To General Heath, who was stationed in the Highlands of the Hudson, he wrote: “The enemy are in great consternation. As the panic affords us a favorable opportunity to drive them out of the Jerseys, it has been determined, in council, that you should move down toward New York, with a considerable force, as if you had a design upon the city. That being an object of great importance, the enemy will be reduced to the necessity of withdrawing a considerable part of their force from the Jerseys, if not the whole, to secure the city.” Washington reinforced his little band at Morristown, and, keeping a vigilant watch upon the movements of the British, so harassed them, that Cornwallis was compelled to draw in all his outposts, and his land communication with New York was entirely cut off. The whole aspect of the war, in the Jerseys, was changed. The grand military qualities of Washington were generally recognized. Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The extraordinary spectacle was presented of a powerful army, straitened within narrow limits, by the phantom of a military force, and never permitted to transgress those limits with impunity.”[149] The British had conducted like savages in the Jerseys, burning, plundering and committing all manner of outrages, often making no discrimination between friends and foes. Thus the whole country was roused against them. The American troops speedily erected a village of log huts in a sheltered valley covered with a dense forest. General Howe, in New York, was a gamester, a wine-bibber, and a fashionable young man of pleasure. He and his officers spent the winter in convivial and luxurious indulgence. The American prisoners were treated with barbarity which would have disgraced the Mohawks. General Lee was held in close confinement, Howe affecting to regard him as a deserter, as he had once been an officer in the British army.[150] Washington had but a very feeble force with him at Morristown. He however succeeded in impressing the British with the conviction that he had a powerful army quite well equipped. He wrote: “The enemy must be ignorant of our numbers and situation, or they would never suffer us to remain unmolested.” The fame of the great struggle for American independence had now pervaded the civilized world. Everywhere, the hearts of the lovers of freedom throbbed in sympathy with the American cause. Many foreign officers came, and applied for service in the patriot army. One of the most illustrious of these was the Polish general, Thaddeus Kosciusko.[151]