Then, as always, what we now call the "profiteer" was holding up supplies for higher prices.

To the British at Philadelphia, because they paid in gold, things were furnished which were denied to Washington at Valley Forge, and he announced that he would hang any one who took provisions to Philadelphia.

To keep his men alive Washington had sometimes to take food by force from the inhabitants and then there was an outcry that this was robbery.

With many sick, his horses so disabled that he could not move his artillery, and his defenses very slight, he could have made only a weak fight had Howe attacked him.

Yet the legislature of Pennsylvania told him that, instead of lying quiet in winter quarters, he ought to be carrying on an active campaign.