General George Washington: First in War, First in Peace, First in National Security Strategy

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On July 4, 1776, American leaders at the Second Continental Congress terminated the strategy they had been executing against Great Britain for over a year. They wanted political, military, and economic independence for the 13 colonies. To achieve that end, they relied on all four instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. But while many of the founders understood one or perhaps two of these instruments, General George Washington was the first American to execute a strategy using all four to achieve his ends—all while operating in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) environment, as complicated in its time as ours is today.

Long before he became President, Washington was a national security strategist who, as commander of all U.S. forces during the American Revolution, understood how all four instruments of national power could be orchestrated to achieve the aim of independence from Great Britain. Washington was undoubtedly the first and possibly the only officer to simultaneously serve as de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Chief of Staff of the Army, and commander of an army in a combat theater. His command of all the instruments of national power most certainly provides a superlative model for officers who will serve in the JIIM environment in the future.

According to Lieutenant General Dave R. Palmer, historian and former West Point superintendent, strategy was not a commonly used word until Carl von Clausewitz analyzed the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Palmer argued that it “was not a word George Washington ever used.”1 However, as Palmer also states, there was most certainly strategy before Clausewitz. In the 18th century, for the most part, a strategy meant “the rules of the game”—that is, maxims on how to execute battles, in much the same way Sun Tzu or Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini handed us recipes for success.2 For military officers, the word strategy referred then to military tactics, not national security strategy or even grand strategy. What today we would call “national security strategy” or “grand strategy” was only for kings and their ministers.

Complicating matters, the new United States did not have a modern national leadership structure during the American Revolution. It was not until 1781 that the 13 new states even ratified the Articles of Confederation, under which each state acted as a sovereign nation. (The Constitution that we operate under today was still several years into the future.) Ideas about national-level strategy fell to the delegates to the Second Continental Congress—among whom Washington was counted from the spring of 1775 until he became commander of the Continental Army. At that point, with the Declaration of Independence still a year away, ideas about military strategy—that is, tactics—fell on the shoulders of the new and unanimously elected commander in chief of the Continental Army, George Washington.3

Washington’s military career embodies many of the goals set out in current-day military education. In the most recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Instruction on joint professional military education (JPME), the Chairman articulated his commander’s intent for JPME, which is “the development of strategically minded joint warfighters who think critically and can creatively apply military power to inform national strategy, conduct globally integrated operations, and fight under conditions of disruptive change.”4 After 1778, North America was a theater in a globally integrated operation between the British and French, in which Washington was the American theater joint commander and the combined forces commander for the allied American and French forces. He was very much a strategically minded critical thinker who learned from his mistakes and fought under conditions of highly disruptive change.

There are many vocabularies of and approaches to strategy, but this article uses standard definitions from A National Security Strategy Primer by the National War College’s Steven Heffington, Adam Oler, and David Tretler.5 This article uses a Primer-informed language and its common vocabulary to argue that Washington—because he was often on his own tactically, operationally, and strategically while acting as diplomat, intelligence chief, soldier, and economist—wielded the instruments of national power to achieve his ends in all the ways the Primer intended, more than 200 years before its publication. Today’s JPME is not trying to create an officer who can do all three of the jobs Washington did simultaneously, nor should it, but JPME students could do well to learn from Washington’s example since his efforts led to victory. Strategically minded officers need to consider that the concept of national security strategy, according to the Primer, and as reflected in Washington’s actions, “can apply broadly, organizing or guiding nearly all aspects of a state’s policy, or more narrowly regarding a specific situation.”6

