The senior officer in rank present was directed to preside, and to report the result to the Commander-in-chief. On the next day after these orders were issued, a second anonymous address appeared from the same writer. In this paper, he affected to consider the orders of General Washington, assuming the direction of the meeting, as a sanction of the whole proceeding which he had proposed. Washington saw, at once, that he must be present at the meeting himself, or that his name would be used to justify measures which he intended to discountenance and prevent. He therefore attended the meeting, and under his influence, seconded by that of Putnam, Knox, Brooks, and Howard, the result was the adoption of certain resolutions, in which the officers, after reasserting their grievances, and rebuking all attempts to seduce them from their civil allegiance, referred the whole subject of their claims again to the consideration of Congress. Even at this distant day, the peril of that crisis can scarcely be contemplated without a shudder. Had the Commander-in-chief been other than Washington, had the leading officers by whom he was surrounded been less than the noblest of patriots, the land would have been deluged with the blood of a civil war. But men who had suffered what the great officers of the Revolution had suffered, had learned the lessons of self-control which suffering teaches. The hard school of adversity in which they had passed so many years made them sensible to an appeal which only such a chief as Washington could make; and, when he transmitted their resolves to Congress, he truly described them as "the last glorious proof of patriotism which could have been given by men who aspired to the distinction of a patriot army; not only confirming their claim to the justice, but increasing their title to the gratitude, of their country."[175] The effect of these proceedings was the passage by Congress of certain resolves, on the 22d of March, 1783, commuting the half-pay for life to five years' full pay after the close of the war, to be received, at the option of Congress, in money, or in such securities as were given to other creditors of the United States.[176] On the 4th of July, the accounts of the army were ordered to be made up and adjusted, and certificates of the sums due were required to be given in the form directed by the Superintendent of the Finances. On the 18th of October, a proclamation was issued, disbanding the army. * * * * *