The justice of the complaints made by the officers could no more be denied, than the measure they had adopted could be approved.

Relying on their patriotism and on his own influence, he immediately wrote a letter to General Maxwell, to be laid before them, in which, mingling the sensibility of a friend with the authority of a general, he addressed to their understanding and to their love of country, observations calculated to invite their whole attention to the consequences which must result from the step they were about to take.
[Sidenote: Letter from General Washington on this subject.] "The patience and perseverance of the army," proceeds the letter, "have been, under every disadvantage, such as to do them the highest honour both at home and abroad, and have inspired me with an unlimited confidence of their virtue, which has consoled me amidst every perplexity and reverse of fortune, to which our affairs, in a struggle of this nature, were necessarily exposed.

Now that we have made so great a progress to the attainment of the end we have in view, so that we can not fail without a most shameful desertion of our own interests, any thing like a change of conduct would imply a very unhappy change of principles, and a forgetfulness, as well of what we owe to ourselves, as to our country.

Did I suppose it possible this could be the case, even in a single regiment of the army, I should be mortified and chagrined beyond expression.

I should feel it as a wound given to my own honour, which I consider as embarked with that of the army at large.