American Revolution

************************************************************************
USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE:  These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in
any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or
persons.  Persons or organizations desiring to use this material,
must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal
representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb
archivist with proof of this consent.
************************************************************************
Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth    Farns10th@aol.com         


The American Revolution
Volume II

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.


p.1

The history of the Revolutionary War may be divided into four well-marked 
periods. The first period begins in  1761 with the resistance of James Otis to 
the general search-warrants and it may be regarded as ending in June,  1774 when 
the acts for changing the government of Massachusetts were intended to take 
effect. This period of  constitutional discussion culminated in the defiance of 
Great Britain by the people of Boston when they threw  the tea into the harbour; 
and the acts of April, 1774, by which Parliament replied to the challenge, were  
virtually a declaration of war against the American colonies, though yet another 
year elapsed before the  first bloodshed at Lexington.

The second period opens with June, 1774, when Massachusetts began to nullify the 
acts of Parliament and it  closes with the Declaration of Independence. During 
this period warfare was carried on only for the purpose  of obtaining a redress 
of grievances, and without any design of bringing

p.2

about a political separation of the English people in America from the English 
people in Britain. The theatre  of war was mainly confined to New England and 
Canada; and while the Americans failed in the attempt to conquer  Canada, their 
defensive warfare was crowned with success. The fighting of this period began 
with the victory  of Lexington; it ended with the victory of Fort Moultrie. New 
England, except the island of Newport, was  finally freed from the presence of 
the British, and no further attack was made upon the southern states for  more 
than two years.

The essential feature of the third period, comprising the years 1776 and 1777, 
was the struggle for the  state of New York and the great natural strategic line 
of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Independence  having been declared, the United 
States and Great Britain were now fighting each other single-handed,  like two 
separate and foreign powers. It was the object of Great Britain to conquer the 
United States  and accordingly she struck at the commercial and military center 
of the confederation. If she could have  thoroughly conquered New York and 
secured the line of the Hudson, she would have broken the confederation  in two, 
and might perhaps have proceeded to overcome its different parts in detail. 
Hence, in this period  of the war everything centers about New York, such an 
outlying expedition as that of Howe against Philadelphia  having no decisive 
military value except in its bearings upon the issue of the great central 
conflict.  The strategy of the Americans was mainly defensive, though with

p.3

regard to certain operations they assumed the offensive with brilliant success. 
The period began with the  disasters of Long Island and Fort Washington; it 
ended with the triumph of Saratoga. As the net result of  the two years' work, 
the British had taken and held the cities of New York and Philadelphia and the 
town  of Newport. The fortress of Ticonderoga which they had likewise taken, 
they abandoned after the overthrow  of Burgoyne; and in like manner they retired 
from the highlands of the Hudson, which the Americans now  proceeded to occupy 
with a stronger force than before. In short, while the British had lost an army, 
they  had conquered nothing but the ground on which they wee actually encamped. 
Their attempt to break through  the centre of the American position had ended in 
a total defeat, and it now began to seem clear to discerning  minds that there 
was small chance of their be-ing able to conquer the United States.

The fourth period, upon which we are now entering, begins with the immediate 
consequences of the victory of  Saratoga, and extends to the treaty of 1783, 
whereby Great Britain acknow-ledged the independence of the United  States. The 
military history of this period ends with the surrender of Cornwallis at 
Yorktown, in October, 1781,  just four years after the surrender of Burgoyne. 
Except as regards the ultimate triumph of the American arms,  the history of 
these four years presents striking contrasts to the history of the two years we 
have just passed  in review. The struggle is no longer confined to the arms of 
Great Britain 

p.4

and the United States, but it extends in some measure over the whole civilized 
world, though it is only France  with its army and more especially its navy, 
that comes into direct relation with the final result in America.  Moreover, 
instead of a well-aimed and concen-trated blow at the centre of the American 
position, the last period  of the war consisted partly of a straggling and 
disorderly series of movements, designed simply to harass the  Americans and 
wear out their patience, and partly of an attempt to conquer the southern states 
and detach them  from the Union. There is, accordingly, less dramatic unity in 
this last stage of the war than in the period which  ended at Saratoga, and it 
is less susceptible of close and consecutive treatment; but on the other hand, 
in richness  of incidents and in variety of human interest it is in no wise 
inferior to the earlier periods.

The first consequence of Saratoga was the retreat of the British government from 
every one of the positions for  the sake of which it had begun the war. The news 
of Burgoyne's surrender reached England just before Parliament  adjourned for 
Christmas, and Lord North immediately gave notice that as soon as the holidays 
were over he should  bring in measures for conciiating the Americans. The 
general feeling in England was one of amazement and consternation.  In these 
days, when we are accustomed to contemplate military phenomena of enormous 
magnitude, when we have lately  carried on a war in which more than two million 
men were under

p.5

arms and more than two million dollars were expended every day, we must not 
forget how different was the historic  background upon which events were 
projected a century ago. Those were not the days of submarine telegraphs and 
Cunard  steamships, and in trying to carry on warfare across three thousand 
miles of ocean the problem before George III.  was far more arduous than that 
which the great Frederick had solved, when, acting on interior lines and 
supported  by British gold, he overcame the combined assaults of France and 
Austria and Russia. The loss which Great Britain  had now suffered could not 
easily be made good. At the same time it was generally believed, both in England 
and on  the continent of Europe, that the loss of the American colonies would 
entail the ruin of the British Empire. Only  a few wise political economists, 
"literary men," like Adam Smith and Josiah Tucker, were far seeing enough to 
escape  this prodigious fallacy; even Chatham was misled by it. It was not 
understood that English America and English Britain  were bound together by 
commercial and social ties so strong that no question of political union or 
severance could perma- nently affect them. It was not foreseen that within a 
century the dealings of Great Britain with the independant United  States would 
far exceed her dealings with the rest of the world. On the contrary, it was 
believed that if political  independence were condeded to the Americans, the 
whole stream of transatlantic commerce would somehow be diverted to  other parts 
of Europe, that the British naval power would forthwith decay, and

p.6

that England would sink from her imperial position into such a mere insular 
nation as that over which Henry VIII.  had ruled. So greatly did men overrate 
political conditions; so far were they from appreciating those economic 
conditions  which are so much more deep-seated and essential.

Under these circumstances, the only people in England who were willing to 
concede the independence of the United  States were the Rockingham Whigs and 
these were now in a small minority. Lord Rockingham and his friends, with Burke  
as their leader, had always condemned the harsh and stupid policy of the 
government toward America, and they were  now ready to condede independence 
because they were convinced that conciliation was no longer practicable. Lord  
Chatham, on the other hand, with his section of the Whig party, while even more 
emphatically condemning the policy  of the government, still clung to the hope 
of conciliation, and could not bear to think of the disruption of the  empire. 
But with the Tory party, which had all along supported the government, the war 
was still popular, and no  calamity seemed so great as the loss of the American 
colonies. Most of the country squires believed in crushing  out rebellion, no 
matter where it occurred or for what reason, and this view was almost 
unamimously taken by the  clergy. In the House of Lords, none were so 
bloodthirsty as the bishops, and country parsons preached from all the  texts of 
the Old Testament which refer to smiting Jehovah's enemies hip and thigh. The 
trading classes in the large  towns,

p.7

and the few manufacturers who had come upon the scene, were so afraid of losing 
the American market that they were  ready to vote men and money without stint. 
The town of Manchester even raised and equipped two regiments at its own  
expense. Thus while the great majority of the British nation believed that 
America must be retained at whatever cost,  a majority of this majority believed 
that it must be conquered before it could be conciliated or reasoned with; and  
this was the opinion which had thus far found favour with Lord North and 
controlled the policy of the government.  We may imagine, then, the unspeakable 
amazement of the House of Commons on the 17th of February, 1778, when Lord North  
arose in his place and moved that every one of the points for which Samuel Adams 
and his friends had zealously contended,  from the passage ot the Stamp Act to 
the breaking out of war, should at once be conceded forever and without further  
parley. By the bill which he now proceeded to read, the famous Tea Act and the 
act for changing the constitution of  Massachusetts were unconditionally 
repealed. It was furthermore declared tht Parliament would renounce forever the 
right  of raising a revenue in America; and it was provided that commissioners 
should be sent over to treat with Congress, armed  with full powers for 
negotiating a peace. Pending the negotiations the commissioners might proclaim a 
truce, and might  suspend the operation of any act of Parliament relating to 
America which had been   

p.8

passed since 1763. They might also proclaim complete amnesty for all political 
offenses. So complete a political  somersault has seldom been turned by an 
English minister, and the speech in which Lord North defended himself was  
worthy of the occasion. Instead of resigning when he saw that his policy had 
proved a failure, as an English minister  would naturally do, he suddenly 
shifted his ground, and adopted the policy which the opposition had urged in 
vain  against him three years before, and which, if then adopted, would 
unquestionably have prevented bloodshed. Not only  did he thus shift his ground, 
but he declared that this policy of conciliation was really the one which he had 
favoured  from the beginning. There was more truth in this than appeared at the 
moment, for in more than one instance Lord North  had, with culpable weakness, 
carried out the king's policy in defiance of his own convictions. It was in 
vain, however,  that he sought to clear himself of responsibility for the Tea 
Act, the oppressive edicts of 1774, and the recent events  in America generally. 
The House received his bill and his speech in profound silence. Disgust and 
dejection filled every  bosom, yet no one could very well help voting for the 
measures.