For most of his life, Washington was more citizen than soldier. Washington was not traditionally trained in the art of war like many of his peers who came up through the ranks in their national armies. He had received a commission as a major in the Virginia colonial militia from Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie in 1754, when Washington was just 22 years old. On his second mission for the Crown, Washington inadvertently started a world war when he participated in the death of a French envoy in a firefight at Jumonville Glen, in what is now southern Pennsylvania, igniting the Seven Years’ War (known in the colonies as the French and Indian War). After adventures during the 1750s with two different British generals, finding himself unable to secure a commission in the regular army, and newly married, Washington left military service in 1758 to spend his days as a member of Virginia’s land-holding class. During this time, he was often referred to as “Colonel Washington.”7 By the time of the Second Continental Congress in 1775, he had achieved military and political notoriety in the colonies. John Adams recalled years later that he suggested Washington for leadership of the Continental Army because Washington was “a Gentleman whose Skill and Experience as an Officer, whose independent fortune, great Talents and excellent universal Character, would command the Approbation of all America, and unite the cordial Exertions of all the Colonies better than any other Person in the Union.”8

Therefore, Washington’s professional military education consisted of what he had learned on the job, his time as part of the military “families” of more senior officers during the French and Indian War, and his wide reading of books on military tactics. He read Humphrey Bland’s Treatise of Military Discipline in the 1750s and, when asked, would recommend books to fellow officers during the war.9 But he did not attend military academies or schools, and when his father passed away, his older brother Lawrence did not send young George to attend school in Great Britain as had been Washington family tradition. Washington was tutored for a time as a young man, though his formal schooling eventually stopped and never included the military arts and sciences. By the time Congress elected Washington commander in chief, he had been out of the formal British military system for over a decade.10 (It was in the buff and blue uniform of the independent Fairfax County militia, formed in 1774, that Washington attended the Second Continental Congress in 1775.)

Washington had not been the only choice for commander in chief that year. Also considered were New Englander John Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress and a wealthy merchant, and former British officers Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, who both had considerably more military experience than Washington. Washington was chosen for many reasons: his lack of outwardly expressed desire for the role, his wealth, his renown in the colonies, and the simple fact that he was not a New Englander. Congress chose Washington, who took the job while feeling “great distress” because he feared his own “abilities & Military experience may not be equal to the extensive & important Trust.”11 He was appointed a senior government leader and, therefore, also a national security strategist.

Washington began his command by defining a problem and an end to achieve, aware of the resources at his disposal. The short-term end was to eject the British from Boston, which the combined armies did with their siege of the city in the winter of 1775–1776. With the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776, Washington gained a much clearer vision of what the national end looked like. From the beginning, he grasped the document’s importance, ordering it to be read aloud to the troops defending New York City.12 Yet a key to strategic success for every national security strategist, regardless of an individual’s parent agency, is the “national” in national security strategy. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of the instruments of national power can help determine an effective solution to a national security problem, and by 1776, Washington had a big problem on his hands.

The Diplomatic Instrument. Washington was not a true diplomat—he left that work to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who served in Paris as the American envoys from Congress and negotiated the Franco-American alliance—but Washington did represent the United States as many military officers do today in his relationship with the forces of our first ally, France. The Primer points out that the three ways in which strategists can wield the diplomatic instrument are through representation, negotiation, and implementation.13 Washington utilized all three. First, he represented the United States after the alliance with France as the leader of a military alliance. Historian Benjamin Huggins argues that Washington’s “diplomatic skills proved critical to the preservation of the alliance in the face of military setbacks and to winning the confidence of French leaders.”14 For example, after the arrival of the French navy in New England in the summer of 1778, Washington negotiated with Admiral Comte d’Estaing for an attack on Newport, Rhode Island, which the combined force undertook, though with little success.

With the arrival of more French forces in 1780, Washington worked with French General Comte de Rochambeau—who was told to recognize Washington as the overall combined force commander—to prepare an assault on New York City.15 By the time of the Wethersfield Conference in Connecticut in 1781, Washington was a military officer working with allies to achieve a common goal—defeating the British in North America. The alliance was finally cemented when combined American and French forces, agreeing that an attack on New York City would be unsuccessful, besieged and captured Yorktown, with support from the French navy. In the process, the allies defeated the British, taking over 8,000 British troops prisoner.

