They know I cannot combat their insinuations, however injurious, without disclosing secrets, which it is of the utmost moment to conceal.

But why should I expect to be exempt from censure, the unfailing lot of an elevated station?
Merit and talents, with which I can have no pretensions of rivalship, have ever been subject to it.

My heart tells me, that it has been my unremitted aim to do the best that circumstances would permit; yet I may have been very often mistaken in my judgment of the means, and may in many instances deserve the imputation of error.

(Valley Forge, 31 January, 1778.)[1] [Footnote 1: Ford, vi, 353.] Such was the sort of explanation which was wrung from the Silent Man when he explained to an intimate the secrets of his heart.
To estimate the harassing burden of these plots we must bear in mind that, while Washington had to suffer them in silence, he had also to deal every day with the Congress and with an army which, at Valley Forge, was dying slowly of cold and starvation.

There was literally no direction from which he could expect help; he must hold out as long as he could and keep from the dwindling, disabled army the fact that some day they would wake up to learn that the last crumb had been eaten and that death only remained for them.