tion can be offered. There was throughout the
colonies an inborn and a carefully cultivated dread of standing armies
and military power. But this very natural feeling was turned most
unreasonably against our own army, and carried in that direction to
the verge of insanity. This jealousy of military power indeed pursued
Washington from the beginning to the end of the Revolution. It cropped
out as soon as he was appointed, and came up in one form or another
whenever he was obliged to take strong measures. Even at the very end,
after he had borne the cause through to triumph, Congress was driven
almost to frenzy because Vergennes proposed to commit the disposition
of a French subsidy to the commander-in-chief.

If this feeling could show itself toward Washington, it is easy to
imagine that it was not restrained toward his officers and men, and
the treatment of the soldiers by Congress and by the States was not
only ungrateful to the last degree, but was utterly unpardonable.
Again and again the menace of immediate ruin and the stern demands of
Washington alone extorted the most grudging concessions, and saved the
army from dissolution. The soldiers had every reason to think that
nothing but personal fear could obtain the barest consideration from
the civil power. In this frame of mind, they saw the war which they
had fought and won drawing to a close with no prospect of either
provision or reward for them, and every indication that they would be
disbanded when they were no longer needed, and left in many cases
to beggary and want. In the inaction consequent upon the victory at
Yorktown, they had ample time to reflect upon these facts, and their
reflections were of such a nature that the situation soon became
dangerous. Washington, who had struggled in season and out of season
for justice to the soldiers, labored more zealously than ever during
all this period, aided vigorously by Hamilton, who was now in
Congress. Still nothing was done, and in October, 1782, he wrote to
the Secretary of War in words warm with indignant feeling: "While I
premise that no one I have seen or heard of appears opposed to the
principle of reducing the army as circumstances may require, yet I
cannot help fearing the result of the measure in contemplation, under
present circumstances, when I see such a number of men, goaded by a
thousand stings of reflection on the past and of anticipation on the
future, about to be turned into the world, soured b