The continental government, which commissioned and sent General Washington to take the command of the army which it had adopted, consisted solely of a body of delegates, chosen to represent the people of the several colonies or states, for certain purposes of national defence, safety, redress, and revolution. When the war had actually commenced, and the United Colonies were engaged in waging it, the Congress possessed, theoretically and rightfully, large political powers, of a vague revolutionary nature; but practically, they had little direct civil power, either legislative or executive. They were obliged to rely almost wholly on the legislatures, provincial congresses and committees, or other local bodies of the several colonies or states, to carry out their plans. When Washington arrived at Cambridge and found the army then encamped around Boston in a state requiring it to be entirely remodelled, he came as the general of a government which could do little more for him than recommend him to the Provincial Congress, to the Committee of Safety, and to the prominent citizens of Massachusetts Bay. The people of the United States, at the present day, surrounded by the apparatus of national power, can form some idea of Washington's position, and of that of the government which he served, from the fact that, when he left Philadelphia to take the command of the army, he requested the Massachusetts delegates to recommend to him bodies of men and respectable individuals, to whom he might apply, to get done, through voluntary coöperation, what was absolutely essential to the existence of that army.[60] In truth, the whole of his residence in Massachusetts during the summer of 1775, and the winter of 1775-6, until he saw the British fleet go down the harbor of Boston, was filled with complicated difficulties, which sprang from the nature of the revolutionary government and the defects in its civil machinery, far more than from any and all other causes. These difficulties required the exertion of great intellectual and physical energy, the application of consummate prudence and forecast, and the patience and fortitude which in him were so happily combined with power. They would have broken down many of the greatest generals whom the world has seen; but it is our good fortune to be able to look back upon his efforts to encounter them as among the more prominent and striking manifestations of the strength of Washington's mind and character, and as among the most valuable proofs of what we owe to him.