Nevertheless, spite of all these unlooked-for calamities and this unimagined expenditure, the war-spirit at the commencement of 1778 was far more extensively spread than had ever before been the case. The very calamities of the war, which had now entered, as it were, into every individual home, had estranged the national heart from the mother-country. Any conciliation, any termination of the struggle, short of entire separation from England, would not be listened to. Besides, when the Americans looked at the position of affairs after a three years’ war, spite of all their losses and sufferings, they saw no cause for despair—as indeed, there was none. The British after all, retained possession but of Long Island and Staten Island, of the insular cities of Newport in Rhode Island and New York, and of Philadelphia on the mainland. As yet they had no interior hold on the country, and though a strong loyalist party existed in various states, and loyalist troops had been raised in Pennsylvania, New York and among the Catholics of Maryland, still the whole number did not amount to above 3,600 men, and their influence tended rather to increase the bitterness of hatred against Britain, who had thus caused civil war in the land, than in reality to weaken or endanger their cause. While the British parliament was debating the subject of conciliation, the colonies were preparing to carry on the war with renewed vigour. The cabal against Washington had ended in the disgrace of its originators, and that great man now stood higher than he had hitherto done in the regard and confidence of the nation. Advantageous changes were made in all the war departments, in accordance with Washington’s wishes, and to the displacement of his enemies. Nathaniel Greene, a favourite officer of Washington’s, was appointed quarter-master-general; Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth accepted the office of commissary-general, in the place of Mifflin, one of the cabal; while General Conway, its head, and a man of weak character, was displaced as army inspector by Baron Steuben, a Prussian officer, who had lately offered his services to congress, and who soon introduced a complete system of exercise and tactics into the American army. By the new organisation the colonial force would have amounted to 60,000 men, but not being fully carried out, to about only half that number; no troops were demanded from Georgia and South Carolina, in consequence of their great slave population. Two independent corps were also raised; the one under Pulaski, the Pole; the other under Armand, a French officer; a third entirely composed of cavalry, was raised by Henry Lee, of Virginia, already distinguished in the war. The fortifications of the Highlands were vigorously prosecuted under the direction of Kosciusko.