 If you were a soldier and you knew that the cause was on the brink of collapse, would you reenlist, especially if your family needed you back home? Well, this was the situation Washington faced at the end of 1776. It was a situation compounded by the fact that he was leading a ragtag group of men and boys. These were farmers, cobblers, shop owners, tailors with very little military experience. And they were fighting against the king's hardened regular soldiers.