More from "A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier"

Time thus passed on to the nineteenth of April, when we had general orders read which satisfied the most skeptical, that the war was over, and the prize won for which we had been contending through eight tedious years. But the soldiers said but very little about it, their chief thoughts were more closely fixed upon their situation as it respected the figure they were to exhibit upon their leaving the army and becoming citizens. Starved, ragged and meagre, not a cent to help themselves with, and no means or method in view to remedy or alleviate their condition; this was appalling in the extreme. All that they could do, was to make a virtue of necessity and face the threatening evils with the same resolution and fortitude that they had for so long a time faced the enemy in the field.

Joseph Plumb Martin
West Point, April 1783