America’s first attempted coup also tracks to Jan. 6
On March 17, 1783, Gen. George Washington gave an unexpected speech to his officer corps at their Newburgh, New York, camp in which he reportedly apologized for his feeble eyesight and pulled out his glasses to read a letter. His message was clear: They should follow his lead, put down their guns and return home when commanded to do so.
To his credit, Washington was putting a stop to America’s first attempted coup, the Newburgh Conspiracy hatched by his protégé Alexander Hamilton.
The agitated officers had gathered expecting to hear a speech calling for a mutiny. More than two months earlier, several officers had delivered a petition to Congress, ironically officially entered into the record on Jan. 6, asking it to pay promised pensions up front.
But Congress was broke, kept afloat by loans from European allies. Attempts to give Congress the power to directly tax imports had failed. Few states had contributed their full share of revenue.
As the officers’ petition was debated in Congress, anonymous officers began to plot with key members of Congress to mutiny by either refusing to fight or put down their weapons.
The officers’ co-conspirators in Congress were primarily Robert Morris and Hamilton. They disliked the Articles of Confederation, distrusted democracy and wanted to empower Congress. It was a dangerous game that could have easily spiraled out of control into dictatorship.
Hamilton admitted his involvement on the floor of Congress and to Washington in a series of letters in which he also named Morris as an accomplice. Hamilton wrote several letters attempting to recruit Washington to “guide the torrent,” the army’s insurrection.
The plotters shared a desire to establish the United States as a global power resting on a secure public credit system so the government could tax, pay its creditors, stimulate the economy and ensure its defenses to prevent insurrections such as the one they were plotting.
Ultimately, fear of a coup provided just the necessary impetus to get the tax and pension plans approved by Congress. However, the plans were never ratified by all the states as the Articles required.
None of the officers involved were ever publicly revealed or punished for sedition.
The plotters in Congress also escaped sedition charges with their reputation, wealth and personal liberty intact. They eventually got their government-backed credit system at the Constitutional Convention.
In the 1790s, Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton got Congress to pass nearly all of Morris’ financial plan. The plan transformed the country into a global hegemon and was the foundation for the U.S. financial system that still functions today.
However, neither Hamilton nor Morris prospered for long. It’s well known that Hamilton was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.
Morris’ story is less well known. He became wealthy as Congress’ dual Revolutionary War director of finance and war contractor. After ratification, his investments crashed and he spent much of the rest of his life in a debtors’ prison, a victim of his own financial system. After a few years, his allies used their new constitutional power to pass a bankruptcy law that freed him. Morris died penniless.
The attempted coup may have failed in the short term, but it eventually achieved its objective: enshrining the immense powers of the purse and sword they sought in the U.S. Constitution.
Ultimately, the plotters in Congress lost the battle but won the war. Sometimes the dangerous objectives pursued by coup attempts are, in time, quietly and almost imperceptibly realized by more indirect methods. Whatever you think about the outcome of the Newburgh plotters’ effort, which was critical to transforming the United States into the global empire it is today, the real danger is that seditious plots have the potential to prevail.
If the seditious plotters both inside and outside of government are not punished, they will live to try again. This is a lesson we must learn from our own Jan. 6 coup attempt.