In Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” a fortune teller warns the Roman potentate to “Beware the Ides of March.” It was a warning that something awful might happen to him on that date which, in the calendar of the time, meant the 15th. Caesar paid little heed and on March 15, in 44 B.C., he was assassinated by senators eager to restore the fading Republic.
If I had been in Rome on that date, I might have applauded the deed. Caesar, after all, was no friend of the liberties of the Republic. He was a violent, power-lusting demagogue who bullied the Senate into naming him “dictator for life” just weeks earlier. I can easily imagine that the threat to Roman liberty justified extreme measures. We now know, however, that Caesar’s death did not produce the outcome its architects intended. Instead of renewing liberty, it provoked civil war and imperial autocracy. The Republic was dead as a doornail, never to rise again.
While the most famous Ides of March remains that fateful day in Rome, a March 15 event from American history (in 1783) also deserves attention. The two principal characters—Caesar in the first instance, George Washington in the second—couldn’t have been more different. Both were military figures, but the similarities end there.
The former intended to extinguish a republic, the latter fought to establish one. One was ambitious for political power, the other preferred managing a farm in Virginia. Caesar possessed little respect for civilian authority, but Washington defended it at all costs. And while Caesar was an arrogant scoundrel, Washington earned the reverence of his countrymen as a pillar of solid character.
What happened on March 15, 1783? Known in history as the high-water mark of the “Newburgh Conspiracy,” it involved disgruntled officers and soldiers of America’s Continental Army, commanded by Gen. George Washington. Perhaps the best book on the subject is historian David Head’s “A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution.” “It was a crisis of peace,” the author argued, “a time when the Revolution still might have failed, and the crisis at Newburgh was an hour of grave danger.” Americans can be grateful that in a moment when character made all the difference, we had a Washington and not a Caesar. Here’s the backdrop:
In the popular imagination, the American victory against the British at Yorktown in October 1781 is considered the end of the conflict with the mother country. In reality, the war would not formally conclude until the Treaty of Paris almost two years later. If peace overtures had broken down at any time in between, hostilities could easily have resumed. So Washington, headquartered in Newburgh, New York, worked to keep the army together and ready in case events turned nasty.
It was, to put it mildly, a massive challenge that would have defeated a lesser man. The army seethed with discontent over the bad food and deplorable living conditions it had suffered for years. The men longed to rejoin their families, impoverished in many instances by the absence of a breadwinner. To add insult to injury, compensation for their wartime services was pitiful. Head wrote:
“As much as they expected money, officers and soldiers alike rarely received any pay at all. As Washington told a complaining Maryland general in spring 1782, ‘no pay has been lately given to the Troops of any state.’ He could have said the same at virtually any other point in the war.”
Congress and the states had offered the men little more than pledges to pay something in the future. The paper dollars the Congress printed and sometimes provided the army were near-worthless from the start, as were the slips of paper issued by various states. Imagine setting aside your life, occupation, and family, risking life and limb for a cause that might not end well, and doing it under often harsh conditions for free.
In May 1778, in lieu of pay, Congress approved pensions of half pay for seven years for officers who served for the duration of the war. That was immensely better than anything the average grunt could expect at that moment. Late in the conflict, Congress changed the promise from seven years to life at Washington’s urging. Anything less, the general feared, would produce mass resignations.
Once when an officer suggested to Washington the idea that the men be given land in the West to establish a country and anoint a king, Washington smacked it down in the strongest possible terms. He wanted no further hints of any betrayal of the young country’s republican principles.
The problem was not that Congress had the money and simply wouldn’t pay it out. It was on the brink of bankruptcy, the costs of war having drained what little treasury it ever had.
In early March 1783, tensions over the pay and pensions situation threatened to boil over. Letters and rumors hinted that some men entertained the unthinkable, namely, a march on Congress in Philadelphia to compel it to pay up. Some politicians hoped, not so secretly, that the threat of insurrection would galvanize the country in favor of a stronger central government. But Head raises doubts that any of this ever constituted an authentic “conspiracy” and regrets the use of the term in connection with Newburgh.
Washington understood the value of a theatrical entrance. Gates had barely opened the meeting when Washington surprised everybody by walking in. Stunned, Gates gave him the floor as Washington gazed upon the faces of his angry men. He produced some paper on which he had written what became known as the “Newburgh Address,” arguably the most important speech of his military career. One could hear the dropping of the proverbial pin.
In a calm but fervent tone, Washington counseled patience. He recognized what the men had been through, and he asked them not to throw it all away, saying,
“Let me entreat you, Gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures, which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity, and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained—let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your Country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress; that, previous to your dissolution as an Army they will cause all your Accts to be fairly liquidated, as directed in their resolutions, which were published to you two days ago—and that they will adopt the most effectual measures in their power, to render ample justice to you, for your faithful and meritorious Services.”
And then he did something that brought many men to tears. He appeared to hesitate over some words, reached in his pocket for a pair of glasses that almost no one had ever seen him wear before, and said this:
“Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”
In an instant, the turmoil was over. This was a man who had always strived to do his best, who endured hardship at the side of his men, who never lost faith in the cause of liberty or the men who fought on its behalf. Washington loved his men, and they in turn loved him back. As he departed the building, one officer after another reaffirmed his loyalty. There would be no mutiny that day, or ever. Peace with Britain arrived in September 1783.
Congress eventually hammered out an agreement with the army. It called for five years of full pay instead of the lifetime pension of half pay promised earlier. The men received bonds which, to Congress’s credit, were redeemed at 100 cents on the dollar by the new American government in 1790.
In an ancient Roman context, the Ides of March evokes a story of bloodshed and tyranny. In an American context, however, March 15 should be remembered as a remarkable day in which the character of a great man saved a nation.