The Informational Instrument. Washington was not a true intelligence professional, although he had part-time advisors on intelligence. Historian John Nagy explained that Washington was not only a reader of enemy orders of battle and troop movements but also a consumer of “open-source material such as gossip, rumors, newspapers,” and information gleaned from British deserters.16 The Primer points out that the three ways in which strategists can wield the information instrument are by perceiving, informing, and manipulating.17 In his time, Washington was able to collect, process, integrate, analyze, and interpret the available strategic information he had.18

Yet he sometimes failed to achieve his goals in battle successfully. The Battle of Brandywine was a notorious tactical intelligence failure for Washington, according to historian Kenneth Daigler, who argued that “he and his officers were not familiar with the countryside where they would have to fight. . . . He only had an inaccurate map of the area, and despite his orders, the local military failed to conduct aggressive scouting of the British movements.”19 The result was the worst defeat of the 1777 campaign. But Washington, who was in constant communication with Congress about the actions of the Continental Army and its needs, did inform Congress of the defeat, stating that the intelligence he had received “was uncertain & contradictory, notwithstanding all my pains to get the best.”20

Washington was also a master manipulator of information, whether hiding the amount of ammunition available for the Continental Army around Boston or using unmanned campfires to mask the movement of the Army at Princeton. He launched his “most important and comprehensive strategic deception operation of the war” in convincing the British that a combined Franco-American attack against New York was imminent in 1781, all the while moving the allies’ armies to besiege Yorktown.21

Finally, Washington took great interest in the spy ring that his part-time intelligence chief Major Benjamin Tallmadge was running in the New York City area, even compartmentalizing the existence of the Culper Ring and providing Talmadge clear guidance and prioritization on the ring’s targets.22

The Military Instrument. Washington was obviously a warrior, albeit an unconventionally educated one. The Primer points out that the three ways in which strategists can wield the military instrument are by using force, threatening to use force, and enabling the building of forces.23 While over 230 skirmishes and battles were fought during the American Revolution, according to the digital encyclopedia of the Fred W. Smith Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, Washington was present for only 17 during the entire 1775–1783 war.24 In fact, most of the battles he participated in took place from August 1776 to January 1777 (nine battles) and from September to December 1777 (four battles).

What was he doing the rest of the time as commander in chief? He was threatening to use force and building a new army. It was normal for armies of the 18th century to camp for the winter when the weather was cold and harsh and daylight minimal. The American Continental Army was no different in this regard. While the British army generally camped in American cities, quartering itself in local homes, the American army built small cities for itself. When the Continental Army pulled into Valley Forge for the winter of 1777–1778, it created the fifth-largest city in the 13 colonies. Washington chose Valley Forge based on critical strategic reasoning: its location was a natural fortress, close to Philadelphia, enabling the Army to deny the British access to forage outside the city, and it was between the British and the Continental Congress, which had evacuated Philadelphia for York, but not so close as to be an additional burden on the people of south-central Pennsylvania.25 Similar reasons led to encampments at Morristown, New Jersey, and Newburgh, New York, both of which were close to New York City.

While at Valley Forge with the Army in winter quarters, Washington worked on creating a new American Army simply by doing his job as a staff officer. The result of this work was a 38-page memorandum to Congress that historian Edward Lengel called a “minor masterpiece of military administration” and that “ultimately laid the basis for victory at Monmouth and Yorktown.”26 Washington started by reminding Congress that while patriotic zeal was necessary, few men were capable of the continual sacrifice to conduct the war. He recommended a reorganization of the Continental Army. Whereas the 13 states had provided 97 regiments, none was at full strength by 1778; Washington proposed reducing the number to 80. To make up for weak recruiting, he suggested drafting men from the militia units attached to the Continental Army, and to reduce disciplinary issues, he suggested creating the position of provost marshal. In addition, “He offered advice in his letter on reforming hospitals, redesigning the commissary [and] clothing and quartermaster departments; importing supplies from France; on Indian alliances; drill and training; camp sanitation; distributing liquor.” And as an illustration of Washington’s active participation in the human rights crime of American slavery, he also suggested conscripting slaves as wagon drivers.27

