As Secretary Rumsfeld faces down the rebellion of a faction of the military’s retired officer corps, it’s a good opportunity to consider anew old Thomas Conway. He was the officer to whom George Washington refused a promotion at a time when Washington was still being defeated

nearly every time he went up against the enemy. The group that rallied around the unhappy officer became known as the Conway Cabal and challenged Washington’s congressionally sanctioned leadership. The catastrophes at Brandywine and Germantown, in the fall of 1777, encouraged Washington’s detractors to complain even more about the problems plaguing the army, from strategic questions to lack of supplies.

The Conway Cabal settled on Horatio Gates, fresh off his stunning victory at Saratoga, as a suitable replacement for Washington. No doubt the New York Times would have been right there with them. But none of the chief “plotters” – it’s unclear whether a “plot” in any normal sense of the word existed – had the will or gumption to see a changing of the guard through. Congress stood with Washington, in part because the French would only support a cause spearheaded by the Virginian.

Washington overcame that challenge, but in 1783, he faced a new problem: a brewing coup in his own ranks. Discontent about late pay led some officers to consider rebellion against the Congress. In a famous incident at Newburgh, Washington, while standing before his troops, donned his spectacles, highlighting his poor vision and reminding his soldiers that he had sacrificed his eyesight to the cause of liberty, before exhorting them to eschew rebellion on the grounds that they had not sacrificed so much to create a military government. By that time Washington had regained his popularity and then some and would have stood to gain a lot had the army revolted and installed him as head of the country.

Nor is Mr. Rumsfeld the only secretary of defense to feud with his generals. Lincoln’s war secretary, Edwin Stanton, exhibited many characteristics discernable in Mr. Rumsfeld today, including an iron will that was sometimes less than deferential to the professional officer corps. Stanton and William Tecumseh Sherman feuded famously over Sherman’s terms for the surrender of a Confederate general, terms Stanton found too accommodating. The general made little effort to conceal his anger that Stanton overrode the agreement he had reached with Joseph Eggleston Johnston. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last secretary of war, Henry Stimson, asserted his authority over a dissenting general, Leslie Groves, in removing Kyoto from a list of potential targets for the atomic bomb. In each case, civilian leadership has won the day – whether in the army’s deference to a congressional decision to keep Washington in charge, in Washington’s decision to defer to Congress and dispel a military revolt, Stanton’s tenacity in the face of opposition from his generals, or Stimson’s assertiveness over the general in charge of the Manhattan Project. The civilian authority hasn’t always – indeed, has rarely – been inerrant; congressional oversight leading up to the incident at Newburgh, for example, was lacking. Not even Mr. Rumsfeld would insist there have been no mistakes, although it’s hard to see dwelling on them as a great war policy.

In reprising this history we don’t suggest for a moment that we are at a pass as grave as the Conway Cabal or the other episodes that have tested our principles of civilian government over the centuries. On the contrary, we merely suggest that this is no time for politicians to panic, even if some generals who already had earned sufficient fame and gratitude for their honorable service feel compelled to come out of retirement to garner an additional 15 minutes by criticizing the civilian secretary of defense in the face of an enemy looking for signs of his weakness. Washington, in the face of civilian mismanagement so bad it eventually forced the drafting of a new constitution, bowed to the institutions through which the American people voice their authority, a lesson that has rarely been so important as today.