To Marion he wrote: “I am fully sensible that your service is hard, and your sufferings great; but how great the prize for which we contend! I like your plan of frequently shifting your ground. It frequently prevents surprise, and perhaps the total loss of your party. Until a more permanent army can be collected than is in the field at present, we must endeavor to keep up a partisan war, and preserve the tide of sentiment among the people in our favor, as much as possible. _Spies are the eyes of an army, and without them, a general is always groping in the dark._” In all these letters and the measures undertaken, Greene reflects the principles upon which his Commander-in-Chief carried on the war, and it was his highest pride so to act, as if under the direct gaze of Washington. On the twentieth of December, having been detained by rains at Charlotte, he abandoned his huts; and by the twelfth of January, 1781, was encamped on the banks of the Peedee River, awaiting the opening of the final campaign of the war for American Independence. Col. Christopher Greene, as well as Colonel Washington, Harry Lee, and Morgan, had already joined him, and Washington had thus furnished to the Southern army his ablest general and such choice details of officers and men as had been faithful, gallant, and successful throughout the war. CHAPTER XXX. THE SOLDIER TRIED.—AMERICAN MUTINY.—FOREIGN Judgment.—ARNOLD’S DEPREDATIONS. Nothing new or unfamiliar to the American student can be said as to the military operations of the British, French and American armies during the closing year of the war for American Independence; but they may be so grouped in their relations to Washington as a Soldier, that he may stand forth more distinctly as both nominal and real Commander-in-Chief. His original commission, it will be remembered, was accompanied by the declaration of Congress that “they would maintain and assist him, and adhere to him, with their lives and fortunes, in the cause of American liberty.” After the Battle of Trenton, when Congress solemnly declared that “_the very existence of Civil Liberty depended upon the right execution of military powers_,” it invested him with dictatorial authority, being “confident of the wisdom, vigor, and uprightness of George Washington.” And in 1778, after the flash of the Burgoyne campaign had spent itself, and the experiences of the American army at Valley Forge attested the necessity for a fighting army under a fighting soldier, Washington was again intrusted with the reorganization of the army, both regular and militia, in respect of all elements of enlistment, outfit, and supply.