U.S. Patent No. 1 Answered a Humdrum Need

Samuel Hopkin's patent with the original signatures.  The date and number in the top right of the page were added after the Patent Act of 1836.

On July 31, 1790 President George Washington affixed his signature to a document granting the first United States Patent.  It was the culmination of a process that began when Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor with more than a passing interest in innovation, carefully reviewed the application.  When he concluded that the submission was both original and useful he signed the document and passed it on to Secretary of War Henry Knox who also approved it and then sent it to Attorney General Edmund Randolph.  Only when the last was finished with it did it land on Washington’s desk.

It was a cumbersome procedure entailing most of the Executive Branch of the still new Federal Government.  It was an improvisation by Jefferson who for some reason left out his rival for Washington’s favor, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton despite the New Yorker’s avowed interest in encouraging American industry.  Chances are very good that the snub was not accidental.

President George Washington and his Cabinet--Secretary of War Henry Knox, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.  All but Hamilton were involved in the review of the first patent.

Jefferson had to ad lib a review process because when Congress authorized the government to issue patents it neglected to say how it should be done.  The act simply authorized the government to carry out the powers described in Article 1. Section 8 of the Constitution:

Congress shall have the power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

The first person to take advantage of the new law was Samuel Hopkins, a Philadelphia inventor who petitioned for a patent on an improvement “in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process.”  As inventions go, it was pretty mundane, but potash, which was derived from the ash residue of vegetable matter, usually wood, and was used in the making of soap and candles.   Both of those necessities had usually been made at home in the Colonial Era.  Hopkins hoped his process would encourage their manufacture in small scale craft shops for local sale.  So, it perfectly fit Jefferson’s key criterion—usefulness.

Samuel Hopkins was granted the first Patent for his new process of making potash. 

Hopkins was so excited about the prospects for his process that the very next year he was also granted the first patent from the Parliament of Lower Canada in 1791, and issued by the Governor General in Council Angus MacDonnel at Quebec City.

The approval process was repeated two more times that year for a new candle-making process and Oliver Evans’s flour-milling machinery.  The following year the trickle of applications became a rushing steam as innovative and ambitious dreamers submitted their ideas for a $4 fee—a cost that although not insignificant, could be raised by most.   Whatever his own interest in examining the models and drawings, the workload was overwhelming the Cabinet and the President’s attention.

Jefferson substantially streamlined the process.  He handed over initial review to a State Department Clerk who would make a recommendation which he would approve and send on to the President for a final signature.  In practice the final two steps began to simply rubber stamp the Clerk’s determination.

This process continued into Jefferson’s own Presidency.   At his urging Congress created Patent Office with its own staff of clerks.  More than 10,000 patents were issued before 1836 when a fire destroyed all of the records.  That fire spurred Congress to enact the Patent Act of 1836 which authorized the hiring of professional patent examiners in addition to the clerks.  It also authorized new patent documents to be issued in all cases where the patent could be confirmed by other records such as copies held by the recipient.  2,845 patents were restored and issued a number beginning with an X.  That included Hopkins’ first patent.  The rest of the missing patents were voided.

A number of well-known personages worked as political appointees in the Patent Office including Civil War nurse Clara Barton.

To date there are more than six million patents that have been issued to Americans and other nationals by the U.S. Patent system.  Since 1975 patents have been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a part of the Department of Commerce.

By the way, a copy of Hopkins’ patent with the original signatures still exists and is held by the Chicago Historical Society. 

Blood on the Snow--How the Boston Massacre Looks a Lot Like the Cases that Inspired Black Lives Matter

Blood on the snow in Boston.

Some parts of the tale of the so-called Boston Massacre, an iconic moment in pre-Revolutionary colonial history that used to be familiar to any school child echo in today’s world.  All of the ingredients—a rowdy protest boiling spontaneously up from streets where outrage over long time grievances sparked violence over a trivial incident and was met by either firm and appropriate action by responsible authorities or was a vicious and violent over reaction depending on the political bias of the observer.  And not only was the first victim a Black man who became a symbol of rebellion, but his uniformed killers were let off virtually Scot free at a trial on the flimsiest and most arcane of grounds.  Sounds like the familiar arc of a police slaying of an unarmed youth, the kind of all-to-common occurrence that fed the Black Lives Matter movement.

