The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

84 LIFE OF WASHINGTON. r1756.
of the preceding year, except that the difficulties were
more numerous and complicated. There were the same
unceasing incursions of the savages, but more sanguinary and terrifying, the same tardiness in the enlistments, the same troubles with the militia, the same
neglect in supplying the wants of the army; and on
every side were heard murmurs of discontent from the
soldiers, and cries of distress from the inhabitants.
And what increased these vexations was, that the
governor, tenacious of his authority, intrusted as little
power as possible to the head of the army. Totally
unskilled in military affairs, and residing two hundred
miles from the scene of action, he yet undertook to
regulate the principal operations, sending expresses
back and forth, and issuing vague and contradictory
orders, seldom adapted to circumstances, frequently
impracticable. This absurd interference was borne with
becoming patience and fortitude by the commanderin-chief; but not without keen remonstrance to the
Speaker of the Assembly and other friends, against
being made responsible for military events, while the
power to control them was withheld, or so heavily
clogged as to paralyze its action. The patriotic party
in the legislature sympathized with him, and would
gladly have procured redress, had not the governor
possessed prerogatives, which they could not encroach
upon, and which he seemed ambitious to exercise;
the more so, perhaps, as the leaders of the majority,
learning his foible in this respect, had thwarted many of
his schemes, and especially had assumed to themselves
the appropriation of the public moneys, which by
ancient usage had been under the direction of the governor and Council.
The summer and autumn were passed in skirmishes
with the Indians, repairing the old forts, and building