The American civil-military relationship

In Bret Devereaux's Fourth of July post, he starts with a bit of history just after the American revolution:

It’s not clear if any of the officers actually contemplated a real coup d’état, but this was transparently an effort to introduce the military, particularly the officer corps, as a political faction, an active ‘player’ in the politics of the nation rather than simply a servant of its civil authorities. Two anonymous letters were circulated in camp, one calling for a meeting (against regulations) and another putting the Congress on blast and threatening that the army would refuse to disband if Congress didn’t meet its demands. It’s important to recognize in this moment that it isn’t the Continental Army vs. the Continental Congress, so much as one faction of the Congress (that wasn’t winning) inviting the army to tip the scales in their favor.

Washington, who had been away due to illness, arrives back at the army shortly before this and moves quickly. The letters circulated on March 10th, calling for a meeting on March 11th; that morning (the 11th), Washington issued general orders objecting to the anonymous meeting, but instead called a regular meeting on the 15th. He also, in a bit of glorious misdirection, requested a report of the meeting, implying he would not be there. It feels necessary to stress that, “convene a group of your disaffected officers in a meeting where you aren’t present so when they vote you supreme power you can say you didn’t ask for it” was a fairly obvious trick even in 1783 and one wonders if some of the disaffected officers read the general orders that way. A second anonymous letter appeared the next day presenting Washington’s meeting as an endorsement of conspiracy of disaffected officers.

The meeting was opened by Major General Horatio Gates, who had been in command of the camp and was in sympathy with the conspiracy.

And it is at this point that George Washington turns in one of the virtuoso moments of his career. He enters the meeting – surprising all present, who assumed he would not be present – and asks to address the gathered officers. He then gave a short speech, the Newburgh Address urging his officers, “as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the man, who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our country; and who wickedly attempts to open the flood-gates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood.”

Washington then drew a letter from Congress and, with a bit of theatrics, paused and fumbled with it, before taking our a pair of reading glasses – another surprise, they were new – and asked the officers’ indulgence, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

The conspiracy collapsed basically instantly. After reading the letter from the Continental Congress, Washington left and the meeting approved a resolution drafted by General Henry Knox affirming their “unshaken confidence” in Congress and deploring the anonymous letters.

He goes on to argue why the US has avoided military coups ever since:

I think that the American civil-military relationship – which to be clear, I view as very successful – is predicated on a bargain, that we can see at work already at Newburgh, of which Huntington’s ideology of professionalism is only one part. The bargain is one between civilian authorities (mainly the President and Congress), the military (mainly the officer corps) and the citizenry. And I would frame it like this: the military agrees not to insert itself into (internal) politics broadly construed and in exchange the civilian authorities agree not to use the military in internal politics and finally in turn the military occupies an elevated place of trust in the citizenry.

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That bargain has not always held, but it has mostly held and I think those are its contours.