From Farm House to the White House - 912 Freedom Library

Farm House to the White House, by William M. Thayer 157
quarters."
Washington despised officers who felt above their business.
On a flying visit to Connecticut, he failed to reach his destination on Saturday night. Early Sunday morning he
completed the few remaining miles of his journey. On his way, a tithing man came out of a house and inquired
of the coachman:
"Is there any necessity of your travelling on the Lord's Day?"
Washington ordered his coachman to stop, and replied:
"I have no intention of breaking the laws of Connecticut; they meet my most cordial approbation. But I was
disappointed in not being able to reach my destination last night, where I shall attend church."
Washington waited and waited for the enemy to move, and wondered that he did not. Putnam wrote to Gates:
"Is it not strange that those invincible troops who were to lay waste all the country, with their fleets and army,
dare not put their feet on the main?"
About this time General Washington made the following address to his army:
"The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves; whether
they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and
destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness, from which no human efforts will deliver
them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our
cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We
have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. Our own, our country's, honor calls upon us for a vigorous and
manly action; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us then rely
upon the goodness of our cause, and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and
encourage us to great and noble actions."
The American army had grown by this time to over twenty thousand men poorly equipped and fed, though not
more than fifteen thousand were available for immediate action. Congress was slow to provide supplies, and
everything dragged. Many of the men carried only a spade, shovel or pick-axe. At the call of the country, they
responded with shovels in hand, having no guns. They could throw up works, though destitute of arms to repel
the foe. It was this destitute condition of our army that led a British officer to write home derisively:
"The rebels are armed with scythes and pitchforks."
To rebuke the growing vice and recklessness of the army, Washington issued the following order:
"The general is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a
vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will by
example, as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect that we can
have little hope of the blessing of Heaven on our arms if we insult it by our impiety and folly; added to this, it
is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises
it."
On the 17th of August Washington observed a movement of the enemy.
"They are embarking," he said to one of his aides, "bound for some point. Thirty thousand of them will be