The troops that accompanied Lafayette, however, did not like their transfer to a warmer climate. Desertions were frequent, and a mutinous spirit was exhibited. Lafayette hung the first deserter who was captured. A second was arrested and brought before him for disposal. He sent him adrift, with “permission to return to his home, or wherever he desired to go.” He then issued an order, reciting, that “_he was setting out upon a dangerous and difficult expedition; and he hoped the soldiers would not abandon him_; but that whoever wished to go away, might do so instantly.” “From that hour,” wrote Lafayette, “all desertions ceased, and not a man would leave.” Washington himself, at this juncture of affairs, was peculiarly embarrassed. Congress had assured him that the new regular force of thirty-seven thousand men would be in the field by the first of January. Marshall, the historian, makes the following statement: “The regular force drawn from Pennsylvania, to Georgia inclusive, at no time during this interesting campaign amounted to three thousand effective men.” Of the Northern troops, twelve hundred had been detached under the Marquis de Lafayette, in the aid of Virginia. Including these in the estimate, the States, from New Jersey to New Hampshire, had furnished only five thousand effectives. The cavalry and artillery at no time exceeded one thousand. During May, the total force reached seven thousand, of whom rather more than four thousand might have been relied on for action; but even these had been brought into camp too late to acquire that discipline which is so essential to military service. As early as February twentieth, when the Virginia campaign was in prospect, General Washington begged Schuyler to accept the head of the War Department, in these earnest words: “Our affairs are brought to an awful crisis. Nothing will recover them but the vigorous exertion of men of abilities who know our wants and the best means of supplying them. These qualifications, Sir, without a compliment, I think you possess. Why, then, the department being necessary, should you shrink from it? The greater the chaos, the greater will be your merit in bringing forth order.” General Schuyler replied on the twenty-fifth, and declared his intention never to hold office under Congress, unless accompanied by a restoration to military rank; and added that “such inconvenience would result to themselves [members of Congress] from such a restoration, as would necessarily give umbrage to many officers.”