* The following is the preamble and resolution: "This Congress, having maturely considered the present crisis, and having perfect reliance on the wisdom, vigor, and uprightness of General Washington, do hereby "Resolve. That General Washington shall be, and he is hereby, vested with full, ample, and complete powers to raise and collect together, in the most speedy and effectual manner, from any or all of these United States, sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those already voted by Congress; to appoint officers for the said battalions of infantry; to raise, officer, and equip three thousand light horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers, and to establish their pay; to apply to any of the states for such aid of the militia as he shall judge necessary; to form such magazines, and in such places, as he shall think proper; to displace and appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier general, and to fill up all vacancies in every other department in the American army; to take, wherever he may be, whatever he may want for the use of the army, if the inhabitants will not sell it, allowing a reasonable price for the same; to arrest and confine persons who refuse to take the Continental currency, or are otherwise disaffected to the American cause, and return to the states of which they are citizens their names, and the nature of their offenses, together with the witnesses to prove them. "That the foregoing powers be vested in General Washington for and during the term of six months from the date hereof, unless sooner determined by Congress."--Journals of Congress, ii., 475. This resolve was transmitted to Washington by the committee of Congress who remained in Philadelphia when that body adjourned to Baltimore. "Happy is it for this country," they wrote to Washington, "that the general of their forces can safely be intrusted with the most unlimited power, and neither personal security, liberty, nor property be in the least degree endangered thereby."---MS. letter, Dec. 31s£, 1776, quoted by Sparks, iv., 552. When Congress adjourned, on the 12th, they gave Washington equal powers, but did not define them.
** Morris had sent Washington a small sum of money two days before, and these transactions are doubtless those alluded to by the writer of the life of Robert Morris, in the fifth volume of the Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, who erroneously says, that "it (the money) enabled General Washington to gain the signal victory over the hireling Hessians at Trenton," &e. The sum sent on the 28th of December was 410 Spanish dollars, two English crowns, half a French erown, and ten and a half English shillings.