Volume 9 of the Revolutionary War Series covers the spring of 1777,
a period when Washington's resourcefulness and perseverance were
tested as much as at any time during the war. Instead of opening
the new campaign by taking the field with a reinvigorated
Continental army as planned, Washington was obliged to spend much
of his time pleading with state authorities to fill their
recruiting quotas and with officers to bring in the men whom they
had enlisted. He was further hampered by a high desertion rate,
which he blamed on the failure of many officers to pay their men
regularly.
Painfully aware of the weakness of his army, Washington was
puzzled but relieved that General Howe did not launch a major
offensive during the spring. Although British raids on Peekskill,
New York, Boundbrook, New Jersey, and Danbury, Connecticut, stirred
local fears, Washington remained focused on the larger threat posed
by Howe's forces. Employing a network of spies, Washington
attempted to discover whether Howe planned to attack the
strategically important Hudson highlands or politically important
Philadelphia, and if the latter, whether he intended to move by
land or sea. Believing that Philadelphia would be Howe's target but
unable to prove it, Washington concentrated most of his forces at
Middlebrook, New Jersey, in late May, in order to be able to move
rapidly north or south as events dictated.
Unhappy officers added to Washington's woes with complaints of
ill treatment and threats to resign. "It seems to me, " Washington
wrote John Hancock in April, "as if all public Spirit was sunk into
the means of making money by the Service, or quarrelling upon the
most trivial points of rank." Foreign officers,who arrived in
unprecedented numbers, were the most troublesome. Often unable to
speak English and having little attachment to the American cause,
they demanded extravagant ranks and pay that could not be granted
without disrupting and demoralizing the Continental officer corps.
"The management of this matter, " Washington wrote Richard Henry
Lee in May, "is a delicate point.... In the mean while I am Haunted
and teased to death by the importunity of some &
dissatisfaction of others."
General
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