point some other officer to the command until
the inquiry should be made. Washington at once selected Greene for the
important trust. His choice was in concurrence with the expressed
wishes of the delegates of the three Southern States, conveyed to him
by one of their number.

With regard to the court of inquiry, Baron Steuben, who was to
accompany Greene to the South was to preside, and the members of the
court were to be such general and field-officers of the Continental
troops as were not present at the battle of Camden, or having been
present, were not wanted as witnesses, or were persons to whom General
Gates had no objection. The affair was to be conducted with the
greatest impartiality, and with as much despatch as circumstances
would permit.

Ravaging incursions from Canada had harassed the northern parts of the
State of New York of late, and laid desolate some parts of the country
from which Washington had hoped to receive great supplies of flour for
the armies. Major Carleton, a nephew of Sir Guy, at the head of a
motley force, European, Tory, and Indian, had captured Forts Anne and
George. Sir John Johnson also, with Joseph Brant, and a mongrel
half-savage crew, had laid waste the fertile region of the Mohawk
River, and burned the villages of Schoharie and Caughnawaga. The
greatest alarm prevailed throughout the neighboring country. Governor
Clinton himself took the field at the head of the militia, but before
he arrived at the scene of mischief, the marauders had been
encountered and driven back by General Van Rensselaer and the militia
of those parts; not, however, until they had nearly destroyed the
settlements on the Mohawk. Washington now put Brigadier-general James
Clinton (the governor's brother) in command of the Northern
department.

The state of the army was growing more and more a subject of
solicitude to the commander-in-chief. He felt weary of struggling on
with such scanty means, and such vast responsibility. The campaign,
which at its commencement had seemed pregnant with favorable events,
had proved sterile and inactive, and was drawing to a close. The short
terms for which most of the troops were enlisted must soon expire, and
then the present army would be reduced to a mere shadow. "To suppose,"
writes he, "that this great Revolution can be accomplished by a
temporary army, that this army will be subsisted by State supplies,
and that taxation alone is adequate to our wants, is in my opin