Mifflin as quartermaster-general, and brought order out of chaos.  The Conway cabal went to pieces, and as spring opened Washington began to see light once more.  To have held on through that winter was a great feat, but to have built up and improved the army at such a time was much more wonderful.  It shows a greatness of character and a force of will rarer than military genius, and enables us to understand better, perhaps, than almost any of his victories, why it was that the success of the Revolution lay in such large measure in the hands of one man.

After Howe’s withdrawal from the Jerseys in the previous year, a contemporary wrote that Washington was left with the remnants of an army “to scuffle for liberty.”  The winter had passed, and he was prepared to scuffle again.  On May 11 Sir Henry Clinton relieved Sir William Howe at Philadelphia, and the latter took his departure in a blaze of mock glory and resplendent millinery, known as the Mischianza, a fit close to a career of failure, which he was too dull to appreciate.  The new commander was more active than his predecessor, but no cleverer, and no better fitted to cope with Washington.  It was another characteristic choice on the part of the British ministry, who could never muster enough intellect to understand that the Americans would fight, and that they were led by a really great soldier.  The coming of Clinton did not alter existing conditions.

Expecting a movement by the enemy, Washington sent Lafayette forward to watch Philadelphia.  Clinton and Howe, eager for a victory before departure, determined to cut him off, and by a rapid movement nearly succeeded in so doing.  Timely information, presence of mind, and quickness alone enabled the young Frenchman to escape, narrowly but completely.  Meantime, a cause for delay, that curse of the British throughout the war, supervened.  A peace commission, consisting of the Earl of Carlisle, William Eden, and Governor Johnstone, arrived.  They were excellent men, but they came too late.  Their propositions three years before would have been well enough, but as it was they were worse than nothing.  Coolly received, they held a fruitless interview with a committee of Congress, tried to bribe and intrigue, found that their own army had been already ordered to evacuate Philadelphia without their knowledge, and finally gave up their task in angry despair, and returned to England to join in the chorus of fault-finding which was beginning to sound very loud in ministerial ears.

Meanwhile, Washington waited and watched, puzzled by the delay, and hoping only to harass Sir Henry with militia on the march to New York.  But as the days slipped by, the Americans grew stronger, while the British had been weakened by wholesale desertions.  When he finally started, he had with him probably sixteen to seventeen thousand men, while the Americans had apparently at least thirteen thousand, nearly all continental troops.[1] Under these circumstances,