cation, to which Rush did not sign his name, Patrick Henry received with scorn, and noticed only by sending it to Washington. An anonymous paper of the like stamp, transmitted to Henry Laurens, then president of congress, took the same direction. Meantime, the council and assembly of Pennsylvania renewed to congress their wish that Philadelphia might be recovered and the British driven away. Congress hailed the letter as proof of a rising spirit, and directed the committee appointed to go to camp to consult on the desired attack with the government of Pennsylvania and with General Washington.

Conway having vainly striven to alienate Lafayette from Washington, and even to induce him to abandon the United States, the board of war sought to entice the young representative of France by dazzling him with ideas of glory. In concert with Conway, and without consulting Washington, they induced congress to sanction a winter expedition against Canada, under Lafayette, who was not yet twenty-one years old, with Conway for his second in command, and with Stark. At a banquet given in his honor by Gates at Yorktown, Lafayette braved the intriguers, and made them all drink his toast to the health of their general. Assured by Gates that he would command an army of three thousand men, and that Stark would have already destroyed the shipping at St. John's, Lafayette, having obtained from congress Kalb as his second, and Washington as his direct superior, repaired to Albany. There the three major-generals of the expedition met, and were attended or followed by twenty French officers. Stark wrote for orders. The available force for the conquest, counting a regiment which Gates detached from the army of Washington, did not exceed a thousand. For these there was no store of provision, nor clothing suited to the climate of Canada, nor means of transportation. Two years' service in the northern department cannot leave to Gates the plea of ignorance; his plan showed his utter want of administrative capacity; it accidentally relieved the country of Conway, who, writing petulantly to congress, found his resignation, which he had meant only as a complaint, irrevocably accepted. Lafayette and Kalb were recalled.

Slights and selfish cabals could wound the sensibility, but

not affect the conduct of Washington. His detractors took an unfair advantage, for he was obliged to conceal the weakness of his army from the enemy, and therefore from the public. To William Gordon, who was gathering materials for a history of the war, he wrote freely: "Neither interested nor ambitious views led me into the service. I did not solicit the command, but accepted it after much entreaty, with all that diffidence which a conscious want of ability and experience equal to the discharge of so important a trust must naturally excite in a mind not quite devoid of thought; and, after I did engage, pursued the great line of my duty and the object in view, as far as my judgment could direct, as pointedly as the needle to the pole. No person ever heard me drop an expression that had a tendency to resignation. The same principles that led me to embark in the opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain operate with additional force at this day; nor is it my desire to withdraw my services, while they are considered of importance to the present contest. There is not an officer in the service of the United States that would return to the sweets of domestic life with more heartfelt joy than I should, but I mean not to shrink in the cause."

In his remonstrances with congress he wrote with plainness, but with moderation. His calm dignity alike irritated and overawed his adversaries; and nothing could shake the confidence of the people, or divide the affections of the army, or permanently distract the majority of congress. Those who had been most ready to cavil at him soon wished their rash words benevolently interpreted or forgotten. Gates denied the charge of being in a league to supersede Washington as a wicked, false, diabolical calumny of incendiaries, and would not believe that any such plot existed; Mifflin exonerated himself in more equivocal language; and both retired from the committee that was to repair to head-quarters. The French minister loudly expressed to the officers from his country his disapprobation of their taking part in any cabal whatever. In the following July, Conway, thinking himself mortally wounded in a duel, wrote to Washington: "My career will soon be over; therefore justice and truth prompt me to declare my last sentiments. You are in my eyes the great and

good man. May you long enjoy the love, veneration, and esteem of these states, whose liberties you have asserted by your virtues." The committee, which toward the end of January was finally sent to consult with Washington, was composed exclusively of members of congress; and the majority of them, especially Charles Carroll of Maryland and John Harvey of Virginia, were his friends. They discerned at once the falsehood of the rumors against Washington. John Harvey said to him: "If you had but explained yourself, these reports would have ceased long ago." And his answer was: How could I have thrown off the blame without doing injury to the common cause?" But, in the procrastination of active measures of relief, the departments of the quartermaster and commissary remained like clocks with so many checks that they cannot go. Even so late as the eleventh of February, Dana, one of the committee, reported that men died for the want of straw or other bedding to raise them from the cold, damp earth. Inoculation was for a like reason delayed. Almost every species of camp-transportation was performed by men who, without a murmur, yoked themselves to little carriages of their own making, or loaded their fuel and provisions on their backs. Sometimes fuel was wanting, when for want of shoes and stockings they could not walk through the snow to cut it in the neighboring woods. Some brigades had been four days without meat. For days together the army was without bread. There was danger that the troops would perish from famine or disperse in search of food.

