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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO HENRY LAURENS. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. VII (1778-1779) [1890]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890). Vol. VII (1778-1779).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

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TO HENRY LAURENS.

Valley Forge, 29 May, 1778.

Dear Sir,

Your polite favor of the 5th instant, I duly received, and thank you much for the information contained in it. At the same time, I earnestly request that you will indulge me with an excuse for not answering it before. A constant crowd of business, and the intervention of a variety of circumstances, have been the cause, and not an inattention to the rules of civility or to those of friendship.

Your letter gave me the first intimation of the disagreement between our commissioners. The event is disagreeable and painful; and, unless they can bring themselves to harmonize, their proceedings will not probably consult the public interest, so well as they otherwise might. It is certain, that they will not have that degree of respect, either at home or abroad. Their embassy is a most interesting one, and may involve consequences which will lead, in a small degree, to the happiness or misery of their country. I hope reflection and a due consideration will set them right.1

The act of the 22d of April will certainly require the commissioners,2 if they come at all, to be vested with much more ample powers than Lord North’s bills professed, or their mission wiil be ridiculously mortifying. Indeed men, who would come out under the powers expressed in the bills, after all that has passed, deserve to be mortified in the extreme. I am happy the report and consequent resolution were previous to the treaty and alliance with France being known. The Parliament have been so much parties to this war, and to all the proceedings respecting it, that it would seem the Crown itself has no authority, either to continue or to end it, or to do any thing else, without their express concurrence.

I sincerely wish the military arrangement to be completed. The delay is attended with great inconvenience and injury. While it remains open, our whole system cannot but be imperfect. I know that Congress have a variety of important matters to call their attention; but, I assure you, there are few if any that are more interesting than what this is. The question of half-pay being decided, I shall not trouble you with a further discussion of the subject. It must be granted, however, that, in the situation of our affairs, the measure or something substantially the same had become necessary. Nor can I, after balancing in my mind and giving the subject the fairest consideration I am capable of, esteem it unjust. I assure you, Sir, however we may have differed in sentiment on this point, I am fully convinced that the strictest candor forms a part of your character, and request you to believe, that I am, with great attachment and esteem, &c.1

P.S. The letter for Mr. Pettit was sent to him in a day or two after it came to hand. I most sincerely wish, that Congress would lay the charge, and order trial of the major-generals in disgrace. St. Clair is exceedingly uneasy and distressed at the delay; and with pain I add, that the proceeding, or more properly not proceeding, in this matter, is looked upon as cruel and oppressive.

[1 ]The history of the doings of the American commissioners in Paris, and of their disagreements, may be found in the first volume of the Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution.

[2 ]The British commissioners expected from England.

[1 ]President Laurens was strongly opposed to the scheme of half-pay for life.

“I view the scheme,” says he, “as altogether unjust and unconstitutional in its nature, and full of dangerous consequences. It is an unhappy dilemma to which we seem to be reduced; provide for your officers in terms dictated to you, or lose all the valuable soldiers among them; establish a pension for officers, make them a separate body to be provided for by the honest yeomanry and others of their fellow-citizens, many thousands of whom have equal claims, upon every ground of loss of estate and health, or lose your army and your cause. That such provision will be against the grain of the people has been unwarily testified by its advocates, whom I have heard converse upon the subject. Indeed they have furnished strong ground for opposition against an immediate compliance with the demand. If we cannot make justice one of the pillars, necessity may be submitted to at present; but republicans will at a proper time withdraw a grant, which shall appear to have been extorted. Were I in private conversation with an officer on this point, I should not despair of fairly balancing every grievance he might suppose to be peculiar to the army, by instances of losses and inconveniences in my own property and person; and I count myself very happy compared with thousands, who have as faithfully adhered to our original compact.

“Would to God, gentlemen had followed the noble, patriotic example of their Commander-in-chief. How superior are many of the gentlemen now in my contemplation (for I know many with whom I do not converse) to the acceptance of half-pay, contributed to by widows and orphans of soldiers, who had bled and died by their sides, shackled with a condition of being excluded from the privilege of serving in offices in common with their fellow-citizens, bated in every House of Assembly as the drones and incumbrances of society, pointed at by boys and girls,—‘There goes a man, who robs me every year of part of my pittance.’ I think, Sir, I do not overstrain. This will be the language of republicans. How pungent, when applied to gentlemen, who shall have stepped from the army into a good remaining estate! How much deeper to some, who, in idleness and by peculation, have amassed estates in the war! I am most heartily disposed to distinguish the gallant officer and soldier by the most liberal marks of esteem, and desirous of making proper provision for all, who shall stand in need. I would not except even some of the brave, whose expenses have been princely in extravagance, while they complained of insufficiency of pay.”

The opinions and arguments of President Laurens, in opposition to the scheme of half-pay, are expressed much more at large in a letter from him to Governor Livingston, who declared himself a disciple of the same school. “In my private judgment,” said the Governor, “I should be totally against the plan of allowing the officers half-pay after the war; it is a very pernicious precedent in republican States; will load us with an immense debt, and render the pensioners themselves in a great measure useless to their country.”—Sedgwick’s Life of William Livingston, pp. 272, 281.