This simple but exceedingly plain letter checked the whole movement at once; but the feeling of hostility to the existing system of government and of confidence in Washington increased steadily through the summer and winter. When the next spring had come round, and the "Newburgh addresses" had been published, the excitement was at fever heat. All the army needed was a leader. It was as easy for Washington to have grasped supreme power then, as it would have been for Cæsar to have taken the crown from Antony upon the Lupercal. He repelled Nicola's suggestion with quiet reproof, and took the actual movement, when it reared its head, into his own hands and turned it into other channels. This incident has been passed over altogether too carelessly by historians and biographers. It has generally been used merely to show the general nobility of Washington's sentiments, and no proper stress has been laid upon the facts of the time which gave birth to such an idea and such a proposition. It would have been a perfectly feasible thing at that particular moment to have altered the frame of government and placed the successful soldier in possession of supreme power. The notion of kingly government was, of course, entirely familiar to everybody, and had in itself nothing repulsive. The confederation was disintegrated, the States were demoralized, and the whole social and political life was weakened. The army was the one coherent, active, and thoroughly organized body in the country. Six years of war had turned them from militia into seasoned veterans, and they stood armed and angry, ready to respond to the call of the great leader to whom they were entirely devoted. When the English troops were once withdrawn, there was nothing on the continent that could have stood against them. If they had moved, they would have been everywhere supported by their old comrades who had returned to the ranks of civil life, by all the large class who wanted peace and order in the quickest and surest way, and by the timid and tired generally. There would have been in fact no serious opposition, probably because there would have been no means of sustaining it.