He flatly refused to obey an order which had come to him through the agency of Nathanael Greene, whose sash he was not fit to tie. Most astonishing of all was the correspondence which he exchanged with Washington's own Adjutant General. Colonel Reed wrote to assure Lee that the safety of the army, and the liberties of America, rested upon him, and upon him alone. "You have decision," the Colonel said; "a quality often wanted in minds otherwise valuable. Oh, General! An indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes which can befall an army. How often have I lamented it this campaign!" Lee, in reply, accepted the tribute, and concurred in deploring that fatal indecision which in war was a much greater disqualification than stupidity, or even want of personal courage. Lee's answer, which externally had been made up in the form of a public despatch, was opened, in official course, by the aide-de-camp on duty, and placed beneath the eyes of the Commander-in-Chief. Washington had a strong regard for his Adjutant General, and set much value upon his abilities. A civilian of mature age, Reed had surrendered a most influential position at home, and, at the earnest request of the Commander-in-Chief, had accepted service in the Staff. The confidences which, in a weak moment, he had bestowed upon Charles Lee, were suggested by intense anxiety for the distresses and perils of the cause, and were expressed with the freedom habitual to a politician of long, and high, standing who had not schooled himself to military reticence and self-repression. Of this Washington was well aware; and he found no difficulty in ignoring, and forgiving, a transient flash of unfriendliness towards himself which was not accompanied by disloyalty to the Republic.1

1 It must be remembered, on Reed's behalf, that he was frank and bold in direct remonstrance against what he regarded as timid and dilatory strategy. On the twenty-second of December, 1776, he sent Washington an appeal couched in vigorous, and even passionate, language. "Our affairs," he wrote, "are hastening fast to ruin if we do not retrieve them by some happy event. Delay with us is now equal to a total defeat. . . Pardon the freedom I have used. The love of my country; a wife and

Washington cared little what gossip might be circulated about his indecision of character, if only he could have got hold of those two brigades of Continental infantry which still were idling at White Plains. On the first of December, in an urgent despatch, the Commander-in-Chief certified General Lee that, from information not to be doubted, the enemy were making for Philadelphia. "The force I have with me," he declared, "is infinitely inferior in numbers, and such as cannot give, or promise, the least successful opposition. I must entreat you to hasten your march as much as possible, or your arrival may be too late to answer any valuable purpose." That message, which breathed a perceptible flavour of an impending Court-martial, brought its recipient to a semblance of compliance. In the course of the next two days he crossed the Hudson, and began to loiter and dawdle down-country in the direction of Trenton; marking the very short stages of his southward progress by epistles which were each of them more absurd and improper than the last.

A week after Lee started on his expedition, (and by that time he had travelled barely five-and-thirty miles,) he informed General Heath, who was anything but a sympathetic confidant, that he was in hopes of reconquering the province of New Jersey, which before his arrival had been at the mercy of the enemy. He was just then full of exhilaration over an unexpected stroke of business which he had done for his own profit and glory. Sir Guy Carleton's retreat to Canada had removed all hostile pressure from the northern quarter. So soon as Washington's entreaty for assistance was four children in the enemy's hands; the respect and attachment I have to you; the ruin and poverty that must attend me, and thousands of others, will plead my excuse for so much freedom." That was an unusual style for a communication addressed by a staff-officer to the general under whom he served; but Washington made full allowance for the emotional nature of a man that he liked, and never ceased to trust. There exists a generous testimony to the merits of the Adjutant General, written by his chief a few weeks subsequent to the date of Colonel Reed's own unbecoming correspondence with General Lee. Washington to the President of Congress; Morristown, January 22, 1776.

