Washington took action to end the Newburgh Conspiracy, because he did not want his soldiers to commit a mutiny before the end of the American Revolutionary War. They were about to win the war, and this would undermine their efforts, so he made sure to make an emotional appeal and to pay some arrears and paid the soldiers in full for five years after their service.
Though many black leaders decried Lincoln’s tardy efforts to act definitively on slavery, when he finally did release the Emancipation Proclamation, both the freed and enslaved African-American community rejoiced at this decisive step towards freedom.