It was a miserable night in Boston in 1770.  What else would you expect on March 5 in the midst of the Little Ice Age which chilled Europe and the Eastern seaboard of North America for nearly two centuries?  A nasty wind whipped across the harbor, a few flakes of snow stung exposed fresh.  Old snow and ice were pushed up against buildings turning gray with the soot from a few thousand hearth fires.

A lone English soldier, Private Hugh White of the 29th Regiment of Foot had the bad luck to draw sentry duty outside of the Customs House on King’s Street that night.  The building was a symbol of unfair taxation without representation and oppression to the people of the city.  Customs collectors had been harassed for attempting to enforce the unpopular Townsend Duties and for seizing ships of leading merchants like John Hancock for smuggling, a mainstay of the local economy.  So, the building needed protection.

The bright red coat of an English private soldier, while colorful, was entirely unsuitable for the harsh New England winter.  Private White undoubtedly shivered in misery.  His life was made worse by the taunting by local toughs, mostly apprentices and day laborers loitering about.  One of them, Edward Garrick, a wig maker’s apprentice, mocked a passing British officer, Captain-Lieutenant John Goldfinch, for not paying a bill due his master.  Goldfinch ignored the jeers and in fact had settled his account that very afternoon.  But White scolded Garrick for insulting an officer.  The two exchanged heated words.  White struck Garrick with the butt of his musket. A small crowd gathered and began pelting the soldier with snow and ice balls. 

19-year-old bookseller Henry Knox made his bow in the history books by warning besieged Private White and later Captain Preston of the dangerous consequences of opening fire. In five years, he would be General Washington's trusted commander of artillery and the man who hauled the heavy artillery from overland from Ft. Ticonderoga setting the stage for the British evacuation of Boston.  Still later he would later be Washington's Secretary of War.

When White leveled his musket against his taunters, Henry Knox, a corpulent 19-year-old bookseller warned him not to shoot because, “if he fire, he must die.”  White refrained from shooting but the crowd on the street grew as church bells rang in alarm.  Someone thought of sending to nearby barracks for reinforcements for the now besieged White who had retreated to the steps of the Custom House with the door at his back.

Things were about to go from bad to worse.

Four regiments of troops were sent to Boston in 1768, more than were ever stationed there when its very existence was threatened by possible invasion during the French and Indian Wars, after the Massachusetts House of Representatives petitioned the Crown for relief from the Townsend Duties and circulated letters of other colonial legislatures asking for support in the protest.  The Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston officially asked for troops to protect him after some of his officers were manhandled and abused.

Four regiments were dispatched as a show of force.  That was about 4,000 men plus the wives and children of many of them, officers and enlisted alike, servants, and the inevitable hangers-on to any army.  The city of Boston boasted only 16,000 residents and a few thousand more resided in nearby villages.  Such a large force deployed among so few civilians, most of them hostile to their presence, led to inevitable friction.

Although two of the regiments had been withdrawn, soldiers of the remaining two were involved in a number of incidents over that winter.  In addition to hostility to the policy that dispatched them, minor personal disputes like the Captain’s late payment to a wig maker, irked the population.  So did the inevitable attention to the local girls by the soldiers, which was often returned by lasses enamored of a dashing uniform. 

A serious bone of contention was the employment of off duty soldiers at the rope walk, Boston’s biggest industrial concern and a main employer of unskilled and casual labor.  The soldiers were working for less than locals and costing many of them jobs.  Wives of several soldiers publicly scolded colonists.  That very afternoon one had promised that the troops would wet their bayonets on troublemakers.

Back at the Customs House, White was finally relieved by a corporal and six private soldiers under the personal command of Captain Thomas Preston, the officer of the watch who declined to trust a junior lieutenant with the sensitive assignment.  As they drew close to the Customs House where the angry crowd had grown to over a hundred, Knox again warned the Captain of the awful consequences if his men fired.  Preston reportedly told him, “I am aware of it.”

