aroused, or that it should have been unreasonable in some of its manifestations.
A striking instance of this jealousy occurred upon the occasion of a proclamation issued by General Washington at Morristown, on the 25th of January, 1777. Sir William Howe had published a proclamation in New Jersey, offering protection to such of the inhabitants as would take an oath of allegiance to the King. Many of the substantial farmers of the country had availed themselves of this offer, and had received protections from the British general. The English and Hessian troops, however, made no distinction between friends and foes, but frequently committed great outrages both upon person and property. The resentment of the population would have restored them to the patriot side; but many who had taken the oath of allegiance felt, or affected, in consequence, scruples of conscience.
General Washington therefore issued a counter-proclamation, commanding all persons who had received the enemy's protection to repair to head-quarters, or to some general officer of the army, and to surrender their protections and take an oath of allegiance to the United States;—allowing thirty days for those who preferred to remain under the protection of Great Britain to withdraw within the enemy's lines. This was considered in some quarters as an undue exercise of power. The idea of an oath of allegiance to the United States, before the Confederation was formed, was regarded by many as an absurdity. Allegiance, it was said, was due exclusively to the State of which a man was an inhabitant; the States alone were sovereign; and it was for each State, not for the United States, which possessed no sovereignty, to exact this obligation. The Legislature of New Jersey were disposed to treat General Washington's proclamation as an encroachment on their prerogatives: and one of the delegates of that State in Congress denounced it as improper.128
This feeling was shared by other members; but it is not to be doubted, that the proceeding was a legitimate exercise of the authority vested in the Commander-in-chief. He had been expressly empowered to arrest and confine persons disaffected to the American cause; and the requiring them to attend at his head-quarters was clearly within the scope of this authority. Moreover, although no confederation or political union of the States had been formed under a written compact, yet the United States were waging war, as a government regularly constituted by its representatives in a congress, for the very purpose of carrying on such war. They had an army in the field, whose officers held continental commissions, and were paid by a continental currency. They were exercising certain of the attributes of sovereignty as a belligerent power; and in that capacity they had a complete right to exact such an obligation not to aid the enemy, as would separate their friends from their foes. It was a military measure; and the tenor of the proclamation shows that General Washington exacted the oath in that relation. To pause at such a moment, and to consider nicely how much sovereignty resided in each of the States, and how much or how little belonged to the United States, was certainly a great refinement. But it marks the temper of the times, and the extreme jealousy with which all continental power and authority were watched at that period.129
We have seen that the powers conferred upon General Washington authorized him to raise, in the most speedy and effectual manner, sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those before voted by Congress, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers; and also to apply to any of the States for the aid of their militia when wanted.130 At the period when he addressed himself to this great undertaking of forming a new army, for the third time, the existing force which he had with him in and around New Jersey was about to be dissolved. The additional regiments of the regular line were to be raised by the States, and upon them alone could he depend for the supply of a new army, with which to commence the campaign in the spring of 1777. He had labored, he said, ever since he had been in the service, to discourage all kinds of local attachments and distinctions of country, denominating the whole by the greater name of American; but he had found it impossible to overcome prejudices.
Two causes especially embarrassed his efforts in the formation of the new army; and both of them show how powerful were the centrifugal forces of our system at that period, and how little hold that great central name had taken upon the people of the different States. One of these causes was the persistence of some of the States in giving extra bounties to encourage enlistments into their quotas of the original eighty-eight battalions not yet raised. The bounty allowed by Congress was twenty dollars to every soldier enlisting into the new establishment for three years or during the war. The additional bounty offered by Massachusetts was sixty-six dollars and two thirds. There was thus an inducement of eighty-six dollars and two thirds offered to the men then in the service of the United States, not to reënlist in their old regiments, as fast as their time of service expired, but to go to Massachusetts and enlist in the fresh quotas which were forming in that State, and which were to be afterwards mustered into the continental service. The same inconsiderate and unpatriotic policy was pursued in all the Eastern States, and before the spring opened, the consequences began to be felt in the state of the new continental battalions which General Washington was endeavoring to procure from some of the Middle States, and in which he would not sanction the allowance of an extra bounty, regarding it as an indirect breach of the union, and of the agreement entered into by the delegates of the States in Congress to give a bounty of twenty dollars only for service in the continental army.131 The month of April arrived, and he had not received a man of the new levies, except a few hundreds from Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while the few old regiments which remained, after the dissolution of the army in January, were reduced to a handful of men, the enemy being in great force, and making every preparation to seize upon Philadelphia.
Nor did the allowance of these irregular bounties help the States, in raising the old levies, as had been anticipated. They rather caused the soldiers to set a high price upon themselves, and to hold back from enlisting; while the second cause, to which I have alluded, as embarrassing the Commander-in-chief, was a great hinderance to his efforts to plan and carry out a campaign, having for its object the general benefit of the whole Union.
This cause was the inability of many local authorities to comprehend the necessity of such a campaign. General Washington was, at this period, harassed by numerous applications to allow the troops, which had been raised in the States for the service of the continent, to remain for the defence of particular neighborhoods against incursions of the enemy. Nothing, he said on one of these occasions, could exceed the pleasure which he should feel, if he were able to protect every town and every individual on the continent. But as this was a pleasure which he never should realize, and as the continental forces were wanted to meet and counteract the main designs of the enemy on the principal theatre of the war, he could not consent to divide them and detach them to every point where the enemy might possibly attempt an impression; "for that," he added, "would be in the end to destroy ourselves and subjugate our country."132
From the operation of these and other causes connected with the political system of the country, the army with which Washington was obliged to take the field, in the spring of 1777, did not exceed five thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight effective men, exclusive of a small body of cavalry and artillery.133 The consequence was, a necessary reliance upon militia, to a great extent, throughout that summer. The battle of the Brandywine, fought with an effective force of only eleven thousand men, including militia, against a thoroughly disciplined army of fifteen thousand British and Hessian troops, and fought for the city of Philadelphia as a stake, was lost on the 11th of September.134 The Congress broke up on the 18th. Sir William Howe took possession of the city on the 26th; and on the 27th, the Congress reassembled at Lancaster. In a few days, they removed to Yorktown, where their sessions continued to be held for several months.
The position in which they found themselves, amid the dark clouds which lowered around their cause, seems to have recalled to their recollection the Articles of Confederation, which had lain slumbering upon their table since the 8th of April. On that day, they had resolved that the report should be taken into consideration on the following Monday, and that two days in each week should be employed on the subject, until it had been wholly discussed. When the Monday came, it was postponed; and it was only after they had been driven from Philadelphia by the approach of the enemy, that they seem to have fully realized the fact, that, without a more perfect union and a more efficient government, the country could not be saved. As soon as they had reassembled at Yorktown, after the urgent business of the moment had been attended to, they passed a resolve, on the 2d of October, that the Articles of