Washington wrote thus frankly to the Congress which seems to have read his doleful reports without really being stimulated, as it ought to have been, by a determination to remove their causes.  Probably the delegates came to regard the jeremiads as a matter of course and assumed that Washington would pull through somehow.  Very remarkable is it that the Commander-in-Chief of any army in such a struggle should have expressed himself as he did, bluntly, in regard to its glaring imperfections.  Doing this, however, he managed to hold the loyalty and spirit of his men.  In the American Civil War, McClellan contrived to infatuate his troops with the belief that his plans were perfect, and that only the annoying fact that the Confederate generals planned better caused him to be defeated; and yet to his obsessed soldiers defeat under McClellan was more glorious than victory under Lee or Stonewall Jackson.  I take it that Washington’s frankness simply reflected his passion for veracity, which was the cornerstone of his character.  The strangest fact of all was that it did not lessen his popularity or discourage his troops.

To his intimates Washington wrote with even more unreserve.  Thus he says to Lund Washington (30th September): 

In short, such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings; and yet I do not know what plan of conduct to pursue.  I see the impossibility of serving with reputation, or doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command, and yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow from the distraction that will ensue.  In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.  To lose all comfort and happiness on the one hand, whilst I am fully persuaded that under such a system of management as has been adopted, I cannot have the least chance for reputation, nor those allowances made which the nature of the case requires; and to be told, on the other, that if I leave the service all will be lost, is, at the same time that I am bereft of every peaceful moment, distressing to a degree.  But I will be done with the subject, with the precaution to you that it is not a fit one to be publicly known or discussed.  If I fall, it may not be amiss that these circumstances be known, and declaration made in credit to the justice of my character.  And if the men will stand by me (which by the by I despair of), I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life; and a few days will determine the point, if the enemy should not change their place of operations; for they certainly will not—­I am sure they ought not—­to waste the season that is now fast advancing, and must be precious to them.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, IV, 458.]