This 19th Century engraving featured the death of Crispus Attucks.  It also depicted Captain Preston ordering a disciplined volley.

Once at the Customs House Preston had his men load and prime their muskets and form a semi-circle in front of Private White and the door.  They faced a crowd now swollen by further reinforcements, many of them armed with cudgels and brick bats.  In the very front of the mob, just feet away from Captain Preston who took up a position in front of his men, was a dark-skinned man named Crispus Attucks.

Not much is known about Attucks, not even whether he was a slave, an escaped slave, or a freeman.  He worked as a sailor on coastal traders and on the docks.  He was described as Mulato but was known to have both African and Native American Wampanoag ancestry.  Although there were not many Blacks in Boston, their presence was not that unusual.  They mixed casually and freely with the lowest classes of White Bostonians—the day laborers, indentured servants, and apprentice boys.

As Attucks and the crowd pressed forward, Preston had his men level their muskets but ordered them to hold their fire.  He ordered the mob to disperse.  They responded with taunts of “go ahead and fire.”  Preston said that the troops would not fire “except on his order” and made the point of standing in front of his men’s guns.

From out of the crowd someone hit Private Hugh Montgomery on the arm with a clump of ice or in other accounts he was struck by a cudgel.  Montgomery fell to the ground, although he may simply have lost his footing on the ice and lost his musket.  He grabbed the gun and scrambled to his feet.  Enraged, he leveled his gun at the nearest man, Atticus, and fired yelling “Damn you, fire!” to his fellow soldiers.

Attucks crumpled to the ground mortally wounded.  There was a pause of a few seconds and then a ragged, un-coordinated volley went off from the troops.  The only command Preston gave was a desperate order to cease fire.

Eleven men were hit by fire indicating that some may have been injured by the same round or that some soldiers had time to re-load and fire. In addition to Attucks rope maker Samuel Gray and mariner James Caldwel died on the cobblestones.  Seventeen-year-old ivory turner apprentice Samuel Maverick standing near the rear of the crowd was struck by a ricocheting fragment and died a few hours later. Patrick Carr, an Irish immigrant died of his wounds two weeks later.

The crowd retreated to near-by streets but continued to grow.  Preston called out the entire regiment for protection and withdrew his squad to the barracks. 

Massachusetts born Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson tried to calm the angry mob that surrounded the State House.

An angry mob descended on the near-by State House which was ringed with troops for protection.  Massachusetts-born Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson tried to calm the crowd by addressing them from the relative safety of a balcony.  He promised a thorough and prompt investigation.  After a few hours the crowd drifted away.

Local malcontents, becoming known loosely as Patriots, were quick to use the slaughter to raise a hue and cry against the Townsend Duties and to the onerous virtual military occupation of their city.  Two virtually identical engravings purporting to accurately portray the shooting were rushed to publication.  The most famous, engraved by Paul Revere, the master silver and coppersmith, iron foundry man, bell caster, and master of all trades, after a drawing by Henry Pelham was published in the Boston Gazette and then re-issued in sometimes hand colored prints which made Revere and the printer a good deal of money.

A hand tinted copy of Paul Revere's famous broadside of the affair on King's Street.  The image was actually cribbed from an earlier version by Henry Pelham that appeared in the Boston Gazette.

With public opinion inflamed, the two regiments in the city were withdrawn to Castle William on an island in the harbor.  Had they not been, “they would probably be destroyed by the people—should it be called rebellion, should it incur the loss of our charter, or be the consequence what it would,” according to Secretary of State Andrew Oliver.  By May General Thomas Gage, in command of all troops in the colonies, decided that the presence of the 29th Regiment was counterproductive to good order, and had the regiment removed from Massachusetts entirely.

Meanwhile, at the end of March Captain Preston, the men in his rescue squad, Pvt. White and four civilian employees of the Customs House, who some had charged fired out the windows of the building were indicted for murder and manslaughter.

