had already begun the campaign against Washington which has come to be known as the Conway Cabal.

The problem of supplying the army was, if possible, a more serious one than that of creating the army itself. The commissary and quartermaster's departments were constantly breaking down and had to be mended and now and again to be thoroughly reorganized. The problem, in a form more or less acute, was before Congress almost continuously throughout the year 1777. The year closed with those departments in almost a complete state of collapse, with Congress desperately struggling, in its customary fashion, to remedy the evil through the agency of a committee of its own body. On scarcely any other subject is so much new light thrown by the materials gathered in this volume. The numerous letters to Joseph Trumbull, to which reference has already been made, are particularly illuminating upon many aspects of the problem, but from several other sources are drawn many letters that cast much light upon the failures, their causes, and the efforts to find a remedy.

One of the most important lessons which Congress was beginning to learn toward the close of 1776, but had only partially acquired at the end of the year 1777, and did not thoroughly master to its dying day, was the fact that it could not efficiently exercise both the legislative and the executive functions. Early in its career Congress adopted the practice of appointing standing committees to supervise and conduct those of its activities which were relatively continuous, creating new committees or differentiating functions from time to time as occasion demanded. The most important of these committees were the secret committee (afterwards the committee of commerce or the commercial committee), the committee of secret correspondence (later the committee of foreign affairs), the marine committee, the treasury committee or board of treasury, and the board of war and ordnance. These committees developed into distinct departments, with gradually increasing powers of self-direction; but for the most part they exercised their extensive functions not only under the direct control but under the immediate supervision of Congress. Indeed how persistently Congress kept its hand on even the minute details of Continental business, how closely it watched over the doings of its committees, whether they were standing committees or committees appointed for some specific purpose, may be learned from a glance at the journals of the first two or three years. Not content to decide upon military policy or the larger aspects of military plans, and to leave the execution of them to its generals, Congress long persisted in giving its own orders for even lesser military movements and activities. Not until driven to it by threatening disaster did Congress grant even to the commander-in-chief those powers without which any general's hands must be securely tied or injuriously hampered.

Throughout this time members groan over the burden of long hours in Congress during the day and long hours in committee meetings at night;

and yet it is long before one of them even so much as suggests that the burden might be lessened and the business better done by handing the actual administration over to capable men outside of Congress. It must nevertheless be recognized that probably no body of representatives ever worked harder at their tasks or more earnestly than did Congress, and when the multitude as well as the magnitude of the things which they did is considered it is remarkable that they accomplished so much as they did and so well.

Richard Smith records that, on March 19, 1776, " Johnson threw out for Consideration the Propriety of establishing a Board of Treasury, a War Office, a Board of Public Accounts and other Boards to consist of Gent'n not Members of Congress". What opposition was made to employing men out of Congress for these purposes we are not told; but it was not done.

Congress first consented to delegate power, even to one of its own committees, when it was compelled to take flight from Philadelphia in December, 1776, and found such a measure absolutely necessary to prevent some of its important affairs from going to ruin. It might not then have done so had not Robert Morris, who had remained behind in Philadelphia, pressed it upon them. Indeed Morris had found things in such confusion that upon his own responsibility he applied himself to the task of endeavoring to bring some order out of the chaos, for "I conceive it better”, he said, "to take some Liberty's and assume some powers than to let the general interest suffer". To this suggestion Congress readily assented.

The committee of Philadelphia, accordingly, during the whole time that Congress was at Baltimore conducted much of the important executive business of Congress with but little let or hindrance, and it proved therefore one of the most forceful object lessons to Congress of the value of delegating its executive business. The correspondence of this committee or of Robert Morris, its principal member, and the rather free correspondence of members of Congress with Morris afford interesting light upon a little known episode in the history of Congress.

At the same time that Morris was urging the appointment of an executive committee at Philadelphia he was insisting, as he had done before, upon the adoption of the plan of placing the executive business generally in the hands of others than members of Congress (see his letter to the committee of secret correspondence, December 16). Reiterating his ideas to the commissioners in Paris a few days later, he asserted that "this has been urged many and many a time, by myself and others, but some of them do not like to part with power, or to pay others for doing what they cannot do themselves ".

The idea nevertheless appears now to have taken firm hold of Congress, and on December 26 a committee was appointed to devise "a plan for the better conducting the executive business of Congress, by boards com

posed of persons, not members of Congress." The confident expressions of a number of the delegates would lead us to believe that there was a firm and unalterable determination in Congress to carry out this great measure of reform at once. The programme was a thorough one, for it included boards of war, ordnance, navy, treasury, and a chamber of commerce. But the first measure actually accomplished, the establishment (March 22) of a department of the office of the secretary of Congress, does not seem to have been on the original programme at all. Probably the committee made this its first offering because it was so easy to do. There was no especial need for a reorganization of the secretary's office, and the conduct of it thereafter was scarcely different from what it had been before. The committee next offered, April 8, a plan for the reorganization of the department of war and ordnance. Upon this measure agreement was not so easily attained, and it was not until October 17 that a plan was adopted, somewhat modified November 24, and then the question of personnel seemed to give no end of trouble, so that the board was not fully established on the new basis until the beginning of 1778. Upon the later phases of the question much light is thrown by the letters here printed.

