After stating plainly that the army was on the verge of dissolution, he said:  “To me it will appear miraculous if our affairs can maintain themselves much longer in their present train.  If either the temper or the resources of the country will not admit of an alteration, we may expect soon to be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of America, in America, upheld by foreign arms.  The generosity of our allies has a claim to all our confidence and all our gratitude, but it is neither for the honor of America, nor for the interest of the common cause, to leave the work entirely to them.”

It must have been bitter to Washington above all men, with his high dignity and keen sense of national honor, to write such words as these, or make such an argument to any of his countrymen.  But it was a work which the time demanded, and he did it without flinching.  Having thus laid bare the weak places, he proceeded to rehearse once more, with a weariness we can easily fancy, the old, old lesson as to organization, a permanent army, and a better system of administration.  This letter neither scolded, nor bewailed, nor desponded, but it told the truth with great force and vigor.  Of course it had but slight results, comparatively speaking; still it did something, and the final success of the Revolution is due to the series of strong truth-telling letters, of which this is an example, as much as to any one thing done by Washington.  There was need of some one, not only to fight battles and lead armies, but to drive Congress into some sort of harmony, spur the careless and indifferent to action, arouse the States, and kill various fatal delusions, and in Washington the robust teller of unwelcome truths was found.

Still, even the results actually obtained by such letters came but slowly, and Washington felt that he must strike at all hazards.  Through Lafayette he tried to get De Rochambeau to agree to an immediate attack on New York.  His army was on the very eve of dissolution, and he began with reason to doubt his own power of holding it together longer.  The finances of the country were going ever faster to irremediable ruin, and it seemed impossible that anything could postpone open and avowed bankruptcy.  So, with his army crumbling, mutinous, and half starved, he turned to his one unfailing resource of fighting, and tried to persuade De Rochambeau to join him.  Under the circumstances, Washington was right to wish to risk a battle, and De Rochambeau, from his point of view, was equally so in refusing to take the offensive, unless the second division arrived or De Guichen came with his fleet, or the English force at New York was reduced.