The country applauded what Jefferson called "the adventurous genius and intrepidity of the New Englanders."

The existence of the army was a miracle of the benevolence of the New England people, and its sustenance during May, June, and July, cannot be accounted for by ordinary rules. There was nothing regularly established, and yet many thousands of men were supplied. Touched by an all-pervading influence, each householder esteemed himself a sort of commissary. There were no public magazines, no large dealers in provisions; but the wants of the army rung in the ears of the farmers, and, from every cellar and barn-yard and field throughout Worcester and Hampshire and even Berkshire, such articles of food as could be spared were devoted to the camp, and everybody's wagons were used to forward them. But for this the forces must have dispersed; how it was done cannot exactly be told; popular enthusiasm keeps little record of its sacrifices; only it was done, and the troops of Massachusetts, and for a long time those of New Hampshire, were fed, without so much as a barrel of flour from the continental congress. It was time for "the confederated colonies" to interpose.

On the nineteenth of July the continental congress read the first report from Washington, by which it appeared that the army was defective in discipline and in numbers; that officers for the regiments were in excess; that the order in rank of the major-generals and brigadiers had displeased the New England troops and governments; that still another class of officers was required to bring method into the system of supplies; that there was the most urgent need of tents, clothing, hospitals, and skilful engineers; of every kind of arms, especially artillery, and above all of powder; and that, as yet, no money had been furnished. The next day it heard the report of Schuyler that the northern army at Ticonderoga exhibited a universal want of discipline. Yet on the side of Canada it did little more than sanction the employment of a body of five thousand men for the protection of the border and the frontier. Washington was authorized to keep up an army of twenty-two thousand men in Massachusetts.

Franklin could remain silent no longer. After consulting with others, especially with Jefferson, on the twenty-first of

July the statesman, who, twenty-one years before, had at Albany reported a plan of union, submitted an outline for confederating the colonies in one nation. Each colony was to retain and amend its own laws and constitution according to its separate discretion, while the powers of the general government were to include all questions of war, peace, and alliance; commerce, currency, and the establishment of posts; the army, the navy, and Indian affairs; the management of all lands not yet ceded by the natives; the planting of new colonies; the settlement of all intercolonial disputes. For the common treasury taxes were to be collected by the several colonies in proportion to their numbers. Congress was to consist of one body only, whose members were to be apportioned triennially according to population, to be chosen annually, and to sit in each colony in rotation. To wield the executive power, it was to select out of its own members a council of twelve, of whom one third were to be annually renewed.

Every colony of Great Britain in North America, and even Ireland which was still classed with the colonies, was invited to accede to the union. The imperfections in the new constitution, which time and experience would surely reveal, were to be amended by congress with the approbation of a majority of the colonial assemblies. Unless Britain should consent to make acceptable retractions and indemnities, the confederation was to be perpetual. The intention of Franklin was an immediate establishment of a self-perpetuating republic, founded on the domestic power of the several states, and the limited sovereignty of the central government.

Georgia "was no more the defaulting link in the American chain." It had resolved neither to purchase nor to employ any slave imported thereafter from Africa, and on the sixth of July its congress adhered to all the measures of resistance.

In the same month congress sent to Ireland a pledge of its unalterable sympathy, and its joy that the trials of America had extorted some mitigation of its wrongs.

While these addresses were in progress, Guy Johnson, acting independently of Carleton, was lavishing promises on the Six Nations and the savages of north-west Canada. An Iro

quois chief, who attended the conference at Montreal, consented to take home a war-belt, emblazoned with the hatchet, but would engage himself no further; other savages, for whom a pipe of wine was broached, feasted on an ox which had been named Bostonian, and, as they drank its blood, they sang the war-song, with promises of prowess when they should be called to the field. Yet still the majority of the congress would not sanction the institution of governments in the several colonies. The hesitancy incensed John Adams, who maintained that the fifty or sixty men composing the congress should at once form a constitution for a great empire, provide for its defence, and in that safe attitude await the decision of the king. His letters to New England, avowing these opinions, were intercepted; and were published by the royalists as the surest way of destroying his influence. So hard it was to rend the tie that bound America to England!

