Page:Harris Dickson--The unpopular history of the United States.djvu/57

 men. My biggest guess at the redcoats is 34,000 men.

With all that force I should have been able to do something. But my fellows were picked up here and there and yonder; and I never kept them hired long enough to get them field broke. There was no way to swarm a big enough bunch in one place at one time to hit the British. The only offensive operations that we felt sufficiently strong to undertake were in the vicinity of Boston, at Trenton and at Princeton. I squandered millions upon millions on short-term recruits who never stayed in ranks long enough to learn which was hay-foot and which was straw-foot, and were not worth their board and keep.

Throughout the Revolution these raw recruits generally had their running gear set on the hair trigger. Our mistakes in the beginning of the war were repeated over and over again, always the same sad story: at Camden the hasty levies stampeded and ran from the first shot, leaving their steadfast Continental comrades to be slaughtered, the