The Tories, already chagrined by the bitter news from Saratoga, were enraged at 
being thus required to abandon all the  ground for which they had been fighting, 
yet no way seemed open for them but to follow the their leader. The Whigs were  
vexed at seeing the wind taken out of their sails, but they could not in honour 
oppose a policy

p.9 

which they had always earnestly supported. All sat for some moments in grim, 
melancholy silence, till Charles Fox, arising,  sarcastically began his speech 
by congratulating his Whig friends on having gained such a powerful and 
unexpected ally in  the prime minister. Taunts and innuendoes flew back and 
forth across the House. From the Tory side came sullen cries that  the country 
was betrayed, while from among the Whigs the premier was asked if he supposed 
himself armed with the spear of  Archilles, which could heal the wounds tht 
itself had made. It was very pointedly hinted that the proposed measures would  
not be likely to produce much effect upon the Americans unless accompanied by 
Lord North's resignation, since, coming from  him, they would come as from a 
tainted spring. But in spite of all this ill-feeling the bill was passed, and 
the same reasons  which had operated here carried it also through the House of 
Lords. On the 11th of March it received the royal signature,  and three 
commissioners were immediately appointed to convey information of this action to 
Congress, and make arrangements  for a treaty of peace.  The conciliatory policy 
of Lord North had come at least two years too late. The American leaders were 
now unwilling to  consider the question of reunion with the mother-country upon 
any terms; and even before the extraordinary scene in Parliament  which we have 
just witnessed, a treaty had been made with France, by which the Americans 
solemnly agreed, in consideration  of armed support

p.10

to be furnished by that power, never to entertain proposals of peace from Great 
Britain, until their independence should be  acknowledged, and never to conclude 
a treaty of peace except with the concurrence of their new ally. the French 
government  had secretly assisted the Americans as early as the summer of 1776 
by occasional loans of money, and by receiving American  privateers in French 
ports. The longer Great Britain and her colonies could be kept weakening each 
other by warfare, the  greater the hope that France might as time be enabled to 
step in and regain her lost maritime empire. But it was no part of  French 
policy to take an active share in the struggle until the proper moment should 
come for reaping some decisive material  advantage. At the beginning of the year 
1778 that moment seemed to arrive. The capture of Burgoyne and the masterly 
strategy  which Washington had shown, in spite of his ill-success on the field, 
had furnished convincing proof that the American alliance  was worth having. At 
the same time, the announcement that Lord North was about to bring in 
conciliatory measures indicated that  the British government was weakening in 
its purpose. Should such measures succeed in conciliating the Americans and in 
bringing  about a firm reunion with the mother-country, the schemes of France 
would be irretrievably ruined. Now, therefore, was the  golden opportunity, and 
France was not slow to seize it. On the 6th of February the treaty with the 
United States was signed  in Paris.

p.11

By a special article it was stipulated that Spain might enter into the alliance 
at her earliest convenience. Just now, too,  Frederick the Great publicly opened 
the port of Dantzie to American cruisers and prohibited Hessian soldiers from 
passing  through his dominions to the seaboard, while he wrote to Franklin in 
Paris that he should probably soon follow the king of  France in recognizing the 
independence of the United States.

Rumours of all these things kept coming to England while the conciliatory 
measures were passing through Parliament, and on  the 13th of March two days 
after those measures had become law, the action of France was formally 
communicated to the British  government and war was instantly declared.

The situation of England seemed desperate. With one army lost in America, with 
the recruiting ground in Germany barred against  her, with a debt piling up at 
the rate of a million dollars a week, and with a very inadequate force of troops 
at home in case  of sudden invasion, she was now called upon to contend with the 
whole maritime power of France, to which that of Spain was  certain soon to be 
added,and to crown all, the government had just written its own condemnation by 
confessing before the world  that its policy toward America, which had been the 
cause of all this mischief, was impracticable as well as unrighteous.

At this terrible moment the eyes of all England were turned upon one great man, 
old now and wasted by disease, but the fire of  whose genius still burned bright 
and clear. The government 
p.12

must be changed, and in the Earl of Chatham the country had still a leader whose 
very name was synonymous with victory. Not  thus had matters gone in the 
glorious days of Quiberon and Minden and Quebec, when his skilful hand was at 
the helm, and every  heart in England and America beat high with the 
consciousness of worth ends achieved by well directed valour. To whom but 
Chatham  should appeal be made to repair the drooping fortunes of the empire? It 
was in hands alone that a conciliatory policy could have  any chance of success. 
From the first he had been the consistent advocate of the constitutional rights 
of the Americans; and  throughout America he was the object of veneration no 
less hearty and enthusiastic than that which was accorded to Washington  
himself.

Overtures that would be laughed at as coming from North would at least find 
respectful hearing if urged by Chatham. On the other  hand, should the day for 
conciliation have irrevocably passed by, the magic of his name was of itself 
sufficient to create a panic  in France, while in England it would kindle that 
popular enthusiasm which is of itself the best guarantee of success. In Germany,  
too, the remembrance of the priceless services he had rendered could not but 
dispel the hostile feeling with which Frederick had  regarded England since the 
accession of George III. Moved by such toughts as these, statesmen of all 
parties beginning with Lord  North himself, implored the king to form a new 
ministry under Chatham. Lord Mansfield, his bitterest enemy, for once declared

p.13

without Chatham at the helm the ship of state must founder, and his words were 
echoed by Bute and the young  George Grenville. At the opposite extreme of 
politics, the Duke of Richmond, who had long since made up his  mind that the 
colonies must be allowed to go, declared, nevertheless, that if it were to be 
Chatham who should  see fit to make another attempt to retain them, he would aid 
him in every possible way. The press teemed with  expressions of the popular 
faith in Chatham, and everyone impatiently wondered that the king should lose a 
day  in calling to the head of affairs the only man who could save the country.  
But all this unanimity of public opinion went for nothing with the selfish and 
obdurate king. All the old  reasons for keeping Chatham out of office had now 
vanished, so far as the American question was concerned;  for by consenting to 
North's conciliatory measures the king had virtually come over to Chatham's 
position,  and as regarded the separation of the colonies from the mother-
country, Chatham was no less unwilling than  the king to admit the necessity of 
such a step. Indeed, the policy upon which the king had now been obliged  to 
enter absolutely demanded Chatham as its exponent instead of North. Everybody 
saw this, and no doubt the  king saw it himself, but it had no weight with him 
in the presence of personal considerations. He hated  Chatham with all the 
ferocity of hatred that a mean and rancorous spirit can feel toward one that is 
generous  and noble; and he well knew

p.14

that besides that, with that statesman at the head of affairs, his own share in 
the government  administered in accordance with the policy of a responsible 
minister, and in disregard of his  own irresponsible whims, was a humiliation to 
which he was not yet ready to submit. For eight  years now, by coaxing and 
bullying the frivolous North, he had contrived to keep the reins in  his own 
hands; and having so long tasted the sweets of power, he was resolved in future 
to have  none but milksops for his ministers. In face of these personal 
considerations the welfare of the  nation was of little account to him.* He flew 
into a rage. No power in heaven or earth, he said,  should ever make him stoop 
to trat with "Lord Chatham and his crew;" he refused to be "shackled  by those 
desperate men" and "made a slave for the remainder of his days." Rather than 
yield to  the wishes of his people at this solemn crisis, he would submit to 
lose his crown. Better thus,  he added, than to wear it in bondage and disgrace.  
In spite of the royal wrath, however, the popular demand for a change of 
government was too strong  to be resisted. But for Lord Chatham's sudden death, 
a few weeks later, he would doubtless have  been called upon to fill the 
position which North was so anxious to relinquish. The king would have  had to 
swallow his resentment, as he was afterwards obliged to do in 1782.



*"This episode appears to me the most criminal in the whole reign of George 
III., and in my own  judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led 
Charles I. to the scaffold." (Lecky, History  of England in the Eighteenth 
Century, vol. iv. p. 83.)

p.15

Had Chatham now become prime minister, it was his design to follow up the repeal 
of all obnoxious  legislation concerning America by withdrawing every British 
soldier from our soil and attacking France  with might and main as in the Seven 
Years' War, on the ocean and through Germany, where the invincible  Ferdinand of 
Brunswick was again to lead the armies of Great Britain.

In America such a policy could hardly have failed to strengthen not only the 
loyalists and waverers,  but also the patriots of conciliatory mould, such as 
Dickinson and Robert Morris. Nor was the moment  an inopportune one. Many 
Americans, who were earnest in withstanding the legislative encroachments of  
Parliament, had formerly been alienated from the popular cause by what they 
deemed the needlessly radical  step of the Declaration of Independence. Many 
others were now alienated by the French alliance. In New  England, the chief 
strong-hold of the revolutionary party, many people were disgusted at an 
alliance with  the Catholic and despotic power which in days gone by had so 
often let loose the Indian hell-hounds upon  their frontier. The treaty with 
France was indeed a marriage of convenience rather than of affection. The  
American leaders, even while arranging it, dreaded the revulsion of feeling that 
might ensue in the country  at large; and their dread was the legitimate hope of 
Chatham. To return to the state of things which had  existed previous to 1765 
would no doubt be impossible. Independence of some sort must be con-

p.16

ceded, and in this Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond were unquestionably 
right. But Chatham was  in no wise foolish in hoping that some sort of federal 
bond might be established which should maintain  Americans and British in 
perpetual alliance, and while granting full legislative autonomy to the colonies  
singly or combined, should prevent the people of either country from ever 
forgetting that the Americans were  English. There was at least a chance that 
this noble policy might succeed, and until the trial should have  been made he 
would not willingly consent to a step that seemed certain to wreck the empire 
his genius had  won for England. But death now stepped in to simplify the 
situation in the old ruthless way.

The Duke of Richmond, anxious to bring matters to an issue, gave notice that on 
the 7th of April he should  move that the royal fleets and armies should be 
instantly withdrawn from America, and peace be mae on  whatever terms Congress 
might see fit to accept. Such at least was the practical purport of the motion.  
For such an unconditional surrender Chatham was not yet ready, and on the 
appointed day he got up from  his sick-bed and came into the House of Lords to 
argue against the motion. Wrapped in flannel bandages  and leaning upon crutches 
his dark eyes in their brilliancy enhancing the pallor of his careworn face,  as 
he entered the House, supported on the one side by his son-in-law, Lord Mahon, 
and on the other by  that younger man who was soon to add fresh glory to the 
name of William Pitt, the peers all started to 

p.17

their feet, and remained standing until he had taken his place. In broken 
sentences, with strange flashes  of eloquence which had once held captive ear 
and heart, he protested against the hasty adoption of a measure  which simply 
prostrated the dignity of England before its ancient enemy, the House of 
Bourbon. The Duke of  Richmond's answer, reverently and delicately worded, urged 
that while the magic of Chatham's name could work  anything short of miracles, 
yet only a miracle could now relieve them from the dire necessity of abandoning  
America. The earl rose to reply, but his overwrought frame gave way, and he sank 
in a swoon upon the floor.  All business was at once adjourned. The peers, with 
eager sympathy came crowding up to offer assistnce and  the unconscious 
statesman was carried in the arms of his friends to a house nearby, whence in a 
few days he  was removed to his home at Hayes. There, after lingering between 
life and death for several weeks, on the  11th of May, and in the seventieth 
year of his age, Lord Chatham breathed his last.

