The Newburgh Address

Summary

The Newburgh Address is the speech George Washington read to the officers of the Continental Army on 15 March 1783 in the Temple, a large log hall the soldiers had built at their winter cantonment near Newburgh, New York. The fighting had largely ended after Yorktown, and peace with Britain was close, but the officers had gone unpaid for months. Congress had promised them half pay for life in 1780, yet under the Articles of Confederation it could only ask the states for money. In December 1782 a delegation led by General Alexander McDougall carried the officers' memorial to Philadelphia, and Congress delayed. On 10 March 1783 an unsigned summons to a meeting circulated in camp with an anonymous address, generally attributed to Major John Armstrong Jr., an aide to General Horatio Gates. It urged the officers, if peace came, not to lay down their arms until they were paid, and, if war continued, to withdraw and leave the country to defend itself. Washington forbade the unauthorized meeting and called his own for 15 March, with the senior officer to preside. A second anonymous paper claimed that his order approved the movement. When the officers met, with Gates in the chair, Washington entered and read the address he had written. He condemns the anonymous summons as unmilitary and subversive of order, and says the second paper appeals to feelings and passions rather than reason. He reminds the officers that he was among the first to join the cause and has never left their side. He turns the anonymous writer's two proposals into a choice between abandoning wives, children and farms or turning the army against Congress, and asks whether such a writer can be a friend to the army or the country. He defends free speech while condemning the address's method, assures them that Congress means to do them justice though large bodies deliberate slowly, and promises to use all his influence for them. He asks them to express their horror of anyone who would open the floodgates of civil discord, and closes by saying that their conduct could give the world an example posterity would honor. Witnesses reported that Washington then began reading a letter from Joseph Jones, a Virginia delegate in Congress, stopped, and put on spectacles that most officers had never seen him wear, remarking that he had grown gray and nearly blind in the service of his country; many officers were moved. After he left, the meeting adopted resolutions moved by Henry Knox affirming confidence in Congress and rejecting the anonymous proposals. On 22 March Congress voted the officers five years' full pay in place of half pay for life.

Top Lessons

• Answering a grievance without rejecting the aggrieved

  Washington never says the officers' complaints about pay are unjust. He separates their just claim from the anonymous writer's method, pledges his own help, and asks them to trust that Congress will act. He wins them by standing with them while refusing the course proposed.

• The army under civil authority

  The anonymous address suggested using the army's arms to pressure Congress. Washington answers that such a step would turn soldiers against the country they had fought for and open the floodgates of civil discord. The principle that the military obeys civil government was set in practice at Newburgh before it was written into the Constitution.

• Reason against passion

  Washington describes the second anonymous paper as addressed to feelings and passions rather than reason and judgment, and asks the officers to view their choice in the calm light of reason. He uses reasoned argument, rhetorical questions and appeals to honor rather than threats.

• Personal credit spent for the public good

  Washington reminds the officers of eight years of shared hardship and stakes his own reputation on Congress's good faith. As witnesses reported, the moment with the spectacles reminded them of the cost of that service, and his personal standing carried the day.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The medical interest lies outside the written text, in the reported moment when Washington, aged fifty-one, needed spectacles to read a letter and spoke of his eyes failing in the service of his country. Presbyopia in middle age was ordinarily met with convex reading glasses, which were widely available in the eighteenth century, but Washington had rarely been seen wearing them in front of his officers. The address itself alludes to the army's distresses and complicated sufferings, the hunger, exposure and camp disease of eight years of war, without describing them.

• After the address (as reported by witnesses)

  Washington pauses while reading Joseph Jones's letter, puts on spectacles, and speaks of having grown gray and almost blind in his country's service.