Chap. XIX.} 1780. |
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and diligence, and with the strictest integrity.’
The
system itself in the hands of a bad man would have opened the way to endless abuses; and congress wisely restored its own controlling civil supervision.
Dismissing a useless supernumerary, it determined to have but one head of the quartermaster's department at the seat of congress, and one at the camp; and in paying the officers of the staff it returned to salaries instead of commissions.1 The unanimous judgment of the country from that day to this has approved the reform.
Greene, to whom his office had for more than a year become grievously irksome, resigned with petulant abruptness; but congress, still following its sense of public duty, conquered its well-grounded displeasure, and soon after, on the advice of Washington, appointed him to the command of the southern army.
His successor in the quartermaster's department was Timothy Pickering, who excelled him as a methodical man of business; so that the department suffered nothing by the change.
The tendency to leave all power in the hands of the separate states was a natural consequence of their historic development, and was confirmed by pressing necessity.
‘A single assembly,’ so John Adams
1 Gerard, in reporting the cost of the war to Vergennes, writes: ‘L'Intendant de l'arinee ou quartier-maitre General a cinq % sur totes ses depenses, et ses agens ont autant.’ My copy of the letter is an office copy, and the word ‘cinq’ is written out in full. The journals of congress of 2 March, 1778, allowed, with a longer, his country would have demerely trifling abatement, one per cent upon the moneys issued in the department for the pay of the chiefs. In excusing himself for accepting unusual emoluments, among reasons of no weight, Greene pleads that he was poor, with a family to provide for. It would not be fair to compare his conduct with that of another who was opulent and childless. If he had but lived lighted to show its gratitude for his signal services.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1874.
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