The need for executive experts in the conduct of marine matters impressed itself on Congress rather earlier than was the case in other departments. Elbridge Gerry wrote to Samuel Adams October 4, 1776: “It is high Time to adopt a Plan for a Board of Admiralty that can be obliged to attend to the business." A month later (November 6) a partial step was taken toward the organization of such a board in a resolve" that three persons well skilled in maritime affairs, be immediately appointed to execute the business of the navy, under the direction of the marine committee". When, therefore, the question came up again a few months later, the ideas of Congress seem to have settled at once upon a similar plan for the New England waters. This plan appears to have been so satisfactory to the New England delegates that on April 19 it was adopted (see nos. 427, 449, 457, 459, 485, 521, 540).

Despite the noble programme which, in the early days of its sojourn in Baltimore, Congress laid down for placing its principal executive business in hands other than its own, the reorganization of the war department was its only large accomplishment prior to the end of 1777. This appears to have exhausted its energies, if not also its zeal. The reconstitution of the treasury department, although regarded as one of the most essential items in the programme, was not even attempted until April, 1778. The chamber of commerce, the last item in the programme, appears to have vanished altogether, Congress having satisfied itself with the substitution, July 5, 1777, of a committee of commerce for the former secret committee, which was nothing more than a change of name. Similarly, although not on the programme at this time at all, the old committee of

secret correspondence gave place to a committee of foreign affairs (April 17, 1777), likewise only a change of name. In fact, the effectual organization of none of the great departments was accomplished until the war was practically at an end. Nevertheless, during the year 1777, much was done toward putting the various subordinate branches of both the military and civil services upon a better basis.

A great, a never-ending problem with Congress was of course the financial one. In the beginning this problem had been solved by the simple and easy method of issuing bills of credit. When the first supply of these bills was exhausted more were issued, and when they gave out there was another issue, and so on. If any were so unpatriotic as to refuse to accept Congress money as legal tender, they were officially denounced as enemies of their country; they might even be haled to prison. Unofficially they might be given the tar and feather treatment to induce them, if not to a more patriotic state of mind, at all events to a course of action more conformable to patriotic purposes. There were not wanting at the outset those who realized that there was a limit to which even a firmly established government might successfully put forth its promises to pay, and that at best therefore the war could not long be supported by the mere operation of a printing-press; nevertheless for a time " all went merry as a marriage bell", and members concerned themselves chiefly with obtaining the largest possible blocks of this currency for their states.

By the end of 1776, however, there was general alarm throughout the country over the sinking state of the currency, and Congress began to recognize that something more than resolutions, proclamations, or even jails, would be required to sustain it. The impairment to the credit of the Continental currency was, however, still largely ascribed to "the pernicious artifices of the enemies of American liberty". Even such a man as Roger Sherman, while upon the whole his ideas of the proper remedy were sound enough, declared as late as November, 1777, that the low credit of the paper currency was occasioned " partly by inimical persons and partly by aviritious ones".

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The obverse of depreciation was of course a rise in prices, and it was from this angle that the problem was first attacked. A conference of the New England states in December, 1776, had recommended rigid regulation of prices. When these proceedings were laid before Congress in January, 1777, they gave rise to long and animated debates, in which nearly all phases of the financial problem were brought under discussion. While many members still pinned their faith to price-fixing measures, others were convinced that all efforts of the sort would not only be futile but would merely aggravate the evils which they were designed to remedy. In the end Congress recommended the middle and southern states to pursue a course similar to that adopted in New England. Benjamin Rush and Thomas Burke have both left notes on some of the principal of these

debates, which, together with the letters written by members upon the subject, reveal how desperately Congress was struggling to discover a remedy for the financial evils which threatened to overwhelm it.

Another phase of the financial problem which came under discussion during the same period and upon which the materials here, particularly the notes of Rush and Burke, shed new light, was the question of a domestic loan. In October, 1776, Congress had resolved to borrow five million dollars at four per cent., issuing therefor what were termed loanoffice certificates. It now (February, 1777) became a question whether it would not be necessary, in order to make the loan a success, to raise the interest to six per cent. These debates and the expressions of members of Congress in their letters accentuate in particular certain sectional interests and views, as they also bring out more strongly than ever the feeling, which had for a time been somewhat suppressed, of the impropriety of the method of voting in Congress; for when the question came to a vote, of ten states represented five of the smaller states carried the decision, though they had but about one-third of the population of the whole and their delegates constituted only a little more than one-third of the members then present in Congress (see especially nos. 349, 352, 375). These debates also emphasize the increasing strength of opinion in favor of two other measures: that Congress must borrow gold and silver from abroad, and that the states must adopt extensive taxation. Taxation was in fact so growing in favor that before many months it became a watchword in Congress; and the idea of borrowing from abroad so seized upon the minds of Congress a few months later that it proceeded to borrow without waiting to learn whether the lender would lend. Finally, as the various phases of the financial problem were mulled over, as Congress turned in this direction and that for a solution of its difficulties, the more farseeing of its members became more and more impressed that the first great essential toward a solution was to be found in such a measure of co-operation and union as only a proper confederation could offer. Accordingly, when the confederation is again brought under consideration the discussion does not proceed far before the key-note to the argument for it is relief to the sinking currency.

Partly in desperation, but partly also, it appears, because many members believed it such a simple and easy thing to do, Congress seized upon the project of drawing bills of exchange upon its ministers in France, expecting, at least hoping, that they would be accepted. An elaborate proposition to this end was submitted to Congress by the committee of the treasury as early as June 11, 1777. This report is found in the Library of Congress edition of the Journals, but the journals proper contain no inkling of this project until it is adopted, September 9 and 10. There are, however, extensive discussions of the question by Henry Laurens (September 5 to 10), briefer ones by James Lovell (August 18, 21), and some