The army was the one coherent, active, and thoroughly organized body in the country.

Six years of war had turned them from militia into seasoned veterans, and they stood armed and angry, ready to respond to the call of the great leader to whom they were entirely devoted.

When the English troops were once withdrawn, there was nothing on the continent that could have stood against them.

If they had moved, they would have been everywhere supported by their old comrades who had returned to the ranks of civil life, by all the large class who wanted peace and order in the quickest and surest way, and by the timid and tired generally.
There would have been in fact no serious opposition, probably because there would have been no means of sustaining it.
The absolute feebleness of the general government was shown a few weeks later, when a recently recruited regiment of Pennsylvania troops mutinied, and obliged Congress to leave Philadelphia, unable either to defend themselves or procure defense from the State.

This mutiny was put down suddenly and effectively by Washington, very wroth at the insubordination of raw troops, who had neither fought nor suffered.
Yet even such mutineers as these would have succeeded in a large measure, had it not been for Washington, and one can easily imagine from this incident the result of disciplined and well-planned action on the part of the army led by their great chief.