[Footnote 17: Letter to Bryan Fairfax; Washington's Writings, Vol. II. p. 395.]
A sublime hope, one which deserved to be rewarded as it was, by the triumph of the cause, but which could not raise to its own lofty elevation all that population, whose free and concurring support was the condition, and indeed the only means, of success. Depression, lukewarmness, inactivity, the desire to escape from labors and expenses, soon became the essential evil, the pressing danger, against which the leaders had constantly to struggle. In point of fact, it was among the leaders, in the front ranks of the party, that enthusiasm and devotedness were maintained. In other instances of similar events, the impulse of perseverance and self-sacrifice has come from the people. In America, it was the independent and enlightened classes, who were obliged to animate and sustain the people in the great contest in which they were engaged for their country's sake. In the ranks of civil life, the magistrates, the rich planters, the leading merchants, and, in the army, the officers, always showed themselves the most ardent and the most firm; from them, example as well as counsel proceeded, and the people at large followed them with difficulty, instead of urging them on. "Take none for officers but gentlemen," was the recommendation of Washington, after the war had lasted three years.[Footnote 18] So fully had he been taught by experience, that these were everywhere devoted to the cause of independence, and ready to risk every thing and suffer every thing to insure its success.
[Footnote 18: In his instructions to Colonel George Baylor, 9th of January, 1777; Washington's Writings, Vol. IV. p. 269.]
These, too, were the only persons who, at least on their own account, could sustain the expenses of the war, for the State made no provision for them. Perhaps no army ever lived in a more miserable condition than the American army. Almost constantly inferior in numbers to the enemy; exposed to a periodical and, in some sort, legalized desertion; called upon to march, encamp, and fight, in a country of immense extent, thinly peopled, in parts uncultivated, through vast swamps and savage forests, without magazines of provisions, often without money to purchase them, and without the power to make requisitions of them; obliged, in carrying on war, to treat the inhabitants, and to respect them and their property, as if it had consisted of troops in garrison in a time of peace, this army was exposed to great exigencies, and a prey to unheard-of sufferings. "For some days," writes Washington, in 1777, "there has been little less than a famine in camp. A part of the army have been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. The soldiers are naked and starving." ... "We find gentlemen reprobating the measure of going into winter quarters; as much as if they thought the soldiers were made of stocks or stones, and equally insensible of frost and snow; and, moreover, as if they conceived it easily practicable, for an inferior army, under the disadvantages I have described ours to be, to confine a superior one, in all respects well-appointed and provided for a winter's campaign, within the city of Philadelphia, and to cover from depredation and waste the States of Pennsylvania and Jersey."
"I can assure those gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. I feel super-abundantly for the poor soldiers, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent." [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: Washington's Writings, Vol. V. pp. 199, 200.]
Congress, to whom he applied, could do hardly more than he himself. Without the strength necessary to enforce the execution of its orders; without the power of passing any laws upon the subject of taxes; obliged to point out the necessities of the country, and to solicit the thirteen confederated States to provide for them, in the face of an exhausted people, a ruined commerce, and a depreciated paper currency; this assembly, though firm and prudent, was often able to do nothing more than address new entreaties to the States, and clothe Washington with new powers; instructing him to obtain from the local governments, reinforcements, money, provisions, and every thing requisite to carry on the war.
Washington accepted this difficult trust: and he soon found a new obstacle to surmount, a new danger to remove. No bond of union, no central power, had hitherto united the colonies. Each one having been founded and governed separately, each, on its own account, providing for its own safety, for its public works, for its most trifling as well as most important affairs, they had contracted habits of isolation and almost of rivalship, which the distrustful mother country had taken pains to foster. In their relations to each other, even ambition and the desire of conquest insinuated themselves, as if the States had been foreign to each other; the most powerful ones sometimes attempted to absorb the neighboring establishments, or to deprive them of their authority; and in their most important interest, the defence of their frontiers against the savages, they often followed a selfish course of policy, and mutually abandoned one another.