Quick as the train to which a torch is applied, the passions caught its flame, and nothing seemed to be required but the assemblage proposed for the succeeding day, to communicate the conflagration to the combustible mass, and to produce an explosion ruinous to the army and to the nation.
Fortunately, the Commander-in-chief was in camp.

His characteristic firmness and decision did not forsake him in this crisis.

The occasion required that his measures should be firm, but prudent and conciliatory,--evincive of his fixed determination to oppose any rash proceedings, but calculated to assuage the irritation which was excited, and to restore confidence in government.
Knowing well that it was much easier to avoid intemperate measures than to correct them, he thought it of essential importance to prevent the immediate meeting of the officers; but, knowing also that a sense of injury and a fear of injustice had made a deep impression on them, and that their sensibilities were all alive to the proceedings of congress on their memorial, he thought it more adviseable to guide their deliberations on that interesting subject, than to discountenance them.
With these views, he noticed in his orders, the anonymous paper proposing a meeting of the officers, and expressed his conviction that their good sense would secure them from paying any "attention to such an irregular invitation; but his own duty, he conceived, as well as the reputation and true interest of the army, required his disapprobation of such disorderly proceedings.

At the same time, he requested the general and field officers, with one officer from each company, and a proper representation from the staff of the army, to assemble at twelve on Saturday, the 15th, at the new building, to hear the report of the committee deputed by the army to congress.

After mature deliberation they will devise what farther measures ought to be adopted as most rational and best calculated to obtain the just and important object in view." The senior officer in rank present was directed to preside, and report the result of the deliberations to the Commander-in-chief.
The day succeeding that on which these orders were published, a second anonymous address appeared, from the same pen which had written the first.