The Continental Army needed to retain good officers, so Washington proposed a half-pay pension for those who stayed for the whole war, bonuses to those who remained at Valley Forge through the winter, and draft and reenlistment bonuses. He also suggested shrinking the Army and collapsing some units to make fewer, stronger ones, and reducing the numbers of staff officers by making some tasks additional duties.28 In addition, Washington enlisted the assistance of an ex-Prussian soldier who trained the American Army to fight a European army with standardized European tactics.29 When the Continental Army faced off against the British at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, which included nearly 30,000 soldiers, it was Britain’s turn to surrender the field.30 Washington had coordinated his actions with Congress and the states and, with the addition of the French alliance in May 1778, successfully operated in the JIIM environment due to the new Army he had built.

The Economic Instrument. As a member of Virginia’s property-holding class, Washington lived within an economic system based on his enslavement of many men, women, and children. As part of this class, he certainly understood economic issues—even though he was not an economist. He understood that the nation’s economic capability was small—at a stage in which the mercantilist economic systems generally limited manufacturing to the mother country. Historian Robert Middlekauff argued that by 1770, Washington, frustrated with the prices he was getting for his tobacco from his agent in London and the taxes imposed by Parliament, had begun to think about “resistance.”31

The Primer points out that the three ways in which strategists can wield the economic instrument for economic power are assistance, trade, and finance.32 From the beginning, Washington was aware of the military and economic means at his disposal, as when he wrote to his brother that Congress had just voted to provide $2 million and 15,000 men for the Army.33 Although the new nation’s economic capability was small, Washington wielded the economic instrument of power effectively when he could, and sometimes for multiple purposes. For example, at Valley Forge, the Continental Army was desperate for supplies. The Army had no meat in mid-December and only 25 barrels of flour for 14,000 men. Camp surgeon Dr. Albigence Waldo stated the men cried, “No meat! No meat!” sounding like “crows and owls.”34 With Valley Forge at the center, the camp essentially stretched along an 80-mile-long crescent-shaped line from Wilmington (south of Philadelphia) to Trenton (north of Philadelphia), providing protection for the supply lines up the Chesapeake Bay and for the people in Delaware and New Jersey, and keeping the locals from trading with the British in Philadelphia.35 As the Army and the local population foraged for supplies, they got in a bad way: Soldiers felt locals were holding on to too much, and they targeted the Quakers, calling them unpatriotic for being conscientious objectors.36

In response, Washington established traveling markets that could both supply the Continental Army and preserve civil-military relations in the region outside Philadelphia.37 The goal was to keep local merchants and farmers from crossing into the city to exchange goods for British silver and to improve relations with the locals. Washington publicly advertised the plan with assurances that there would be no commandeering of goods, carts, and wagons. But in February, the market system collapsed because of bad weather. Washington was concerned that he faced a “fatal crisis, total want and dissolution of the Army” if things did not improve.38 He eventually ordered his quartermaster, Major General Nathanael Greene, to strip the local countryside of supplies. Many locals hid their property because when Greene seized goods, he paid for them with “receipts” or destroyed them to keep them out of the hands of the British.39 This led to Washington’s Army gaining more supplies but less civilian goodwill.40 The locals “cry out and beset me from all quarters,” Greene wrote Washington on February 15, 1778, “but like Pharoah, I harden my heart.”41 Washington had made a strategic decision to take what the Army needed. The results of these actions were providing supplies for the American Army and support for the American economy and currency, while simultaneously preventing the British from foraging in the area, which stressed their ocean-crossing supply lines even further.

