Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them.

Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the end; and, with peace upon them, they did not dare to disband because they feared that, if they left before they were paid, they would never be paid.
Washington felt that, if thousands of discontented and even angry soldiers were allowed to go back to their homes without the means of taking up any work or business, great harm would be done.

The love of country, which he believed to be most important to inculcate, would not only be checked but perverted.

They already had too many reasons to feel aggrieved.

Why should they, the men who risked their lives in battle and actually had starved or frozen in winter quarters, go unpaid, whereas every civilian who had a post under the Government lived at least safely and healthily and was paid with fair promptitude?
They felt now that their best hope for justice lay in General Washington's interest in their behalf; and that interest of his seems now one of the noblest and wisest and most patriotic of his expressions.
Washington had need to be prepared for any emergency.