alarming. The mutineers were commanded by a sergeant named Williams, who had deserted from the British army. They had several grievances-many soldiers were detained in service beyond their enlistment; the arrearages of pay with the ruinous depreciation had not been made up; they were suffering every privation for food, money and clothing.

The revolt was general among all the Pennsylvania regiments. At a given signal nearly all the non-commissioned officers and privates, paraded under arms, avowing their determination of marching to Philadelphia, demanding redress from Congress or of quitting the service. An effort to quell the mutiny resulted in the death of Captain Billing, the wounding of several other officers and of a number of the rebels. General Wayne, who was held in high estimation by the troops, was not only repudiated, but upon cocking his pistol and threatening the most conspicuous with chastisement, found a bayonet at his breast. How the mutineers marched from Morristown to Middlebrook, thence to Princeton, where they submitted a list of their grievances to General Wayne; how Congress appointed a Committee, who together with the Governor of Pennsylvania and members of the executive Council left Philadelphia to treat with them; how Sir Henry Clinton assembled a large body of English troops to march at a moment's warning, his objective being West Point; at the same time despatching three emissaries with tempting offers to the insurgents; how Generals St. Clair, Lafayette and Lieutenant Colonel Laurens were ordered to leave Princeton; how the mutineers seized Sir Henry Clinton's emissaries and held them for a time and then turned them over to General Wayne to whom Clinton's proposals had been transmitted; how they eventually accepted the government's proposals and

marched to Trenton, where the mutiny ended, will be told in detail at the appropriate place in this volume.

The result of this outbreak might well create in the breast of the Commander in chief the most serious misgivings and appre hension. Chagrined by the generous concessions granted the mutineers by Congress, dismayed at this critical juncture by the practical dissolution of the military organizations of a state so influential as Pennsylvania, he resorted to no half way measures, when, three weeks later, a part of the Jersey brigade undertook to imitate the example of the Keystone revolters. The crisis was met with a resolute hand. General Robert Howe, who commanded the disaffected troops, was ordered to make no terms with them so long as they defied constituted authority, but to seize a few of the ringleaders and execute them on the spot. These orders were sternly obeyed and the mutiny came to an end.

From the time of the Conway cabal, two parties established influence known in Congress-those who were willing to bestow unlimited power upon the Commander in chief and those who favored the restriction of that power. Even Washington failed to escape the suspicion and the jealousy of men occupying high, responsible and patriotic places. He had disinterestedly recommended "that a plan" should "be devised by which everything relating to the army could be conducted on a general principle under the direction of Congress." When it was proposed to send a Committee of three Members of Congress to confer with Washington in order to effect necessary reforms and changes in the army, objection was made on the floor by certain members. to increase the power already lodged in the hands of the Commander in chief for the reasons "that his influence was already

But

too great; that even his virtues afforded motives for alarm; that the enthusiasm of the army, joined to the dictatorship already confided to him, put Congress and the United States at his mercy; that it was not expedient to expose a man of highest virtue to such temptation." Congress, guarding its own prerogatives with jealous care or careful jealousy, had created a cumbersome and heterogeneous contrivance, which was operated through committees and boards consisting of several members. Through mis-directed suspicion and distrust, one man power had never received recognition or encouragement from Congress. For years the unwieldy system had prevailed against the judgment and in spite of the opposition of the more liberal and progressive sentiment of the country in and out of Congress. now, the reform wave came along and with it departed the committees and the boards, before a Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a Secretary of War, a Secretary of Marine and a Superintendent of Finance. Scarcely, however, had the new experiment been tried, when the Articles of Federation were ratified, February 1781. This wonderful and marrowless expedient fully justified the expectations of its opponents and proved hopelessly dis appointing to its advocates and framers. In a short time it was repudiated by those who favored a centralized form of government and eventually discredited by the state rights representatives. It was an impotent makeshift, "a rope of sand," as Washington graphically described it. Its miserable life ended in less than a decade. Under the natural development of the American people, its substitution by a stronger, more cohesive and more intelligent instrument was but a matter of time and in 1787 the Federal Constitution rode over it and bowled it into

oblivion.

The reorganization of the army had been ordered late in the fall of 1780-a much needed reform that had given the Commander in chief no less perturbation than uneasiness. Regiments were reduced by necessity and officers were dropped for incompetency. Washington estimated the fighting force of the enemy between eighteen and twenty thousand men. He placed his own army at eighteen thousand and calculated that twenty-two thousand men were necessary for even a defensive plan. Washington suggested that Congress should undertake the reduction of the old and the incorporation of the new regiments rather than leave the work to the States, because of his apprehension of the "great confusion and discontent" that should be produced. He had shown-and the evidence in support of his contention is voluminous and convincing in the following pages that the system of raising regiments was complicated, demoralizing and productive of mutiny; that it was aggravated by the bankrupt condition of government, by the incapacity of staff officers, and by the mercenary practice of the farmer who discriminated in the sale of provisions against the depreciated paper money offered by our people in favor of the coin offered by the enemy. Though on the point of sheer bankruptcy the country was steadily called upon to face the great expense involved in paying and feeding two sets of troops, "the discharged men going home and the Levies coming in." Discipline had to all intents and purposes, disappeared from the militia and levy regiments. Food had been wasted by the short term evanescent troops and arms and equipment had been unnecessarily destroyed by the frequent changes.

No state suffered from these disheartening conditions more than New York. The militia were under constant orders to

rush to the frontiers which lay open, exposed and helpless to the marauder from the Pennsylvania line near Tioga to New Hampshire two sides of a large triangle. Alarms were frequent; daring and destructive raids of Tories and Indians kept the nerves of the inhabitants drawn to the highest tension; crops that were not burned were neglected, or ruined from blight; animals of the field were carried away or killed; houses and barns were set ablaze with the torch and the whole region presented a sorrowful picture of desolation and terror. The militia were utterly unable to cope with the serpent like tactics employed. Washington had urged a permanent army-on the grounds of economy, greater mobility and discipline, and also for the wholesome effect that might be produced upon the enemy, our allies and Europe. He was unwilling to weaken his plans, even now by forwarding "line" regiments for the protection of New York's frontiers, in spite of the importuning of Governor Clinton and of General James Clinton who had been assigned to the command at Albany. It was not alone the distress among the inhabitants which followed in the wake of the currency depreciation that James Clinton was called upon to provide against; nor the wild and uncontrollable panic, periodically produced by a restless and merciless enemy that disturbed him most, but the danger of being compelled to abandon the territory under his jurisdiction, and the threatened dissolution of his command, thoroughly loyal and patriotic, through mutiny and starvation. No better illustration of the apparent hopelessness of the American cause in the winter of 1781-the darkest hour before the dawn-can be found than the series of letters which this loyal, patient, uncomplaining soldier, wrote to his brother, the governor, concerning the destitution of his ommand.