tish always on the eve
of disbanding.

He reasoned out, however, in his own way, the peculiar needs of every
military position, and how he did this will appear more clearly as our
narrative progresses. He often spoke of his own lack of military
experience, as well as of the lack of it in the officers about him; and
this seems to have led him to study every situation like a beginner,
with exhaustive care, consulting with everybody, calling councils of war
on every possible occasion, and reasoning out his plans with minute
carefulness. This method, which his best friends sometimes ridiculed,
was in striking contrast to the method of one of his own officers,
General Greene, and also to the method of Grant in the Civil War. Both
Greene and Grant dispensed altogether with laborious consultations and
councils of war.

But the laborious method was well suited to Washington, whose mind was
never satisfied unless it could strike a balance among a great mass of
arguments and details which must be obtained from others, and not
through his own imagination. He liked to reserve his decision until the
last moment, and this trait was sometimes mistaken for weakness. His
preparedness and devotion to details remind us of Napoleon. His
cautious, balancing, weighing habit, developed by lifelong practice,
runs through all his letters and every act of his life, appearing in
some of the great events of his career as a superb and masterful
equipoise. It became very impressive even to those who ridiculed it; it
could inspire confidence through years of disaster and defeat; and it
enabled him to grasp the general strategy of the war so thoroughly that
no military critic has ever detected him in a mistake.

As a soldier he fought against distinguished British officers four
pitched battles--Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth; in
the first three of which he was defeated, and the last was a draw. He
conducted two sieges--Boston and Yorktown--in both of which he was
successful; and he destroyed two outposts--Trenton and Princeton--in a
manner generally regarded as so brilliant and effective that he saved
the patriot cause from its first period of depression. His
characteristics as a soldier were farseeing judgment and circumspection,
a certain long-headedness, as it might be called, and astonishing
ability to recover from and ignore a defeat. In his pitched battles,
like Long Island and Brandywine, he knew that defeat was probable,