the weak language of entreating memorials, begged from their justice, what you could no longer expect from their favor?
'What is this?' Washington asked, not looking up from the paper.
'This… perfidy was distributed in the camp this very morning,' Tilghman said through tight lips. 'Read on.'
Washington continued reading. Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution and, retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which hitherto has been in honor? If you can, go, and carry with you the jest of tories and the scorn of whigs; the ridicule and, what is worse, the pity of the world!
Go, starve and be forgotten! But, if your spirits should revolt at this; if you have sense enough to discover and spirit sufficient to oppose tyranny under whatever garb it may assume, whether it be the plain coat of republicanism or the splendid robe of royalty; if you have yet learned to discriminate between a people and a cause, between men and principles: awake, attend to your situation, and redress yourselves! If the present moment be lost, every future effort is in vain, and your threats then will be as empty as your entreaties now.
Now Washington looked up, his eyes heavy and sad.
'It's an incitement to treason, ' Tilghman said. 'They're calling for a meeting of all officers tomorrow, in the temple. They mean to march on Philadelphia, demand their blood money, and, if frustrated in that claim, disband the government and replace it with a military tribunal.' He leaned forward, his hands on the table. 'And we know who's scheming hand puts these words to paper.'
'Gates,' Washington said, with a sigh.
Tilghman nodded vigorously. 'He has been hungry for your commission since the war began, we both know this. And he has been hard lobbying at Congress to replace you. Even after his marathon retreat, better to call it flight, from Cornwallis at Camden, he has Hamilton's favor. He sees final power in this maneuver.'
'But what proof-,' Washington began to protest, though weakly.
'Look at the letters!' Tilghman answered. 'If that isn't the imprint of the press in Gates's quarters, I'm an English bulldog. And these sentiments, they're the constant cry of his aide, that artillery man with lead shot for brains, Armstrong.'
Washington leaned back, ran a hand through his hair-hair that had once been a vibrant red, but which had gone a steel gray in the course of the long, frustrating war; a war that had been a much nearer thing, and a much longer campaign, than he'd ever imagined.
'The fools,' he said finally. 'The British are but sixty miles away, warm and content in New York. If they caught wind of such dissension…'
'Arrest him,' Tilghman said with vigor. 'And Armstrong. In fact, put his entire staff in chains. They must know of this.'
Washington frowned. 'And fulfill the slander of 'tyrant'?' He shook his head. 'The men are ragged enough, Colonel. One of the officers was hung in effigy in the Sixth Regiment just Tuesday last. Mass arrests would put match to powder.'
'Then what would you have?' asked Tilghman, exasperated. 'Let them march? Toss out the Congress? That would bring civil war, and the redcoats would happily sup up the leavings. All would be lost!'
Washington pushed back from the table, stood up, walked to the small potbellied stove in the corner upon which steamed a small porcelain pot of tea. Offering a cup to Tilghman, who declined, he poured himself one and sipped at it, his eyes unfocused, thinking.
Finally, he turned to Tilghman. 'Do nothing to impede them for now,' he said.
'What!' Tilghman could barely speak. 'But then-'
'Let them assemble,' Washington said. Then he smiled. 'It's addressed to all officers, isn't it?' Tilghman looked at him blankly. 'The last time I glanced at my shoulders, Colonel, I was an officer in this army, too.'
Washington's lamp burned late that night, and anyone looking through one of the frosted windowpanes of his modest quarters would have seen him at the table long into the cold darkness, writing with a steady and energetic hand.
The next morning dawned as bleak and chill as any of that March. Rising even earlier than usual, Washington dressed slowly, putting on his full dress uniform, complete with red sash and bright rows of medals. When he was ready, he threw on his greatcloak-the same he'd worn that fateful Christmas night in the crossing to Trenton, though now considerably more frayed and patched-and left his quarters, walking slowly across the crunching ground to the long, narrow wooden building his men had completed just a month before; a place meant to serve as the one warm sanctuary in camp where men might gather to drink and play at cards, and which had been named, with a certain ironic military humor, the Temple of Virtue. Adjusting the coat upon his shoulders, he opened the door and entered.
The room was warm from the large stove in the center, and musky with the scent of canvas and leather and men too long from the niceties of bath and soap. Rows of churchlike pews faced a small lectern set at the front of the hall; the pews, he was distressed to see, were full with all ranks of his officer corps.
There was a cacophony of voices as he entered, men shouting, declaiming, some standing as if ready to come to blows. And then a few saw him at the doorway, and nudged their neighbors, and so on until the hall fell almost silent. All heads turned as he walked slowly down the center aisle of the hall, and most displayed a look of shock. Other than the hiss and crackle of wood in the stove, for a moment the only sound was the slap of his boots on the floorboards.
Behind the lectern stood, of course, Major General Horatio Lloyd Gates, also in full dress uniform. Clearly, Gates was as shocked to see him as anyone else in the hall. He'd been about to speak when Washington entered.
'General Gates,' Washington said, standing next to him.
Gates was at first flustered, then remembered himself and saluted. 'General Washington,' he said nervously.
'General,' Washington repeated, 'do I have your permission to address this assemblage?'
Now Gates looked terrified. 'Of course, General Washington,' he said. 'Uh… please,' and he moved aside from the lectern.
Washington moved behind the podium and surveyed the room. He waited until he had every pair of eyes upon him. And then, with a movement deliberate and graceful, he reached into his greatcloak's pocket.
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.'
There was absolute silence. He realized most of the men in the room didn't even know he wore spectacles. And he saw that his comment had had the desired effect, their faces expressing shame in the face of Washington's humble admission of all he'd given to the Cause these past seven terrible years. As he looked around the room, here and there men dropped their gaze, unable to look him in the eyes.
He then drew his speech from his pocket, the one he'd labored all night to produce. But even as he read from it, he knew it was unnecessary; he could feel the shift in the room's sentiment. He knew that when he finished, thanked them for their attention, and left, they would never be able to pledge themselves to open rebellion again.
CHAPTER 17
'Astounding,' Wolfe said when Benjamin had finished the story. 'That certainly wasn't covered in my high school history of the Revolutionary War.'
'Nor anyone else's,' said Benjamin. 'For decades after the war, it simply wasn't spoken about, by either side. Once the Treaty of Paris was signed and the war successfully over, certainly the conspirators didn't want their names associated with such a betrayal. And for Washington's side… well, he thought the country too fragile to know it had survived its birth by a pair of spectacles.
'And years later, when some of the facts came out, the argument was it had all been something of a joke, a tempest in a teapot. Other historians, however, my father for instance, have taken it more seriously. He thought