Washington also believed he could assist in boosting the value of the new nation’s currency, called a “continental” and backed by the full faith but marginal credit of the United States, and which rose and fell with his success or defeat on the battlefield. A weak currency made it harder to supply the Continental Army, while a strong currency kept patriots from defecting to the British or trying to sell their goods for British silver.42 Washington also understood the benefits of assistance as an economic tool as his Army received both military and financial aid from France and supplies from France and the Netherlands.43 Likewise, the bulk of the Yorktown campaign in fall 1781, which proved to be the decisive point of the war, was paid for with Spanish money that the French brought to the United States from Cuba.44

Finally, Washington also understood the importance of finance. The Army faced constant funding issues throughout the war from a Congress that did not have the ability to tax the Nation but only to request funds from the individual states, which sometimes failed to pay their bills. Washington appealed directly to the governors of the various states to support the troops they had raised and sponsored to be part of the Continental Army. Furthermore, much of the background to the Newburgh Conspiracy centered around the fact that the officer corps had not been paid in years; at that point, the promise made after Valley Forge of half-pay for an officer’s life seemed a distant memory. Many officers planned to march on Congress at Philadelphia to demand their owed compensation with the threat of force. Washington’s appeal to them in 1783 at the end of the revolution may have “saved the republic,” historian William Fowler argued. In another scholar’s mind, heading off a potentially violent march on Congress was a victory more complete than anything Washington won on the battlefield, well illustrating the importance of finance in war.45

Washington saw things at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels because he was simultaneously commander of the Army and commander of an army, which in modern terms meant he was both Chief of Staff of the Army and a theater commander, and eventually, after the French joined the war, a combined force commander. When the French brought to bear their significant naval power at Yorktown in 1781, Washington leaped at the opportunity to hand the British a decisive blow. He used his available means in myriad ways: he was not solely trying to eradicate his enemy—sometimes, he just needed to observe, accommodate, shape, persuade, enable, or induce the objects of his strategies to achieve his ends. He was a master orchestrator of the instruments of national power who used his limited available means to achieve national ends in clearly effective ways. The result speaks for itself: independence.

Washington’s autodidactic success should not be misunderstood to mean that JPME is unimportant—absolutely not. In these times, self-study is no longer enough to achieve success, and modern national security strategists must ask questions Washington never asked, such as, “What are the instruments of power?” and “How do you wield them?” In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment—one that functions under “conditions of disruptive change” and that is vastly more complicated and fast-moving than in the 18th century—we need a common understanding of strategic thinking and officers who understand the capabilities of all the instruments of national power, enabling them to be strategically minded and communicate effectively in the JIIM environment—that is, the same environment General Washington operated in over 200 years ago.

Washington’s ability to craft effective strategy using all the instruments of national power was a hallmark of his military service and one we can do well to emulate. Undoubtedly, as President of the United States, George Washington was a national security strategist, whether it was in negotiating treaties, dealing with British forts on American territory, leading the military in difficult political times, or warning of entangling alliances as he left office. Indeed, as commander of the Continental Army, Washington may have been the first national security strategist, but he was certainly not the last officer the Nation needed to be among a group of “strategically minded joint warfighters who think critically and can creatively apply military power to inform national strategy, conduct globally integrated operations, and fight under conditions of disruptive change.”46 We all should be. JFQ

Notes

1 Dave R. Palmer, George Washington’s Military Genius (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2012), 1.

2 Ibid., 3.

3 “Address to the Continental Congress, 16 June 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), available at <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0001>. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775–15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 1–3.] Even if Washington had wanted to turn to Clausewitz in some mythical universe in which Clausewitz wrote a draft of On War before the American Revolution, Clausewitz is so weak on “popular wars” that his treatise might not have been very useful. As Clausewitz put it, “it is possible to fight superbly, like men of the Vendée [who fought a 3-year, counter-revolution insurgency in western France in the 1790s that resulted in 240,000 killed—see David A. Bell, “The French Revolution, the Vendée, and Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 22, no. 1 (2020), 19–25] and to achieve great results, like the Swiss, the American, and even the Spaniards without developing the kind of virtues discussed here.” See Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 188. Unfortunately, when Clausewitz did write, 40 years after the American Revolution, he contributed little to discussions on wars of national liberation.

