mission to the army, with authority to appoint all the officers of the new regiments. Congress passed a resolve recommending this step to the States, and advising that the Commander-in-chief should be consulted in making the appointments; that those officers should be promoted who had distinguished themselves for bravery and attention to their duties; that no officer should be appointed who had left his station without leave; and that all the officers to be appointed should be men of honor and known abilities, without particular regard to their having been in service before. This was but a partial remedy for the defects of the system. Several of the States sent such a commission to act with the Commander-in-chief; but many of them were tardy in making their appointments, and finally the Congress authorized General Washington to fill the vacancies.

This

Another and a dangerous defect in this plan was, that the continental pay and bounty on enlistment were fixed so low, that some of the States, in order to fill up their quotas, deemed it expedient to offer a further pay and bounty to their own men. was done immediately by the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts. The consequence was likely to be, that, if the quotas of some States were raised before the fact became known that other States had increased the pay and the bounty, some regiments would, when the army came together, be on higher pay than others, and jealousy, impatience, and mu

1 Journals, II. 403. October 8, 1776.

tiny must inevitably follow. Knowing that a differ ent pay could not exist in the same army without these consequences, General Washington remonstrated with the Governor of Connecticut, arrested the proceedings of the commissioners of that State and of Massachusetts, and prevented them from publishing their terms, until the sense of the Congress could be obtained.1 That body, on receiving from him another strong representation on the subject, passed a resolve augmenting the pay.

As

Still, the system, notwithstanding these efforts to amend it, worked ill. The appointment of the officers by the States was incapable of being well managed; the pay and bounty, even after they were increased, were insufficient; and the whole scheme of raising a permanent army was entered upon at too late a period to be effectually accomplished. late as the middle of November, so little had been done, that the whole force on one side of the Hudson, opposed to Howe's whole army, did not exceed two thousand men of the established regiments; while, on the other side, there was a force not much larger to secure the passes into the Highlands." "I am wearied almost to death," said the Commanderin-chief, in a private letter, "with the retrograde motion of things, and I solemnly protest that a pecuniary reward of twenty thousand pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do; and

1 Writings of Washington, IV.173.

2 Ibid. 183, 184.

after all, perhaps, to lose my character, as it is impossible, under such a variety of distressing circumstances, to conduct matters agreeably to public expectation, or even to the expectations of those who employ me, as they will not make proper allowances for the difficulties their own errors have occasioned." "1

There are few pages in our history so painful as those on which are recorded the complaints extorted from Washington, at this period, by the trials of his situation. That he, an accomplished soldier, who had retired with honor from the late war with France to his serene Mount Vernon; who had left it again, to stake life, and all that makes life valuable, on the new issue of his country's independence; who asked no recompense and sought no object but her welfare, should have been compelled to pass into the dark valley of the retreat through New Jersey, with all its perplexities, dangers, and discouragements, its cruel exertions and its humiliating reverses, without a powerful and energetic government to lean upon, and with scarcely more than Divine assistance to which to turn, presents, indeed, to our separate contemplation, a disheartening and discreditable fact. But no trials are appointed to nations, or to men, without their fruits. The perplexities and difficulties which surrounded Washington in the early part of the Revolution contributed, undoubtedly, to give him that profound civil wisdom, that knowledge of our civil wants, and that

VOL. I.

1 Writings of Washington. IV. 184.

13

influence over the moral sense of the country, which were afterwards so beneficently felt in the establishment of the Constitution. The very weakness of the government which he served became in this manner his and our strength. Without the trials to which it subjected him, it may well be doubted whether we should now possess that tower of strength, — that security against distracted counsels and clashing interests, which exist for us in the character and services of that extraordinary man.

It is not necessary to sketch the scene or to follow the route of General Washington's retreat through New Jersey, except as they illustrate the subject of this work, the constitutional history of the country. Its remarkable military story is well known. On the 23d of November, four days after the date of the letter to his brother above quoted, he was at Newark, with a body of troops whose departure was near at hand, and for supplying whose places no pro vision had been made. The enemy were pressing on his rear, and in order to impress upon Congress the danger of his situation, he sent General Mifflin to lay an exact account of it before them.1 On the 28th, he marched out of Newark in the morning, and Lord Cornwallis entered it on the afternoon of the same day. On the 30th, he was at Brunswick, endeavoring, but with little success, to raise the militia; the terms of service of the Jersey and Maryland brigades expiring on that day. On the

1 Writings, IV. 190.

3

1st of December, his army numbered only four thousand men, and the enemy were pushing forward with the greatest energy.1 On the 5th, he resolved to march back to Princeton; but neither militia nor regulars had come in, and it was too late to prevent an evil, which he had both foreseen and foretold.2 On the 8th, he crossed the Delaware. On the 12th, he saw his little handful of men still further decrease, and now, without succors from the government, or spirited exertions on the part of the people, the loss of Philadelphia-"an event," said he, "which will wound the heart of every virtuous American"-rose as a spectre in his path. On the 16th, as he moved on, gathering all the great energies of his character to parry this deep disgrace, concentrating every force that remained to him towards the defence of the city, and animating and directing public bodies, in a tone of authority and command, he once more urged the Congress to discard all reliance upon the militia, to augment the number of the regular troops, and to strain every nerve to recruit them.5 Finally,-being still in doubt whether Howe did not intend an attack on Philadelphia, before going into winter quarters, with less than three thousand men fit for duty, to oppose a well-appointed army of ten or twelve thousand, and surrounded by a population rapidly submitting to the enemy, he felt that the time had come, when to his single hands must be given all the military authority and power which the Continental

1 Ibid. 197.

2 Ibid. 202.