There was a time when in Washington's whole force not more than two thousand men were in a condition to fight.

Congress was responsible for the needs of the army but was now, in sordid inefficiency, cooped up in the little town of York, eighty miles west of Valley Forge, to which it had fled.

There was as yet no real federal union.

The seat of authority was in the State Governments, and we need not wonder that, with the passing of the first burst of devotion which united the colonies in a common cause, Congress declined rapidly in public esteem.

"What a lot of damned scoundrels we had in that second Congress" said, at a later date, Gouverneur Morris of Philadelphia to John Jay of New York, and Jay answered gravely, "Yes, we had." The body, so despised in the retrospect, had no real executive government, no organized departments.