ing more is to be
understood than constancy; and something more _ought_ to be understood
than the Fabian system of _doing nothing_. The _nothing_ part can be
done by any body. Old Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper of head quarters,
(who threatened to make the sun and the wind shine through Rivington of
New York,) 'could have done it as well as Mr. Washington. Deborah would
have been as good as Barak.

Mr. Washington had the nominal rank of Commander in Chief, but he was
not so in fact. He had, in reality, only a separate command. He had no
controul over, or direction of, the army to the northward under Gates,
that captured Burgoyne; nor of that to the south under [Nathaniel]
Greene, that recovered the southern States.(2) The nominal rank,
however, of Commander in Chief, served to throw upon him the lustre
of those actions, and to make him appear as the soul and centre of all
military operations in America.

1 The Tory publisher of New York City, whose press was
destroyed in 1775 by a mob of Connecticut soldiers.--
_Editor._

2 See Mr. Winterbotham's valuable History of America, lately
published.--Author. [The "History of the Establishment of
Independence" is contained in the first of Mr.
Winterbotham's four volumes (London, 1795).--_Editor._.]

He commenced his command June, 1775, during the time the Massachusetts
army lay before Boston, and after the affair of Bunker-hill. The
commencement of his command was the commencement of inactivity. Nothing
was afterwards done, or attempted to be done, during the nine months
he remained before Boston. If we may judge from the resistance made at
Concord, and afterwards at Bunker-hill, there was a spirit of enterprise
at that time, which the presence of Mr. Washington chilled into cold
defence. By the advantage of a good exterior he attracts respect, which
his habitual silence tends to preserve; but he has not the talent of
inspiring ardour in an army. The enemy removed from Boston in March
1776, to wait for reinforcements from Europe, and to take a more
advantageous position at New York.

The inactivity of the campaign of 1775, on the part of General
Washington, when the enemy had a less force than in any other future
period of the war, and the injudicious choice of positions taken by
him in the campaign of 1776, when the enemy had its greatest force,
necessarily produced the losses and misfortunes that marked that gloomy
campaign. The posit