Burgoyne, exclusive of the Maryland troops sent to Wilmington, amounts
to no more than eight thousand two hundred in camp fit for duty;
notwithstanding which, and that since the fourth instant, our number
fit for duty, from the hardships and exposures they have undergone,
particularly from the want of blankets, have decreased near two
thousand men, we find gentlemen, without knowing whether the army was
really going into winter quarters or not, (for I am sure no resolution
of mine would warrant the remonstrance), reprobating the measure as
much as if they thought the soldiers were made of stocks or stones,
and equally insensible of frost and snow; and moreover, as if they
conceived it easily practicable for an inferior army, under the
disadvantages I have described ours to be, which are by no means
exaggerated, to confine a superior one, in all respects well appointed
and provided for a winter's campaign, within the city of Philadelphia,
and to cover from depredation and waste the states of Pennsylvania,
Jersey, &c. But what makes this matter still more extraordinary in my
eye is, that these very gentlemen, who were well apprised of the
nakedness of the troops from ocular demonstration, who thought their
own soldiers worse clad than others, and advised me, near a month ago,
to postpone the execution of a plan I was about to adopt, in
consequence of a resolve of Congress for seizing clothes, under strong
assurances that an ample supply would be collected in ten days,
agreeably to a decree of the state; (not one article of which by the
by is yet to come to hand,) should think a winter's campaign, and the
covering of their states from the invasion of an enemy, so easy and
practicable a business. I can assure 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 blankets.
However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and