Handbills were issued giving information of the advance of the enemy, and to awaken the indignation of the people printed sheets were circulated describing the insults to which the women of New Jersey had been subjected. Some of the citizens refused to take the Continental money, as it was rumored that Congress would soon disperse. On the 11th of December Congress requested Washington to contradict this rumor in general orders, and to assure the army that the delegates would remain in Philadelphia until it was certain the enemy would capture the city. It was well that Washington exercised his discretion in this matter, for the next day the crushing news was known throughout the city that he had been obliged to cross the Delaware. Congress at once adjourned to Baltimore, having first conferred on Washington "full power to order and direct all things relative to the department and to the operations of the war." The state of political affairs in Pennsylvania was the chief cause of the inefficiency which exposed Philadelphia to the danger of capture and of the panic with which her citizens were seized. The old colonial charter had been abrogated, but the new constitution had not been put into effect, and the condition of society bordered upon anarchy. For two weeks after Washington had retreated across the Delaware there seemed little chance of impeding the British advance. "Day by day the little handful was decreasing, from sickness and other causes." The services of all the regular troops in it, with the exception of those from Virginia and Maryland, expired on the first of the year, and the militia could not be depended upon. "They come", wrote Washington, "you cannot tell how, go you cannot tell when, and act you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment." "These", he said again to Congress, on the 20th of December, "are the men I am to depend upon ten days hence." On Congress he urged the importance of raising at once an army upon a more substantial basis, and impressed upon those around him the necessity of the utmost vigilance. But in the anguish of the moment he wrote to his brother: "If every nerve is not strained to recruit the new army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up.... I cannot entertain the idea that [our cause] will finally sink, though it may remain for some time under a cloud."