General Washington, that his authority will have sufficient weight to
prevent any interruption to their progress, and any insult to their
persons." This demand was ascribed to the treatment to which officers
under the protection of his passport had already been exposed.

General Washington lamented the impediment to the exchange of
prisoners, which had hitherto appeared to be insuperable; and made
repeated, but ineffectual efforts to remove it. General Howe had
uniformly refused to proceed with any cartel, unless his right to
claim for all the diseased and infirm, whom he had liberated, should
be previously admitted.

At length, after all hope of inducing him to recede from that high
ground had been abandoned, he suddenly relinquished it of his own
accord, and acceded completely to the proposition of General
Washington for the meeting of commissioners, in order to settle
equitably the number to which he should be entitled for those he had
discharged in the preceding winter. This point being adjusted,
commissaries were mutually appointed, who were to meet on the 10th of
March, in Germantown, to arrange the details of a general cartel.

{March 4.}

The Commander-in-chief had entertained no doubt of his authority to
enter into this agreement. On the fourth of March, however, he had the
mortification to perceive in a newspaper, a resolution of congress
calling on the several states for the amounts of supplies furnished
the prisoners, that they might be adjusted according to the rule of
the 10th of December, before the exchange should take place.