ts, tents, or provisions. In four
months his army dwindles from twenty thousand down to less than three
thousand. In the meantime, the Indians have been committing ravages on
the frontier, and in the heart of the country a great party demand
absolute submission. The Quakers oppose the war. There is no money to
pay soldiers, nor clothing to put on them; they are poorly armed, and
there is but little powder to put in the guns. Congress has only _voted_
for battalions, and there is an enemy "in the nation's bowels" that
votes can not resist. After Congress had voted for battalions, it took
its flight from Philadelphia to Baltimore, destroying public credit and
throwing upon Washington the responsibility of directing all things
relative to the operations of the war. The fate of the nation rests in
the balance; the beam is not equally poised, the nation is going down.
Washington is beyond the Delaware; the Hessians are at Trenton. He makes
a stand to look into the faces of but "twenty-four hundred men strong
enough to be his companions." And on the 20th of December, he tells a
voting and cowardly Congress: "Ten days more will put an end to this
army." These are "black days."

Where now are the hopes of America? Where are the committeemen who took
the Declaration of Independence into Congress? Franklin has gone to
France to work for the nation; Jefferson has refused to go with him, and
is at home in Virginia safe with his slaves. But where is John Adams,
who said that Jefferson had stolen his ideas from him to put into the
Declaration of Independence? Where is the chief representative from New
England, this "Colossus" of debate, this chief of the war committee?
_Where is John Adams_ in this darkest hour of his country's trial? He
has deserted her; he went home on the 13th of October after the first
reverse, and is "brave in his home by the sea," but will not come back
till four months are past, and Washington makes himself famous. The poor
dupe to his passions. Lee he loved, Washington he hated; a patriot this,
a traitor that. But where is the man who has on hand the _business of a
world_? We shall see. In this midnight of the revolution he has been
writing something. He has been in the army as a soldier, but has found
time to write. It is his first crisis, and it runs thus:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and
the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service
of his country