represented to be full of flour.
Washington's letter of the 16th of December to President Reed, had
obtained temporary relief from that quarter; he now wrote to him a
second time, and still more earnestly, and sought to rouse President
Reed to extraordinary exertions. "This is a time," writes he, "to
hazard and to take a tone of energy and decision. All parties but the
disaffected will acquiesce in the necessity and give it their
support." He urges Reed to press upon the legislature of Pennsylvania
the policy of investing its executive with plenipotentiary powers. His
letter procured relief for the army from the legislature, and a
resolve empowering the president and council, during its recess, to
declare martial law, should circumstances render it expedient.

In like manner, he endeavored to rouse the dormant fire of Congress,
and impart to it his own indomitable energy. "Certain I am," writes he
to a member of that body, "unless Congress speak in a more decisive
tone, unless they are vested with powers by the several States,
competent to the purposes of war, or assume them as matters of right,
and they and the States respectively act with more energy than they
have hitherto done, that our cause is lost. We can no longer drudge on
in the old way. By ill-timing the adoption of measures, by delays in
the execution of them, or by unwarrantable jealousies, we incur
enormous expenses and derive no benefit from them. One State will
comply with a requisition of Congress; another neglects to do it; a
third executes it by halves; and all differ, either in the manner, the
matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working
up-hill; and, while such a system as the present one, or rather want
of one, prevails, we shall ever be unable to apply our strength or
resources to any advantage."

At this juncture came official intelligence from the South to connect
which with the general course of events, requires a brief notice of
the operations of Sir Henry Clinton in that quarter.

In the preceding chapter we left the British fleet under Admiral
Arbuthnot, preparing to force its way into the harbor of Charleston.
Several days elapsed before the ships were able, by taking out their
guns, provisions, and water, and availing themselves of wind and tide
to pass the bar. They did so on the 20th of March, with but slight
opposition from several galleys. Commodore Whipple, then, seeing the
vast superiority of their force, made a