an
four thousand might have been relied on for action.

The prospects for the campaign were rendered still more unpromising by
the failure of supplies for the support of the troops. The long
expected clothing from Europe had not arrived; and the want of
provisions[79] furnished a still more serious cause of alarm.

[Footnote 79: See note No. V. at the end of the volume.]

After congress had come to the resolution of emitting no more bills on
the credit of the continent, the duty of supplying the army with
provisions necessarily devolved on the states, who were required to
furnish certain specified articles for the subsistence of the troops,
according to a ratio established by the federal government. These
requisitions had been neglected to such a degree as to excite fears
that the soldiers must be disbanded from the want of food.

To increase the general embarrassment, the quartermaster department
was destitute of funds, and unable to transport provisions or other
stores from place to place, but by means of impressment supported by a
military force. This measure had been repeated, especially in New
York, until it excited so much disgust and irritation among the
people, that the Commander-in-chief was under serious apprehensions of
actual resistance to his authority.

While in this state of deplorable imbecility, intelligence from every
quarter announced increasing dangers.

Information was received that an expedition was preparing in Canada
against Fort Pitt, to be conducted by Sir John Johnston, and Colonel
Conelly; and it was understood that many, in the country threatened
with invasion, were ready to join the British standard. The Indians
too had entered into formidable combinations, endangering the whole
extent of the western frontier.

In addition to these alarming circumstances, some vessels had arrived
at Crown Point from Canada, with information that three thousand men
had been assembled on the lakes, for the purpose of attempting, once
more, an invasion from that quarter.

This information, though unfounded, was believed to be true, and was,
at that critical moment, the more alarming, because a correspondence
of a criminal nature had just been discovered between some persons in
Albany and in Canada. A letter intercepted by Generals Schuyler and
Clinton, stated the disaffection of particular settlements, the
provision made in those settlements for the subsistence of an invading
army, and their readines