The journey lasted a month. The party paid a visit to Governor Caswell in North Carolina and stopped at Petersburg and Annapolis, where Lafayette met Major Brice, who later became his aide-de-camp. On July twenty-seventh the travel-worn party reached Philadelphia, which was then the capital of the United States. The outlook for the Americans was gloomy enough then. New York was in the hands of the enemy, Burgoyne’s army had captured Ticonderoga and was threatening to separate New England from the rest of the country, and Howe was preparing to attack Philadelphia with a much larger army than Washington could bring against him. It would have seemed just the time when any help from abroad should have been doubly welcome, and yet as a matter of fact the Congress was not so very enthusiastic about it. The reason for this was that already a great number of adventurers had come to America from the different countries of Europe and asked for high commands in the American army. Many of them were soldiers of considerable experience, and they all thought that they would make much better officers than the ill-trained men of the new republic. Some of them also quickly showed that they were eager for money, and one and all insisted on trying to tell Congress exactly what it ought to do. Quite naturally the Americans preferred to manage affairs in their own way. George Washington had already sent a protest to Congress. “Their ignorance of our language and their inability to recruit men,” he said, “are insurmountable obstacles to their being ingrafted into our continental battalions; for our officers, who have raised their men, and have served through the war upon pay that has hitherto not borne their expenses, would be disgusted if foreigners were put over their heads; and I assure you, few or none of these gentlemen look lower than field-officers’ commissions. To give them all brevets, by which they have rank, and draw pay without doing any service, is saddling the continent with vast expense; and to form them into corps would be only establishing corps of officers; for, as I have said before, they cannot possibly raise any men.” It was true that Silas Deane had been instructed to offer commissions to a few French officers, whose experience might help the Americans, but he had scattered commissions broadcast, and some of these men had proved of little use. One of them, Du Coudray, had arrived and insisted on commanding the artillery with the rank of major-general, and had aroused so much opposition that Generals Greene, Sullivan, and Knox had threatened to resign if his demands were granted. Congress was therefore beginning to look askance at many of the men who bore Silas Deane’s commissions.