Washington - Commander for Freedom

In March 1783 the war was nearly won, and the Continental Army had not been paid. At the army's camp near Newburgh, New York, an anonymous paper urged the officers to turn on Congress if their back pay and pensions did not come through, and to suspect any man who counseled patience.

Washington called the officers together on March 15 and answered it. Part of his argument was about speech itself. If men were shut out from offering their opinions on so serious a question, he said, reason was of no use, the freedom of speech might be taken away, and "dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter."

Then he took out a letter from a Virginia congressman, struggled with the handwriting and reached for his spectacles. Officers in the room recalled him saying he had grown not only gray but almost blind in the service of his country. Many were in tears, and the plot went no further.

The poster shows Washington as a black silhouette in profile, facing right. Behind him, three rough bands of navy, cream and red look like weathered paper. The line from Newburgh runs in heavy cream capitals across the dark of his coat.