The Articles of Confederation, which served as the US Constitution from 1781 to 1789, were designed to give the Congress essentially the powers relative to the States that the Revolutionaries claimed they thought the British government should have relative to the colonies. Among these was that the Congress had no right to imposes taxes, only to request voluntary payments from the States. The entirely predictable outcome was that Congress was constantly short of cash and only intermittently able to pay the Continental Army.

March, 1783. For all intents and purposes, the war is over and everyone is just waiting on the paperwork declaring America an independent nation. And the Continental Congress is well behind on their debts to the Continental Army. The soldiers and officers are beginning to think they’ll be disbanded without getting the pay they were owed.

The result was that a cabal of officers led by Horatio Gates (the same guy who took the credit for Saratoga and tried to parlay that into replacing Washington), form a plot to issue an ultimatum to the Congress: either pay the army what it was owed, or the army would take over the government.

To rally support among the troops, they held a protest meeting, reminding the soldiers of how ungratefully they’d been treated by the government, that they weren’t being paid, and so on.

This, of course, brings it to the attention of General Washington. Washington then show cased some Machiavellian cleverness in how he handled the (extremely dangerous) situation.

First, of course, he chided the officers for holding such a meeting in the first place. A lesser man would imagine that would solve the problem, but Washington knew better. He followed up by inviting them to hold a second, official meeting four days later to discuss the problem. He very carefully worded his orders to imply, but not outright state, that he himself would be absent (“The senior officer in Rank present will be pleased to preside and report the result of the Deliberations to the Commander in Chief”).

The four days gave tempers a chance to cool down and reason to prevail among the men. Then, on the day of the meeting, Horatio Gates stood up, being the most senior officer present, and began the proceedings…only for Washington himself to walk in and assume control of the meeting.

Washington then promised his men that they would be paid, and asked them to “give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism & patient virtue.”

The end result was that the conspiracy fizzled out and the officers agreed to try to work with the Congress rather than threaten mutiny.

The takeaway is that the American Revolution very nearly went the same way that practically every other revolution in history, with the newly-formed government proving too weak and unstable to survive, necessitating a military takeover and a descent into violence and chaos. The main reason it did not is pretty much entirely due to George Washington.