4 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 1800.01F, Officer Professional Military Education Policy (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, May 15, 2020), 1.

5 Steven Heffington, Adam Oler, and David Tretler, A National Security Strategy Primer (Washington: NDU Press, 2019) (hereafter Primer).

6 Ibid., 1.

7 For more on the early phases of Washington’s military career, any number of biographies are available. One of the best to focus on his early military career is Peter Stark’s Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father (New York: Ecco Press, 2018).

8 “Address to the Continental Congress, 16 June 1775,” n2.

9 John W. Hall, “An Irregular Consideration of George Washington and the American Military Tradition,” Journal of Military History 78, no. 3 (July 2014), 962; Oliver L. Spaulding, Jr., “The Military Studies of George Washington,” The American Historical Review 29, no. 4 (July 1924). Spaulding’s article is a brief look at the books on military topics in Washington’s personal library.

10 According to historian Jessica E. Brunelle, “In 1785 he referred to his education as ‘defective.’” See Jessica E. Brunelle, “The Youth of George Washington,” in A Companion to George Washington, ed. Edward G. Lengel (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 4.

11 “Address to the Continental Congress, 16 June 1775.”

12 Edward G. Lengel, General George Washington: A Military Life (New York: Random House, 2005), 136.

13 Primer, 14–15.

14 Benjamin L. Huggins, “‘The Most Unlimited Confidence in His Wisdom & Judgement’: Washington as Commander in Chief in the First Years of the French Alliance,” in Lengel, A Companion to George Washington.

15 Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1993), 349.

16 John A. Nagy, “George Washington, Spymaster,” in Lengel, A Companion to George Washington, 349–350.

17 Primer, 26–27.

18 Ibid., 26.

19 Kenneth A. Daigler, Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 136–137.

20 “VIII: To John Hancock, 11 September 1777,” Founders Online, NARA, available at <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-11-02-0190-0009>. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 11, August – October 1777, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2001) 200–201.]

21 Daigler, Spies, Patriots, and Traitors, 131, 214.

22 Ibid., 174–177.

23 Primer, 28–29.

24 “Revolutionary War Battles,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, available at <https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-revolutionary-war/washingtons-revolutionary-war-battles/>.

25 See, for example, Lengel, General George Washington, chap. 14.

26 Ibid., 275.

27 Ibid., 275–276.

28 Ibid.; Wayne Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 146–147.

29 See, for example, Paul Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

30 See, for example, chap. 15, “Monmouth,” in Lengel, General George Washington.

31 Robert Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 70–74.

32 Primer, 31–32.

33 “From George Washington to John Augustine Washington, 20 June 1775,” Founders Online, NARA, available at <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0009>. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 19–20.]

34 Bruce Chadwick, The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America’s First Fight for Freedom (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2005), 227.

35 Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter, 132–134.

36 Ibid., 126–130.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 165–168.

39 Ibid., 175–177.

40 Ibid., 169–171.

41 Nathaniel Philbrick, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (New York: Viking, 2016), 197.

42 Ricardo A. Herrera, “‘Our Army Will Hut This Winter at Valley Forge’: George Washington, Decision Making, and the Councils of War,” Army History 117 (Fall 2020), 12.

43 Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (New York: Viking, 2018), 10, 112.

44 Ibid., 151, 174–175.

45 David Head, A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution (New York: Pegasus Books, 2019), 34–36, 62–63; William M. Fowler, Jr., “‘High Time for Peace’: George Washington and the Close of the American Revolution,” in Lengel, A Companion to George Washington, 299; Lengel, General George Washington, 349.

46 CJCSI 1800.01F, 1.