The Army and Country after the War: Executive Council and State
Although for the year 1782 eight million had been required, the payments made into the public treasury under that requisition had amounted to only four hundred and twenty thousand and thirty-one dollars and twenty-nine ninetieths, and the foreign loans had not been sufficient to defray expenses it was impossible to avoid. At the close of that year the expenditures of the superintendent of the finances had exceeded his receipts four hundred and four thousand seven hundred and thirteen dollars and nine ninetieths, and the excess continued to increase.
Congress, in this dilemma, instructed the commander-in-chief to grant furloughs freely to the officers and men, hoping thus quietly to reduce the army. This order produced serious alarm. It was supposed that the authorities were seeking to get rid of them without paying them, and Washington's persuasions and influence were again necessary to quiet the murmurs. He succeeded in this troublesome task.
The utmost good temper was universally manifested, and the arrangements for retiring on furlough were made without a murmur. In the course of the summer a considerable proportion of the troops enlisted for three years were also permitted to return to their homes; and in October a proclamation was issued by Congress declaring all those who had engaged for the war to be discharged on the third of December.
While these excellent dispositions were manifested by the veterans serving under the immediate eye of their patriot chief, the government was exposed to insult and outrage from the mutinous spirit of a small party of new levies. About eighty of this description of troops belonging to the State of Pennsylvania were stationed at Lancaster. Revolting against the authority of their officers, they marched in a body to Philadelphia, with the avowed purpose of obtaining a redress of their grievances from the Executive Council of the State. The march of these insolent mutineers was unobstructed, and after arriving in Philadelphia they were joined by some other troops quartered in the barracks, so as to amount to about three hundred men. They then marched in military parade, with fixed bayonets, to the State-House, where Congress and the Executive Council of the State were sitting. After placing sentinels at all the doors, they sent in a written message, threatening the President and Council of the State to let loose an enraged soldiery upon them if their demands were not gratified in twenty minutes. Although the resentments of this banditti were not directed particularly against Congress, the government of the Union was grossly insulted, and those who administered it were blockaded for several hours by an insolent and licentious soldiery. After remaining in this situation about three hours, Congress separated, having fixed on Princeton as the place at which they should reassemble.
On receiving information of this outrage, the commander-in-chief instantly detached fifteen hundred men under the command of Major-General Howe to suppress the mutiny. The indignation which this insult to the civil authority had occasioned, and the mortification with which he viewed the misconduct of any portion of the American troops, were strongly marked in his letter written on that occasion to the President of Congress.
Before the detachment from the army could reach Philadelphia, the disturbances were in a great degree quieted without bloodshed; but Major-General Howe was ordered by Congress to continue his march into Pennsylvania, "in order that immediate measures might be taken to confine and bring to trial all such persons belonging to the army as have been principally active in the late mutiny; to disarm the remainder; and to examine fully into all the circumstances relating thereto.".
At length, on the 25th of November, the British troops evacuated New York, and a detachment from the American army took possession of that town.
The guards being posted for the security of the citizens, General Washington, accompanied by Governor Clinton, and attended by many civil and military officers and a large number of respectable inhabitants on horseback, made his public entry into the city, where he was received with every mark of respect and attention. His military course was now on the point of terminating; and previous to divesting himself of the supreme command he was about to bid adieu to his comrades in arms.