provisions
and ammunition, on their ships and send them across the Atlantic,
where they were more than a match for the nondescript, undisciplined,
ill-equipped, and often badly nourished Americans. The fact that
at the highest reckoning hardly a half of the American people were
actively in favor of Independence, is too often forgotten. But from
this fact there followed much lukewarmness and inertia in certain
sections. Many persons had too little imagination or were too sordidly
bound by their daily ties to care. As one planter put it: "My business
is to raise tobacco, the rest doesn't concern me."

Over the generally level plains of New Jersey, George Washington
pushed the remnant of the army that remained to him. He had now hardly
five thousand men, but they were the best, most seasoned, and in
many respects the hardiest fighters. In addition to the usual
responsibility of warfare, of feeding his troops, finding quarters
for them, and of directing the line of march, he had to cope with
wholesale desertions and to make desperate efforts to raise money and
to persuade some of those troops, whose term was expiring, to stay on.
His general plan now was to come near enough to the British centre and
to watch its movements. The British had fully twenty-five thousand men
who could be centred at a given point. This centre was now Trenton,
and the objective of the British was so plainly Philadelphia that the
Continental Congress, after voting to remain in permanence there, fled
as quietly as possible to Baltimore. On December 18th Washington wrote
from the camp near the Falls of Trenton to John Augustine Washington:

If every nerve is not strained to recruit the new army with all
possible expedition, I think the game is pretty near up, owing,
in great measure, to the insidious acts of the Enemy, and
disaffection of the Colonies before mentioned, but principally to
the accursed policy of short enlistments, and placing too great
a dependence on the militia, the evil consequences of which were
foretold fifteen months ago, with a spirit almost Prophetic. ...
You can form no idea of the perplexity of my situation. No man, I
believe, ever had a greater choice of difficulties, and less means
to extricate himself from them. However, under a full persuasion
of the justice of our cause, I cannot entertain an idea that it
will finally sink, though it may remain for some time under a
c