On a flying visit to Connecticut, he failed to reach his destination on Saturday night. Early Sunday morning he completed the few remaining miles of his journey. On his way, a tithing man came out of a house and inquired of the coachman: "Is there any necessity of your travelling on the Lord's Day?" Washington ordered his coachman to stop, and replied: "I have no intention of breaking the laws of Connecticut; they meet my most cordial approbation. But I was disappointed in not being able to reach my destination last night, where I shall attend church." Washington waited and waited for the enemy to move, and wondered that he did not. Putnam wrote to Gates: "Is it not strange that those invincible troops who were to lay waste all the country, with their fleets and army, dare not put their feet on the main?" About this time General Washington made the following address to his army: "The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness, from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. Our own, our country's, honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly action; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us then rely upon the goodness of our cause, and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions." The American army had grown by this time to over twenty thousand men poorly equipped and fed, though not more than fifteen thousand were available for immediate action. Congress was slow to provide supplies, and everything dragged. Many of the men carried only a spade, shovel or pick-axe. At the call of the country, they responded with shovels in hand, having no guns. They could throw up works, though destitute of arms to repel the foe. It was this destitute condition of our army that led a British officer to write home derisively: "The rebels are armed with scythes and pitchforks." To rebuke the growing vice and recklessness of the army, Washington issued the following order: