Note 46 — Chapter XXIX

"Congress could do nothing, and confessed that it could do nothing. 'We have required,' thus they wrote to the States on the 15th of January, 1781, 'aids of men, provisions and money; the States alone have authority to execute.' Since Congress itself made a public confession of its powerlessness, nothing remained but to appeal to France for rescue, not from a foreign enemy, but from the evils consequent on its own want of government. 'If France lends not a speedy aid,' wrote General Greene from the South to her Minister in Philadelphia, 'I fear the country will be for ever lost.' It was therefore resolved for the moment to despatch to Versailles, as a special minister, one who had lived in the midst of the ever-increasing distresses of the army, to set them before the Government of France in the most striking light. The choice fell on the younger Laurens, of South Carolina. To this agent Washington confided a statement of the condition of the country; and with dignity and candour avowed that it had reached a crisis out of which it could not rise by its own unassisted strength. To Franklin he wrote in the same strain; and La Fayette addressed a like memorial of ripe wisdom to Vergennes" (the French Minister for Foreign Affairs). (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. X., Chap., xix., pp. 417, 418.)

"Scarce any one of the States had as yet sent an eighth part of its quota into the field; and there was no prospect of a glorious offensive campaign, unless their generous allies should help them with money, and with a fleet strong enough to secure the superiority at sea."—Ib., p. 425.