All this time the British soldiers in Philadelphia were well provided for, and the officers quartered upon the inhabitants. The days were spent in pastime, the nights in entertainments. By a proportionate tax on the pay and allowances of each officer, a house was opened for daily resort and for weekly balls, with a gaming-table, and a room devoted to the players of chess. Thrice a week dramas were enacted by amateur performers. The curtain painted by André was greatly admired. The officers, among whom all ranks of the British aristocracy were represented, lived in open licentiousness. At a grand review, an English girl, mistress of a colonel and dressed in the colors

* Mazzei: Recherches, iv., 120.

of his regiment, drove down the line in her open carriage with great ostentation. The pursuit of pleasure was so eager that an attack in winter was not added to the trials of the army at Valley Forge, even though at one time it was reduced to five thousand men.

During the winter the members present in congress were sometimes only nine, rarely seventeen; of former members, Franklin, Jefferson, John Rutledge, Jay, and others were employed elsewhere, and John Adams had recently been elected to succeed Deane as commissioner in France. The want of power explains the inefficiency of congress. It proposed in January to borrow ten millions of dollars, but it had no credit. So in January, February, and March two millions of paper money were ordered to be issued, and in April six and a half millions more. These emissions were rapidly followed by corresponding depreciations. When the currency lost its value, congress would have had the army serve on from disinterested patriotism; but Washington pointed out the quality in human nature which does not permit practical affairs to be conducted through a succession of years by a great variety of persons without regard to equitable interests and just claims; and, after months of resistance, officers who should serve to the end of the war were promised half-pay for seven years, privates a sum of eighty dollars.

The opportunity of keeping up an army by voluntary enlistments having been thrown away by the jealousy of congress, Washington, in February, in a particular manner laid before the congressional committee of arrangement, then with the army at Valley Forge, a plan of an annual draft as the surest and most certain, if not the only, means left for conducting the war "on a proper and respectable ground." Toward the end of the month congress adopted the advice, but changed its character to that of a transient expedient. It directed the continental battalions of all the states, except South Carolina and Georgia, to be completed by drafts from their militia, but limited the term of service to nine months. The execution of the measure was unequal, for it depended on the good-will of the several states; but the scattered villages paraded their militia for the draft with sufficient regularity to

save the army from dissolution. Varnum, a brigadier of Rhode Island, proposed the emancipation of slaves in that state, on condition of their enlisting in the army for the war. The scheme approved by Washington, and by him referred to Cooke, the governor of the state, was accepted. Every ablebodied slave in Rhode Island received by law liberty to enlist in the army for the war. On passing muster, he became free and entitled to all the wages and encouragements given by congress to any soldier. The state made some compensation to their masters.

Unable to force a defaulting agent to a settlement, congress in February asked the legislatures of the several states to enact laws for the recovery of debts due to the United States; and it invited the supreme executive of every state to watch the behavior of all civil and military officers of the United States in the execution of their offices.

The regulation of the staff of the army was shaped by Joseph Reed, now a member of congress and of the committee sent by congress to the camp. Notwithstanding the distresses. of the country, the system was founded on the maxim of large emoluments, especially for the head of the quartermaster's department; and for that head Greene was selected, with two family connections of Reed as his assistants. The former was to be with the army; the other two, of whom one was superfluous, were stationed near congress, and, by an agreement among themselves, the emoluments in the shape of commissions were to be divided equally between the three. All subordinate appointments were to be made by the quartermastergeneral himself, and their emoluments were likewise to be derived from commissions. The system was arranged and carried through congress independently of Washington, who, though repeatedly solicited, would never sanction it by his approval. Greene was importunate in his demands to retain the command of a division; on that point Washington was inflexible. After more than another month the system of centralization was extended to the commissary department. To increase his profits by furnishing supplies to the army, Greene did not scruple to enter into a most secret partnership with the head of that department, a third partner, not in office,