The obscurity of
the morning was your best friend, for a fog is always favorable to a
hunted enemy. Some weeks after this you likewise planned an attack
on General Washington while at Whitemarsh. You marched out with
infinite parade, but on finding him preparing to attack you next
morning, you prudently turned about, and retreated to Philadelphia
with all the precipitation of a man conquered in imagination.
Immediately after the battle of Germantown, the probability of
Burgoyne's defeat gave a new policy to affairs in Pennsylvania, and it
was judged most consistent with the general safety of America, to wait
the issue of the northern campaign. Slow and sure is sound work. The
news of that victory arrived in our camp on the 18th of October, and
no sooner did that shout of joy, and the report of the thirteen cannon
reach your ears, than you resolved upon a retreat, and the next day,
that is, on the 19th, you withdrew your drooping army into
Philadelphia. This movement was evidently dictated by fear; and
carried with it a positive confession that you dreaded a second
attack. It was hiding yourself among women and children, and
sleeping away the choicest part of the campaign in expensive
inactivity. An army in a city can never be a conquering army. The
situation admits only of defence. It is mere shelter: and every
military power in Europe will conclude you to be eventually defeated.
The time when you made this retreat was the very time you ought to
have fought a battle, in order to put yourself in condition of
recovering in Pennsylvania what you had lost in Saratoga.
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