rch 1, 1781--it was still, as Washington
wrote in 1785, "little more than a shadow without the substance, and the
Congress a nugatory body"; or, as it was described by a later writer,
"powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union."

Like politicians, like people. There was no doubt a brilliant display of
patriotic ardor at the first flying to arms of the colonists. Lexington
and Bunker Hill were actions decidedly creditable to their raw troops.
The expedition to Canada, foolhardy though it proved, was pursued up to
a certain point with real heroism. But with it the heroic period of the
war--individual instances excepted--may be said to have closed. There
seems little reason to doubt that the Revolution would never have been
commenced if it had been expected to cost so tough a struggle. "A false
estimate of the power and perseverance of our enemies," wrote James
Duane to Washington, "was friendly to the present revolution, and
inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of people which was
necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause."

As early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military
arrangements, "Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue,
such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain
advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's
mercy that I may never be witness to again." Such "a mercenary spirit"
pervaded the whole of the troops, that he should not have been "at all
surprised at any disaster."

At the same date, besides desertions of thirty or forty soldiers at a
time, he speaks of the practice of plundering as so rife that "no man is
secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person." People "were
frightened out of their houses under pretence of those houses being
ordered to be burnt, with a view of seizing the goods"; and to conceal
the villainy more effectually some houses were actually burnt down. On
February 28, 1777, "the scandalous loss, waste, and private
appropriation of public arms during the last campaign" had been "beyond
all conception." Officers drew "large sums under pretence of paying
their men," and appropriated them. In one case an officer led his men to
robbery, offered resistance to a brigade-major who ordered him to return
the goods, and was only with difficulty cashiered.

"Can we carry on the war much longer?" Washington asks in 1778--after
the treaty with France and the appearance of a French fleet off