this very moment, while Washington was breaking camp and marching southward, Congress was considering the reduction of the army!—­which was as appropriate as it would have been for the English Parliament to have reduced the navy on the eve of Trafalgar, or for Lincoln to have advised the restoration of the army to a peace footing while Grant was fighting in the Wilderness.  The fact was that the Continental Congress was weakened in ability and very tired in point of nerve and will-power.  They saw that peace was coming, and naturally thought that the sooner they could get it the better.  They entirely failed to see, as Washington saw, that in a too sudden peace lurked the danger of the uti possidetis, and that the mere fact of peace by no means implied necessarily complete success.  They did not, of course, effect their reductions, but they remained inert, and so for the most part did the state governments, becoming drags upon the wheels of war instead of helpers to the man who was driving the Revolution forward to its goal.  Both state and confederate governments still meant well, but they were worn out and relaxed.  Yet over and through all these heavy masses of misapprehension and feebleness, Washington made his way.  Here again all that can be said is that somehow or other the thing was done.  We can take account of the resisting forces, but we cannot tell just how they were dealt with.  We only know that one strong man trampled them down and got what he wanted done.

Pushing on after the joyful news of the arrival of De Grasse had been received, Washington left the army to go by water from the Head of Elk, and hurried to Mount Vernon, accompanied by De Rochambeau.  It was six years since he had seen his home.  He had left it a Virginian colonel, full of forebodings for his country, with a vast and unknown problem awaiting solution at his hands.  He returned to it the first soldier of his day, after six years of battle and trial, of victory and defeat, on the eve of the last and crowning triumph.  As he paused on the well-beloved spot, and gazed across the broad and beautiful river at his feet, thoughts and remembrances must have come thronging to his mind which it is given to few men to know.  He lingered there two days, and then pressing on again, was in Williamsburg on the 14th, and on the 17th went on board the Ville de Paris to congratulate De Grasse on his victory, and to concert measures for the siege.

The meeting was most agreeable.  All had gone well, all promised well, and everything was smiling and harmonious.  Yet they were on the eve of the greatest peril which occurred in the campaign.  Washington had managed to scrape together enough transports; but his almost unassisted labors had taken time, and delay had followed.  Then the transports were slow, and winds and tides were uncertain, and there was further delay.  The interval permitted De Grasse to hear that the British fleet had received reinforcements,