peace upon them, they did not dare to disband because they feared
that, if they left before they were paid, they would never be paid.
Washington felt that, if thousands of discontented and even angry
soldiers were allowed to go back to their homes without the means of
taking up any work or business, great harm would be done. The love of
country, which he believed to be most important to inculcate, would
not only be checked but perverted. They already had too many reasons
to feel aggrieved. Why should they, the men who risked their lives
in battle and actually had starved or frozen in winter quarters, go
unpaid, whereas every civilian who had a post under the Government
lived at least safely and healthily and was paid with fair
promptitude? They felt now that their best hope for justice lay in
General Washington's interest in their behalf; and that interest of
his seems now one of the noblest and wisest and most patriotic of his
expressions.

Washington had need to be prepared for any emergency. Thus a body
of officers deliberated not only a mutiny of the army, but a _coup
d'état_, in which they planned to overthrow the flimsy Federation of
the thirteen States and to set up a monarchy. They wrote to Washington
announcing their intention and their belief that he would make an
ideal monarch. He was amazed and chagrined. He replied in part as
follows, to the Colonel who had written him:

I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have
given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big with
the greatest mischiefs, that can befall my country. If I am not
deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a
person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. I must add,
that no man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice