George Washington to Richard Henry Lee

Your favour of the 6th instant, did not get to my hands till the 18th, it found me at our posts in the highlands, on my circuit to this place, and at a time when I had neither leisure nor opportunity to write to you. I am so thoroughly impressed with the necessity of re-enlisting the army, that you may depend upon it, nothing in my power to effect it shall be left unessayed. Instructions and money are in the hands of every brigade for this purpose; and I have directed weekly returns to be made of the progress. An advance in silver dollars, of part of the bounty money, might facilitate the business of recruiting; but I conceive that it would be attended with every pernicious consequences; not from the cause you speak of, to wit, discontenting the other soldiers but another source, namely, opening the eyes of the whole and setting them to reasoning upon the difference between specie and paper. At present, they know that every comfort and necessary of life is insufferably dear, but do not inquire much after the causes; and having no specie among them, to fix the comparison, do not attribute it to the depreciation of the paper money; but let them have ocular proof, that they can purchase as much with one silver, as with four or five paper dollars, and have forestallers, and the disaffected at work among them, in purchasing up the specie, while the latter class of people are painting in lively colours the difference, and using at the same time every art in their power to poison the minds, and sow the seeds of discontent, and then judge of the event, at any rate I think the experiment would be dangerous, and ought not to be tried, but as the dernier resort, lest by obviating one evil, a greater be involved. The designs of the enemy, to me, are mysterious, indeed totally incomprehensible, that they are preparing for some grand manoeuvre does not admit of a doubt; but whether it is for an operation on the North River, against the French squadron at Boston (by a junction of their land and sea forces,) or a total or partial evacuation of the United States, is not easy to discover. I believe, myself, that they are waiting orders; which, probably, will arrive in the August packet, to determine their plan; and in the mean while are preparing to remove wholly, or in part, as they shall be directed; but as their motives are equivocal, and will apply to either of the above cases, I have strengthened the posts in the highlands, and thrown the army into such a position as to reinforce them readily, at the same time that we are advanced to the eastward, and can move on in different columns, by different routs, if the operations of the enemy should call us to that quarter.

I am, etc.