Page:Harris Dickson--The unpopular history of the United States.djvu/37

 “After the last of this month our lines will be so weakened that the Minutemen and militia must be called in for their defense. And these, being under no kind of government themselves, will destroy what little subordination I have been laboring to establish.”

Recruiting went slower than cold molasses, and Washington himself is authority for the statement that men were “holding back to see what advantages could be gained, and whether or not they could extort a bounty.” Every school boy will naturally spurn the suggestion that patriots of the Revolution would put up their services at public auction. But nobody has ever written for the school boy a popular history of the bounty system.

That was not the worst of it. Most of those volunteers engaged for short terms only, and were so fidgety to return home, that some of them left camp ahead of time “getting away with their arms and ammunition.”

The Governor to whom Washington wrote these facts expressed his great indignation, adding this illuminating phrase: “The pulse