nor cancelled until it is fairly discharged."

After giving a sufficient apology for treating upon political topics, he
concluded by saying:--

"I have thus freely declared what I wished to make known, before I
surrendered up my public trust to those who committed it to me. The
task is now accomplished. I now bid adieu to your excellency, as
the chief magistrate of your state, at the same time I bid a last
farewell to the cares of office and all the employments of public
life."

But, six long months of official labor, with all the anxieties and cares
incident thereto, were before the commander-in-chief. Even at the very
moment when he was sending forth his address, and making a noble plea to
his country for justice to the army, a part of that army was bringing
dishonor upon the whole, by mutinous proceedings. About eighty
newly-recruited soldiers of the Pennsylvania line, stationed at
Lancaster, marched in a body to Philadelphia, where they were joined by
about two hundred from the barracks in that city. The whole body then
proceeded, with drum and fife, and fixed bayonets, to the statehouse,
where the Pennsylvania legislature and the continental Congress were in
session, with the avowed purpose of demanding a redress of specified
grievances from the state authorities. They placed a guard at every
door, and sent a message in to the president and council, threatening
them with violence if their demands were not complied with in the course
of twenty minutes. The Congress, feeling themselves outraged, and
doubting the strength of the local government to protect them against
any armed mob that might choose to assail them, sent a courier to
Washington with information of these proceedings, and then adjourned to
meet at Princeton, in New Jersey. This event occurred on the
twenty-first of June, and the Congress reassembled at Princeton on the
thirtieth.

Washington received information of the mutiny on the twenty-fourth, and
immediately detached General Howe, with fifteen hundred men to quell the
insurrection and punish the leaders. At the same time he wrote a letter
to the president of Congress, in which he expressed his sorrow and
indignation that a mob of men, "contemptible in number, and equally so
in point of service, and not worthy to be called soldiers," should have
so insulted the "sovereign authority of the United States." He then
vindicated the rest of the army upon whom the ac