These, too, were the only persons who, at least on their own account, could sustain the expenses of the war, for the State made no provision for them. Perhaps no army ever lived in a more miserable condition than the American army. {44} Almost constantly inferior in numbers to the enemy; exposed to a periodical and, in some sort, legalized desertion; called upon to march, encamp, and fight, in a country of immense extent, thinly peopled, in parts uncultivated, through vast swamps and savage forests, without magazines of provisions, often without money to purchase them, and without the power to make requisitions of them; obliged, in carrying on war, to treat the inhabitants, and to respect them and their property, as if it had consisted of troops in garrison in a time of peace, this army was exposed to great exigencies, and a prey to unheard-of sufferings. "For some days," writes Washington, in 1777, "there has been little less than a famine in camp. A part of the army have been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. The soldiers are naked and starving." ... "We find gentlemen reprobating the measure of going into winter quarters; 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, 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 and Jersey." {45} "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. I feel super-abundantly for the poor soldiers, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent." [Footnote 19] [Footnote 19: _Washington's Writings_, Vol. V. pp. 199, 200.] Congress, to whom he applied, could do hardly more than he himself. Without the strength necessary to enforce the execution of its orders; without the power of passing any laws upon the subject of taxes; obliged to point out the necessities of the country, and to solicit the thirteen confederated States to provide for them, in the face of an exhausted people, a ruined commerce, and a depreciated paper currency; this assembly, though firm and prudent, was often able to do nothing more than address new entreaties to the States, and clothe Washington with new powers; instructing him to obtain from the local governments, reinforcements, money, provisions, and every thing requisite to carry on the war. {46}