Washington found that he had sixteen thousand troops under his command near Boston.  Of these two thirds came from Massachusetts, and Connecticut halved the rest.  During July Congress added three thousand men from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  They lacked everything.  In order to give them some uniformity in dress, Washington suggested hunting-shirts, which he said “would have a happier tendency to unite the men and abolish those Provincial Distinctions which lead to jealousy and dissatisfaction.”  Among higher officers, jealousy, which they made no attempt to dissemble or to disguise, was common.  Two of the highest posts went to Englishmen who proved themselves not only technically unfit, but suspiciously near disloyalty.  One of these was Charles Lee, who thought the major-generalship to which Congress appointed him beneath his notice; the other was also an Englishman, Horatio Gates, Adjutant-General.  A third, Thomas, when about to retire in pique, received from Washington the following rebuke: 

In the usual contests of empire and ambition, the conscience of a soldier has so little share, that he may very properly insist upon his claims of rank, and extend his pretensions even to punctilio;—­but in such a cause as this, when the object is neither glory nor extent of territory, but a defense of all that is dear and valuable in private and public life, surely every post ought to be deemed honorable in which a man can serve his country.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, George Washington, I, 175.]

Besides the complaints which reached Washington from all sides, he had also to listen to the advice of military amateurs.  Some of these had never been in a battle and knew nothing about warfare except from reading, but they were not on this account the most taciturn.  Many urged strongly that an expedition be sent against Canada, a design which Washington opposed.  His wisdom was justified when Richard Montgomery, with about fifteen hundred men, took Montreal—­November 12, 1775—­and after waiting several weeks formed a junction with Benedict Arnold near Quebec, which they attacked in a blinding snowstorm, December 31, 1775.  Arnold had marched up the Kennebec River and through the Maine wilderness with fifteen hundred men, which were reduced to five hundred before they came into action with Montgomery’s much dwindled force.  The commander of Quebec repulsed them and sent them flying southward as fast as the rigors of the winter and the difficulties of the wilderness permitted.

By the end of July, meanwhile, Washington had brought something like order into the undisciplined and untrained masses who formed his army, but now another lack threatened him:  a lack of gunpowder.  The cartridge boxes of his soldiers contained on an average only nine charges of ball and gunpowder apiece, hardly enough to engage in battle for more than ten minutes.  Washington sent an urgent appeal to every town, and