t Roxbury, but the council of officers
unanimously voted against him. A little more than a month later he
planned another attack, and was again voted down by his officers.
Councils of war never fight, it is said, and perhaps in this case
it was well that such was their habit, for the schemes look rather
desperate now. To us they serve to show the temper of the man, and
also his self-control in this respect at the beginning of the war, for
Washington became ready enough afterwards to override councils when he
was wholly free from doubt himself.

Thus the planning of campaigns, both distant and near, went on, and at
the same time the current of details, difficult, vital, absolute in
demanding prompt and vigorous solution, went on too. The existence of
war made it necessary to fix our relations with our enemies, and that
these relations should be rightly settled was of vast moment to our
cause, struggling for recognition. The first question was the matter
of prisoners, and on August 11 Washington wrote to Gage:--

"I understand that the officers engaged in the cause of liberty and
their country, who by the fortune of war have fallen into your hands,
have been thrown indiscriminately into a common gaol appropriated
for felons; that no consideration has been had for those of the most
respectable rank, when languishing with wounds and sickness; and that
some have been even amputated in this unworthy situation.

"Let your opinion, sir, of the principle which actuates them be what
it may, they suppose that they act from the noblest of all principles,
a love of freedom and their country. But political principles, I
conceive, are foreign to this point. The obligations arising from the
rights of humanity and claims of rank are universally binding and
extensive, except in case of retaliation. These, I should have hoped,
would have dictated a more tender treatment of those individuals whom
chance or war had put in your power. Nor can I forbear suggesting
its fatal tendency to widen that unhappy breach which you, and those
ministers under whom you act, have repeatedly declared your wish is to
see forever closed.

"My duty now makes it necessary to apprise you, that for the future I
shall regulate all my conduct towards those gentlemen who are or may
be in our possession, exactly by the rule you shall observe towards
those of ours now in your custody.

"If severity and hardship mark the line of your conduct, painful as it
may be