"Instead of having our arsenals well supplied with military stores they are poorly provided, and the workmen all leaving them. Instead of having the various articles of field equipage in readiness the quartermaster-general is but now applying to the several States to provide these things for their troops respectively. Instead of having a regular system of transportation established upon credit, or funds in the quartermaster's hands to defray the contingent expenses thereof we have neither the one nor the other; and all that business, or a great part of it being done by impressment, we are daily and hourly oppressing the people, souring their tempers, and alienating their affections. Instead of having the regiments completed agreeable to the requisitions of Congress, scarce any State in the Union has at this hour one-eighth part of its quota in the field, and there is little prospect of ever getting more than half. In a word, instead of having anything in readiness to take the field, we have nothing; and, instead of having the prospect of a glorious offensive campaign before us we have a bewildered and gloomy prospect of a defensive one, unless we should receive a powerful aid of ships, troops, and money from our generous allies, and these at present are too contingent to build upon." While the Americans were suffering the complicated calamities which introduced the year 1781 their adversaries were carrying on the most extensive plan of operations against them which had ever been attempted. It had often been objected to the British commanders that they had not conducted the war in the manner most likely to effect the subjugation of the revolted provinces. Military critics found fault with them for keeping a large army idle at New York, which, they said, if properly applied, would have been sufficient to make successful impressions at one and the same time on several of the States. The British seemed to have calculated the campaign of 1781 with a view to make an experiment of the comparative merit of this mode of conducting military operations. The war raged in that year not only in the vicinity of the British headquarters at New York, but in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and in Virginia.