s thought too dangerous. Perhaps it was; perhaps the
irksomeness of my situation led me to undertake more than could be
warranted by prudence. I did not think so, and I am sure yet, that the
enterprise, if it had been undertaken with resolution, must have
succeeded." He added that "the enclosed council of war:... being
almost unanimous, I must suppose it to be right; although, from a
thorough conviction of the necessity of attempting something against the
ministerial troops before a reinforcement should arrive, and while we were
favored with the ice, I was not only ready but willing, and desirous of
making the assault," and a little later he said that had he but foreseen
certain contingencies "all the generals upon earth should not have
convinced me of the propriety of delaying an attack upon Boston."

In the defence of New York there was no chance to attack, but even when
our lines at Brooklyn had been broken and the best brigades in the army
captured, Washington hurried troops across the river, and intended to
contest the ground, ordering a retreat only when it was voted in the
affirmative by a council of war. At Harlem plains he was the attacking
party.

How with a handful of troops he turned the tide of defeat by attacking at
Trenton and Princeton is too well known to need recital. At Germantown,
too, though having but a few days before suffered defeat, he attacked and
well-nigh won a brilliant victory, because the British officers did not
dream that his vanquished army could possibly take the initiative. When
the foe settled down into winter quarters in Philadelphia Laurens wrote,
"our Commander-in-chief wishing ardently to gratify the public expectation
by making an attack upon the enemy ... went yesterday to view the works."
On submitting the project to a council, however, they stood eleven to four
against the attempt.

The most marked instance of Washington's un-Fabian preferences, and proof
of the old saying that "councils of war never fight," is furnished in the
occurrences connected with the battle of Monmouth. When the British began
their retreat across New Jersey, according to Hamilton "the General
unluckily called a council of war, the result of which would have done
honor to the most honorable society of mid-wives and to them only. The
purport was, that we should keep at a comfortable distance from the enemy,
and keep up a vain parade of annoying them by detachment ... The General,
on mature reconsidera