conveyed to Albany, General Schuyler responded without an hour's hesitation, and put in motion such regiments as he could spare, if regiments they might be called. The strongest of them had been reduced by hardship and disease below the size of a couple of companies; but the soldiers who survived were all the more intent on being in time to help their countrymen. Enfeebled in health, and ill supplied with food, in a single week they accomplished a hundred and thirty miles; until they reached a neighbourhood where Lee contrived to lay hands on four out of their seven battalions. He attached them to his own command, and ordered them to take their place in his column of march, where they were thenceforward as completely out of the game as if they had been intercepted and captured by Lord Cornwallis. It was a cruel injury to Washington, whose vexation was aggravated by the triumphant tone of the despatch in which the unwelcome tidings were imparted. This addition to his own army, (so Lee reported with an excruciating air of self-satisfaction,) enabled him to dispose of five thousand good troops, full of fight, and glowing with patriotism. He very soon threw aside the last pretence of subordination. On the eighth of December he plainly notified to the Committee of Congress that it was no longer his intention to unite forces with Washington; and the same post carried the same information to the Commander-in-Chief himself. "If," (so that letter ran,) "I was not taught to think that your army was considerably reinforced, I should immediately join you; but I am assured you are very strong, and I imagine we can make a better impression by hanging on their rear." On the morning of that very day Washington, with an attenuated band of famished and exhausted followers, was making his escape across the river Delaware in quest of a temporary and precarious refuge from destruction.

Deserted and flouted by his principal lieutenant, and robbed of half his army, Washington was racked

by solicitude of which no outward traces appeared in his placid features, and his composed and dignified bearing. Brave and patriotic men, who were themselves in the forefront of danger and responsibility, rightly conjectured, from their own sensations, the care and sorrow which underlay that calm exterior. "My heart bleeds for poor Washington. I wish to God that it were possible to lead the fifteen hundred hardy veterans you left with me to your assistance, but for one day. But as that is out of my power I can only wish you success, and assure you that the post you left to my charge shall be maintained." Those words were in a letter addressed to General Gates by Anthony Wayne, the fiery warrior to whose guardianship the great national outpost of Ticonderoga had been committed. Washington himself, in his despatches of December 1776, refrained to a noticeable degree from the touches of sadness, and personal vexation, which he sometimes allowed to be observed in him under less trying emergencies. Those despatches were of a multifarious nature, voluminous in bulk, and scrupulously specific in detail; but with never a syllable more than the elucidation of the subject demanded. They contained as little as possible which could discourage colleagues and subordinates who needed all the equanimity and hopefulness that they were able to command. Where Washington had occasion to impress upon a correspondent the necessity for instant, and intense, exertion he would sketch the situation in a sentence or two, very sparingly interspersed with adjectives; and that situation was sufficiently formidable without any word-painting.1 During one short moment, in the course of those terrible weeks, he

1 "It is a matter of concern to me that, in my last, I directed you to take back any of the militia designed for the support of the army under my command, and have to request that you will hasten them on with all possible expedition, as I see no other chance of saving Philadelphia, and preventing a fatal blow to America, in the loss of a city from whence so many of our resources are drawn." Washington to Major-General Spencer; December 22, 1776.

unpacked his heart to his younger and favourite brother, who never allowed a secret entrusted to him by George Washington to get abroad, whether that secret referred to facts or to feelings. "You can form," (the General wrote,) "no idea of the perplexity of my situation. No man, I believe, ever had a greater choice of difficulties, and less means to extricate himself from them. However, under a full persuasion of the justice of our cause, I cannot entertain an idea that it will finally sink, though it may remain for some time under a cloud." 1

That self-control which the Commander-in-Chief practised as a duty, and which well became him, was not to be looked for in writers of the revolutionary party who held no official position that bound them to dissimulate their anxiety, and to weigh their phrases. The agony of the crisis lent to their archaic, and somewhat artificial, rhetoric a note of very genuine power and passion. The most telling appeals in the pages of the public journals were addressed to those of their readers who lived in closest proximity to the scene of action. What apology, (it was asked,) could Pennsylvanians make to their brethren in Virginia, and South Carolina, and Massachusetts Bay, who themselves had repelled the invader from their coasts, if he was enabled, through local apathy and cowardice, to get possession of the vitals of the Continent? "Such an event would render the name of a Pennsylvanian as infamous as that of an ancient Cappadocian. Let the words of the prophet sound perpetually in our ears: Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and keepeth back his sword from blood.'" "Should you now," (so ran another passage,)" by a miserable lassitude suffer your exulting enemy to cry Victory, what must be your miserable lot? You will be a hissing among the nations, and the despised of the world. He is an American he dared 1 Letter to John Augustine Washington; Camp, near the Falls of Trenton, December 18, 1776.