Gov. Hutchinson managed by hook or by crook to delay the start of the trial for nearly a year to let inflamed passions died down.  Patriots took that time to organize the publication of an account of the event, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, which although banned from circulation in the city, inflamed passions across the Colonies, and even earned sympathy when it was reprinted in London.

Patriot lawyer John Adams successfully took up the defense of Captain Preston, the accused soldiers, and civilian employees of the Customs House.

Despite the delay, it looked like it would be very difficult for Captain Preston and the soldiers to get a fair trial in Massachusetts.  All of the leading local lawyers had refused to take their cases.  John Adams, a leading Patriot, a man with boundless political ambition, and first cousin to rabble-rouser-in-chief Samuel Adams, agreed to take on the case, despite howls of protest from his political allies.

It was a great choice.  Assisted by his cousin Josiah Quincy, another Patriot, and Loyalist Robert Auchmuty he quickly obtained a not guilty verdict in the first trial.  Captain Preston was shown by the testimony of multiple witnesses to have never ordered the troops to fire and to have tried to get them under control.  That was in October.

In November the cases of the enlisted soldiers proved dicer.   They had, after all, fired lethal rounds without orders.  Adam’s pled straight up self-defense.  He told the jury that the men were under attack by the mob, “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.”  Appealing to the class prejudice of the land-owning pool of eligible jurors, Adams won acquittal on murder charges for all of the defendants, and only two were convicted of manslaughter.      

Privates Montgomery and Kilroy still faced the death penalty at the sentencing on December 14, they “prayed the benefit of clergy”, a remnant of Medieval law in which the essentially claimed exemption from punishment on the grounds that they were “clergy” who could read a Bible verse.        The two were branded on the thumb and released.

By the time the civilians were up for trial in December, enthusiasm for continuing the case against them, which was weak and based on the testimony of one servant easily proven to be false, was waning.

Whatever the outcome of the trials, the events of March 5 helped set the stage for the American Revolution.

By the way, the term Boston Massacre was not applied to the bloody ruckus until long after the fact.  Like another iconic event, the so-called Boston Tea Party it got its name during the brief national enthusiasm generated by the 50th anniversaries of important Revolutionary and pre-revolutionary events.  And like the Tea Party it was soon imbued with a lot of romantic myth and nonsense.            

 

The Day George Washington Stared Down a Coup

Washington's Newbugh Address quashed a coup d' etat against Congress and military rule. 

The American Revolution in the military sense was essentially over in March of 1783 except for minor skirmishes and associated Indian warfare on the far western frontier. Everyone was waiting for Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in faraway Paris to conclude a final peace treaty. George Washington’s victorious Continental Army had to be held together just in case talks broke down or a change in ministry in London decided to take another crack at subduing the wayward former colonies.

 

A dysfunctional government run collectively by a fractious Congress under the terms of the Articles of Confederation and without direct power of taxation was unable to pay its troops—even its officers, and scarcely able to deliver to the Army basic provisions for survival. The Army was idle and hungry. An idle, hungry army is a very dangerous thing. 

 

Afterwards other revolutions won by rebel armies after protracted wars would come to similar cross roads. It almost never ended well. Usually the victorious General would place himself at the head of his troops and overthrow what civil revolutionary authority there was, declaring himself President, Dictator, or Monarch and consolidating his power by lavishing the spoils of war on his officers and men. Other times revolution devolved into bitter civil war. Almost never did it end with civil government intact and hardly a shot fired in anger. One man, General Washington himself, prevented calamity in one of the most important acts of his distinguished career and one that is little remembered today. This is what happened. 

 

Washington's Headquarters at Newburgh.

 

The bulk of the Army had been encamped at Newburgh, New York to keep the British Army under close surveillance and bottled up in New York City since March of 1782. As another winter approached, all eyes turned to Congress where proposals to provide pensions when the Army was disbanded were being debated. 