The man thus struck down, like a soldier at his post, was one whom Americans no 
less than Englishmen  have delighted to honour. The personal fascination which 
he exerted in his life time is something we  can no longer know; but as the 
field of modern history expands till it covers the globe, we find  ourselves 
better able than his contemporaries to comprehend the part which he played at 
one of the  most critical moments of the career of mankind. For simple 
magnitude, the preponderance of the English  race in the world

p.18

has come now to be the most striking fact in human history; and when we consider 
all that is implied  in this growing preponderance of an industrial civilization 
over other civilizations of relatively  archaic and militant type, we find 
reason to believe that among historic events it is the most teeming  with mighty 
consequences to be witnessed by a distant future. With no other historic 
personage are the  beginnings of this supremacy of the English race so closely 
associated as with the elder William Pitt.  It was he who planned the victories 
which gave England the dominion of the sea, and which, rescuing  India from the 
anarchy of centuries, prepared it to become the seat of a new civilization, at 
once the  apt pupil and the suggestive teacher of modern Europe. It was he who, 
by driving the French from America  cleared the way for the peaceful overflow of 
our industrial civilizaton through the valley of the  Mississippi; saving us 
from the political dangers which chronic warfare might otherwise have entailed,  
and insuring us the ultimate control of the fairest part of this continent. To 
his valiant and skilful  lieutenants by sea and land, to such great men as 
Hawke, and Clive and Wolfe, belong the credit of executing  the details; it was 
the genius of Pitt that conceived and superintended the prodigious scheme as a 
connected  whole. Alone among the Englishmen of his time, Pitt looked with 
prophetic gaze into the mysterious future  of colonial history, and saw the 
meaning of the creation of a new and greater Europe in the outlying regions  of 
the earth; and through his triumphs it was decided that this new and

p.19

greater Europe should become for the most part a new and greater England - a 
world of self-government and  of freedom of thought and speech. While his 
plitical vision thus embraced the uttermost parts of the globe,  his action in 
the centre of Europe helped to bring about results the importance of which we 
are now beginning  to appreciate. From the wreck of all Germany in that horrible 
war of religion which filled one third of the  seventeenth century, a new 
Protestant power had slowly emerged and grown apace, till in Pitt's time, for  
various reasons, dynastic, personal and political - it had drawn down upon 
itself the vengeance of all  the reactionary countries of Europe. Had the 
coalition succeeded, the only considerable Protestant power  on the continent 
would have been destroyed, and the anarchy which had followed the Thirty Years' 
War  might have been renewed. The stupid George II., who could see in Prussia 
nothing but a rival of Hanover,  was already preparing to join the alliance 
against Frederick when Pitt overruled him and threw the weight  of England into 
the other side of the scale. The same act which thus averted the destruction of 
Prussia  secured to England a most efficient ally in her struggle with France. 
Of this wise policy we now see the  fruits in that renovated German Empire which 
has come to be the strongest power on the continent of Europe,  which is daily 
establishing fresh bonds of sympathy with the people of the United States, and 
whose  political interests are daily growing more and more visibly identical 
with those of Great Britain. As  in days to come the solidarity of the 

p.20

Teutonic race in its three great nationalities - America, England and Germany, 
becomes more and more  clearly manifest, the more will the student of history be 
impressed with the wonderful fact that the  founding of modern Germany, the 
maritime supremacy of England and the winning of the Mississippi valley  for the 
English-speaking America were but the different phases of one historic event, 
coherent parts  of the one vast conception which marks its author as the 
grandest of modern statesmen. As the lapse of  time carries us far enough from 
the eighteenth century to study it in its true proportions, the figure  of 
Chatham in the annals of the Teutonic race will appear no less great and 
commanding than the figure  of Charlemagne a thousand years before.

But Chatham is interesting to Americans not only as the eloquent defender in our 
revolutionary struggle,  not only as standing in the forefront of that vast 
future in which we are to play so important a part,  but also as the first 
British statesman whose political thinking was of a truly American type. Pitt 
was  above all things the man of the people, and it has been well said that his 
title of the "Great Commoner"  marks in itself a political revolution. When the 
king and the Old Whig lords sought to withstand him in  the cabinet, he could 
say with truth, "It is the people who have sent me here." He was the first to  
discover the fact that the development of trade and manufactures, due chiefly to 
the colonial expansion  of England, had brought into existence an important 
class of society, for which neither the

p.21 

Tory nor the Old Whig schemes of government had made provision. He was the first 
to see the absurdity  of such towns as Leeds and Manchester going without 
representation, and he began in 1745 the agitation  for parliamentary reform 
which was first successful in 1832. In the celebrated case of Wilkes, while  
openly expressing his detestation of the man, he successfully defended the 
rights of constituencies  against the tyrranny of the House of Commons. Against 
the fierce opposition of Lord Mansfield, he  maintained inviolate the liberty of 
every Englishman to publish his opinions. He overthrew the abuse  of arbitrary 
imprisonment by general warrants. He ended the chronic troubles of Scotland by 
taking  the Highlanders into his confidence and raising regiments from them for 
the regular army. In this  intense devotion to liberty and to the rights of man, 
Pitt was actuated as much by his earnest,  sympathetic nature as by the 
clearness and breadth of his intelligence. In his austere purity of  character, 
as in his intensity of conviction, he was an enigma to sceptical and frivolous 
people  in his own time. Cromwell or Milton would have understood him much 
better than did Horace Walpole,  to whom his haughty mien and soaring language 
seemed like theatrical affectation. But this grandiose  bearing was nothing but 
the natural expression of that elevation of soul which, lighted by a rich  
poetic imagination and fired by the glow of passion beneath, made his eloquence 
the most impressive  that has ever been heard in England. He was soaring in 
outward demeanour

p.22

only as his mind habitually dwelt with strong emotion upon great thoughts and 
noble deeds. He was  the incarnation of all that is lofty and aspiring in human 
nature, and his sublime figure, raised  above the grave in the northern transept 
of Westminster Abbey, with its eager outstreched arm, still  seems to be urging 
on his countrymen in the path of duty and glory.  By the death of Chatham the 
obstacles which had beset the king were suddenly removed. On the morning  after 
the pathetic scene in the House of Lords, he wrote with ill concealed glee to 
North, "May not  the political exit of Lord Chatham incline you to continue at 
the head of my affairs?" North was very  unwilling to remain, but it was 
difficult to find any one who could form a goverment in his place.  Among the 
New Whigs, now that Chatham was gone, Lord Shelburne was the most prominent; but 
he was a  man who, in spite of great talents, never succeeded in winning the 
confidence either of the politicians  or of the people. He was a warm friend to 
the American cause, but no one supposed him equal to the  difficult task which 
Chatham would have undertaken, of pacifying the American people. The Old Whigs,  
under Lord Rockingham, had committed themselves to the full independence of the 
United States, and for  this the people of England were not yet prepared. Under 
the circumstances, there seemed to be nothing  for Lord North to do but remain 
in office. The king was delighted, and his party

p.23

appeared to have gained strength from the indignation aroused by the alliance of 
the Americans with  France. It was strengthened still more by the positive 
refusal of Congress to treat with the commissioners  sent over by Lord North. 
The commissioners arrived in America in June, and remained until October, 
without  effecting anything. Congress refused to entertain any propositions 
whatever from Great Britain until the  independence of the United States should 
first be acknowledged. Copies of Lord North's conciliatory bills  were published 
by order of Congress, and scattered broadcast over the country. They were 
everywhere  greeted with derision; at one town in Rhode Island they were 
publicly burned under a gallows which had  been erected for the occasion. After 
fruitlessly trying all the devices of flattery and intrigue, the  commissioners 
lost their temper; and just before sailing for England they issued a farewell 
manifesto,  in which they treated the American people with exemplary punishment 
for their contumacy. The conduct of  the war, they said, was now to be changed; 
these obstinate rebels were to be made to suffer the extremes  of distress, and 
no mercy was to be shown them. Congress instantly published this document, and 
it was  received with somewhat more derision than the conciliatory bills had 
been. Under the circumstances of  that day, the threat could have but one 
meaning. It meant arson along the coasts at the hands of the  British fleet, and 
murder on the frontiers at the hands of Indian auxi-

p.24

iaries. The commissioners sought to justify their manifesto before Parliament, 
and one of them  vehemently declared that if all hell could be let loose against 
these rebels, he should approve  of the measure. "The proclamation," said he, 
"certainly does mean a war of desolation: it can mean  nothing else." Lord 
Rockingham denounced the policy of the manifesto, and few were found in  
Parliament willing to support it openly. This barbarous policy however, was 
neither more nor  less than that which Lord George Germaine had deliberately 
made up his mind to pursue for the  remainder of the war. Giving up the problem 
of conquering the Americans by systematic warfare,  he thought it worth while to 
do as much damage and inflict as much suffering as possible, in  the hope that 
by and by the spirit of the people might be broken and their patience worn out.  
No policy could be more repugnant to the amiable soul of Lord North, but his 
false position  obliged him passively to sanction much that he did not like. 
Besides this plan for tiring out  the people, it was designed to conduct a 
systematic expedition against Virginia and the Carolinas,  in order to detach 
these states from the rest of the confederacy.

