He set himself doggedly to fight it, as he always fought every enemy, using both speech and pen in all quarters.
Much, no doubt, he ultimately effected, but he was contending with the usual results of civil war, which are demoralizing always, and especially so among a young people in a new country.

At first, therefore, all seemed vain.

The selfishness, "peculation, and speculation" seemed to get worse, and the tone of Congress and the people lower, as he struggled against them.

In March, 1779, he wrote to James Warren of Massachusetts: "Nothing, I am convinced, but the depreciation of our currency, aided by stock-jobbing and party dissensions, has fed the hopes of the enemy, and kept the British arms in America to this day.

They do not scruple to declare this themselves, and add that we shall be our own conquerors.