bsent from his post when the enemy appeared there and burnt a house
just by it. Besides these I have at this time one colonel, one major,
one captain, and two subalterns under arrest for trial. In short, I
spare none, and yet fear it will not all do, as these people seem to
be too attentive to everything but their own interests." This may
be plain and homely in phrase, but it is not stilted, and the quick
energy of the words shows how the New England farmers and fishermen
were being rapidly brought to discipline. Bringing the army into
order, however, was but a small part of his duties. It is necessary
to run over all his difficulties, great and small, at this time, and
count them up, in order to gain a just idea of the force and capacity
of the man who overcame them.

Washington, in the first place, was obliged to deal not only with his
army, but with the general congress and the congress of the province.
He had to teach them, utterly ignorant as they were of the needs and
details of war, how to organize and supply their armies. There was no
commissary department, there were no uniforms, no arrangements for
ammunition, no small arms, no cannon, no resources to draw upon for
all these necessaries of war. Little by little he taught Congress
to provide after a fashion for these things, little by little he
developed what he needed, and by his own ingenuity, and by seizing
alertly every suggestion from others, he supplied for better or worse
one deficiency after another. He had to deal with various governors
and various colonies, each with its prejudices, jealousies, and
shortcomings. He had to arrange for new levies from a people unused
to war, and to settle with infinite anxiety and much wear and tear of
mind and body, the conflict as to rank among officers to whom he could
apply no test but his own insight. He had to organize and stimulate
the arming of privateers, which, by preying on British commerce, were
destined to exercise such a powerful influence on the fate of the war.
It was neither showy nor attractive, such work as this, but it was
very vital, and it was done.

By the end of July the army was in a better posture of defense;
and then at the beginning of the next month, as the prospect was
brightening, it was suddenly discovered that there was no gunpowder.
An undrilled army, imperfectly organized, was facing a disciplined
force and had only some nine rounds in the cartridge-boxes. Yet there
is no quivering i