Should it be found necessary, after all, to acknowledge the independence of the 
United States,  it seemed worthwhile at least to cut down their territory as 
much as possible, and save to the  British Crown these rich countries of rice 
and indigo and tobacco. Such was the plan now proposed  by Germaine and adopted 
by the ministry of which he was a member.


Table of Contents



The American Revolution, Vol. 2
Chapter 8

CHAPTER IX.
VALLEY FORGE.


p.25

Lord George Germaine's scheme for tiring out the Americans could not seem 
altogether hopeless.  Though from a military point of view the honours of the 
war thus far remained with them, yet the  losses and suffering had been very 
great. The disturbance of trade was felt even more severely  in American than in 
England, and it was further exacerbated by the evils of a depreciated currency.  
The country had entered into the war heavily handicapped by the voluntary 
stoppage of importation  which had prevailed for several years. The war had cut 
off New England from the Newfoundland  fisheries and the trade had been nearly 
annihilated by British cruisers. The problem of managing  the expenses of a 
great war was something quite new to the Americans, and the consequent waste  
and extravagance were com-placated and enhanced by the curse of paper money. 
Congress, as a mere  advisory body, could only recommend to the various states 
the measures of taxation which were  deemed nec-essary for the support of the 
army. It had no authority to raise taxes in any state,  nor had it any power to 
constrain the government of a state

p.26

to raise taxes. The states were accordingly all delinquent, and there was no 
resources left for  Congress already owed more than forty million dollars and 
during the first half of the year 1778  the issues of paper money amounted to 
twenty-three millions. The depreciation had already become  alarming, and the 
most zealous law-making was of course powerless to stop it.

Until toward the close of the Revolutionary War, indeed, the United States had 
no regularly organized  government. At the time of the Declaration of 
Independence a committee had been appointed by  Congress to prepare articles of 
confederation, to be submitted to the states for their approval.  These articles 
were ready by the summer of 1778, but it was not until the spring of 1781 that 
all  the states had signed them. While the thirteen distinct sover-eignties in 
the United States were  visible in clear outline, the central government was 
something was something very shadowy and  ill-defined. Under these 
circumstances, the military efficiency of the people was reduced to a  minimum. 
The country never put forth more than a small fraction of its available 
strength.  Everything suffered from the want of organization. In spite of the 
popular ardour, which never  seems to have been deficient when opportunities 
came for testing it, there was almost as much  difficulty in keeping up the 
numbers of the army by enlistment as in providing equipment,  sustenance, and 
pay for the soldiers when once enlisted. The army of 80,000 men which Congress  
had devised in the

p.27

preceding year, had never existed except on paper. The action of Congress had 
not, indeed,  been barren of results, but it had fallen far short of the end 
proposed. During the campaigns  of 1777 the army of Washington had never 
exceeded 11,000 men; while of the 20,000 or more who  witnessed the surrender of 
Burgoyne, at least half were local militia, assembled merely to meet  the 
exigencies of the moment. The whole country, indeed, cherished such a horror of 
armies that  it was unjust even to the necessary instrument by which its 
independence was to be won; and it  sympathized with Congress in the niggardly 
policy which, by discouraging pensions, endangered  the future of brave and 
skilful officers who were devoting the best years of their lives to  the public 
service. Washington's earnest efforts to secure for retired officers the promise 
of  half pay for life succeeded only in obtaining it for the term of seven 
years. The excessive  dread of a standing army made it difficult to procure long 
enlistments, and the frequent changes  in the militia, besides being ruinous to 
discipline, entailed a sad waste of equipments and an  interruption of 
agriculture which added much to the burdens of the people.

Besides these evils, for which no one in particular was to blame, since they 
resulted so directly  from the general state of the country, the army suffered 
under other drawbacks, which were  immediately traceable to the incapacity of 
Congress. Just as afterwards, in the war of Secession,  the soldiers had often 
to pay the penalty for the sins of the politicians. A single specimen of  the 
ill-timed

p.28

meddling of Congress may serve as an example. At one of the most critical 
moments of the year 1777,  Congress made a complete change in the commissariat, 
which had hitherto been efficiently managed  by a single officer, Colonel John 
Trumball. Two commisary-generals were not appointed, one of whom  was to 
superintend the purchase and the other the issue of supplies; and the 
subordinate officers  of the department were to be accountable, not to their 
superiors, but directly to Congress. This  was done in spite of the earnest 
opposition of Washington, and the immediate result was just what  he expected. 
Colonel Trumbull, who had been retained as commissary-general for purchases, 
being  unable to do his work properly without controlling his subordinate 
officers, soon resigned his  place. The department was filled up with men 
selected without reference to fitness, and straightway  fell into hopeless 
confusion, whereby the movements of the armies were grievously crippled for the  
rest of the season. On the 22d of December, Washington was actually prevented 
from executing a most  promising movement against General Howe, because two 
brigades had become mutinous for want of food. For three days they had gone 
without bread, and for two days without meat. The quartermaster's department was 
in no better condition. The dreadful sufferings of Washington's army at Valley 
Forge have called forth the pity and the admiration of historians; but the point 
of the story is lost unless we realize that this misery resulted

p.29

from gross mismanagement rather than from the poverty of the country. As the 
poor soldiers marched on the 17th of December to their winter quarters, their 
route could be traced on the snow by the blood that oozed from bare, frost-
bitten feet; yet at the same moment, says Gordon, "hogsheads of shoes, stockings 
and clothing were lying at different places on the roads and in the woods, 
perishing for want of teams, or of money to pay the teamsters." On the 23d, 
Washington informed Congress that he had in camp 2,898 men "unfit for duty, 
because they were barefoot, and otherwise naked." For want of blankets, many 
were fain, "to sit up all night by fires, instead of taking comfortable rest in 
a natural and common way." Cold and hunger daily added many to the sick-list; 
and in the crowded hospitals, which were for the most part mere log-huts or 
frail wigwams woven of twisted boughs, men sometimes died for want of straw to 
put between themselves and the frozen ground on which they lay. In the 
deficiency of oxen and draft-horses, gallant men volunteered to serve as beasts 
of burden, and, yoking themselves to wagons, dragged into camp such meagre 
supplies as they could obtain for their sick and exhausted comrades. So great 
was the distress that there were times when, in case of an attack by the enemy, 
scarcely two thousand men could have been got under arms. When one thinks of 
these sad consequences wrought by a negligent quartermaster and a deranged 
commissariate, one is strongly reminded of the remark once made by the eccentric 
Charles Lee, when with caustic alliteration

p.30

described Congress as "a stable of stupid cattle that stumbled at every step." 
The mischief did not end, however, with the demoralization of the departments 
that were charged with supplying the army. In the appointment and promotion of 
general officers, Congress often acted upon principles which, if consistently 
carried out, would have ruined the efficiency of any army that ever existed. For 
absurdly irrelevant political reasons, brave and well-tried officers were passed 
by, and juniors, comparatively little known, were promoted over their heads. The 
case of Benedict Arnold was the most conspicuous and flagrant example of this. 
After his good name had been destroyed by his treason, it became customary for 
historians to cite the restiveness of Arnold under such treatment as one more 
proof of his innate wickedness. But Arnold was not the only officer who was 
sensitive about his rank. In June, 1777, it was rumoured about Washington's camp 
that a Frenchman named Ducoundray was about to be appointed to the chief command 
of the artillery, with the rank of major-general. Congress was continually beset 
with applications from vagrant foreign officers in quest of adventure; and such 
appointments as this were sometimes made, no doubt, in that provincial spirit 
which it has taken Americans so long to outgrow, and which sees all things 
European in rose-colour.

As soon as the report concerning Ducoudray reached the camp, Generals Greene, 
Sullivan, and Knox each wrote a letter to Congress proffering their resignations 
in case the report were true;

p.31

and the three letters were dated on the same day. Congress was very angry at 
this, and the three generals were abused without stint. The affair, however, was 
more serious than Congress had supposed, and the contemplated appointment of 
Ducoudray was not made.

The language of John Adams with reference to matters of this sort was more 
pungent than wise, and it gave clear expression to the principles upon which 
Congress too often acted. This "delicate point of honour" he stigmatized as "one 
of the most putrid corruptions of absolute monarchy." He would be glad to see 
Congress elect all the general officers annually; and if some great men should 
be obliged to go home in consequence of this, he did not believe the country 
would be ruined! The jealousy with which the several states insisted upon "a 
share of the general officers" in proportion to their respective quotas of 
troops, he characterized as a just and sound policy. It was upon this principle, 
he confessed, that many promotions had been made; and if the generals were so 
unreasonable as not to like it, they must "abide the consequences of their 
discontent."

Such expressions of feeling, in which John Adams found many sympathizers, bear 
curious testimony to the intense distrust with which our poor little army was 
regarded on account of the monarchical tendencies supposed to be necessarily 
inherent in a military organization.

This policy, which seemed so "sound" to John Adams, was simply an attempt to 
apply to the regimen of the army a set of principles fit only for the 
organization

p.32

of political assemblies; and if it had been consistently adopted, it is probable 
that Lord George Germaine's scheme of tiring the Americans out would have 
succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations.

But the most dangerous ground upon which Congress ventured during the whole 
course of the war was connected with the dark intriques of those officers who 
wished to have Washington removed from the chief command that Gates might be put 
in his place. We have seen how successful Gates had been in supplanting Schuyler 
on the eve of victory. Without having been under fire or directing any important 
operation, Gates had carried off the laurels of the northern campaign. From many 
persons, no doubt, he got credit even for what had happened before he joined the 
army, on the 19th of August. His appointment dated from the 2d, before either 
the victory of Stark or the discomfiture of St. Leger; and it was easy for 
people to put dates together uncritically and say that before the 2d of August, 
Burgoyne had continued to advance into the country and nothing could check him 
until after Gates had been appointed to command. The very air rang with the 
praises of Gates and his weak head was not unnaturally turned with so much 
applause. In his dispatches announcing the surrender of Burgoyne, he not only 
forgot to mention the names of Arnold and Morgan, who had won for him the 
decisive victory, but he even seemed to forget that he was serving under a 
command-in-chief, for he sent his dispatches directly to Congress,

p.33

leaving Washington to learn of the event through hearsay. Thirteen days after 
the surrender, Washington wrote to Gates, congratulating him upon his success. 
"At the same time," said the letter, "I cannot but regret that a matter of such 
magnitude and so interesting to our general operations, should have reached me 
by report only, or through the channels of letters not bearing that authencity 
which the importance of it required, and which it woould have received by a line 
over your signature stating the simple truth."

