As he dealt with this discontent, Washington again had to deal with his disgruntled mother. Mary Washington had written to apprise him that the overseer at her Little Falls Quarter farm was pocketing all the profits for himself, and this made George no less upset than his mother. As he told brother Jack, he had maintained this place for her with “no earthly inducement to meddle with it, but to comply with her wish and to free her from care,” but he hadn’t received a penny in return. He protested that it was “too much while I am suffering in every other way (and hardly able to keep my own estate from sale), to be saddled with all the expense of hers and not be able to derive the smallest return from it.”37 This parenthetical statement—that he could hardly keep Mount Vernon safe from sale again—reveals the dreadful toll that his neglected business interests had taken on his personal fortune.

After asking Jack to stop by Little Falls to replace the overseer, Washington mentioned that he had heard nothing further of their mother’s petition for a pension from the Virginia assembly. But it turned out that Mary was still up to her old antics and broadcasting her financial grievances to anyone who cared to listen. As Washington worried anew that she would blacken his reputation, his repressed anger toward her, long tamped down, spilled out. He told his brother that he had learned “from very good authority that she is upon all occasions and in all companies complaining of the hardness of the times, of her wants and distresses; and if not in direct terms, at least by strong innuendoes, inviting favors which not only makes her appear in an unfavorable point of view, but those also who are connected with her.”38 As someone who jealously guarded his reputation, Washington was crestfallen by Mary’s unending torrent of abuse, and he dispatched Jack on a private mission to visit her and “inquire into her real wants and see what is necessary to make her comfortable.”39 As always, Washington was ready to pay what she needed, but he demanded that she halt the character assassination: “I wish you to represent to her in delicate terms the impropriety of her complaints and acceptance of favors, even where they are voluntarily offered, from any but relations.”40 As always, the headstrong mother and son were locked in a fierce contest of wills in which both sides refused to yield an inch.

Around this time Washington discovered that his vision had grown slightly blurry and that it cleared when he borrowed spectacles from his colleagues. He had become older and wearier during this long war, and the eyestrain caused by reading his copious correspondence had been enormous. He ordered a pair of handsome silver-framed reading glasses from David Rittenhouse of Philadelphia, a renowned astronomer and optical expert. Washington sampled the lenses of various people, then asked Rittenhouse to duplicate the ones that worked best. By mid-February he had the new reading glasses in hand but had to keep tilting them at different angles until his eyes adjusted to the novel experience. “At present, I find some difficulty in coming at the proper focus,” he informed Rittenhouse, “but when I do obtain it, they magnify properly and show those objects very distinctly which at first appear like a mist, blended together and confused.”41 Little did Rittenhouse know, as he fashioned these spectacles, that they would soon serve as a key prop in one of the most emotionally charged scenes in American history.

IN EARLY JANUARY, amid rumors of mass resignations, a three-man delegation of officers went to Philadelphia to lay before Congress a petition that catalogued their pent-up grievances: “We have borne all that men can bear—our property is expended—our private resources are at an end.”42 This delegation met with two dynamic young members of Congress: James Madison of Virginia, a member since 1780, and Alexander Hamilton of New York, who had joined Congress a little more than a month earlier. However alarmed by the prospect of an officer mutiny, Hamilton believed it might represent a handy lever with which to budge a lethargic Congress from inaction, leading to expanded federal powers.

On February 13 Hamilton wrote to Washington in a candid tone that presupposed that a profound understanding still existed between them. He talked of the critical state of American finances and suggested that the officer revolt could be helpful: “The claims of the army, urged with moderation but with firmness, may operate on those weak minds which are influenced by their apprehensions rather than their judgment . . . But the difficulty will be to keep a complaining and suffering army within the bounds of moderation.”43 In suggesting that Washington exploit the situation to influence Congress, Hamilton toyed with combustible chemicals. He also tried to awaken anxiety in Washington by telling him that officers were whispering that he didn’t stand up for their rights with sufficient zeal. “The falsehood of this opinion no one can be better acquainted with than myself,” Hamilton emphasized, “but it is not the less mischievous for being false.”44

On March 4 Washington sent Hamilton a thoughtful response and disclosed grave premonitions about the crisis. “It has been the subject of many contemplative hours,” he told Hamilton. “The sufferings of a complaining army, on one hand, and the inability of Congress and tardiness of the states on the other, are the forebodings of evil.”45 He voiced concern at America’s financial plight and told of his periodic frustration at being excluded from congressional decisions. If Congress didn’t receive enlarged powers, he maintained, revolutionary blood would have been spilled in vain. After spelling out areas of agreement with Hamilton, however, Washington said he refused to deviate from the “steady line of conduct” he had pursued and insisted that the “sensible and discerning” officers would listen to reason. He also asserted that any attempt to exploit officer discontent might only “excite jealousy and bring on its concomitants.”46 It was a noble letter: Washington refused to pander to any political agenda, even one he agreed with, and he would never encroach upon the civilian prerogatives of Congress. In a later letter Washington was even blunter with Hamilton, warning him that soldiers weren’t “mere puppets” and that the army was “a dangerous instrument to play with.”47

The officers continued to believe that Philadelphia politicians remained deaf to their pleas, and Washington had no inkling that they would soon resort to more muscular measures. In his general orders for March 10, he dwelt on a mundane topic, the need for uniform haircuts among the troops. Then he learned of an anonymous paper percolating through the camp, summoning officers to a mass meeting the next day to air their grievances—a brazen affront to Washington’s authority and, to his mind, little short of outright mutiny. Then a second paper made the rounds, further stoking a sense of injustice. Its anonymous author was, in all likelihood, John Armstrong, Jr., an aide-de-camp to Horatio Gates, who mocked the peaceful petitions drawn up by the officers and warned that, come peace, they might “grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt.”48 Before being stripped of their weapons by an armistice, they should now take direct action: “Change the milk and water style of your last memorial—assume a bolder tone . . . And suspect the man who would advise to more moderation and longer forbearance.”49 The man of moderation was, of course, George Washington. When handed a copy of this manifesto, he conceded its literary power, later saying that “in point of composition, in elegance and force of expression” it had “rarely been equaled in the English language.”50 That only made it the more threatening, for it aroused the prospect of a military putsch.