power to "co-operate with them," and directing the committee appointed to proceed to the camp, "to consult with the president and council of Pennsylvania, and with General Washington," on the practicability of an attack. At the same time the excitement of the legislature of that State was brought in aid.

The recent statement of Washington of the condition of the army seemed to be wholly disregarded. "Few men," he wrote, "have more than one shirt, many only the moiety of one, and some none at all. A number of men confined to hospitals for want of shoes, and others in farmers' houses on the same account. We have, by a field return this day made, no less than two thousand eight hundred ninety-eight men now in camp unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked, numbers having been obliged for want of blankets and still are, to sit up all night by fires instead of taking comfortable rest in a natural way. I can assure these gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room, by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and from my soul pity those miseries which it is not in my power to relieve or to prevent."

This letter was dated from the camp at Valley Forge,* which lies on the western side of the Schuylkill, convenient to the rich country of Lancaster and Reading, and in the first step of the ascent of hills which reach to the North Mountain or Blue Ridge. It possessed every advantage which strength of ground or salubrity of climate could bestow. Here, by the hands of his soldiers, Wash

* Lee's Southern War, 47, gives this description, with fuller remarks.

ington erected a town of huts, and strengthened his position by all the helps of art and industry. He was now occupied in instructing his troops, and subjecting them at the same time to inoculation for the small pox, then a fearful pestilence.

The sufferings of the soldiery in this encampment did not only proceed from want of clothing and of protection from the cold; nor were abuses only seen in the quartermaster's department. The conduct of the hospital department was believed to have increased the distress and fatality of disease. This important matter was referred to a committee. Linen and blankets were ordered to be reserved for the sick, clothes to be supplied to the convalescent; a member of Congress was specially charged to visit the hospitals in the middle department; and the clergy were requested to solicit charitable "donations of woollens or linens for the sick soldiers." To probe the evil to its source, Shippen, the director general of all the military hospitals in the United States, and Rush, who had been surgeon-general, and was now "physician-general of the hospital in the middle department," were ordered on the sixth of January to attend Congress on the twenty-sixth of that month, "to be examined touching certain abuses said to prevail in the hospital." * Letters were received from these officers, and on the twenty-seventh of that month were referred to a Committee of Congress, who were directed "to send for them and to hear them and to report specially." The next day Rush resigned. His resignation was forthwith accepted.† Shippen continued in office. Soon after, letters were addressed to Washington and to a member of Congress by Rush, charging Shippen with malconduct. An inquiry was instituted, but, it would seem, was not proceeded in. Similar charges were subIbid. 422, Jan. 28.

* Journals Congress, ii. 394.

sequently preferred by another physician. Shippen was arrested, tried before a court martial, and acquitted.

On the day this matter was taken up in Congress, a letter was addressed to Washington by his faithful surgeon, Craig, stating "that a strong faction was forming against him in the new Board of War and in the Congress." "It was said that some of the eastern and southern members were at the bottom of it, particularly one, who has been said to be your enemy before, but denied it, Richard Henry Lee; and that General Mifflin, in the new Board of War, was a very active person. This last, I am afraid, is too true. I have reason to believe he is not your friend from many circumstances." After stating the low artifices resorted to, he proceeds: "It is said, they dare not appear openly as your enemies, but that the new Board of War is composed of such leading men as will throw such obstacles and difficulties in your way, as to force you to resign." "Mifflin is plausible, sensible, popular, and ambitious, takes great pains to draw over every officer he meets with to his own way of thinking, and is very engaging."

Six days later, on the twelfth of January, an anonymous letter was addressed to Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, intended to destroy Washington in his native State, which shows that the recently instituted inquiry as to the hospital department was not without effect. A compliment to Henry and a flourish of patriotism precede a sketch of the condition of the public councils and of the army. "America can only be outdone by herself. She looks up to her councils and arms for protection; but, alas! what are they? Her representation in Congress dwindled to only twenty-one members; her Adams, her Wilson, her Henry are no more among them. Her councils weak, and partial remedies applied constantly for

universal diseases. Her army, what is it? a major-general belonging to it, called it, a few days ago, in my hearing, a mob. Discipline unknown,, or wholly neglected. The quarter-master's and commissary's departments filled with idleness, ignorance, and peculation; our hospitals crowded with six thousand sick, but half provided with necessaries for accommodations, and more dying in them in one month than perished in the field during the whole of the last campaign. The money depreciating, without any effectual measures being taken to raise it." "But is our case desperate? By no means. We have wisdom, virtue, and strength enough to save us, if they could be called into action. The northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a general at their head. The spirit of the southern army is no way inferior to the spirit of the northern. A Gates, a Lee, a Conway, would in a few weeks render them an irresistible body of men. The last of the above officers has accepted of the new office of inspector-general of our army, in order to reform abuses, but the remedy is only a palliative one." He states that the author "is one of his Philadelphia friends. A hint of his name, if found out by the handwriting, must not be mentioned to your most intimate friend. Even the letter must be thrown in the fire. But some of its contents ought to be made public, in order to awaken, enlighten and alarm our country."

This paper was enclosed by Patrick Henry to Washington, who, acknowledging it, remarked, "The anonymous letter with which you were pleased to favor me, was written by Doctor Rush, so far as I can judge from a similitude of hands. This man has been elaborate and studied in his professions of regard for me, and long since the letter to you."—"I cannot precisely mark the extent

of their views" (the cabal), "but it appeared in general, that General Gates was to be exalted on the ruin of my reputation and influence."

ton.

Another anonymous communication, entitled "Thoughts of a Freeman," was addressed to Henry Laurens, who had been recently elected President of Congress in place of Hancock, which was transmitted by him to WashingAfter a labored censure of the commander-in-chief and of the administration of military affairs, it closed, stating, that "The head cannot be sound when the whole body is disordered; that the people of America have been guilty of idolatry, by making a man their god; and the God of heaven and earth will convince them by woful experience, that he is only a man; that no good may be expected from the standing army, until Baal and his worshippers are banished from the camp."

While such vile means were being used to impair confidence in Washington, Gates was waiting intelligence as to the letter of Conway. Inflated by the incense offered to him, and relieved by Washington's disclosure of the limited extent of his knowledge of his correspondence with Conway, and that its authority rested upon a verbal statement of Wilkinson, Gates thought an easy escape was open to him. On the twenty-third of January he answered Washington:

"The letter of the 4th inst. which I had the honor to receive yesterday from your excellency, has relieved me from unspeakable uneasiness. I now anticipate the pleasure it will give you when you discover that what has been conveyed to you for an extract of General Conway's letter to me, was not an information which friendly motives induced a man of honor to give, that injured virtue might be forewarned against secret enemies. The paragraph which your excellency has condescended to