The last letter which Washington
wrote before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to
thank Steuben for his invaluable aid. Charles Lee did not believe that
American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the
disciplined British battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong
to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth when fighting began in 1778.

The British army in America furnished sharp contrasts to that of
Washington. If the British jeered at the fighting quality of citizens,
these retorted that the British soldier was a mere slave. There were
two great stains upon the British system, the press-gang and flogging.
Press-gangs might seize men abroad in the streets of a town and, unless
they could prove that they were gentlemen in rank, they could be sent
in the fleet to serve in the remotest corners of the earth. In both navy
and army flogging outraged the dignity of manhood. The liability to this
brutal and degrading punishment kept all but the dregs of the populace
from enlisting in the British army. It helped to fix the deep gulf
between officers and men. Forty years later Napoleon Bonaparte, despot
though he might be, was struck by this separation. He himself went
freely among his men, warmed himself at their fire, and talked to them
familiarly about their work, and he thought that the British officer was
too aloof in his demeanor. In the British army serving in America there
were many officers of aristocratic birth and long training in military
science. When they found that American officers were frequently drawn
from a class of society which in England would never aspire to a
commission, and were largely self-taught, not unnaturally they jeered
at an army so constituted. Another fact excited British disdain. The
Americans were technically rebels against their lawful ruler, and rebels
in arms have no rights as belligerents. When the war ended more than a
thousand American prisoners were still held in England on the capital
charge of treason. Nothing stirred Washington's anger more deeply than
the remark sometimes made by British officers that the prisoners they
took were receiving undeserved mercy when they were not hanged.

There was much debate at Valley Forge as to the prospect for the future.
When we look at available numbers during the war we appreciate the
view of a British officer that in spite of Washington's failures and
of British victories the war was serious, "an