y,
had done really nothing to allay the discontents in the army; and the
commander-in-chief was fearful, that during the idle hours of a winter
encampment, those discontents would assume the form of absolute mutiny.
He drew his forces to his former encampment, near Newburg, and there
calmly awaited the issue of events.

Almost daily there were bold conferences of officers and soldiers in the
camp, when the prospects of the future were discussed, sometimes
angrily, and always warmly. Finally, in December, 1782, the officers, in
behalf of the army, sent a committee with a memorial to the Congress, in
which they represented the real hardships of their condition, and
proposed that a specific sum should be granted them for the money
actually due them, and as a commutation for the half-pay of the
officers. This memorial elicited a long and warm debate in Congress, its
character and its propositions being viewed differently by different
minds. The entire winter passed away, and nothing satisfactory was done
in the supreme legislature for the suffering soldier.

At length forbearance appeared to many as no longer a virtue, and some
officers resolved not to wait for justice in idle expectation of its
appearance from the halls of legislation. A plan was arranged among a
few, "for assembling the officers, not in mass, but by representation;
and for passing a series of resolutions, which, in the hands of their
committee, and of their auxiliaries in Congress, would form a new and
powerful lever" of operations. Major John Armstrong, a young officer
six-and-twenty years of age, and aid-de-camp of Gates, was chosen to
write an address to the army, suitable to the subject, and this, with an
anonymous notification of a meeting of officers, was circulated
privately on the tenth of March, 1783.[2]

That address exhibited superior talent in the writer, and its tone was
calculated to make a deep impression upon the minds of the malcontents.
After preparing their feelings for a relinquishment of faith in the
justice of their country, which had been already much weakened by real
and fancied injuries, he remarked:--

"Faith has its limits as well as temper, and there are points
beyond which neither can be stretched without sinking into
cowardice or plunging into credulity. This, my friends, I conceive
to be your situation; hurried to the verge of both, another step
would ruin you forever. To be tame and unprovoked,