This Day in History: February 27

Reports are freely circulated here, that there are dangerous combinations in the army ; and, within a few days past, it has been said, they are about to declare they will not disband until their demands are complied with. I trust these reports are not well founded, and that the army will exercise, awhile longer at least, that patient forbearance, which hath hitherto so honorably distinguished them. To you it must be unnecessary to observe, that when once all confidence between the civil and military authority is lost, by intemperate conduct, or an assumption of improper power, especially by the military body, the Rubicon is passed, and to retreat will be very difficult, from the fears and jealousies that will unavoidably subsist between the two bodies. [More]