Washington had listened, too. He had traveled far since those early months in Cambridge, when he had decried the stupidity of his officers and the unkempt indiscipline of his privates. Together he and the army had been annealed by defeat, death, sorrow, and occasional success. That mystical bond between leader and led had strengthened almost imperceptibly, the consequence of mutual respect and shared faith in a brighter future. He spoke to them affectionately, not as military underlings and social inferiors but as fellow republicans. “Here was a new idea of a gentleman, a moral condition
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