 

In 1780, to squelch earlier discontent among the troops, Congress had pledge to, on the model of the British, put all officers on half-pay for the rest of their lives. Now the treasury, such as it was, was empty and with no power to compel the states to fund the Confederation government, there was no way to make good on that promise. Worse, in January Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris announced that the coffers were empty and that he was suspending paying the Army. Previously Morris, a financier and one of the wealthiest men in the new nation, had met such emergencies by personally guaranteeing notes—and buying many of them himself. That he refused to do so at this juncture was part a plan of a faction of Congress known as the Nationalists to put pressure on the new government to assert limited powers of taxation, notably the ability to levy an import duty or impost. This was bitterly opposed by a larger block of Congress and many states had passed instructions to their delegates forbidding them to vote in favor of payments of pensions fearing that it would force the adoption of taxation. 

 

The Nationalists who included Morris, Gouverneur Morris of New York, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton who had left the Army to take a seat in Congress from New York, backed the impost plan not only to meet obligations to the Army, but to pay the many debts of Congress amassed during the Revolution. They hoped that a possible crisis involving the Army might force Congress to move. They were in more or less confidential communication with officers in the Army, including some senior commanders. 

 

Among those was one of Washington’s favorite officers, General Henry Knox, who was encouraged to draft a memorial to Congress signed by other senior officers of such impressive stature that they could not be dismissed as mere malcontents. After expressing dissatisfaction with the suspension of pay, the memorial offered a compromise on the pension issue. Instead of half pay for a life time, they indicated the Army would be satisfied with a lump sum payment. It concluded with a not very veiled threat that “that any further experiments on their [the army’s] patience may have fatal effects.” Private messages were also sent to Secretary of War Benjamin Lincoln, himself recently out of the Army and the officer delegated by Washington to receive the surrender of the British at Yorktown, which made clear the dangerous state of moral in the Army. 

 

The memorial was delivered to Congress by General Alexander McDougall and Colonels John Brooks and Matthias Ogden in late December 1782. McDougall and Brooks lingered in Philadelphia to lobby Congress and monitor the situation. They met with a special committee in early January to explain the seriousness of the situation. That committee reported to the whole body on January 22 at which time Robert Morris shocked Congress by announcing his resignation in despair of the body acting. The nationalists twice tried to pass legislation calling for pensions at full pay to end on a specific date as an alternative to the original lifetime half pay or the Army’s immediate lump sum. On February 4 Congress rejected the proposal for the second time. 

 

Brooks hastened back to Newburgh to rally the officer corps for more decisive action. McDougall wrote Knox under the significant pseudonym Brutus suggested that the Army refuse to disband when peace was announced until their demands were met. That action would be virtual mutiny in the face of an order from Congress to demobilize. Knox was sympathetic but non-committal. 

 

Meanwhile other dissenting forces in the Army became involved. That included the staff of Washington’s chief rival General Horatio Gates, the victor at Saratoga and a clique of younger officers long dissatisfied with Washington’s leadership and outside the thrall of the cult of personal loyalty to him. Nationalists in Congress may have believed that these officers might be the core of a coup d’état should it become necessary. 

 

By mid-February rumors that a peace treaty was at hand swirled around both the capital in Philadelphia and the camp in Newburgh, bring the situation closer to crisis. Hamilton wrote privately to Washington, his patron in the Army and who was said to regard him like the Marquis de Lafayette as a son. Taking advantage of the relationship, Hamilton warned the General of the dangers in his camp and urged him to “take the direction” of the army’s anger—in other words be ready to assume command of a coup against Congress. Shocked, Washington wrote back that he sympathized with the plights of both the Army and of Congress but flatly said that he would be no part of a plan to use the Army as a threat to the civil government in contradiction to the republican principles on which the war had been conducted.

 

Washington's trusted and loyal chief of artillery, Major General Henry Knox dashed plotters' hopes when he refused to participate in or lead a refusal of the Army to disband and menace Congress.
 

On February 21 Knox dashed the hopes of Congressional Nationalists who had hoped that he would lend his prestige to a threat not to disband the Army undoubtedly after consultation with Washington. In letters he expressed again sympathy for the Army’s plight but declared he would not participate in any mutiny or revolt and expressed the hope that the Army would only be used “against the Enemies of the Liberties in America.” 

