of service of different portions of the army expired almost every month in the year; and raw troops, ignorant of the first rudiments of military duty, were introduced in the most critical moments of a campaign.  Had timely and correspondent measures been taken by the states to raise their respective quotas by a specified time in the depth of winter, the recruits would have received the advantage of a few months training before they were brought into actual service, and the General, that of a certain uninterrupted force for each campaign.  This course of proceeding had been continually recommended, and the recommendation had been as continually neglected.

[Sidenote:  Letter from General Washington to Congress.]

“In the more early stages of the contest,” said the Commander-in-chief to congress, in a letter of the 8th of November, “when men might have been enlisted for the war, no man, as my whole conduct, and the uniform tenor of my letters will evince, was ever more opposed to short enlistments than I was; and while there remained a prospect of obtaining recruits on a permanent footing in the first instance, as far as duty and a regard to my station would permit, I urged my sentiments in favour of it.  But the prospect of keeping up an army by voluntary enlistments being changed, or at least standing on too precarious and uncertain a footing to depend on for the exigency of our affairs, I took the liberty in February, 1778, in a particular manner, to lay before the committee of arrangement then with the army at Valley Forge, a plan for an annual draught, as the surest and most certain, if not the only means left us, of maintaining the army on a proper and respectable ground.  And, more and more confirmed in the propriety of this opinion by the intervention of a variety of circumstances, unnecessary to detail, I again took the freedom of urging the plan to the committee of conference in January last; and, having reviewed it in every point of light, and found it right, at least the best that has occurred to me, I hope I shall be excused by congress in offering it to them, and in time for carrying into execution for the next year; if they should conceive it necessary for the states to complete their quotas of troops.

“The plan I would propose is, that each state be informed by congress annually of the real deficiency of its troops, and called upon to make it up, or such less specific number as congress may think proper, by a draught.  That the men draughted join the army by the first of January, and serve until the first of January in the succeeding year.  That from the time the draughts join the army, the officers of the states from which they come, be authorized and directed to use their endeavours to enlist them for the war, under the bounties granted to the officers themselves, and to the recruits, by the act of the 23d of January, 1779, viz:  ten dollars to the officer for each recruit, and two hundred to the recruits