nd overcome the
inertness and dullness born of ignorance, and to teach Congress how to
govern a nation at war. In the hours "allotted to sleep," he sat in
his headquarters, writing a letter, with "blots and scratches," which
told Congress with the utmost precision and vigor just what was
needed. It was but one of a long series of similar letters, written
with unconquerable patience and with unwearied iteration, lighted here
and there by flashes of deep and angry feeling, which would finally
strike home under the pressure of defeat, and bring the patriots of
the legislature to sudden action, always incomplete, but still action
of some sort. It must have been inexpressibly dreary work, but quite
as much was due to those letters as to the battles. Thinking for other
people, and teaching them what to do, is at best an ungrateful duty,
but when it is done while an enemy is at your throat, it shows a grim
tenacity of purpose which is well worth consideration.

In this instance the letter of September 24, read in the light of the
battles of Long Island and Kip's Bay, had a considerable effect. The
first steps were taken to make the army national and permanent, to
raise the pay of officers, and to lengthen enlistments. Like most of
the war measures of Congress, they were too late for the immediate
necessity, but they helped the future. Congress, moreover, then felt
that all had been done that could be demanded, and relapsed once more
into confidence. "The British force," said John Adams, chairman of the
board of war, "is so divided, they will do no great matter this
fall." But Washington, facing hard facts, wrote to Congress with his
unsparing truth on October 4: "Give me leave to say, sir, (I say it
with due deference and respect, and my knowledge of the facts, added
to the importance of the cause and the stake I hold in it, must
justify the freedom,) that your affairs are in a more unpromising way
than you seem to apprehend. Your army, as I mentioned in my last, is
on the eve of its political dissolution. True it is, you have voted
a larger one in lieu of it; but the season is late; and there is a
material difference between voting battalions and raising men."

The campaign as seen from the board of war and from the Plains of
Harlem differed widely. It is needless to say now which was correct;
every one knows that the General was right and Congress wrong, but
being in the right did not help Washington, nor did he take petty