Washington, George, as Continental Commander

Autograph letter signed ("Go: Washington"), 1 page (12 3/8 x 8 in.; 315 x 205 mm) on a bifolium of laid paper (watermarked Britannia | CTaylor), Newburgh, 16 February 1783, to David Rittenhouse, integral blank with autograph address panel ("David Rittenhouse Esqr. | Philadelphia  | Favoured | by | Mr. [William] Shippen"); wide marginal loss to address leaf not affecting address panel, seal tear, mounting remnants on verso.

The Writings of George Washington, ed. Fitzpatrick, 26:136–37; Barton, Memoirs of the Life of David Rittenhouse, pp. 199–200. cf. The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, ed. Josiah Quincy (1847); Ronald S. Fishman, MD, "Presbyopia's Finest Hour," in Archives of Ophthalmology (2002): vol. 120, no. 1

Autograph letter signed ("Go: Washington"), 1 page (12 3/8 x 8 in.; 315 x 205 mm) on a bifolium of laid paper (watermarked Britannia | CTaylor), Newburgh, 16 February 1783, to David Rittenhouse, integral blank with autograph address panel ("David Rittenhouse Esqr. | Philadelphia | Favoured | by | Mr. [William] Shippen"); wide marginal loss to address leaf not affecting address panel, seal tear, mounting remnants on verso.
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The eyeglasses that helped to save the new nation. Washington's courteous letter of thanks to Rittenhouse for the set of spectacles (one for distance, one for reading) that the famed instrument maker had personally ground and polished for the General belies the extraordinary significance of the gift.

In February 1783, Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown was nearly two years past, but the Treaty of Paris, acknowledging the sovereignty of the United States, would not be signed and ratified for another eleven months. In the meantime, the British army still occupied New York City and Washington's Continentals were in winter camp at Newburgh. Among a host of problems facing Washington was the gradual erosion of his eyesight. In desperation he tested the spectacles of a number of fellow officers, and, as he informed Tench Tilghman on 10 January 1783, "I have sent Mr. Rittenhouse the Glass of such Spectacles as Suit my Eyes, that he may know how to grind his Christals" (Fitzpatrick 26:27). In less than a month Rittenhouse sent two pairs of eyeglasses to Washington, donating his own time and expertise and evidently asking only to be compensated for the frames he had provided. This is Washington's reply:

"I have been honored with your letter of the 7th and beg you to accept my sincere thanks for the favor confered on me in the Glasses—which are very fine—but more particularly for the flattering expressions which accompanied the present.

"The Spectacles suit my Eyes extremely well—as I am persuaded the Reading Glasses also will when I get more accustomed to the use of them—at present, I find some difficulty in coming at the proper Focus—but when I do obtain it, they magnify perfectly, and shew those letters very distinctly which at first appear like a mist blended together & confused.

"I send the amount of the Silver Smiths charge. ..."

But advancing presbyopia was not the most perilous matter that Washington faced that winter in Newburgh. The American officer corps was still plagued by the financial anxieties that had exisited almost since the regular army had been authorized by Congress. Many officers had not been paid for nearly four years, and many who had been summoned to payroll received paper dollars that would buy only a fraction of their face value in silver coins.

On 10 March 1783 several inflammatory petitions were anonymously circulated throughout the camp by a small group of agitators. The documents, which became known as the Newburgh Addresses, implicitly invited a military coup and explicitly called for a meeting of officers the next day to formulate a plan of action.

Washington forbade the meeting the following morning in his genral orders for the day, terming the gathering "unmilitary" and "subversive of all order and discipline." At a previously scheduled officers' conference four days later, Washington further diffused the tension through a combination of force of personality and subtle reference to his own public service. But the pivotal moment of the meeting came when Washington brought out a letter from Joseph Jones, a Virginia delegate to Congress, that underscored that body's committment to fulfilling their obligation to the army. After making a halting attempt to read Jones's letter, Washington reached into his pocket for the reading glasses that Rittenhouse had sent him, and looked up to apologize: "Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind."

Minor Myers characterized the Society of the Cincinnati as "a mutiny moderated into an organization," and his history of the Society makes clear that the mutiny was defeated when Washington put on Rittenhouse's spectacles: "The officers were stunned. Many of them stood with tears in their eyes, and that simple comment delivered the group into the hands of Washington and his allies" (Liberty Without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati, pp. 2, 14).