the British could not figure out an effective way to counter the Fabian approach. Washington faced down four British commanders during the war. As Nathaniel Philbrick puts it, “As one after the other of his British opponents, from Thomas Gage to William Howe (with Clinton and Cornwallis soon to follow), returned to England in disgrace, he had found a way, despite having lost more battles than he had won, to keep his army, and by extension his country, together.”85 Time was on Washington’s side, if he could hold the army together and not lose it in the field.
