The confederation empowers congress to appoint a committee to sit in the recess of congress, to be denominated “a committee of the states,” and to consist of one delegate from each state, to exercise such powers as congress might from time to time vest them with.

A few of the states agreed to ratify the confederation unconditionally.  By many, amendments were proposed which were steadily rejected by congress.  It was obvious that the delays would be almost interminable should congress relax this determination, because every change would make it necessary again to submit the instrument as amended to the several states.  It is remarkable that Jersey alone proposed an enlargement of the powers of congress.  That state was desirous of investing the representatives of the state with the power of regulating commerce.

The states possessing no vacant lands, or an inconsiderable quantity within their chartered limits, pressed earnestly and perseveringly their claim to participate in the advantages of territory, which was, they said, acquired by the united arms of the whole; and Maryland refused, on this account, to accede to the confederation.  At length, several of the states empowered their members in congress to ratify that instrument as forming a union between the twelve states who had assented to it.  Maryland, alarmed at the prospect of being excluded from the union, gave her reluctant consent to the confederation, accompanied by a protest, in which she still asserted her claim to her interest in the vacant territory which should be acknowledged at the treaty of peace, to be within the United States.

It required the repeated lessons of a severe and instructive experience to persuade the American people that their greatness, their prosperity, their happiness, and even their safety, imperiously demanded the substitution of a government for their favourite league.]

[Sidenote:  Military transactions.]

Such was the defensive strength of the positions taken by the adverse armies on the Hudson, and such their relative force, that no decisive blow could be given by either in that quarter of the continent.  The anxious attentions of General Washington, therefore, were unremittingly directed to the south.  One of those incidents which fortune occasionally produces, on the seizing or neglect of which the greatest military events frequently depend, presented, sooner than was expected, an opportunity which he deemed capable of being improved to the destruction of the British army in Virginia.

The French fleet, from its arrival on the American coast, had been blocked up in the harbour of Newport; and the land forces of that nation had been reduced to a state of inactivity by the necessity of defending their ships.  Late in January, a detachment from the British fleet was encountered on the east end of Long Island by a furious storm, in which such damage was sustained as to destroy for a time the naval superiority which Arbuthnot had uniformly preserved.