waited, ready to strike elsewhere if necessary. It
looked for a time as if the British intended to descend on Boston,
seize the town, and destroy the French fleet, which had gone there
to refit. Such was the opinion of Gates, then commanding in that
department, and as Washington inclined to the same belief, the fear of
this event gave him many anxious moments. He even moved his troops
so as to be in readiness to march eastward at short notice; but he
gradually became convinced that the enemy had no such plan. Much
of his thought, now and always, was given to efforts to divine the
intentions of the British generals. They had so few settled ideas,
and were so tardy and lingering when they had plans, that it is small
wonder that their opponents were sorely puzzled in trying to find out
what their purposes were, when they really had none. The fact was that
Washington saw their military opportunities with the eye of a great
soldier, and so much better than they, that he suffered a good deal of
needless anxiety in devising methods to meet attacks which they had
not the wit to undertake. He had a profound contempt for their policy
of holding towns, and believing that they must see the utter futility
of it, after several years of trial, he constantly expected from them
a well-planned and extensive campaign, which in reality they were
incapable of devising.

The main army, therefore, remained quiet, and when the autumn had
passed went into winter-quarters in well-posted detachments about New
York. In December Clinton made an ineffectual raid, and then all was
peaceful again, and Washington was able to go to Philadelphia and
struggle with Congress, leaving his army more comfortable and secure
than they had been in any previous winter.

In January he informed Congress as to the next campaign. He showed
them the impossibility of undertaking anything on a large scale, and
announced his intention of remaining on the defensive. It was a trying
policy to a man of his temper, but he could do no better, and he knew,
now as always, what others could not yet see, that by simply holding
on and keeping his army in the field he was slowly but surely winning
independence. He tried to get Congress to do something with the navy,
and he planned an expedition, under the command of Sullivan, to
overrun the Indian country and check the barbarous raids of the Tories
and savages on the frontier; and with this he was fain to be content.
In fact, he p