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. However, although they
seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I
feel abundantly for them, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries,
which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent."

In the present exigency to save his camp from desolation and to
relieve his starving soldiery, he was compelled to exercise the
authority recently given him by Congress, to forage the country round,
seize supplies wherever he could find them, and pay for them in money
or in certificates redeemable by Congress. He exercised these powers
with great reluctance. He was apprehensive of irritating the jealousy
of military sway, prevalent throughout the country, and of corrupting
the morals of the army.

We here close Washington's operations for 1777; one of the most
arduous and eventful years of his military life, and one of the most
trying to his character and fortunes. He began it with an empty army
chest, and a force dwindled down to four thousand half-disciplined
men. Throughout the year he had had to contend, not merely with the
enemy, but with the parsimony and meddlesome interference of Congress.
In his most critical times that body had left him without funds and
without reinforcements. It had made promotions contrary to his advice
and contrary to military usage; thereby wronging and disgusting some
of his bravest officers. It had changed the commissariat in the very
midst of a campaign, and thereby thrown the whole service into
confusion.

Among so many cross-purposes and discouragements, it was a difficult
task for Washington to "keep the life and soul of the army together."
Yet he had done so. Marvellous indeed was the manner in which he had
soothed the discontents of his aggrieved officers, and reconciled them
to an ill-requiting service; and still more marvellous the manner in
which he had breathed his own spirit of patience and perseverance in
his yeoman soldiery, during their sultry marchings and
countermarchings through the Jerseys, under all kinds of privations,