But worse than this, Gates kept his victorious army idle at Saratoga after the 
whole line of the Hudson was cleared of the enemy, and would not send 
reinforcements to Washington. Congress so far upheld him in this as to order 
that Washington should not detach more than 2,000 men from the northern army 
without consulting Gates and Governor Clinton. It was only with difficulty that 
Washington, by sending Colonel Hamilton with a special message, succeeded in 
getting back Morgan with his riflemen. When reinforcements finally did arrive, 
it was too late. Had they come more promptly, Howe would probably have been 
unable to take the forts on the Delaware, without control of which he could not 
have stayed in Philadelphia. But the blame for the loss of the forts was by many 
people thrown upon Washington, whose recent defeats at Brandywine and Germantown 
were now commonly contrasted with the victories at the North.

The moment seemed propitious for Gates to try his peculiar strategy once more, 
and displace

p.34

Washington as he had already displaced Schuyler. Assistants were not wanting for 
this dirty work. Among the foreign adventurers then with the army was one Thomas 
Conway, an Irishman, who had been for a long time in the French service and 
coming over to America, had taken part in the Pennsylvania campaign. Washington 
had opposed Conway's claim for undue promotion, and the latter at once threw 
himself with such energy into the faction then forming against the commander-in-
chief that it soon came to be known as the "Conway Cabal."

the other principal members of the cabal were Thomas Mifflin, the quartermaster-
general and James Lovell, a delegate from Massachusetts who had been Schuyler's 
bitterest enemy in Congress. It was at one time reported that Samuel Adams was 
in sympathy with the cabal, and the charge has been repeated by many historians, 
but it seems to have originated in a malicious story set on foot by some of the 
friends of John Hancock. At the beginning of the war, Hancock, whose overweening 
vanity often marred his usefulness had hoped to be made commander-in-chief, and 
he never forgave Samuel Adams for preferring Washington for that position. In 
the autumn of 1777, Hancock resigned his position as president of Congress and 
was succeeded by Henry Laurens of South Carolina. On the day when Hancock took 
leave of Congress, a motion was made to present him with the thanks of that body 
in acknowledgement of his admirable discharge of his duty; but the New England 
delegates, who had not been altogether satisfied with

p.35

him, defeated the motion on general grounds, and established the principle that 
it was injudicious to pass such complimentary votes in the case of any 
president. This action threw Hancock into a rage, which was chiefly directed 
against Samuel Adams as the most prominent member of the delegation; and after 
his return to Boston it soon became evident that he had resolved to break with 
his old friend and patron. Artful stories, designed to injure Adams were in many 
instances traced to persons who were in close relation to Hancock. After the 
fall of the cabal, no more deadly stab could be dealt to the reputation of any 
man than to insinuate that he had given it aid or sympathy; and there is good 
ground for believing that such reports concerning Adams were industriously 
circulated by unscrupulous partisans of the angry Hancock. The story was revived 
at a later date by the friends of Hamilton and John Adams, but it has not been 
well sustained. The most plausible falsehoods however are those which are based 
upon misconstrued facts; and it is certain that Samuel Adams had not only 
favoured the appointment of Gates in the north, but he had sometimes spoken with 
impatience of the so-called Fabian policy of Washington.

In this he was like many other ardent patriots whose military knowledge was far 
from commensurate with their zeal. His cousin, John Adams, was even more 
outspoken. He declared himself "sick of Fabian systems." "My toast," he said, 
"is a short and violent war;" and he complained of the reverent affection which

p.36

the people felt for Washington as an "idolatry" dangerous to American liberty. 
It was by working upon such impatient moods as these, in which high-minded men 
like the Adamses sometimes indulged, that unscrupulous men like Gates hope to 
attain their ends.

The first-fruits of the cabal in Congress were seen in the reorganization of the 
Board of War in November, 1777. Mifflin was chosen a member of the board, and 
Gates was made its president, with permission to serve in the field should 
occasion require it. Gates was thus in a certain sense, placed over Washington's 
head; and soon afterward Conway was made inspector-general of the army, with the 
rank of major-general. In view of Washington's well-known opinions, the 
appointments of Mifflin and Conway might be regarded as an open declaration of 
hostility on the part of Congress. Some weeks before, in regard to the rumour 
that Conway was to be promoted, Washington had written, "It will be impossible 
for met to be of any further service, if such insuperable difficulties are 
thrown in my way." Such language might easily be understood as a conditional 
threat of resignation, and Conway's appointment was probably urged by the 
conspirators with the express intention of forcing Washington to resign. Should 
this affront prove ineffectual, they hoped, by dint of anonymous letters and 
base innuendoes, to make the commander's place too hot for him.

It was asserted tht Washington's army had all through the year outnumbered 
Howe's more than three to one. The distress

p.37

of the soldiers was laid at his door; the sole result, if not the sole object, 
of his many marches, according to James Lowell, was to wear out their shoes and 
stockings. As anonymous letter to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, 
dated from York, where Congress was sitting, observed, "We have wisdom, virtue 
and strength enough to save us, if they could be called into action. The 
northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a general at 
their head. The spirit of the southern army is no way inferior to the spirit of 
the northern. A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway would in a few weeks render them an 
irresistible body of men. Some of the contents of this letter ought to be made 
public, in order to awaken, enlighten and alarm our country." Henry sent this 
letter to Washington, who instantly recognized the well-know handwriting of Dr. 
Benjamin Rush. Another anonymous letter, sent to President Laurens, was still 
more emphatic: "It is a very great reproach to America to say there is only one 
general in it. The great success to the north ward was owing to a change of 
commanders; and the southern army would have been alike successful if a similar 
change had taken place. The people of America have been guilty of idolatry by 
making a man their God, and the God of heaven and earth will convince them by 
woful experience that he is only a man; for no good can be expected from our 
army until Baal and his worshipers are banished from camp." This mischievous 
letter was addressed to Congress, but, instead of laying it before that body, 
the high-minded Laurens sent it directly to Washington.

p.38

But the commander-in-chief was forewarned, and neither treacherous missives like 
these, nor the direct affronts of Congress were allowed to disturb his 
equanimity. Just before leaving Saratoga, Gates received from Conway a letter 
containing an allusion to Washington so terse and pointed as to be easily 
remembered and quoted and Gates showed this letter to his young confidant and 
aid-de-camp, Wilkinson. A few days afterward, when Wilkinson had reached York 
with the dispatches relating to Burgoyne's surrender, he fell in with a member 
of Lord Stirling's staff, and under the genial stimulus of Monongahela whiskey 
repeated the malicious sentence. Thus it came to Stirling's ears and he 
straightway communicated it to Washington by letter, saying that he should 
always deem it his duty to expose such wicked duplicity. Thus armed, Washington 
simply sent to Conway the following brief note:

"Sir, A letter which I received last night contained the following paragraph: 
'In a letter from General Conway to General Gates, he says, "Heaven has 
determined to save your country, or a weak General and bad counsellors would 
have ruined it." I am, sir, your humble servant, George Washington."

Conway knew not what sort of answer to make to this startling note. When Mifflin 
heard of it, he wrote at once to Gates, telling him that an extract from one of 
Conway's letters had fallen into Washington's hands, and advising him to take 
better care of his papers in future. All the plotters

p.39

were seriously alarmed; for their scheme was one which would not bear the light 
for a moment, and Washington's curt letter left them quite in the dark as to the 
extent of his knowledge. "There is scarcely a man living," protested Gates, "who 
takes greater care of his papers than I do. I never fail to lock them up and 
keep the key in my pocket." One thing was clear: there must be no delay in 
ascertaining how much Washington knew and where he got his knowledge. After four 
anxious days it ocurred to Gates that it must have been Washington's aid-de-
camp, Hamilton, who had stealthily gained access to his papers during his short 
visit to the northern camp. Filled with this idea, Gates chuckled as he thought 
he saw a way of diverting attention from the subject matter of the letters to 
the mode in which Washington had got possession of their contents. He sat down 
and wrote to the commander-in-chief, saying he had learned that some of Conway's 
confidential letters to himself had come into his excellency's hands: such 
letters must have been copied by stealth and he hoped his excellency would 
assist him in unearthing the wretch who prowled about and did such wicked 
things, for obviously it was unsafe to have such creatures in the camp; they 
might disclose precious secrets to the enemy. And so important did the matter 
seem that he sent a duplicate of the present letter to Congress, in order that 
every imaginable means might be adopted for detecting the culprit without a 
moment's delay. The purpose of this elaborate artifice was to create

p.40

in Congress, which as yet knew nothing of the matter, an impression unfavourable 
to Washington, by making it appear that he encouraged his aids-de-camp in prying 
into the portfolios of other generals. For, thought Gates, it is as clear as day 
that Hamilton was the man; nobody else could have done it.

But Gates's silly glee was short-lived. Washington discerned at a glance the 
treacherous purpose of the letter, and foiled it by the simple expedient of 
telling the plain truth. "Your letter," he replied, "came to my hand a few days 
ago, and, to my great surprise, informed me that a copy of it had been sent to 
Congress, for what reason I find myself unable to account; but as some end was 
doubtless intended to be answered by it, I am laid under the disagreeable 
necessity of returning my answere through the same channel, lest any member of 
that honourable body should harbour an unfavourable suspicion of my having 
practised some indirect means to come at the contents of the confidential 
letters between you and General Conway." After this ominous prelude, Washington 
went on to relate how Wilkinson had babbled over his cups and a certain sentence 
from one of Conway's letters had thereupon been transmitted to him by Lord 
Stirling. He had communicated this discovery to Conway, to let that officer know 
that his intriguing disposition was observed and watched. He had mentioned this 
to no one else but Lafayette, for he thought it indiscreet to let scandals arise 
in the army, and thereby "afford a gleam of hope to the enemy."

p.41

He had not known that Conway was in correspondence with Gates, and had even 
supposed that Wilkinson's information was given with Gates's sanction, and with 
friendly intent to forarm him against a secret enemy. "But in this," he 
disdainfully adds, "as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken."

