With Washington himself the case was hardly better.  There were few motions that he could make of his own free will.  He had to get authority from the Continental Congress at Philadelphia.  The Congress was not made up of military experts and in many cases it knew nothing about the questions he asked.  The members of the Congress were talkers, not doers, and they sometimes lost themselves in endless debate and sometimes they seemed quite to forget the questions Washington put to them.  We find him writing in December to beg them to reply to the urgent question which he had first asked in the preceding October.  He was scrupulous not to take any step which might seem dictatorial.  The Congress and the people of the country dreaded military despotism.  That dread made them prefer the evil system of militia and the short-term enlistments to a properly organized standing army.  To their fearful imagination the standing army would very quickly be followed by the man on horseback and by hopeless despotism.

The Olympians in London who controlled the larger issues of war and peace whispered to the young gentlemen in the War Office to draw up plans for the invasion, during the summer of 1777, of the lower Hudson by British troops from Canada.  General Burgoyne should march down and take Ticonderoga and then proceed to Albany.  There he could meet a smaller force under Colonel St. Leger coming from Oswego and following the Mohawk River.  A third army under Sir William Howe could ascend the Hudson and meet Burgoyne and St. Leger at the general rendezvous—­Albany.  It was a brave plan, and when Burgoyne started with his force of eight thousand men high hopes flushed the British hearts.  These hopes seemed to be confirmed when a month later Burgoyne took Ticonderoga.  The Americans attributed great importance to this place, an importance which might have been justified at an earlier time, but which was now really passed, and it proved of little value to Burgoyne.  Pursuing his march southward, he found himself entangled in the forest and he failed to meet boats which were to ferry him over the streams.

The military operations during the summer and autumn of 1777 might well cause the Americans to exult.  The British plan of sending three armies to clear out the forces which guarded or blocked the road from Canada to the lower Hudson burst like a bubble.  The chief contingent of 8000 men, under General Burgoyne, seems to have strayed from its route and to have been in need of food.  Hearing that there were supplies at Bennington, Burgoyne turned aside to that place.  He little suspected the mettle of John Stark and of his Green Mountain volunteers.  Their quality was well represented by Stark’s address to his men:  “They are ours to-night, or Molly Stark is a widow.”  He did not boast.  By nightfall he had captured all of Burgoyne’s men who were alive (August 16, 1777).

Only one reverse marred the victories of the summer.  This was at Oriskany in August, 1777.  An American force of 400 or 500 men fell into an ambush, and its leader, General Herkimer, though mortally wounded, refused to retire, but continued to give directions to the end.  Oriskany was reputed to be the most atrocious fight of the Revolution.  Joseph Brant, the Mohawk chief, led the Indians, who were allies of the English.