As a matter of course, there was not the strongest liking felt for the General thus chosen by the New England delegates, and this was steadily lessened by Washington’s frank criticism of the New England soldiers and officers already noticed.  Equally bitter to the New England delegates and their allies were certain army measures that Washington pressed upon the attention of Congress.  He urged and urged that the troops should be enlisted for the war, that promotions should be made from the army as a whole, and not from the colony- or State-line alone, and most unpopular of all, that since Continental soldiers could not otherwise be obtained, a bounty should be given to secure them, and that as compensation for their inadequate pay half-pay should be given them after the war.  He eventually carried these points, but at the price of an entire alienation of the democratic party in the Congress, who wished to have the war fought with militia, to have all the officers elected annually, and to whom the very suggestion of pensions was like a red rag to a bull.

A part of their motive in this was unquestionably to prevent the danger of a standing army, and of allowing the commander-in-chief to become popular with the soldiers.  Very early in the war Washington noted “the jealousy which Congress unhappily entertain of the army, and which, if reports are right, some members labor to establish.”  And he complained that “I see a distrust and jealousy of military power, that the commander-in-chief has not an opportunity, even by recommendation, to give the least assurance of reward for the most essential services.”  The French minister told his government that when a committee was appointed to institute certain army reforms, delegates in Congress “insisted on the danger of associating the Commander-in-chief with it, whose influence, it was stated, was already too great,” and when France sent money to aid the American cause, with the provision that it should be subject to the order of the General, it aroused, a writer states, “the jealousy of Congress, the members of which were not satisfied that the head of the army should possess such an agency in addition to his military power.”

His enemies in the Congress took various means to lessen his influence and mortify him.  Burke states that in the discussion of one question “Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina voted for expunging it; the four Eastern States, Virginia and Georgia for retaining it.  There appeared through this whole debate a great desire, in some of the delegates from the Eastern States, and in one from New Jersey, to insult the General,” and a little later the Congress passed a “resolve which,” according to James Lovell, “was meant to rap a Demi G—­over the knuckles.”  Nor was it by commission, but as well by omission, that they showed their ill feeling.  John Laurens told his father that