erceived very clearly the direction in which the war was
tending. He kept up his struggle with Congress for a permanent army,
and with the old persistency pleaded that something should be done for
the officers, and at the same time he tried to keep the States in good
humor when they were grumbling about the amount of protection afforded
them.

But all this wear and tear of heart and brain and temper, while given
chiefly to hold the army together, was not endured with any
notion that he and Clinton were eventually to fight it out in the
neighborhood of New York. Washington felt that that part of the
conflict was over. He now hoped and believed that the moment would
come, when, by uniting his army with the French, he should be able to
strike the decisive blow. Until that time came, however, he knew that
he could do nothing on a great scale, and he felt that meanwhile the
British, abandoning practically the eastern and middle States, would
make one last desperate struggle for victory, and would make it in the
south. Long before any one else, he appreciated this fact, and saw a
peril looming large in that region, where everybody was considering
the British invasion as little more than an exaggerated raid. He
foresaw, too, that we should suffer more there than we had in the
extreme north, because the south was full of Tories and less well
organized.

All this, however, did not change his own plans one jot. He believed
that the south must work out its own salvation, as New York and New
England had done with Burgoyne, and he felt sure that in the end it
would be successful. But he would not go south, nor take his army
there. The instinct of a great commander for the vital point in a war
or a battle, is as keen as that of the tiger is said to be for the
jugular vein of its victim. The British might overrun the north or
invade the south, but he would stay where he was, with his grip upon
New York and the Hudson River. The tide of invasion might ebb and flow
in this region or that, but the British were doomed if they could not
divide the eastern colonies from the others. When the appointed hour
came, he was ready to abandon everything and strike the final and
fatal blow; but until then he waited and stood fast with his army,
holding the great river in his grasp. He felt much more anxiety about
the south than he had felt about the north, and expected Congress to
consult him as to a commander, having made up his mind that Greene