regiments with volunteers, who
should engage to serve for six months. This plan was submitted to
General Washington by Governor Henry, and his opinion asked upon it.
"I am under the necessity of observing," said the General in reply,
"that the volunteer plan which you mention will never answer any
valuable purpose, and that I can not but disapprove the measure. To
the short engagements of our troops may be fairly and justly ascribed
almost every misfortune that we have experienced."

In a subsequent letter to the same gentleman, enforcing earnestly the
necessity of bringing a sufficient army into the field, though
coercive measures should be adopted, some alternatives were suggested,
which, in a later period of the war, constituted the basis of various
experiments to furnish the quota of troops required from that state.

As the season for active operations approached, fresh difficulties,
growing out of the organization of the American system, unfolded
themselves. As every state was exposed to invasion, and the command of
the ocean enabled the British general to transfer the war, at
pleasure, to any part of the Union, the attention of each was directed
exclusively to its particular situation. Each state in the
neighbourhood of the great theatre of action, contemplating its own
danger, claimed the protection which is due from the whole to its
parts. Although the object of the confederation was the same with that
pursued by each of its members, the spirit incident to every league
could not be controlled in an empire where, notwithstanding the
existence of a head, the essentials of government resided in the
members. It was displayed in repeated efforts to give to the energies
of the army such various directions, as would leave it unable to
effect any great object, or to obstruct any one plan the enemy might
form. The patriotism of the day, however, and the unexampled
confidence placed by all the state governments in the
Commander-in-chief, prevented the mischiefs this spirit is so well
calculated to generate. His representations made their proper
impression; and the intention of retaining continental troops for
local defence was abandoned, though with some reluctance. The burden,
however, of calling militia from their domestic avocations, at every
threat of invasion, to watch every military post in each state, became
so intolerable, that the people cast about for other expedients to
relieve themselves from its weight. Th