that they "led their soldiers to plunder the inhabitants and into every kind of mischief." To his brother, John Augustine Washington, he declared that the different states were nominating such officers as were "not fit to be shoe-blacks." Resignations occurred upon discreditable pretexts, and became alarmingly prevalent. Some resigned at critical moments, and others combined together in considerable number for purposes of intimidation, and threatened to retire from the service at a specified time unless certain terms were complied with. Many of those who abandoned Washington were guilty of a crime which, when committed by private soldiers, is called "desertion," and punished with death. Eighteen of the generals retired during the struggle, one for drunkenness, one to avoid disgrace for receiving double pay, some from declining health, others from weight of advancing years; but several from private resentments and real or imagined wrongs inflicted by Congress or associates in the service. John Adams wrote in 1777: "I am worried to death with the wrangles between military officers, high and low. They quarrel like cats and dogs. They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts."[66] [66] Sabine, Vol. I, pp. 139-150. "The abandoned and profligate part of our army," wrote Washington, "lost to every sense of honor or virtue as well as their country's good, are by rapine and plunder spreading ruin and terror wherever they go, thereby making themselves infinitely more to be dreaded than the common enemy they are come to oppose. Under the idea of Tory property, or property that may fall into the hands of the enemy, no man is secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person."[67] American soldiers were constantly driving innocent persons out of their homes by an alarm of fire, or by actual incendiarism, in order more easily to plunder the contents, and all attempts to check this atrocious practice had proved abortive. The burning of New York was generally attributed to New England soldiers. The efforts of the British soldiers to save the city were remembered with gratitude, and there is little doubt that in the city, and in the country around it, the British were looked upon not as invaders, but as deliverers. [67] Washington's Works, IV., 118, 119, Lecky, 257. "Wherever the men of war have approached, our militia have most manfully turned their backs and run away, officers and men, like sturdy fellows, and these panics have sometimes seized the regular regiments.