 

Without the support of Washington and Knox—indeed with their declared opposition—the Nationalists turned their attention to Gates as their best bet for a man on a white horse. They sent Gates a signal of their support should he decide to move with Pennsylvania Colonel Walter Stewart, returning to duty after an illness. He arrived at camp on March 8 and met with Gates. Rumors about an impending demonstration of some kind swirled through the camp. On March 10 an unsigned letter, later attributed to Major John Armstrong, Jr. who was an aide to Gates, began circulating in camp calling for a meeting of field grade officers the next day, March 11 at 11 am. 

 

As soon as Washington got wind of it he denounced the “disorderly... and irregular nature” of the anonymously called meeting in his general orders of the day the morning of the 11th. Without explicitly banning the meeting, he proposed his own meeting of officers on March 15. The letter was carefully worded to give the impression that Washington himself would not attend. Instead, he directed the meeting to be chaired by the “senior officer present” knowing full well that would be Gates. 

 

Major General Horatio Gates, the victor at the turn-the-tide Battle of Saratoga, chaired the Newbugh meeting of rebellious officers and was apparently prepared to assume command of a mutinous Army if Washington would not. 

 

The next day a second anonymous letter appeared claiming that Washington’s endorsement of a meeting on the 15th was a signal the General would support a threat in force to Congress. Washington was furious. 

 

For the next three days the camp was awash in rumors and whispered plot. On the appointed time on Saturday, March 15 the officers assembled in the New Building or Temple which had just been constructed and was the largest facility in camp capable of holding such a meeting. As expected, Gates took the chair. Shortly after he called the meeting to order, Washington suddenly and unexpectedly appeared and asked permission to address the assembly. 

 

His sudden appearance caused quite a stir—and for one of the few times in his experience in the Army the greeting was not unanimously adulatory. Younger officers and those who had not personally served close to him hooted and jeered. Gates must have been none to glad to see his commander but had no choice but to allow him to speak. 

 

Washington asked for permission to address the meeting--he could hardly have been denied.

 

Washington came to the front of the room and turned to face his officers. He gave a short speech with unusual heat and passion, a departure from his carefully cultivated image of lofty probity. He had carefully drafted the statement but gave it without notes as if extemporaneously. He called upon the assembly to oppose anyone “who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood.” 

 

Then he drew sheets of paper folded in half length-wise from inside his coat. It was a letter from a member of Congress. He fumbled with the paper and seemed to have difficulty reading it. He then drew from another pocket a new pair of spectacles. Almost no one except his closest aides had yet seen him wear them. He slowly unfolded them and perched them unsteadily on his nose. 

 

“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.” Many of the officers wept. The sympathy and sentiment of the room swung immediately to Washington. After reading the letter, which really added little to the issue at hand, the General bowed and left the building without waiting for a response. He didn’t have to wait.

 

The conspiracy or potential coup or whatever had been afoot collapsed. A motion was made to denounce the anonymous letters. It passed virtually unanimously with only Colonel Timothy Pickering protesting. Other motions affirmed the loyalty of the Army. A committee consisting of General Knox and Colonel Brooks was appointed to draft a final resolution which expressed the “utmost confidence” of the Army in Congress and the “disdain and abhorrence” for the irregular proposals circulated earlier. 

 

Washington's spectacles--the key prop in a bit of business that swung sympathy and loyalty to him. 

 

How much of the proceedings that morning was carefully stage-managed in advance by Washington and Knox and how much was happy accident is hotly debated by historians. I am in the camp that recognizes Washington as a brilliant tactician. The old fox knew exactly what he was doing. The speech went down in history as the Newburgh Address, but it was a bit of stage business that carried the day.

