But although Congress was compliant, Washington could not convince the country of the justice of his views, and of the continued need of energetic exertion.  The steady relaxation of tone, which the strain of a long and trying war had produced, was accelerated by the brilliant victory of Yorktown.  Washington for his own part had but little trust in the sense or the knowledge of his enemy.  He felt that Yorktown was decisive, but he also thought that Great Britain would still struggle on, and that her talk of peace was very probably a mere blind, to enable her to gain time, and, by taking advantage of our relaxed and feeble condition, to strike again in hope of winning back all that had been lost.  He therefore continued his appeals in behalf of the army, and reiterated everywhere the necessity for fresh and ample preparations.

As late as May 4 he wrote sharply to the States for men and money, saying that the change of ministry was likely to be adverse to peace, and that we were being lulled into a false and fatal sense of security.  A few days later, on receiving information from Sir Guy Carleton of the address of the Commons to the king for peace, Washington wrote to Congress:  “For my own part, I view our situation as such that, instead of relaxing, we ought to improve the present moment as the most favorable to our wishes.  The British nation appear to me to be staggered, and almost ready to sink beneath the accumulating weight of debt and misfortune.  If we follow the blow with vigor and energy, I think the game is our own.”

Again he wrote in July:  “Sir Guy Carleton is using every art to soothe and lull our people into a state of security.  Admiral Digby is capturing all our vessels, and suffocating as fast as possible in prison-ships all our seamen who will not enlist into the service of his Britannic Majesty; and Haldimand, with his savage allies, is scalping and burning on the frontiers.”  Facts always were the object of Washington’s first regard, and while gentlemen on all sides were talking of peace, war was going on, and he could not understand the supineness which would permit our seamen to be suffocated, and our borderers scalped, because some people thought the war ought to be and practically was over.  While the other side was fighting, he wished to be fighting too.  A month later he wrote to Greene:  “From the former infatuation, duplicity, and perverse system of British policy, I confess I am induced to doubt everything, to suspect everything.”  He could say heartily with the Trojan priest, “Quicquid id est timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”  Yet again, a month later still, when the negotiations were really going forward in Paris, he wrote to McHenry:  “If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.  There is nothing which will so soon produce a speedy and honorable peace as a state of preparation for war; and we must either do this, or lay our account to patch up an inglorious peace, after all the toil, blood, and treasure we have spent.”