Lord North's proposal toward conciliation had already been declared inadequate; but, as it was founded on joint resolves of parliament, officially recommended by Lord Dartmouth, and had been referred by Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to congress, a committee, composed of Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, and Richard Henry Lee, was constituted to report on its conditions as a basis for accommodation. Jefferson was the writer of their report, and the most decisive measure of congress was its adoption in July. The American congress had asked of the king a cessation of hostilities, and a settlement of the disputed questions by a concert between the crown and the collective colonies; Lord North offered, as the British ultimatum, to treat separately with each assembly for grants toward the general defence and for its own civil government, with the promise that parliament would abstain from taxing the province that should offer satisfactory terms. This offer was pronounced unreasonable, because it implied a purchase of the forbearance of parliament at an uncertain price; invidious, as likely to divide the colonies and leave the dissatisfied to resist alone; unnecessary, for America had ever voluntarily contributed fully, when called upon as freemen; insulting, since the demand for money was made with fleets and armies; unjust, as it asked increased contributions without

renouncing the monopoly of trade; unwarrantable, as a wrongful intermeddling in the colonial support of civil government; unsatisfactory, since it left the obnoxious acts unrepealed; insufficient, as it did not renounce the claim of a right to alter colonial charters and laws; insincere, as coming from a minister who had declared "that he would never treat with America till he had brought her to his feet;" and delusive, as it offered no option but of devastation or abject submission. If the king would order a truce and point out a method for treating with the colonies jointly, they would desire nothing better than a colonial constitution, to be established by a mutual agreement.

Meantime, Franklin was selected to organize a post-office; a hospital was agreed to for the army and Benjamin Church elected its director; the rate of pay of officers and soldiers was finally settled. For money, a third million of dollars was ordered to be struck in paper bills, and each colony was charged to sink its quota of them. Here the question arose whether the apportionment for redemption should be according to wealth or population; and, after long deliberation, it was agreed for the time that population should constitute the distributive rule; and that all persons, including free negroes, mulattoes, and slaves, should be counted. Of four annual instalments, by which the continental notes were to be redeemed, the earliest was adjourned to the last day of November 1779.

There was no mode of obtaining munitions of war but by throwing open the ports and inviting commerce, especially with the French and Dutch colonies; yet the last act of congress, before its adjournment, was the renewal of the agreement neither directly nor indirectly to export any merchandise or commodity whatever to Great Britain, Ireland, or to the British, or even to the foreign, West Indies.

On the first day of August congress adjourned for five weeks, leaving the insurgent country with no representative of its unity but Washington and the army.

CHAPTER XVI.

AMERICA AWAITS THE KING'S DECISION.

JULY-OCTOBER 1775.

In the absence of a continental government, and with a most imperfect one in Massachusetts, it fell on Washington to take thought for his army from its general direction to its smallest want. As commander-in-chief, he scrupulously obeyed the continental congress, which, from its inchoate character, was tardy, feeble, and uncertain. In his intercourse with the neighboring colonial governments, whose good-will was his main resource, he showed deference to their laws and courtesy to their magistrates.

By the fourth of August the army was formed into three divisions, stationed at Roxbury, Cambridge, and Winter Hill, under Ward, Lee, and Putnam. Each division consisted of two brigades, each brigade of about six regiments; but the powder on hand was only enough to furnish each man with nine rounds of cartridge.

Between the twenty-fifth of July and the seventh of August fourteen hundred riflemen arrived in the camp. A company from Virginia had for its captain Daniel Morgan, who, in 1774, had gained experience in war, having taken part in the expedition of Dunmore. In person he was more than six feet high and well proportioned, of an imposing presence, moving with strength and grace, of a hardy constitution that defied fatigue, hunger, and cold. His open countenance was the mirror of an ingenuous nature. He could glow with anger, but was never mastered by it; his disposition was sweet and peaceful, and his hospitable house was the home of cheerful