 

Meanwhile Washington sent copies of both the anonymous letters and his address to Congress, which was debating, yet again, the pension issue. Even steadfast opponents now realized how narrowly disaster had been averted. The Nationalists saw an opportunity. They advised the creation of a committee to study the intelligence and come up with a solution. Shrewdly, they stacked the committee with steadfast opponents of any pension plan. But presented with mounting evidence of deep dissatisfaction in the Army and the prospect that in the future Washington might not be able to so deftly turn aside open rebellion, one anti-pension delegate, Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut,  came forward with a proposal for a lump-sum payment, including arrears pay. 

 

As finally approved, the pension plan called for half-pay for five years, mirroring the solution proposed by Knox and twice rejected before. The payment was not in cash, but in government bonds, highly speculative securities many thought would be worthless. Many officers sold their bonds to speculators for pennies on the dollar. But those who held onto the bonds were made whole. Thanks to the adoption of the Constitution, the new ability of the nation to levy import duties and taxes, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s determination to fully pay off all of the Revolutionary War debt, the bonds were redeemed by the government at full value in 1790. 

 

But Congress was not yet out of the woods. Discontent spread to the still uncompensated non-commissioned officers and there was some minor rioting in camp and talk of marching on Philadelphia to claim their back pay. Once again the specter of the Army refusing to disband was raised. 

 

 

Robert Morris stepped up with $800,000 in personal notes to pay non-commissioned officers and enlisted men three months pay to encourage them to obey and order to disband after victory was concerned.  His sacrifices contributed to his financial failure  and he was sent to debtor's prison after the war.

 

On April 19, eight years to the day since the Battles of Lexington and Concord, with news of a final Peace Treaty confirmed, Washington declared the war over. Congress quickly ordered him to disband the Army and voted each enlisted man and non-commissioned officer three months’ pay. Since there were still no funds in the treasury, Robert Morris stepped up $800,000 in notes on his personal accounts to the troops. 

 

Many soldiers, in need of cash just to get home, sold their notes to speculators at deep discounts. The notes, whether retained by the soldiers or by the speculators were also paid off by Hamilton. Soldiers left camp over the next few months either on a furlough from which they never expected to be recalled or outright discharged. 

 

The notes were given them upon their separation. This caused difficulties when a Pennsylvania regiment was swept by rumors that they would be discharged before getting their notes. They departed camp and marched on Philadelphia in June, sending Congress scurrying to Princeton, New Jersey. There is evidence that some supporters of the Newburgh plot also had a hand in this dangerous mini-uprising including Walter Stewart, John Armstrong, and Gouverneur Morris. 

 

But the crisis passed. The Army was formally disbanded in November except for small garrisons at West Point and on the frontier. Washington went to New York City where he was given a hero’s public welcome and met for one last time with his officers, including many of the players in the Newburgh affair, for an emotional farewell at the Fraunces Tavern. Then he retired to his Virginia plantation, disappointing those who hoped he would become king and they his hereditary nobles.

 

Robert Morris stepped up with $800,000 in personal notes to pay non-commissioned officers and enlisted men three months pay to encourage them to obey and order to disband after victory was concerned.  His sacrifices contributed to his financial failure  and he was sent to debtor's prison after the war. 

 

Perhaps the saddest fate of all of those involved, except for Hamilton who died in that infamous duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, was that of Robert Morris. He had expended much of his personal wealth for the cause. To recoup his losses in 1791 he contracted with Massachusetts to purchase what is now essentially all of Western New York west of the Genesee River for $333,333.33. There were other deals involving land in and around Washington, DC and in the South, as well as contracts on Virginia tobacco for sale in France. First the French Revolution erupted destroying his market there and leaving him deeply in debt for annual commitments to purchase the tobacco. Then a financial panic in 1797 left him land rich and cash poor, unable to pay his many creditors. He lost most of his land and was actually held for two and a half years in debtor’s prison. 

 

Congress passed the temporary Bankruptcy Act of 1800, in part, to get Morris out of prison. In ill health, he spent the rest of his life in a modest Philadelphia home in retirement. He died in 1809.

 

The United States of America got and kept, for what it is worth, a Constitutional republic and a military subservient to an elected civilian government. But it was a closer thing than you probably imagined.