Congress, moreover, then felt that all had been done that could be demanded, and relapsed once more into confidence.

"The British force," said John Adams, chairman of the board of war, "is so divided, they will do no great matter this fall." But Washington, facing hard facts, wrote to Congress with his unsparing truth on October 4: "Give me leave to say, sir, (I say it with due deference and respect, and my knowledge of the facts, added to the importance of the cause and the stake I hold in it, must justify the freedom,) that your affairs are in a more unpromising way than you seem to apprehend.

Your army, as I mentioned in my last, is on the eve of its political dissolution.

True it is, you have voted a larger one in lieu of it; but the season is late; and there is a material difference between voting battalions and raising men." The campaign as seen from the board of war and from the Plains of Harlem differed widely.

It is needless to say now which was correct; every one knows that the General was right and Congress wrong, but being in the right did not help Washington, nor did he take petty pleasure in being able to say, "I told you how it would be." The hard facts remained unchanged.