The Man who Could be King: A Novel by John Ripin Miller ’55. This novel is based on the Newburgh Conspiracy, a plot by the Continental Army to instigate a military coup because of the failure of Congress in Philadelphia to provide wages to the long-suffering troops. The narrator, Josiah, Washington’s young aide-de-camp, narrates the events, looking back as an old man in 1840 to what transpired in 1783, when as a young pacifist Quaker, he found himself in the middle of the last stages of the war. Josiah, a fictional character, but a composite of numerous real aides-de camp, provides a look at the Father of the Country as a human being, capable of being tempted by power and adept at wily maneuvers. In the end, we are not wrong to revere Washington. He found a way to defuse the plot, which could have made him king and supplanted one George with another. John Ripin Miller represented Washington state in the House of Representatives, just one of the many civic responsibilities he undertook during his life. I am grateful to his classmate, Arthur Goldschmidt (who authored the history of the Middle East found in the Nonfiction-International section) for telling me about his friend’s book. John Ripin Miller died in 2017.
