The Ides of War: George Washington and the Newburgh Crisis by Stephen Howard Browne (review)

In this deeply researched and splendidly written book, Stephen Howard Browne traces the rhetorical history of the Newburgh Crisis, persuasively arguing that Washington's March 15, 1783 speech "illustrates to stunning effect the power of human agency in brokering one of humankind's most persistent, most troublesome dilemmas: the rival claims to power of civil and military authority" (ix). The book is organized into an introduction, three content chapters, a conclusion, and a helpful set of appendices containing three primary texts. This structure not only mirrors scholarly expectations for a book of this sort but also reveals a careful, deliberate reading of Washington's address within and as a product of its political, historical, social, and economic contexts.

In the introduction, Browne sketches out the defining elements of this rhetorical drama beginning in the fall of 1782. The Continental Army had scored a major victory at Yorktown, but no peace treaty had been signed. Seven thousand soldiers were encamped on the banks of the Hudson River with little to do but wait. The Continental Congress was strapped for cash, unable to raise revenue through taxation. Most significant for this tale, however, is that soldiers serving in the Continental Army had not been paid. As Henry Knox later wrote, "Posterity will hardly believe that an army contended incessantly for eight years under a constant pressure of misery to establish the liberties of their country without knowing who were to compensate them or whether they were ever to receive any award for their services" (10). Military service was, at this point, a completely voluntary affair. By the spring of 1783, with the end of the war in sight, the question of whether to compensate these men who had risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor was still a matter of debate in the Continental Congress. For many of the disgruntled officers and soldiers, the only remaining option was revolt. Such was the situation facing General Washington in March 1783 and, as Browne argues persuasively, it was Washington's character that made all the difference. "Washington embodied in his very person those principles upon which the fortunes of the nation rested. In the climactic moment of the Newburgh crisis, then, Washington so fused the speaker and the speech as to make them indistinguishable" (4). In a remarkable speech delivered by a relatively unremarkable orator, General Washington diffused what very well could have become a coup d'état. And it is the story of this drama that Browne proceeds to unpack in careful detail.

Chapter 1 offers a rhetorical biography of Washington before he ever became general or president. Here Browne opens a window into the personal history and character development of the public figure who, better than anyone else in American history, "bettered his talent for showing up at just the right time and place" (22). Washington was a man of beginnings and endings, a character who knew when to arrive on the scene and when to take his leave. Browne artfully traces various beginnings and endings throughout Washington's life to portray a man whose judgment, foresight, decorum, and innate sense of timing developed through hardship, struggle, and eventual triumph. This reading of Washington's character provides more than a glimpse into the formation of our nation's first president; it offers readers and fellow critics an example of what it looks like to write a rhetorical history of a subject's life, to uncover the formative moments that ultimately forge individual character and public expression.

Chapter 2 details the particulars of the Newburgh Crisis. "At stake," writes Browne, "was nothing less than the age-old problem of subordinating military to political authority. Because that contest shows no signs of abating, the story remains as vital to the collective memory now as ever, and its lessons ought never to be allowed to fade" (43). In this chapter, Browne...