Even the undisguised jealousy of Charles Lee, his cross-purposes, disobedience of orders, abuse of Congress, breaches of confidence, and attempts to warp councils of war adversely to the judgment of the Commander-in-Chief did not forfeit Washington’s recognition of that officer’s general military knowledge and his ordinary wisdom in council. These considerations fully introduce the Commander-in-Chief to the reader, as he imagines the Soldier to be in his tent with the commissions of subordinate officers before him. He began his duties with the most minute inspection of the material with which he was expected to carry on a contest with Great Britain. Every company and regiment, their quarters, their arms, ammunition, and food supplies, underwent the closest scrutiny. He accepted excuses for the slovenliness of any command with the explicit warning that repetition of such indifference or neglect would be sternly punished. The troops had hardly been dismissed, after their first formal parade for inspection, before a set repugnance to all proper instruction in the details of a soldier’s duty became manifest. The old method of fighting Indians singly, through thickets, and in small detachments, each man for himself, was clung to stubbornly, as if the army were composed of individual hunters, who must each “bag his own game.” Guard duty was odious. Superiority by virtue of rank was questioned, denied, or ignored. The abuses of places of trust, especially in the quartermaster and commissary departments, and the prostitution of these responsibilities to private ends were constant. “Profanity, vulgarity, and all the vices of an undisciplined mass became frightful,” as Washington himself described the condition, “so soon as any immediate danger passed by.” To sum up the demoralization of the army, he could only add, “They have been trained to have their own way too long.” But the good, the faithful, and the pure were hardly less restive under the new restraint, and few appreciated the vital value of some absolutely supreme control. The public moneys and public property were held to belong to everybody, because Congress represented everybody. Commands were considered despotic orders, and exact details were but another system of slavery. Nor was this the whole truth. Even officers of high position, whether graded above or below their own expectations, found time to indulge in petty neglect of plain instructions, and in turn to usurp authority, in defiance of discipline and the paramount interests of the people at large.