So the schemer hd overreached himself. It was not Washington's aid-de-camp who 
had pried, but it was Gates's own aid who had blabbed. But for Gates's 
treacherous letter Washington would not even have suspected him; and, to crown 
all, he had only himself to thank for rashly blazoning before Congress a matter 
so little to his credit, and which Washington, in his generous discretion, would 
forever have kept secret. Amid this discomfiture, however, a single ray of hope 
could be discerned. It appeared that Washington had known nothing beyond the one 
sentence which had come to him as quoted in conversation by Wilkinson. A 
downright falsehood might now clear up the whole affair, and make Wilkinson the 
scapegoat for all the others. Gates accordingly wrote again to Washington, 
denying his intimacy with Conway, declaring that he had never received but a 
single letter from him, and solemnly protested that this letter contained no 
such paragraph as that of which Washington had been informed.

The information received through Wilkinson he denounced as a villainous slander. 
But these lies were too transparent to deceive anyone, for in his first letter 
Gates had implicitly admitted the exist-

p.42

ence of several letters between himself and Conway, and his manifest 
perturbation of spirit had shown that these letters contained remarks that he 
would not for the world have had Washington see. A cold and contemptuous reply 
from Washington made all this clear, and put Gates in a very uncomfortable 
position, from which there was no retreat.

When the matter came to the ears of Wilkinson, who had just been appointed 
secretary of the Board of War, and was on his way to Congress, his youthful 
blood boiled at once. He wrote bombastic letters to everybody and challenged 
Gates to deadly combat. A meeting was arranged for sunrise, behind the Episcopal 
church at York, with pistols. At the appointed hour, when all had arrived on the 
ground, the old general requested, through his second, an interview with his 
young antagonist, walked up a back street with him, burst into tears, called him 
his dear boy, and denied that he had ever made any injurious remarks about him. 
Wilkinson's wrath was thus assuaged for a moment, only to blaze forth presently 
with fresh violence, when he made inquiries of Washington, and was allowed to 
read the very letter inwhich his general had slandered him. He instantly wrote a 
letter to Congress, accusing Gates of treachery and falsehood, and resigned his 
position on the Board of War.

These revelations strengthened Washington in proportion as they showed the 
malice and duplicity of his enemies. About this time a pamphlet

p. 43

was published in London, and republished in New York, containing letters which 
purported to have been written by Washington to members of his family, and to 
have been found in the possession of a mulatto servant taken prisoner at Fort 
Lee. The letters, if genuine, would have proved their author to be a traitor to 
the American cause; but they were so bungling concocted that everyone knew them 
to be a forger, and their only effect was to strengthen Washington still more, 
while throwing discredit upon the cabal, with which many persons were inclined 
to connect them.

The army and the people were now becoming incensed at the plotters and the press 
began to ridicule them, while the reputation of Gates suffered greatly in 
Congress as the indications of his real character were brought to light. All 
that was necessary to complete the discomfiture of the cabal was a military 
fiasco and this was soon forthcoming. In order to detach Lafayette from 
Washington, a winter expedition against Canada was devised by the Board of War. 
Lafayette, a mere boy, scarcely twenty years old, was invited to take the 
command, with Conway for his chief lieutenant. It was said that the French 
population of Canada would be sure to welcome the high-born Frenchman as their 
deliverer from the British yoke; and it was further thought that the veteran 
Irish schemer might persuade his young commander to join the cabal and bring to 
it such support as might be gained from the French alliance, then

p.44

about to be completed. Congress was persuaded to authorize the expedition, and 
Washington was not consulted in the matter. But Lafayette knew his own mind 
better than was supposed. He would not accept the command until he had obtained 
Washington's consent, and then he made it an indispensible condition that Baron 
de Kalb who outranked Conway should accompany the expedition. These 
preliminaries having been arranged, the yount general went to York for his 
instructions. There he found Gates, surrounded by schemers and sycophants seated 
at a very different kind of dinner from that to which Lafayette had lately been 
used to at Valley Forge. Hilarious with wine, the company welcomed the new guest 
with acclamations. He was duly flattered and toasted, and a glorious campaign 
was predicted.

Gates assured him that on reaching Albany he would find 3,000 regulars ready to 
march, while powerful assistance was to be expected from the valiant Stark with 
his redoubtable Green Mountain Boys. The marguis listened with placid composure 
till his papers were brought to him and he felt it to be time to go. Then rising 
as if for a speech, while all eyes were turned upon him and breathless silence 
filled the room, he reminded the company that there was one toast which, in the 
generous excitement of the occasion, they had forgotten to drink, and he begged 
leave to propose the health of the commander-in-chief of the armies of the 
United States. The deep silence became still deeper. None dared refused the 
toast, "but 

p.45

some merely raised their glasses to their lips, while others cautiously put them 
down untasted." With the politest of bows and a scarcely perceptible shrug of 
the shoulder, the new commander of the northern army left the room, and mounted 
his horse to start for his headquarters in Albany.

When he got there, he found neither troops, supplies nor equipments in 
readiness. Of the army to which Burgoyne had surrendered, the militia had long 
since gone home, while most of the regulars had been withdrawn to Valley Forge 
or the highlands of the Hudson. Instead of 3,000 regulars which Gates had 
promised, barely 1,200 could be found, and these were in no wise clothed or 
equipped for a winter march through the wilderness. Between carousing and 
backbiting, the new Board of War had no time left to attend to its duties. Not 
an inch of the country but was known to Schuyler, Lincoln and Arnold, and they 
assured Lafayette that an invasion of Canada, under the circumstances would be 
worthy of Don Quixote. In view of the French alliance, moreover, the conquest of 
Canada had even ceased to seem desirable to the Americans; for when peace should 
be concluded the French might insist upon retaining it, in compensation for 
their services. The men of New England greatly preferred Great Britain to France 
as a neighbour, and accordingly Stark with his formidable Green Mountain Boys 
felt no interest whatever in the enterprise and not a dozen volunteers could be 
got together for love or money. The fiasco was so complete, and the scheme it-

p.46

self so emphatically condemned by public opinion, that Congress awoke from its 
infatuation. Lafayette and Kalb were glad to return to Valley Forge. Conway, who 
stayed behind, became indignant with Congress over some fancied slight, and sent 
a conditional threat of resignation, which, to his unspeakable amazement, was 
accepted unconditionally. In vain he urged that he had not meant exactly what he 
said, having lost the nice use of English during his long stay in France. His 
entreaties and objurgations fell upon deaf ears. In Congress the day of the 
cabal was over. Mifflin and Gates were removed from the Board of War. The latter 
was sent to take charge of the forts on the Hudson and cautioned agains 
forgetting that he was to report to the commander-in-chief. The cabal and its 
deeds having become the subject of common gossip, such friends as it had 
mustered now began stoutly to deny their connection with it. Conway himself was 
dangerously wounded a few months afterward in a duel with General Cadwallader, 
and, believing himself to on his death-bed, he wrote a very humble letter to 
Washington, expressing his sincere grief for having ever done or said anything 
with intent to injure so great and good a man. His wound proved not to be 
mortal, but on his recovery, finding himself generally despised and shunned, he 
returned to France and American history knew him no more.

Had Lord George Germaine been privy to the secrets of the Conway cabal, his hope 
of wearing out the American cause would have been sensibly strengthened.

p.47

There was really more danger in such intrigues than in an exhausted treasury, a 
half-starved army and defeat on the field. The people felt it to be so, and the 
events of the winter left a stain upon the reputation of the Continental 
Congress from which it never fully recovered. Congress had already lost the high 
personal consideration to which it was entitled at the outset. Such men as 
Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Jay, and Rutledge were now serving in 
other capacities. The legislature of the several states afforded a more 
promising career for able men than the Continental Congress, which had neither 
courts nor magistrates, nor any recognized position of sovereignty. The meetings 
of Congress were often attended by no more than ten or twelve members. Curious 
symptoms were visible which seemed to show that the sentiment of union between 
the states was weaker than it had been two years before. Instead of the phrase, 
"people of the United States," one begins in 1778, to hear of "inhabitants of 
these Confederated States." In the absence of any central sovereignty which 
could serve as the symbol of union, it began to be feared that the new nation 
might after all be conquered through its lack of political cohesion. Such fears 
came to cloud the rejoicings over the victory of Saratoga, as, at the end of 
1777, the Continental Congress began visibly to lose its place in public esteem, 
and sink, step by step into the utter degradation and impotence which was to 
overwhelm it before another ten years should have expired.

p.48

As the defeat of the Conway cabal marked the beginning of the decline of 
Congress, it marked at the same time the rise of Washington to a higher place in 
the hearts of the people than he had ever held before. As the silly intrigues 
against him recoiled upon their authors, men began to realize that it was far 
more upon his consummate sagacity and unselfish patriotism than upon anything 
that Congress could do that the country rested its hopes of success in the great 
enterprise which it had undertaken. As the nullity of Congress made it ever more 
apparent that the country as a whole was without a government, Washington stood 
forth more and more conspicuously as the living symbol of the union of the 
states.

In him and his work were centred the common hopes and the common interests of 
all the American people. There was no need of clothing him with extraordinary 
powers. During the last years of the war he came, through sheer weight of 
personal character to wield an influence like that which Perikles had wielded 
over the Athenians. He was all-powerful because he was "first in the hearts of 
his countrymen." Few men, since history began, had ever occupied so lofty a 
position; none ever made a more disinterested use of power. His arduous labours 
taught him to appreciate, better than any one else, the weakness entailed upon 
the country by the want of a stable central govenment. But when the war was 
over, and the political problem came into the foreground, instead of using this 
knowledge to make himself personally indispensable to the country, he bent all 
the weight

p.49

of his character and experience toward securing the adoption of such a federal 
constitution as should make anything like a dictatorship forever unnecessary and 
impossible.

