A rabble in arms, flushed with success and insolence.
--General Burgoyne to Lord Rochfort describing American troops before Boston.

We are starving, and unless something very efficacious for the supply of the army is done very speedily, we must disband or turn freebooters -- an evil of almost as much magnitude as the first. You have much influence with members of Congress. I entreat you to make them sensible of the risk to which they are exposing their country, and of the double risk to which they expose themselves; for it begins to be a prevailing sentiment, both in the army and in the country, that a party among them has been bribed to bring things into confusion.
--General St. Clair to Joseph Reed, 1780.

I see nothing before us but accumulating distress. We have been half our time without provisions and are like to continue so. We have no Magazines nor money to form them. And in a little time we shall have no Men, if we had Money to pay them. We have lived upon expedients until we can live no longer. In a word, the history of the War is a history of false hopes and temporary devices, instead of system and economy.
--George Washington to Cadwalader, 1780.

Arnold displayed more real military genius and inspiration than all the generals put together, on both sides, engaged in the war, with the must undaunted personal courage.
--Charles Knight; History of England, Vol. I, p. 430.

I despise my Countrymen. I wish I could say I was not born in America. I once gloried in it but I am now ashamed of it. The Rascally Stupidity which prevails, the Insults and Neglects which the army have met with, Beggars all description. It must go no farther. They can endure it no longer. I am in Rags, have lain in the Rain on the Ground for 40 hours past, & only a Junk of fresh Beef & that without Salt to dine on this day, rec'd no pay since last December, & all this for my Cowardly Countrymen who flinch at the very time when their exertions are wanted, & who hold their Purse Strings as tho they would Damn the World, rather than part with a Dollar to their Army.
--Colonel Ebenezer Huntington to his brother, 1780.