He was working now more anxiously and earnestly than at any time in the Revolution, not merely because he felt that success depended on the blow, but because he descried a new and alarming danger.

He had perceived it in June, and the idea pursued him until all was over, and kept recurring in his letters during this strained and eager summer.
To Washington's eyes, watching campaigns and government at home and the politics of Europe abroad, the signs of exhaustion, of mediation, and of coming peace across the Atlantic were plainly visible.

If peace should come as things then were, America would get independence, and be shorn of many of her most valuable possessions.

The sprawling British campaign of maraud and plunder, so bad in a military point of view, and about to prove fatal to Cornwallis, would, in case of sudden cessation of hostilities, be capable of the worst construction.

Time, therefore, had become of the last importance.