affairs are hastening apace to ruin if we do not retrieve them by some happy event. Delay with us, is near equal to a total defeat. We must not suffer ourselves to be lulled into security and inactivity because the enemy does not cross the river. The love of my country, a wife (formerly miss De Berdt) and four children in the enemy’s hands, the respect and attachment I have to you, the ruin and poverty that must attend me and thousands of others, will plead my excuse for so much freedom.” The general on the 23d answered, “Necessity, dire necessity will—nay, must justify any attempt. Prepare, and in concert with Griffin, attack as many posts as you possibly can with a prospect of success. I have now ample testimony of the enemy’s intentions to attack Philadelphia, as soon as the ice will afford the means of conveyance. Our men are to be provided with three days provision, ready cooked, with which and their blankets they are to march. One hour before day is the time fixed upon for our attempt upon Trenton. If we are successful, which Heaven grant! and other circumstances favor, we may push on. I shall direct every ferry and ford to be well guarded, and not a soul suffered to pass without an officer’s going down with the permit.” The origin of the present distress was stated in a letter of the same date, from a member of congress to his friend, in these words, “The causes of our present unhappy situation have long been known; the consequences of them were often foretold, and the measures execrated by some of the best friends of America; but an obstinate partiality (in the New-England delegates) to the habits and customs of one part of this continent, has predominated in the public councils, and too little attention has been paid to others. It has been my fate to make an ineffectual opposition to all short enlistments, to colonial appointments of officers, and other measures pregnant with mischiefs; but these things either suited the genius and habits, or squared with the interests of some states that had sufficient influence to prevail; and nothing is now left but to extricate ourselves from difficulties as well as we can.”