1 7 7 7 Mississippi. Virginia also claimed the country northI 7 8 I west of the Ohio by virtue of the "west and northwest"

Ratification

A

DISSERTATION

ON THE

clause of a charter that had been annulled for more than
a century and a half, her claim thus overlapping those of
Massachusetts and Connecticut. Without any hope of
sharing in the western lands, the non-claimant states
naturally saw a want of right and reason in the claims of
the others. To them it seemed that when the king for-
bade the sale of lands beyond the Alleghenies and
united that territory to Quebec he established western
boundaries even for the states whose charters had not
been annulled. Moreover, the western territory was to
be won from the enemy by united action and the fruit of
a common effort should be a common possession.
In spite of these objections, the articles of confeder-
ation were signed, in July,
1778, by the delegates of
all the states except New
Jersey, Delaware, and
Maryland; New Jersey
fell into line in the follow-
ing November, and Dela-
ware in May, 1779.
Maryland, however, re-
fused to sign until some
satisfactory arrangement
had been made regarding
the western lands. In
January, 1780, New York
gave up her claims to all
land west of the meridian
of the extreme western
end of Lake Ontario and
congress urged similar
action upon the other
states. In January of the
following year, Virginia,
whose claim had been strengthened by the campaigns of
George Rogers Clark, of which more hereafter, provisionally

POLITICAL

AND

UNION

CONSTITUTION

OF THE

THIRTEEN UNITED STATES,

OF

NORTH-AMERICA:

Waihis necellary to their -Prefervation and Happiness,

humbly offered to the Pub! c,

CITIZEN of PHILADELPHIA,

PHILADELPHIA:

Printed and Sold by T. BRADFORD, in Front-dreet, three. Daar belam
the Coco Houle, MDCCLXXXIII.

Title-page of Pelatiah Webster's Pamphlet

yielded her title to the territory northwest of the Ohio. 1 7 8 I Maryland then gave her delegates authority to sign the February 2 articles. They did so on the first of March, 1781, and thus completed the ratification. On the following day, the revolutionary congress met as the congress of the confederation. Six weeks later, James Madison proposed and Washington supported an amendment to give the United States power to employ the military and naval forces to compel delinquent states to fulfil their federal engagements and, in May, 1783, Pelatiah Webster published a pamphlet urging a federal convention for reconstructing the whole scheme of government. "In civil affairs, as much as in husbandry, seed-time goes before the harvest, and the harvest may be in the seed, the seed in the harvest."

Camp and
Costume

CHAPTER VII

VALLEY FORGE,

D

URING the winter of 1777-78, Washington's little army lay among the wood-clad hills at Valley Forge. The log huts that the soldiers built were arranged in parallel streets, each brigade by itself, and gave the camp something of the appearance of

a city. The window openings were closed with oiled paper and the cracks between the logs were chinked with wetted clay. On the twenty-third of December, the commander-in-chief reported that he had two thousand

eight hundred and ninety-eight men "unfit for duty, 1 7 7 7
because they are barefoot, and otherwise naked," and 1 7 7 8
that, for lack of blankets, many were compelled "to sit
up all night by fires, instead of taking comfortable rest
in a natural and common way." Officers who were for-

tunate enough to have coats "had them of every color
and make. I saw officers at a grand parade at Valley
Forge, mounting guard in a sort of dressing gown made
of an old blanket or woolen bed cover.' On one
occasion a party of aides-de-camp gave a supper to which
no one who had a whole pair of breeches was admitted.
"This," writes a foreign officer, "was of course under-
stood as pars pro toto;
but torn clothes were
an indispensable requi-
site." The dinner was
well attended.

GEORGE WASHINGTON,
GENERAL COMMAND-R C

A

Y Virtue of the Power and D) on to Me dpe
da qui cail!ons

Ballygraf, Tierely con

reading within ferenty Miles of my Lord Qutais Le
weth ore Lalf of their Grun by the aft Day of Februriy,
and the other Half by the a Day of March next cnluing,
on Pain, in Cafe of Failure, of having all that thall re-
ram in Sheaves after the Period above menti ned, feized
Is the Commillaries and Quarter-Mallors of the Army,
and paid for as Straw.

GIVEN under any Hand, at Head Quarters, Liar
the Valley Forge, in Philadelpha City, this 2014
Day of December, 1777.

G. WASHINGTON

By His Excellency's Command,
ROBERT H. HARRISON, Sec'y.

LANCASTER LENTED JOHN DUNSF

On the twenty-second of December, there was not "a single hoof of any kind to slaughter, and not more than twenty-five barrels of flour;" on the sixteenth of February, Washington wrote that part of the army had been "a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days." "No meat! no meat!" was the common cry of that dreadful winter. Meantime, there was much sickness, and many legs and arms were frozen and cut off. Horses starved to death by hundreds and, "without a murmur," the weakened troops, with tattered clothing and uncovered feet, did "patiently yoke themselves to little carriages of their own making, or load

Washington's Proclamation, issued at Valley
Forge, December 20, 1777

Food and
Frost

1 7 7 7 their wood and provisions on their backs." As early as the 1 7 7 8 twenty-third of December, Washington wrote that unless some "great and capital change" was quickly made the army would die of starvation or dissolve by desertion. Many of European nationality did desert, but, almost to a man, the native-born Americans remained. No wonder that the English historian, Trevelyan, says that this "bids fair to be the most celebrated encampment in the world's history." In all that history, there is no record of a heroism more sublime, a self-sacrifice more holy.

The Reason
Why

The

General Lee

Much of this suffering was unnecessary; the trouble lay in the people and in the government. A large proportion of the well-to-do population was Tory in sentiment; of the rest, some were indifferent and more were unwilling to give their precious blood or their still more precious dollars for the cause of freedom. Having rebelled against taxation without representation, many had acquired a disinclination to pay any taxes at all. Congress, then in session at York, had degenerated into a "rump," attended during the last months of 1777 by sixteen or seventeen members and sometimes by only nine or ten. attempted to perform administrative work with the result that everything was done ill. By their meddling in the summer of 1777, they forced the resignation of the efficient commissary-general, Colonel Joseph Trumbull, and that department fell into confusion. "Hogsheads of shoes, stockings, and clothing," are said to have been "lying at different places on the roads and in the woods, perishing for want of teams, or of money to pay the teamsters.”

MrBarton

They

In December, 1776, General Clinton sailed from New Exchange of York with about three thousand men; on the ninth of that month, the British force landed at Newport. With Clinton was Major-general Prescott who, as if in imitation of the rashness of Major-general Lee at Baskinridge, took quarters at an unprotected farmhouse on the west side of the island, a mile from any troops. On the night of the twentieth of July, 1777, Lieutenant-colonel William Barton of the Rhode Island mili

Autograph of William
Barton