The Plots Against George Washington During the American Revolution

Throughout the American Revolution, George Washington faced threats not only from British forces but from political intrigue that challenged his authority as commander in chief of the Continental Army. During the Conway Cabal in 1777 and Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783, critics and dissatisfied military officers sought to undermine or replace Washington, but his deft political skills preserved his authority and quelled dissent.

Although neither crisis came close to removing him, both tested his leadership—and his ability to keep the Continental Army united under civilian control. Had he lost command, the American Revolution—and the fate of the new nation—might have taken a different course.

Washington understood the enormous weight of his position. “Such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings,” he confided in a September 1776 letter to distant cousin Lund Washington. “And yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow.”

Washington’s command came under attack in the fall of 1777. After stinging battlefield defeats at Brandywine and Germantown and the British occupation of Philadelphia, criticism of his leadership and inexperience commanding a large army grew louder. “Thousands of lives and millions of property are yearly sacrificed to the insufficiency of our commander-in-chief,” complained Pennsylvania attorney general Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant.

Some called for replacing Washington with General Horatio Gates, whose star was rising after his stunning victory at the Battle of Saratoga. Among Washington’s sharpest critics was Brigadier General Thomas Conway—an Irish-born officer who mocked his tactics at Brandywine. In an October 1777 letter to Gates, Conway sneered, “Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak [general] and bad [councilors] would have ruined it.”

The “Conway Cabal” was less a full-fledged conspiracy than a loose network of critics, but Washington fumed at the “secret, insidious attempt…to wound my reputation” after a drunken aide to Gates leaked the contents of Conway’s letter.

Washington informed both men he had seen their correspondence and signaled his willingness to step aside if the public wanted another commander. “Whenever the public gets dissatisfied with my services, or a person is found better qualified to answer her expectations, I shall quit the helm,” he wrote.

Although some members of Continental Congress questioned Washington's leadership, no broad consensus emerged to replace him and many still viewed him as indispensable to holding the army together. His generals rallied to his defense, writing letters of support to Congress, and the crisis soon subsided. “Washington does not get enough credit as a politician. And that’s where his real skill was, in the politics of the war,” says David Head, author of A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution.

The 1781 victory at Yorktown did not end the American Revolution. The war dragged into 1783 as peace negotiations continued and British troops remained in New York City, just 50 miles from Washington’s headquarters near Newburgh, New York. With no peace treaty signed, Washington kept the Continental Army on high alert.

A greater threat, however, came from within. Frustration mounted as Congress failed to deliver promised back pay and officer pensions. On March 10, 1783, an anonymous letter—likely written by Major John Armstrong Jr., an aide to Gates—urged officers to either abandon the army or march to Philadelphia to force Congress to honor its commitments.

Washington recognized that officers’ frustrations could erupt into a challenge to civilian authority. “If the war ends with the military destroying the civilian government, then there’s no point in the war at all,” Head says.

Washington canceled the unauthorized meeting proposed in the letter and instead called an official assembly for March 15. The roughly 500 officers gathered in the wooden auditorium known as the Temple of Virtue didn’t expect Washington to appear, making his entrance all the more dramatic.

Pulling prepared remarks from his coat, Washington denounced the letter’s author: “Can he be a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country? Rather, is he not an insidious foe?” After chastising his officers for sowing discord between civil and military authorities, Washington urged patience, assuring his men that Congress would eventually meet its obligations.

Then came the moment that transformed the meeting. After Washington struggled to read the small handwriting of a letter and fumbled putting on his newly prescribed spectacles, he apologized, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.” The display of vulnerability moved some officers to tears.

The appeal worked. The officers reaffirmed their loyalty to civilian government and proclaimed their “unshaken confidence” in Congress, reinforcing the principle of civilian control of the military that would become a cornerstone of the American republic.

When peace arrived with the Treaty of Paris, Washington rejected the precedent of rebel leaders such as Oliver Cromwell and voluntarily relinquished his command, reinforcing civilian control of the military. On December 23, 1783, he resigned before the Confederation Congress in Annapolis, Maryland.

His hands trembled and voice cracked as he concluded, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action.” After sleeping in 280 houses during the war, Washington returned to his beloved home, Mount Vernon.

Retirement proved brief. After presiding over the Constitutional Convention, Washington was elected to be the nation’s first president, intending to serve only until the new constitutional government had established itself. Less than three years into his presidency, a weary Washington asked James Madison to draft a farewell address in anticipation of stepping down after one term.

Concerned that the nation’s growing political divisions still required a unifying leader, Washington agreed to seek a second term. By 1796, though, he retired for good. His memorable farewell address, drafted with Alexander Hamilton’s help, warned against the dangers of partisanship before he returned to the “shade of retirement” at Mount Vernon.

The crises that tested Washington's authority during the Revolution foreshadowed the example he later set as president: that political and military power should be exercised reluctantly and surrendered willingly. “The way that Washington handled the Newburgh Conspiracy, resigning his commission in Annapolis at the end of 1783, and stepping down from the presidency all flowed from the same source,” Head says, “which is Washington’s conviction that power is to be held temporarily.”