I would add onto /u/The_Alaskan 's impressive post with another contender for the Continental Army's nadir: the winter of 1780-1781. I think the events of this winter show a side to Washington's command style that my esteemed colleague missed.

1780 was a horrible year for the American cause. General Gates, previously one of the most successful generals in the American army, had disgraced himself and gotten a sizable American army destroyed at the Battle of Camden, capping a three-year run of defeats in the South. In the North, Benedict Arnold nearly succeeded in betraying West Point to the British. Indian attacks ravaged the backcountry, despite a seemingly successful attempt to ravage Iroquois Country. Everywhere, food was scarce and pay was nonexistent. And it was bitter, bitter cold.

Distressed in both materiel and moral, the Pennsylvania line - the regular regiments from that state - mutinied on January 1, 1781., killing one of their officers. With Washington's blessing, the Pennsylvania state government negotiated with the mutineers, returning them peacefully to service with nothing lost than some more enlistment bounties being added to the pile of debt the state already owed. The state's regiments were reorganized and effectively quarantined apart from the army in Pennsylvania for the rest of the war, save some more trustworthy troops that joined the main army on the march to Yorktown.

A few weeks later, the New Jersey line mutinied. Washington sent a party of artillery and infantry from the Hudson Valley to the Jersey encampment at Pompton Lakes, where they arrested the mutiny's ringleaders. Twelve mutineers were made to form a firing squad, which executed the two serjeants leading the mutiny on the spot.

Part of Washington's skill as a commander was knowing when and how to treat with his men as citizens. He also knew when to discipline them like soldiers, and made free use of the lash, noose, and gun to keep his men in line.

This skill showed itself again in 1783. After the announcement of a cease-fire with the British on April 19, 1783, discipline in the main body of the Continental Army began to fray badly. By this point, the vast majority of the army was composed of men who had enlisted for the duration of the war - a war that they felt ended with the ceasefire and the signing of a preliminary peace treaty that caused it. Desertions increased at the main army camp at New Windsor, New York, and the Connecticut troops at West Point rioted outright over the night of May 13-14. Washington desperately wanted to keep the army together until the British could leave New York, but the situation quickly became impossible to maintain. Court martials spent much of May ordering the flogging of deserters, but Washington realized that the army was better off granting the most troublesome soldiers furloughs home. In early June, this became the official policy, and all for-the-war men who wanted to leave were furloughed home pending their final discharge. Washington, ever a realist, had decided that he could not control his army any longer.

The lowest points for the nascent American army came in the winters of 1776-1777 and 1777-1778. In the first case, the situation was reversed by a successful American campaign in New Jersey. In the second case, the situation was reversed by an improved supply situation and the entry of France into the war on the American side.

I'll offer a hypothesis to you: Washington didn't motivate his soldiers with rhetoric -- he did so with action. Others supplied the rhetoric that got soldiers to join Washington.

Let's take the winter of 1776-1777 as an example. I recommend you read David McCullough's 1776. There's a reason it won the Pulitzer Prize.

1776 was a big year on the battlefield. In August, Washington had the largest army he would ever assemble -- 20,000 men. It didn't do him much good: In a stand-up fight on Long Island, he was thoroughly and utterly routed. His surviving men narrowly avoided capture in Brooklyn, then failed to defend Manhattan against the Royal Navy's bombardment. (No fault of their own there; they were massively outgunned.)

After Manhattan's loss, Washington was defeated again and again, his army bleeding men and supplies as it retreated south, into New Jersey. The situation grew worse. Winter set in, and the British kept up the pursuit. Washington's army was deprived of supplies by the defeats in and around New York City, and it shed men in great quantities -- deserters who'd had enough of war.

On Dec. 1, more than 2,000 militiamen left Washington's army in a single day as their enlistments expired and they went home. Hundreds more simply left. On Dec. 13 -- Friday the 13th -- British Lt. Banister Tarleton captured American Gen. Charles Lee, a famed commander who had led British forces during the Seven Years' War. Among the British, Lee had a reputation at that time as being as good if not better than Washington.

On the same day, Washington learned that Congress had abandoned Philadelphia for Baltimore. Things seemed about as bad as they could get.

And yet, on Dec. 14, 1776, British Gen. William Howe let up the pressure. At the time, wars were typically not fought through the winter, and Howe put his army into winter quarters as he returned to the comfortable confines of New York City. A seaborne attack on Philadelphia was abandoned in favor of securing Rhode Island, the better to secure the British rear. It was thought that the Americans were all but done.

By Dec. 22, Washington had an army of about 7,500 fighting men, and at best 6,000 were fit for duty. Hundreds were sick, hungry, and suffering from the cold. Across New Jersey, residents were signing loyalty proclamations, the result of a British campaign promising amnesty.

And yet, even though the thought the war might be about over, Washington maintained a facade of confidence and calm. On Dec. 24, Col. William Tudor wrote to his fiancee in Boston, saying, "I cannot desert a man (and it would certainly be desertion in a court of honor) who has deserted everything to defend his country, and whose chief misfortune, among ten thousand others, is that a large part of it wants spirit to defend itself."

Washington's spirit, as great as it might be, wasn't enough. On Jan. 1, the enlistments of his remaining soldiers would expire, and that date would almost certainly mark the end of his army. He needed a victory.

"I agree with you that it is vain to ruminate upon, or even reflect upon the authors of our present misfortunes," he wrote on Christmas Day. "We should rather exert ourselves, and look forward with hopes, that some lucky chance my turn up in our favor."

On the morning of Dec. 26, five days before the end of his army, Washington attacked. And won.

At Trenton, New Jersey, Washington's few men -- in less than 45 minutes -- killed 21 Hessian (German) mercenaries, wounded 90, and captured almost 900. Only four Americans were wounded. Two soldiers froze to death on the march to New Jersey.

Washington's men captured cannon, they took small arms, they carried away gunpowder, food, warm clothing, horses -- everything their desperate army needed. They collected it all and took it back to Pennsylvania. More than anything else, they took morale.

Washington gave a stirring speech after the battle, but it was the event itself that stirred emotions. Within days, newspapers were filled with accounts of the surprise crossing of the Delaware River, the night march to Trenton, and the booty that had been captured.

Flush after the battle, Washington offered every man whose enlistment expired on Dec. 31 a bounty of $10 if he would stay for an additional six months. "My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear," he said to them. "You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance."

After the Battle of Trenton, Howe's army came on again, with a chagrined Howe at its head. At Trenton, however, the Americans feinted and then departed, marching hard and striking Howe's rearguard at Princeton. In a short, sharp battle, the Americans lost 23 men but the British lost more in dead and wounded -- and 300 prisoners. For Washington and his men, it was a sudden, unexpected victory as much as Trenton had been.

Washington wanted to push on to Brunswick, the British supply base, but instead he thought that would be overreaching. His troops were exhausted after their forced marching to Princeton, and so he moved his forces into the hilly, wooded sections of New Jersey near Morristown where they would remain safe for the remainder of the winter.

The American army had survived.