[Sidenote: Congress send a committee of their own body to the army.]

The weak and broken condition of the continental regiments, the strong
remonstrances of the General, the numerous complaints received from
every quarter, determined congress to depute a committee to reside in
camp during the winter, for the purpose of investigating the state of
the army, and reporting such reforms as the public good might require.

This committee repaired to head quarters in the month of January. The
Commander-in-chief laid before them a general statement, taking a
comprehensive view of the condition of the army, and detailing the
remedies necessary for the correction of existing abuses, as well as
those regulations which he deemed essential to its future prosperity.

This paper, exhibiting the actual state of the army, discloses defects
of real magnitude in the existing arrangements. In perusing it, the
reader is struck with the numerous difficulties, in addition to those
resulting from inferiority of numbers, with which the American general
was under the necessity of contending. The memorial is too long to be
inserted, but there are parts which ought not to be entirely
overlooked. The neglect of the very serious representation it
contained respecting a future permanent provision for the officers,
threatened, at an after period, to be productive of such pernicious
effects, that their insertion in this place will not, it is presumed,
be unacceptable.

He recommended as the basis of every salutary reform, a comfortable
provision for the officers, which should render their commissions
valuable; to effect which the future, as well as the present, ought to