The absolute feebleness of the general government was shown a few weeks later, when a recently recruited regiment of Pennsylvania troops mutinied, and obliged Congress to leave Philadelphia, unable either to defend themselves or procure defense from the State.  This mutiny was put down suddenly and effectively by Washington, very wroth at the insubordination of raw troops, who had neither fought nor suffered.  Yet even such mutineers as these would have succeeded in a large measure, had it not been for Washington, and one can easily imagine from this incident the result of disciplined and well-planned action on the part of the army led by their great chief.  In that hour of debility and relaxation, a military seizure of the government and the erection of some form of monarchy would not have been difficult.  Whether such a change would have lasted is another question, but there is no reason to doubt that at the moment it might have been effected.  Washington, however, not only refused to have anything to do with the scheme, but he used the personal loyalty which might have raised him to supreme power to check all dangerous movements and put in motion the splendid and unselfish patriotism for which the army was conspicuous, and which underlay all their irritations and discontents.

The obvious view of Washington’s action in this crisis as a remarkable exhibition of patriotism is at best somewhat superficial.  In a man in any way less great, the letter of refusal to Nicola and the treatment of the opportunity presented at the time of the Newburgh addresses would have been fine in a high degree.  In Washington they were not so extraordinary, for the situation offered him no temptation.  Carlyle was led to think slightingly of Washington, one may believe, because he did not seize the tottering government with a strong hand, and bring order out of chaos on the instant.  But this is a woeful misunderstanding of the man.  To put aside a crown for love of country is noble, but to look down upon such an opportunity indicates a much greater loftiness and strength of mind.  Washington was wholly free from the vulgar ambition of the usurper, and the desire of mere personal aggrandizement found no place in his nature.  His ruling passion was the passion for success, and for thorough and complete success.  What he could not bear was the least shadow of failure.  To have fought such a war to a victorious finish, and then turned it to his own advantage, would have been to him failure of the meanest kind.  He fought to free the colonies from England, and make them independent, not to play the part of a Caesar or a Cromwell in the wreck and confusion of civil war.  He flung aside the suggestion of supreme power, not simply as dishonorable and unpatriotic, but because such a result would have defeated the one great and noble object at which he aimed.  Nor did he act in this way through any indolent shrinking from the great task of making what he had won worth