General Greene assumed the command at West Point 780 and Washington took post with his main army at Prake- After the Play ness near Passaic Falls in New Jersey, whence, on the eighteenth of October, he issued a circular to the states describing the critical condition of the army "and how essential it is the States should make the most vigorous exertions to replace" as early as possible the men who would be discharged by the end of the year.

Privateers

The Keel of

Navy

E

NGLAND was easily the mistress of the sea. America had neither navy nor resources that would enable her to create a navy that could meet on equal terms that of England, but she had thousands of hardy seamen who gladly turned from commerce and the fisheries for the capture of English merchantmen and transports. Not all who were engaged in privateering were actuated primarily by patriotic motives. Credit must be given to them for distressing the enemy and for capturing supplies that were needed, but if congress got the goods it had to pay for them. It probably would be fair to say that the typical privateersman was a patriot engaged in business ventures; "New England, the home of the privateers, was never more prosperous than in the last years of the Revolution."

The war had not been long in progress before congress the American took steps to create a regular navy as related in the preceding volume, and provided for the commissioning of privateers. Before the end of the war, almost every one of the thirteen war-ships ordered in December, 1775, had been captured or burned to avoid capture and others were bought or built to take their places. Not including the vessels employed by Washington in the siege of Boston or Arnold's fleet on Lake Champlain, the American navy of the Revolution consisted of fifty-six armed vessels, with an average of twenty guns each. The largest number