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The treatment of prisoners illustrates the condition of this army. It was not a part of the Cambridge army, as was Arnold’s, but the contributions promised largely by New York, and directly forwarded by Congress. One regiment mutinied because Montgomery allowed the prisoners to retain their extra suit of clothing, instead of treating it as plunder. Schuyler’s and Montgomery’s Orderly Books and letters show that even officers refused to take clothing and food to suffering prisoners until peremptorily forced to do it. Washington was constantly advised of the existing conditions; and when both Schuyler and Montgomery regarded the prosecution of their expeditions as hopeless, with such troops, and proposed to resign, the Commander-in-Chief thus feelingly, almost tenderly, wrote: “God knows there is not a difficulty you both complain of which I have not in an eminent degree experienced; that I am not, every day, experiencing; but we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish. Let me therefore conjure you both, to lay aside such thoughts; thoughts injurious to yourselves, and extremely so to your country, which calls aloud for gentlemen of your abilities.”