CHAPTER X.
MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT.


p.50

During the dreary winter at Valley Forge, Washington busied himself in improving 
the organi-azation of his army. The fall of the Conway cabal removed many 
obstacles. Greene was per-suaded, somewhat against his wishes, to serve as 
quarter-master-general, and forthwith the duties of that important office were 
discharged with zeal and promptness. Conway's resigna-tion opened the way for a 
most auspicious change in the inspectorship of the army. Of all the foreign 
officers who served under Washington during the War for Independence, the Baron 
Von Steuben was in many respects the most important. Member of a noble family 
which for five centuries had been distinguished in the local annals of 
Magdeburg, Steuben was on of the best educated and most experienced soldiers of 
Germany. His grandfather, an able theo-logian, was well known as the author of a 
critical treatise on the New Testament. His uncle an eminent mathematician, had 
been the inventor of a new system of fortification. His father had seen half a 
century of honourable service in the corps of engineers. He had him-self held 
the rank of first lieutenant at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, 

p.51

and after excellent service in the battles of Prague, Rossbach and Kunersdorf he 
was raised to a position on the staff of Frederick the Great. At the end of the 
war, when the thrifty king reduced his army, and Blucher with other officers 
afterward famous left the service, Steuben retired to private life, with the 
honorary rank of General of the Circle of Swabia. For more than ten years he was 
grand marshal to the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen. Then he went travelling 
about Europe, until the spring of 1777 he arrived in Paris and became acquainted 
with Franklin and Beaumarchais. The American alliance was already secretly 
contemplated by the French ministry, and the astute Vergennes, knowing that the 
chief defect of our armies lay in their want of organi-zation and discipline, 
saw in the scientific German soldier an efficient instrument for remedying the 
evil. After much hesitation Steuben was persuaded to undertake the task. That 
his arrival upon the scene might excite no heart-burning among the American 
officers, the honorary rank which he held in Germany was translated by Vergennes 
into the rank of lieutenant-general as more eminent than any position existing 
in their own army except that of commander-in-chief.

Knowing no English, Steuben took with him as secretary and interpreter the 
youthful Pierre Duponceau, afterward famous as a lawyer, and still more famous 
as a philologist. One day, on shipboard, this gay young

p.52

Frenchman laid a wager that he would kiss the first Yankee girl he should meet 
on landing. So as they came ashore at Portsmouth on a frosty December day, he 
gravely stepped up to a pretty New Hampshire maiden who was passing by, and told 
her that before leaving his native land to fight for American freedom he had 
taken a vow to ask, in earnest victory, a kiss from the first lady he should 
meet. The prayer of chilvalry found favour in the eyes of the fair Puritan and 
the token of success was granted.

At Boston John Hancock furnished the party with sleighs, drivers and saddle-
horses for the inland journey of more than four hundred miles to York. During 
this cheerful journey, which it took three weeks to perform, Steuben's heart was 
warmed toward his new country by the reminiscences of the Seven Years' War which 
he frequently encountered. The name of Frederick was deservedly popular in 
America, and his familiar features decorated the sign-board of many a wayside 
inn, while on the coffee-room walls hung quaint prints with doggerel verses 
commemorating Rossbach and Leuthen along with Louisburg and Quebec. On arriving 
at York, the German general was received by Congress with distinguished honours; 
and this time the confidence given to a trained European soldier turned out to 
be well deserved. Throughout the war Steuben prove no less faithful than 
capable. He came to feel a genuine love for his adopted country and after the 
war was over, retiring to the romantic woodland near Oriskany, 

p.53

where so many families of German lineage were already settled, and where the 
state of New York presented him with a farm of sixteen thousand acres in 
acknowledgment of his services, he lived the quiet life of a country gentleman 
until his death in 1794. A little village some twelve miles north of the site of 
old Fort Stanwix still bears his name and marks the position of his estate.

After his interview with Congress, Steuben repaired at once to Valley Forge, 
where Washington was not slow in recognizing his ability; nor was Steuben, on 
the other hand, at a loss to perceive, in the ragged and motley army which he 
passed in review, the exist-ence of soldierly qualities which needed nothing so 
much as training. Disregarding the English prejudice which looked upon the 
drilling of soldiers as work fit only for sergeants, he took musket in hand and 
showed what was to be done. Alert and untiring, he worked from morning till 
night in showing the men how to advance, retreat, or change front without 
falling into disorder - how to perform, in short, all the rapid and accurrate 
movements for which the Prussian army had become so famous. It was a revelation 
to the American troops. Generals, colonels and captains were fired by the 
contagion of his example and his tremendous enthusiasm and for several months 
the camp was converted into a training-school, in which masters and pupils 
worked with incessant and furious energy. Steuben was struck with the quickness 
and with which the common soldiers

p.54

learned their lessons. He had a harmlessly choleric temper, which was part of 
his over-flowing vigour, and sometimes, when drilling an awkward squad, he would 
exhaust his stock of French and German oaths, and shout for his aid to come and 
curse the blockheads in English. "Viens, mon ami Walker," he would say, "viens, 
mon bon ami. Sacre-blue! Gott-vertamn de gaucherie of des badauts. Je ne puis 
plus; I can curse dem no more!" Yet in an incredibly short time, as he afterward 
wrote, these awkward fellows had acquired a military air, ahd learned how to 
carry their arms, and knew how to form into column, deploy, and execute 
manoeuvres with precision. In May, 1778, after three months of such work, 
Steuben was appointed inspector-general of the army, with the rank and pay of 
major-general. The reforms which he introduced were so far-reaching that after a 
year they were said to have saved more than 800,000 French livres to the United 
States. No accounts had been kept of arms and accoutrements, and owing to the 
careless good-nature which allowed every recruit to carry home his musket as a 
keepsake, there had been a loss of from five to eight thousand muskets annually. 
During the first year of Steuben's inspectorship less than twenty muskets were 
lost. Half of the arms at Valley Forge wer found by Steuben without bayonets. 
The American soldier had no faith in this weapon, because he did not know how to 
use it; when he did not throw it away, he adapted it to colinary purposes, 
holding on its point the beef which he roasted before his campfire.

p.55

Yet in little more than a year after Steuben's arrival we shall see an American 
column, without firing a gun, storm the works at Stony Point in one of the most 
spirited bayonet charges known to history.

Besides all this, it was Steuben who first taught the American army to 
understand the value of an efficient staff. The want of such a staff had been 
severely felt at the battle of Brandywine; but before the end of the war 
Washington had become provided with a staff that Frederick need not have 
despised. While busy with all these laborious reforms, the good baron found time 
to prepare a new code of discipline and tactics, based on Prussian experience, 
but adapted to the peculiar conditions of American warfare; and this excellent 
manual held its place, long after the death of its author, as the Blue Book of 
our army.

In this adaptation of means to ends, Steuben proved himself to be no martinet, 
but a thorough military scholar; he was able not only to teach, but to learn. 
And in the art of warfare there was one lesson which Europe now learned from 
America. In woodland fights with Indians, it had been found desirable to act in 
loose columns, which could easily separate to fall behind trees and reunite at 
brief notice; and in this way there had been developed a kind of light infantry 
peculiar to America, and especially adapted for skirm-ishing. It was light 
infantry of this sort that, in the hands of Arnold and Morgan, had twice won the 
day in the Saratoga campaign. Reduced to scientific shape by Steuben, and 
absorbed, with all the other

p.56

military knowledge of the age, by Napolean, these light-infantry tactics have 
come to play a great part on the European battlefields of the nineteenth 
century. Thus from the terrible winter at Valley Forge, in which the accumulated 
evils of congressional mismanagement had done their best to destroy the army, it 
came forth, nevertheless, stronger in organization and bolder in spirit than 
every before.

On the part of the enemy nothing had been done to molest it. The position at 
Valley Forge was a strong one and Sir William Howe found it easier to loiter in 
Philadelphia than to play a strategic game against Washington in the depths of 
an American winter. When Franklin at paris first heard the news that Howe had 
taken Philadelphia, knowing well how slight was the military value of the 
conquest, he observed that it would be more corrrect to say that Philadelphia 
had taken General Howe. And so it turned out, in more ways than one; for his 
conduct in going there at all was roundly blamed by the opposition in 
Parliament, and not a word was said in his behalf by Lord George Germaine. The 
campaign of 1777 had been such a bungling piece of work that none of the chief 
actors, save Burgoyne, was willing frankly to assume his share of responsibility 
for it. Sir William Howe did not care to disclose the secret of his peculiar 
obligations to the traitor Lee; and it would have ruined Lord George Germaine to 
have told the story of the dispatch that never was sent. Lord George, who was 
never noted for generosity, sought to screen himself by throwing

p.57

the blame for everything indiscriminately upon the two generals. Burgoyne, who 
sat in Parliament, defended himself ably and candidly; and when Howe heard what 
was going on, he sent in his resignation, in order that he too might go home and 
defend himself. Besides this, he had grown sick of the war, and was more than 
ever convinced that it must end in failure. On the 18th of May, Philadelphia was 
the scene of a grand farewell banquet, called the Mischianza, - a strange medley 
combining the modern parade with the mediaeval tournament, wherein seven silk-
clad knights of the Blended Rose and seven more of the Burning Mountain did 
amicably break lances in honour of fourteen blooming damsels dressed in Turkish 
trousers, while triumphal arches, surmounted by effigies of Fame, displayed 
inscriptions commemorating in fulsome Latin and French the glories of the 
departing general.

In these curious festivities savouring more strongly of Bruges in the fifteenth 
century than Philadelphia in the eighteenth, it was long after remembered that 
the most prominent parts were taken by the ill-starred Major Andre' and the 
beautiful Miss Margaret Shippen, who was soon to become the wife of Benedict 
Arnold. With such farewell ceremonies Sir William Howe set sail for England, and 
Sir Henry Clinton took his place as commander-in-chief of the British armies in 
America.

