The Usual Suspects: General Washington, His Critics, and the Conway Cabal Reconsidered by Mark Lender

New Bridge Landing NJ,  Over late 1777 and early 1778, dismayed by Washington’s repeated defeats, senior patriot military officers—most notably major generals Thomas Mifflin, Thomas Conway, and Horatio Gates—and allied political figures ostensibly launched an effort to limit Washington’s control of the Continental Army, if not to actually replace him with Gates. The episode has come down to us as the “Conway Cabal.” Since the 1941 publication of Bernhard Knollenberg’s Washington and the Revolution, however, most modern scholarship has discounted the existence of any serious “cabal,” writing off the matter as unfounded fears of conspiracy among Washington’s inner circle. Professor Lender will argue that the cabal was not only real, but that it posed a genuine threat to Washington’s command. Moreover, he believes that Mifflin, Gates and Conway—the “usual suspects”—indeed were at the heart of events. But instead of some clandestine conspiracy, Washington’s critics worked through the reorganized Board of War in which Mifflin and Gates held particular influence. Under their lead, the Board initiated measures to take control of vital army training and logistics functions as well as operational decisions. Enacted with congressional approval, these measures, had they succeeded, would have negated Washington’s prerogatives as commander-in-chief and left the title meaningless—whether or not Washington elected to remain in the army. The eventual defeat of the cabal was a key step in Washington’s consolidation of his position in the army and his rise to iconic status in the Revolution itself.

Mark Edward Lender has a Ph.D. in American History from Rutgers University. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University, from which he retired as Vice President for Academic Affairs in 2011. He is the author or co-author of eleven books and many articles and reviews, and his writings have won awards for history, writing, and research. His Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle (with Garry Wheeler Stone) won the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book of the Year Award (2017) and was a finalist for the George Washington Literary Prize. His latest book, Cabal! The Plot Against General Washington (2019), is the first full study of the Conway Cabal that threatened Washington’s command of the Continental Army. He is a recipient of the Richard J. Hughes Award, the highest honor bestowed by the New Jersey Historical Commission for contributions to New Hersey history. Lender lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Rutgers University librarian emerita and author Penny Booth Page. He retains a great fondness for her, the history of his native New Jersey, and Elvis.

The Usual Suspects: General Washington, His Critics, and the Conway Cabal Reconsidered by Mark Lender

The Lecture Series meets in the Steuben House, 1209 Main Street, River Edge, NJ. No admission, please join us for refreshments afterwards.