he years in which he came nearest to despair. The
strain of a great movement is not in the early days of enthusiasm, but
in the slow years when idealism is tempered by the strife of opinion
and self-interest which brings delay and disillusion. As the war went
on recruiting became steadily more difficult. The alliance with France
actually worked to discourage it since it was felt that the cause
was safe in the hands of this powerful ally. Whatever Great Britain's
difficulties about finance they were light compared with Washington's.
In time the "continental dollar" was worth only two cents. Yet soldiers
long had to take this money at its face value for their pay, with the
result that the pay for three months would scarcely buy a pair of
boots. There is little wonder that more than once Washington had to face
formidable mutiny among his troops. The only ones on whom he could rely
were the regulars enlisted by Congress and carefully trained. The worth
of the militia, he said, "depends entirely on the prospects of the day;
if favorable, they throng to you; if not, they will not move." They
played a chief part in the prosperous campaign of 1777, when Burgoyne
was beaten. In the next year, before Newport, they wholly failed General
Sullivan and deserted shamelessly to their homes.

By 1779 the fighting had shifted to the South. Washington personally
remained in the North to guard the Hudson and to watch the British in
New York. He sent La Fayette to France in January, 1779, there to urge
not merely naval but military aid on a great scale. La Fayette came back
after an absence of a little over a year and in the end France
promised eight thousand men who should be under Washington's control as
completely as if they were American soldiers. The older nation accepted
the principle that the officers in the younger nation which she was
helping should rank in their grade before her own. It was a magnanimity
reciprocated nearly a century and a half later when a great American
army in Europe was placed under the supreme command of a Marshal of
France.

CHAPTER IX. THE WAR IN THE SOUTH

After 1778 there was no more decisive fighting in the North. The British
plan was to hold New York and keep there a threatening force, but to
make the South henceforth the central arena of the war. Accordingly,
in 1779, they evacuated Rhode Island and left the magnificent harbor of
Newport to be the chief base for the French fleet and army in Ameri