The other idea which had grown in his mind during the weary siege was that the Tories were thoroughly dangerous and deserved scant mercy.
Henry Cabot Lodge
The Public Record
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. He voted in favor of American entry into World War I and his successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. His penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge Reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
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But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion…
Men are the creatures of the time in which they live, and take their color from the conditions which surround them, as the chameleon does from the grass or leaves in which it hides.
When, without any self-seeking, he was placed at the head of the Revolution, he made up his mind that he would carry it through everything to victory, if victory were possible.
I can answer those gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room, by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or…
However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and from my soul I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent.
This was not a safe man for the gentlemen of Pennsylvania to cross too far, nor could they swerve him, with all his sense of public opinion, one jot from what he meant to do.
It showed that America had demonstrated to Europe that she could win independence, and it had been proved to the traditional enemy of England that the time had come when it would be profitable to help the revolted colonies.
Clearness and precision of plan as to the central point, joined to a perfect readiness to change suddenly and strike hard and decisively in a totally different quarter, are sure marks of the great commander.
After stating plainly that the army was on the verge of dissolution, he said: "To me it will appear miraculous if our affairs can maintain themselves much longer in their present train.
If either the temper or the resources of the country will not admit of an alteration, we may expect soon to be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of America, in America, upheld by foreign arms.
He flung aside the suggestion of supreme power, not simply as dishonorable and unpatriotic, but because such a result would have defeated the one great and noble object at which he aimed.