Newburgh

Newburgh, New York: Where the Revolution Was Saved from Itself

The American Revolution was won not once but twice — first on the battlefield, and then in a cramped stone farmhouse overlooking the Hudson River, where George Washington stood before his own officers and, with a single quiet gesture, preserved the republic that their sacrifices had made possible. That farmhouse was the Hasbrouck House in Newburgh, New York, and the crisis that unfolded there in March 1783 may have been the most dangerous moment the young nation ever faced — not from British arms, but from the frustrations and fury of the very army that had secured American independence. Newburgh's place in the Revolution is not defined by a dramatic battle or a famous siege. It is defined by something rarer and more consequential: the moment when military power voluntarily submitted to civilian authority, establishing a precedent without which the United States as we know it could never have existed.

To understand why Newburgh mattered, one must understand the condition of the Continental Army in the final years of the war. By the autumn of 1782, the military situation had shifted decisively in America's favor. Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown more than a year earlier, and peace negotiations were underway in Paris. Yet the Continental Congress, operating under the weak Articles of Confederation, was nearly bankrupt. It had no power to tax and relied on requisitions from the states — requisitions that went largely ignored. Congress had, in 1780, promised Continental officers a lifetime pension of half their pay when they were discharged.

Financier Robert Morris had in early 1782 stopped army pay as a cost-saving measure, arguing that when the war finally ended the arrears would be made up. Officers who had served for years, often at great personal cost, had not been paid. Many had been promised half-pay pensions for life, a commitment Congress now seemed unable or unwilling to honor. Enlisted soldiers were in even worse condition, ragged and hungry, held together by discipline and by the force of Washington's personal example. The army was encamped in and around Newburgh and the nearby cantonment at New Windsor, positioned along the Hudson to keep watch over the remaining British garrison in New York City. The soldiers constructed nearly 600 log huts aligned in rows, making the cantonment the second largest city in New York State at the time.

Over 7,000 soldiers and some 500 of their wives and children remained there through June 1783. It was here, in this uneasy limbo between war and peace, that the crisis gathered.

Washington established his headquarters at the Hasbrouck House, a modest Dutch fieldstone dwelling built in 1750 by Jonathan and Tryntje Hasbrouck, on April 1, 1782. Washington chose the Hasbrouck house because of a key ferry crossing and its proximity to the nearby American army encampment at Vails Gate (New Windsor Cantonment). His wife Martha accompanied him to the headquarters, where she, officers, servants, and enslaved people lived and worked in close quarters. He would remain there for sixteen and a half months — longer than at any other wartime headquarters — making it the place where the final and in some ways most critical chapter of his military leadership unfolded. From this house, Washington managed the complex logistics of an army in waiting, corresponded with Congress and with the peace commissioners in Europe, and navigated a political landscape that grew more treacherous by the month.

The first crisis to test Washington at Newburgh arrived not from the army's enlisted ranks but from one of its own officers. On May 22, 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola sent Washington a letter proposing that he should become the King of the United States.

Nicola argued that the weaknesses of republican government were self-evident, and suggested giving the head of such a new constitution "some title apparently more moderate, but if all other things were once adjusted I believe strong arguments might be produced for admitting the title of king." Washington's rejection was immediate, unequivocal, and delivered the same day. He wrote: "Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for your self or posterity—or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your Mind, & never communicate, as from yourself, or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature." The Nicola affair was a harbinger of the deeper unrest to come, but Washington's swift repudiation of any monarchical ambition helped establish, early and firmly, the republican character of American military leadership.

It was also at Newburgh, on August 7, 1782, that Washington issued the order establishing the Badge of Military Merit, a decoration of purple cloth in the shape of a heart, awarded to enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers for "singularly meritorious action." By 1782, Congress had forbidden Washington from granting commissions to men as a reward for merit, as it could ill afford to pay existing officers, let alone additional ones; yet Washington felt strongly that the enlisted soldier needed to be recognized for his service, and so from his headquarters at the Hasbrouck House he created two awards.

The first was the Honorary Badge of Distinction — a single chevron sewn on the left sleeve of the regimental coat representing three years of faithful service, while two chevrons represented six or more years. The second, the Badge of Military Merit, was reserved for acts of extraordinary gallantry or essential service. Only three badges were awarded in the waning days of the Revolutionary War, all to volunteers from Connecticut.

On May 3, 1783, Sergeants Elijah Churchill and William Brown received their badges and certificates from Washington at the Newburgh headquarters.

One month later, on June 10, 1783, Sergeant Daniel Bissell — one of Washington's most successful spies — was awarded his badge at headquarters by Secretary Jonathan Trumbull. Washington intended the award to be permanent, but after the army disbanded it fell into obscurity. It was not until 1932, on the bicentennial of Washington's birth, that the modern Purple Heart was created in recognition of his ideals, with General Order #3 declaring it "revived out of respect to his memory and military achievements." Today, the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor stands at New Windsor, just miles from where the original award was conceived.

But the defining event at Newburgh — the one that would echo through American history — was the conspiracy that reached its climax in March 1783. The plot originated with politicians frustrated with the weak government under the Articles of Confederation and with several army officers, including General Horatio Gates, the "hero of Saratoga," who sought to replace Washington as commander-in-chief. Congressmen Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris schemed to have the army mutiny, intimidating Congress into passing an import tax that would provide resources to pay the soldiers and supply the government with permanent revenue. These men did not want a military coup, which they believed would result in civil war or chaos, but a stronger national government.

On Monday, March 10, 1783, an anonymous letter circulated around the Newburgh encampment — later determined to have been written by Major John Armstrong, Gates's aide-de-camp, with two other aides copying and distributing it.

The document, known as the First Newburgh Address and signed only by "a fellow soldier," accused America of trampling on the soldiers' rights and suggested that if peace was declared, the Army could refuse to lay down their arms until their demands were met; alternatively, if the war continued, the Army could simply retire from the field and leave America to