Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/488

 letter in the following words: "It may be thought that I am going a good deal out of the line of my duty, to adopt these measures, or to advise thus freely. A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse."

Congress, deeply impressed with the weight and importance of the subjects thus urged upon them, and being at a distance from the scene of active military operations, promptly met the emergency. They resolved to place unlimited powers in the hands of Washington, constituting him, in fact, a military. Declaring that "the unjust, but determined purpose of the British court to enslave these free states, obvious through every insinuation to the contrary, having placed things in such a situation, that the very existence of civil liberty now depends on the right exercise of military powers; and the vigorous and decisive conduct of these being impossible to distant, numerous, and deliberative bodies;" Congress passed the following resolve: "That General Washington shall be, and he is hereby, vested with full, ample, and complete powers to raise and collect together, in the most speedy and effectual manner, from any and all of these United States, sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those already voted by Congress; to appoint officers for the said battalions of infantry; to raise, officer, and equip three thousand light horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers, and to establish their pay; to apply to any of the states for such aid of the militia, as he shall judge necessary; to form such magazines of provisions, and in such places as he shall think proper; to displace and appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier-general, and to fill all vacancies in every other department of the American armies; to take, wherever he may be, whatever he may want for the use of the army, if the inhabitants will not sell it, allowing a reasonable price for the same; to arrest and confine persons who refuse to take the continental currency, or are any otherwise disaffected to the American cause; and return to the states, of which they are citizens, their names and the nature of their offences, together with the witnesses to prove them."

These extraordinary powers were entrusted to Washington for the term of six months, unless revoked by Congress before that period. In acknowledging the resolves of Congress, Washington assured that body, that all his faculties should be employed, to direct properly the powers they had been pleased to vest him with, to advance those objects and those only, which had given rise to so honorable a mark of distinction. "If my exertions," he said, "should not be attended with the desired success, I trust the failure will be imputed to the true cause,—the peculiarly distressed situation of our affairs, and the difficulties I have to combat,—rather than to a want of zeal for my country, and the closest attention to her interests, to promote which has ever been my study." The exercise of these dictatorial powers was marked by all the