Through all his trials and anxieties Washington always showed the broadest and most generous sympathy.  When the militia had begun to leave him a few days before, although he despised their action and protested bitterly to Congress against their employment, yet in his letters he displayed a keen appreciation of their feelings, and saw plainly every palliation and excuse.  But there was one thing which he could never appreciate nor realize.  It was from first to last impossible for him to understand how any man could refuse to fight, or could think of running away.  When he beheld rout and cowardly panic before his very eyes, his temper broke loose and ran uncontrolled.  His one thought then was to fight to the last, and he would have thrown himself single-handed on the enemy, with all his wisdom and prudence flung to the winds.  The day when the commander held his place merely by virtue of personal prowess lay far back in the centuries, and no one knew it better than Washington.  But the old fighting spirit awoke within him when the clash of arms sounded in his ears, and though we may know the general in the tent and in the council, we can only know the man when he breaks out from all rules and customs, and shows the rage of battle, and the indomitable eagerness for the fray, which lie at the bottom of the tenacity and courage that carried the war for independence to a triumphant close.

The rout and panic over, Washington quickly turned to deal with the pressing danger.  With coolness and quickness he issued his orders, and succeeded in getting his army off, Putnam’s division escaping most narrowly.  He then took post at King’s Bridge, and began to strengthen and fortify his lines.  While thus engaged, the enemy advanced, and on the 16th Washington suddenly took the offensive and attacked the British light troops.  The result was a sharp skirmish, in which the British were driven back with serious loss, and great bravery was shown by the Connecticut and Virginia troops, the two commanding officers being killed.  This affair, which was the first gleam of success, encouraged the troops, and was turned to the best account by the general.  Still a successful skirmish did not touch the essential difficulties of the situation, which then as always came from within, rather than without.  To face and check twenty-five thousand well-equipped and highly disciplined soldiers Washington had now some twelve thousand men, lacking in everything which goes to make an army, except mere individual courage and a high average of intelligence.  Even this meagre force was an inconstant and diminishing quantity, shifting, uncertain, and always threatening dissolution.