Of course it had but slight results, comparatively speaking; still it did something, and the final success of the Revolution is due to the series of strong truth-telling letters, of which this is an example, as much as to any one thing done by Washington.

There was need of some one, not only to fight battles and lead armies, but to drive Congress into some sort of harmony, spur the careless and indifferent to action, arouse the States, and kill various fatal delusions, and in Washington the robust teller of unwelcome truths was found.
Still, even the results actually obtained by such letters came but slowly, and Washington felt that he must strike at all hazards.
Through Lafayette he tried to get De Rochambeau to agree to an immediate attack on New York.

His army was on the very eve of dissolution, and he began with reason to doubt his own power of holding it together longer.

The finances of the country were going ever faster to irremediable ruin, and it seemed impossible that anything could postpone open and avowed bankruptcy.

So, with his army crumbling, mutinous, and half starved, he turned to his one unfailing resource of fighting, and tried to persuade De Rochambeau to join him.