The Newburgh Conspiracy was a failed apparent threat by leaders of the Continental Army in March 1783, at the end of the American Revolutionary War. The Army's commander, George Washington, successfully calmed the soldiers and helped secure back pay. The conspiracy may have been instigated by members in the Congress of the Confederation, which circulated an anonymous letter in the army camp at Newburgh, New York, on March 10, 1783. Soldiers were unhappy that they had not been paid for some time and that pensions that had been promised remained unfunded.
The letter suggested that they should take unspecified action against Congress to resolve the issue. The letter was said to have been written by Major John Armstrong, aide to General Horatio Gates, although the authorship and underlying ideas are subjects of historical debate. Commander-in-Chief George Washington stopped any serious talk of rebellion when he made an emotional address to his officers asking them to support the supremacy of Congress. Not long afterward, Congress approved a compromise agreement that it had previously rejected: it funded some of the pay arrears, and granted soldiers five years of full pay instead of a lifetime pension of half pay.
The motivations of numerous actors in these events are debated. Most historians say that the plot was led by civilians. Their goal was forcing Congress to make good on its long-standing promises to the soldiers. Some historians allege that serious consideration was given within the army to some sort of coup d'état, while others dispute the notion. The exact motivations of congressmen involved in communications with army officers implicated in the events are similarly debated.
Background
After the British loss at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, the American Revolutionary War died down in North America, and peace talks began between British and American diplomats. The American Continental Army, based at Newburgh, New York, monitored British-occupied New York City. With the end of the war and dissolution of the Continental Army approaching, soldiers who had long been unpaid feared that the Confederation Congress would not meet previous promises concerning back pay and pensions.
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. Throughout 1782 these issues were a regular topic of debate in Congress and in the army camp at Newburgh, and numerous memos and petitions by individual soldiers had failed to significantly affect Congressional debate on the subject.
A number of officers organized under the leadership of General Henry Knox and drafted a memorandum to Congress. Signed by enough general officers that it could not be readily dismissed as the work of a few malcontents, the memo was delivered to Congress by a delegation consisting of General Alexander McDougall and Colonels John Brooks and Matthias Ogden in late December 1782. It expressed unhappiness over pay that was months in arrears, and concern over the possibility that the half pay pension would not be forthcoming. In the memo, they offered to accept a lump sum payment instead of the lifetime half pay pension. It also contained the vague threat that "any further experiments on their [the army's] patience may have fatal effects." The seriousness of the situation was also communicated to Congress by Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln.
Actions of Congress
Congress was bitterly divided on the subject of finance, with Rhode Island preventing action. The treasury was empty, and Congress lacked the power to compel the states to provide the necessary funds for meeting its obligations. An attempt to amend the Articles of Confederation to allow Congress to impose an import tariff was decisively defeated by the states in November 1782, and some states had enacted legislation forbidding their representatives from supporting any sort of lifetime pension. Members of the "nationalist" faction in Congress who had supported the tax proposal (including Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton) believed that the army funding issues could be used as a lever to gain for Congress the ability to raise its own revenue. They took action and Kohn identifies three main leaders of the "conspiracy": Hamilton, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris. Jack N. Rakove emphasizes the leadership of Robert Morris.