"To what end?"

"The British think us so bad beat, and are so desirous
to hold a big territory, for purposes of forage and plunder,
that they have scattered their troops beyond supporting distance.
Can we but get a force together sufficient to attack
Burlington, Trenton, or Princeton, 't will be possible to beat
them in detail."

"I have a better project than that," asserted Lee. "Let
Washington but make a show of activity on the Delaware, and
he shall hear of my doings shortly."

"But what better can be done than to drive them back
from a country rich with food supplies, relieve the dread of
their advancing upon Philadelphia, and give the people a
chance to rally to us?" protested the aide.

"Pooh!" scoffed Lee. "'T is pretty to talk of, but 't is
another thing to bring it off, and I make small doubt that
't will be no more successful than the damned ingenious
manoeuvres of Brooklyn and Fort Washington, which have
unhinged the goodly fabric we had been building. I tell you
we shall be in a declension till a tobacco-hoeing Virginian, who
was put into power by a trick, and who has been puffed up
to the people as a great man ever since, is shown to be most
damnably weak and deficient. He 's had his chance and
failed; now 't is for me to repair the damage he's done."