success of the project ; for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favour of this unfortunate class of men. With the truest respect and esteem,
I am, sir your most obedient servant,
William Jay, The Life of John Jay : with Selections from his Correspondence, etc. (New York, 1833), II, 31-32.
174. The Inconveniences of Militia (1780)
BY GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Upon the character and service of the various classes of American soldiers no testimony is so good as that of the commander-in-chief. Yet out of these irregular levies came the armies which defeated Howe, Burgoyne, Clinton, and Cornwallis. — Bibliography as in No. 195 below.
. . . IT is the true policy of America not to content herself with temporary expedients, but to endeavor, if possible, to give consistency and solidity to her measures. An essential step to this will be immediately to devise a plan, and put it in execution, for providing men in time to replace those who will leave us at the end of the year, for subsisting and making a reasonable allowance to the officers and soldiers. The plan for this purpose ought to be of general operation, and such as will execute itself. Experience has shown, that a peremptory draft will be the only effectual one. If a draft for the war or three years can be effected, it ought to be made on every account. A shorter period than a year is inadmissible. To one, who has been witness to the evils brought upon us by short enlistments, the system appears to have been pernicious beyond description, and a crowd of motives present themselves to dictate a change. It may easily be shown, that all the misfortunes we have met with in the military line are to be attributed to this cause.
Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning, which, by the continuance of the same men in service, had been capable of discipline, we never should have had to retreat with a handful of men across the Delaware in '76, trembling for the fate of America, which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could have saved ; we should not have remained all the succeeding winter at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable
