"that{336} men enough could be found in a condition fit to discharge the military camp duties from day to day; and for this purpose, those who were naked borrowed of those who had clothes." Unprovided with materials to raise their beds from the ground, the dampness occasioned sickness and death. "The army, indeed, was not without consolation," says Thacher, "for his excellency the commander-in-chief, whom every soldier venerates and loves, manifested a fatherly concern and fellow-feeling for their sufferings, and made every exertion in his power to remedy the evil, and to administer the much-desired relief." Yet, amid all this suffering day after day, surrounded by frost and snow (for it was a winter of great severity), patriotism was still warm and hopeful in the hearts of the soldiers, and the love of self was merged into the one holy sentiment, _love of country_. Although a few feeble notes of discontent were heard, * and symptoms of intentions to abandon the cause were visible, yet the great body of that suffering phalanx were content to wait for the budding spring, and be ready to enter anew upon the fields of strife in the cause of freedom. It was one of the most trying scenes in the life of Washington, but a cloud of doubt seldom darkened the serene atmosphere of his hopes. He knew that the cause was just and holy; and his faith and confidence in God as a defender and helper of right were as steady in their ministrations of vigor to his soul, as were the pulsations of his heart to his active limbs. ** In perfect reliance upon Divine aid, he moved in the midst of crushed hopes, and planned brilliant schemes for the future. While pressed with complicated cares incident to his exalted position and the condition of the army under his command, Washington was "wounded in the house of his friends." Jealous and ambitious men were conspiring to tarnish the fair fame of the commander-inchief, to weaken the affections of the people for him, and to place the supreme military command in other hands. Among those designated at the time as the most conspicuous actors in this scheme were General Conway, a foreign officer of great pretensions, Generals Gates and Mifflin, Samuel Adams, with two or three others of the New England delegation in Congress, and one of the Virginia deputies. Whether the movement originated in personal ambition, or a sincere conviction of the necessity of making a change on account of the alleged "Fabian slowness" of Washington in his military movements, is a question of difficult solution. The measures adopted by the opponents of the chief were certainly the reverse of open, manly, generous, pure and disinterested patriotism, and deserve, as they received at the time, the unqualified reprobation of honest men. ***