George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[178] great numbers were quitting the service from abso-

Chap. VII.} 1778.

lute necessity, and those who remained were sinking into poverty; while the men grew impatient under their privations and want of pay. The next campaign would unavoidably prove an inactive one; so that the discontented would have leisure to discuss their hardships and brood over their wrongs.

And yet the British made no progress in recovering their colonies, and the Americans could not be subdued. An incalculable amount of energy lay in reserve in the states and in their citizens individually. Though congress possessed no effective means of strengthening the regular army, there could always be an appeal to the militia, who were the people in arms. The strength of patriotism, however it might seem to slumber, was ready to break forth in every crisis of danger, as a beam of light ceases to be invisible when it has something to shine upon. The people never lost buoyant self-reliance, nor the readiness to make sacrifices for the public good.

The great defect lay in the absence of all means of coercion. Yet no member of congress brought forward a proposition to create the needed authority. The body representing the nation renounced powers of compulsion, and by choice devolved the chief executive acts upon the separate states. To them it was left to enforce the embargo on the export of provisions; to sanction the seizure of grain and flour for the army at established prices; to furnish their quotas of troops, and in great part to support them; and each, for itself, to collect the general revenue so far as its collection was not voluntary. State governments were dearer to the inhabitants than the general