Washington’s diary at this period affords a fair show of existing conditions, and reveals his anxiety better than another can depict it. On the first of May, his record is this: “Instead of having magazines filled with provisions, we have a scant pittance, scattered here and there, in different States. Instead of having our arsenals filled with military stores, they are poorly provided, and the workmen are leaving them.... Instead of having the regiments completed under the new establishment, scarce any State has an eighth part of its quota in the field, and there is little prospect of getting more than half. In a word, instead of having everything in readiness to take the field, we have nothing.... And instead of having the prospect of a glorious, offensive campaign before us, we have a gloomy and bewildered prospect of a defensive one, unless we should receive a powerful aid of ships, land troops, and money, from our generous allies, and these are at present too contingent to build upon.... Chimney-corner patriots abound; venality, corruption, prostitution of office for selfish ends, abuse of trust, perversion of funds from a national to a private use, and speculations upon the necessities of the times, pervade all interests.... In fact, every battle and every campaign is affected by these elements, and the diffusion of political responsibility still makes the United States only a loose partnership of scattered and loosely related partners.” At this date, May first, the British troops in Virginia consisted of Arnold’s command of fifteen hundred and fifty-three men, and that of Phillips, of twenty-one hundred and sixty-three men. On the twentieth of May, including the forces of Cornwallis, the entire British force in Virginia did not exceed five thousand effective troops. Arnold, Phillips, and Simcoe made numerous excursions, destroying property, burning buildings, and leaving marks of desolation upon Williamsburg, Petersburg, Osborne, Hanover Court-House, Chesterfield Court-House, and elsewhere. Lafayette’s command was almost ubiquitous, harassing the enemy at every point, so that they could hardly make an expedition without being compelled to abandon portions of the property plundered, and return to their fortified positions with the loss of some men and horses, every time. So soon as Lafayette learned that Cornwallis proposed to move northward from Wilmington to Virginia, and unite his command with those of Phillips and Arnold, he made an effort to reach Halifax Court-House, and cut him off; but the shorter route enabled Phillips to defeat Lafayette’s movement.