satisfaction. In the lines of some of the
states, the officers gave notice in a body, of their determination to
resign on a given day, if some decent and certain provision should not
be made for them. The remonstrances of the Commander-in-chief produced
an offer to serve as volunteers until their successors should be
appointed; and, on the rejection of this proposition, they were with
difficulty induced to remain in service.

Under these complicated embarrassments, it required all that
enthusiastic patriotism which pre-eminently distinguishes the soldier
of principle; all that ardent attachment to the cause of their country
which originally brought them into the field, and which their
sufferings could not diminish; all the influence of the
Commander-in-chief, whom they almost adored; to retain in the service
men who felt themselves neglected, and who believed themselves to be
the objects of the jealousy of their country, rather than of its
gratitude.

Among the privates, causes of disgust grew out of the very composition
of the army, which increased the dissatisfaction produced by their
multiplied wants.

The first effort made to enlist troops for the war had, in some
degree, succeeded. While these men found themselves obliged to
continue in service without compensation, and often without the common
necessaries of life, they perceived the vacant ranks in their
regiments filled up by men who were to continue only for a few months,
and who received bounties for that short service, from individuals or
from the states, which were of great real value, and which appeared to
soldiers not acquainted with the actual state of depreciation, to be
immense. They could not fail to compare situations, and to repine at
engagements which deprived them of advantages which they saw in
possession of others. Many were induced to contest those
engagements;[36] many to desert a service in which they experienced
such irritating inequalities; and all felt with the more poignant
indignation, those distressing failures in the commissary department,
which so frequently recurred.

[Footnote 36: In some instances, the civil power of the state in which
such soldiers happened to be, attempted to interfere and to discharge
even those belonging to the lines of other states, who asserted their
right to be discharged. It was with some difficulty the general could
arrest this dangerous interposition.]

[Sidenote: Committee of Congress deputed to cam