We find him writing in December to beg them to reply to the urgent question which he had first asked in the preceding October.

He was scrupulous not to take any step which might seem dictatorial.

The Congress and the people of the country dreaded military despotism.

That dread made them prefer the evil system of militia and the short-term enlistments to a properly organized standing army.

To their fearful imagination the standing army would very quickly be followed by the man on horseback and by hopeless despotism.
The Olympians in London who controlled the larger issues of war and peace whispered to the young gentlemen in the War Office to draw up plans for the invasion, during the summer of 1777, of the lower Hudson by British troops from Canada.