Washington's position at Valley Forge had held the British in check through the 
winter. They had derived no advantage from the possession of the "rebel 
capital," for such poor work as Congress

p.58

could do was as well done from York as from Philadelphia, and the political life 
of the United States was diffused from one end of the country to the other. The 
place was worth-less as a basis for military operations. It was harder to defend 
and harder to supply with food than the insular city of New York; and, moreover, 
a powerful French fleet, under Count d'Estaing, was approaching the American 
coast. With the control of the Delaware imperilled Philadelphia would soon 
become untenable, and, in accordance with instructions received from the 
ministry, Sir Henry Clinton prepared to evacuate the place and concentrate his 
forces at New York. His first intention was to go by water; but finding that he 
had not transports enough for his whole army, together with the Tory refugees 
who had put themselves under his protection, he changed his plan. The Tories, to 
the number of 3,000, with their personal effects, were sent on in the fleet, 
while the army, encumbered with twelve miles of baggage wagons, began its 
retreat across New Jersey. On the morning of the 18th of June, 1778, the rear-
guard of the British marched out of Philadelphia, and before sunset the American 
advance marched in and took possession of the city. General Arnold, whose 
crippled leg did not allow him to take the field, was put in command, and after 
a fortnight both Congress and the state government returned. Of the Tories who 
remained behind, twenty five were indicted under the laws of Pennsylvania, for 
the crime of offering aid to the enemy. Two Quakers,

p.59

who had actually conducted a party of British to a midnight attack upon an 
American outpost, were found guilty of treason and hanged. The other twenty-
three were either acquitted or pardoned. Across the river, seventeen Tories, 
convicted of treason under the laws of New Jersey, all received pardon from the 
governor. The British retreat from Philadelphia was regarded by the Americans as 
equivalent to a victory, and Washington was anxious to enhance the moral effect 
of it by a sudden blow which should cripple Sir Henry Clinton's army. In force 
he was about equal to the enemy, both armies now numbering about 15,000 while in 
equipment and discipline his men were better off than ever before. 
Unfortunately, the American army had just received one addition which went far 
to neutralize these advantages. The mischief-maker, Lee, had returned.

In the preceding summer the British Major-General Prescott had been captured in 
Rhode Island, and after a tedious negotiation of nine months Lee was exchanged 
for him. He arrived at Valley Forge in May, and as Washington had found a 
lenient interpretation for his outrageous conduct before his capture, while 
nothing whatever was known of his treason-able plot with the Howes, he naturally 
came back unquestioned to his old position as senior major-general of the army. 
It was a dangerous situation for the Americans to have such high command 
entrusted to such a villain.

When Philadelphia was evacuted, Lee first tried to throw Washington off on a 
false scent

p.60

by alleging reasons for believing that Clinton did not intend to retreat across 
New Jersey. Failing in this, he found reasons as plentiful as blackberries why 
the British army should not be followed up and harassed on its retreat. Then 
when Washington decided that an attack must be made he grew sulky and refused to 
conduct it. Washington was marching more rapidly than Clinton, on a line nearly 
parallel with him, to the northward, so that by the time the British general 
reached Allentown he found his adversary getting in front of him upon his line 
of retreat. Clinton had nothing to gain by fighting, if he could possibly avoid 
it, and accordingly he turned to the right, following the road which ran through 
Monmouth and Middletown to Sandy Hook. Washington now detached a force of about 
5,000 men to advance swiftly and cut off the enemy's rear, while he designed to 
come up and support the operation with the rest of his army. To Lee, as second 
in rank, the command of this advanced party properly belonged; but he declined 
to take it, on the ground that it was sure to be de-feated and Washington 
entrusted the movement to the youthful Lafayette, of the soundness of whose 
judgment he had already seen many proofs. But in the course of the night it 
occurred to Lee, whatever his miserable purpose may have been, that perhaps he 
might best accomplish it, after all, by taking the field. So he told Washington, 
next morning, that he had changed his mind and was anxious to take the command 
which he had just declined.

p.61

With extraordinary forbearance Washington granted his request, and arranged the 
affair with such tact as not to wound the feelings of Lafayette, who thus, 
unfortunately, lost the direction of the movement.

On the night of June 27th, the left wing of the British army, 8,000 strong, 
commanded by Lord Cornwallis, encamped near Monmouth Court House, on the road 
from Allentown. The right wing, of about equal strength, and composed chiefly of 
Hessians under Knyphausen, lay just beyond the Court House on the road to 
Middletown. In order of march the right wing took the lead, convoying the 
immense baggage train. The left wing, following in the rear, was the part 
exposed to danger, and with it stayed Sir Henry Clinton. The American advance 
under Lee, 6,000 strong lay about five miles northeast of the British line, and 
Washington, with the main body, was only three miles behind. Lee's orders from 
Washington were positive and explicit. He was to gain the flank of th British 
left wing and attack it vigorously, while Washington was to come up and complete 
its discomfiture. Lee's force was ample, in quantity and quality, for the task 
assigned it and there was fair ground for hope that the flower of the British 
army might thus be cut off and captured or destroyed. Since the war began there 
had hardly been such a golden opportunity.

Sunday, the 28th of June, was a day of fiery heat, the thermometer showing 98 
degrees in the shade. Early in the morning Clinton moved cautiously.

p.62

Knyphausen made all haste forward on the Middletown road, and the left wing 
followed till it had passed more than a mile beyond Monmouth Court House, when 
it found itself outflanked on the north by the American columns. Lee had 
advanced from Freehold church by the main road, crossing two deep rvines upon 
causeways; and now, while his left wing was folding about Cornwallis on the 
north, occupying superior ground, his centre, under Wayne, was close be-hind and 
his right, under Lafayette, had already passed the Court House, and was 
threatening the other end of the British line on the south. Cornwallis instantly 
changed front to meet the danger on the north, and a detachment was thrown down 
the road toward the Court House to check Lafayette. The British position was one 
of extreme peril, but the behaviour of the American commander now became very 
extraordinary. When Wayne was beginning his attack, he was ordered by Lee to 
hold back and simply make a feint, as the main attack was to be made in another 
quarter. While Wayne was wondering at this, the British troops coming down the 
road were seen directing their march so as to come between Wayne and Lafayette. 
It would be easy to check them, but the marquis had no sooner started than Lee 
ordered him back, murmering about its being impossible to stand against British 
soldiers.

Lafayette's suspicions were now aroused, and he sent a dispatch in all haste to 
Washington saying that his presence in the field was sorely needed. 

Map - The Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778

p.63

The army was bewildered. Fighting had hardly begun, but their position was 
obviously so good that the failure to make prompt use of it suggested some 
unknown danger. One of the divisions on the left was now ordered back by Lee, 
and the others, seeing this retrograde movement, and understanding it as the 
prelude to a general retreat, began likewise to fall back. All thus retreated, 
though without flurry or disorder, to the high ground just east of the second 
ravine which they had crossed in their advance. All the advantage of their 
offensive movement was thus thrown away without a struggle but the position they 
had now reached was excellent for a defensive fight. To the amazement of 
everybody, Lee ordered the retreat to be continued across the marshy ravine. As 
they crowded upon the causeway the ranks began to fall into some disorder. Many 
sank exhuasted from the heat. No one could tell from what they were fleeing, and 
the exultant ardour with which they had begun to en-fold the British line gave 
place to bitter disappointment, which vented itself in passionate curses. So 
they hurried on, with increasing disorder, till they approached the brink of the 
westerly ravine, where their craven commander met Washington riding up, pale 
with anger, looking like an avenging deity.

"What is the meaning of all this?" shouted Washington. His tone was so fierce 
and his look so threatening tht the traitor shook in his stirrups and could make 
no answer. When the question was repeated with yet greater fierceness, and 
further emphasized by a tremendous oath, he flew

p.64

into a rage, and complained at having been sent out to beard the whole British 
army. "I am very sorry," said Washington, "that you undertook the command, if 
you did not mean to fight." Lee replied that he did not think it prudent to 
bring on a general engagement, which was, however, precisely what he had been 
sent out to do. "Whatever your opinions may have been," said Washington sharply, 
"I expected my orders to be obeyed." and with these words he wheeled about to 
stop the retreat and form a new front. There was not a moment to lose, for the 
British were within a mile of them, and their fire began before the line of 
battle could be formed. To throw a mass of disorderly fugitives in the face of 
advancing reinforcements as Lee had been on the point of doing, was to endanger 
the organi-zation of the whole force. It was now that the admirable results of 
Steuben's teachings were to be seen. The retreating soldiers immediately wheeled 
and formed under fire with as much coolness and precision as they could have 
shown on parade, and while they stopped the enemy's progress, Washington rode 
back and brought up the main body of his army. On some heights to the left of 
the enemy Greene placed a battery which enfiladed their lines, while Wayne 
attacked them vigorously in front. After a brave resistance, the British were 
driven back upon the second ravine which Lee had crossed in the morning's 
advance. Washington now sent word to Steuben, who was a couple of miles in the 
rear, telling him to bring up three brigades and press

p.65

the retreating enemy. Some time before this he had again met Lee and ordered him 
to the rear, for his suspicion was now thoroughly aroused. As the traitor rode 
away from the field he met Steuben advancing and tried to work one final piece 
of mischief. He tried to persuade Steuben to halt, alleging that he must have 
misunderstood Washington's orders; but the worthy baron was not to be trifled 
with, and doggedly kept on his way. The British were driven in some confusion 
across the ravine, and were just making a fresh stand on the high ground east of 
it when night put an end to the strife. Washington sent out parties to attack 
them on both flanks as soon as day should dawn; but Clinton withdrew in the 
night, leaving his wounded behind, and by daybreak had joined Knyphausen on the 
heights of Middle-town, whither it was useless to follow him.

The British loss in the battle of Monmouth was about 416 and the American loss 
was 362. On both sides there were many deaths by sunstroke. The battle has 
usually been claimed as a victory for the Americans; and so it was, in a certain 
sense, as they drove the enemy from the field. Strategically considered, 
however, Lord Stanhope is quite right in calling it a drawn battle. The purpose 
for which Washington undertook it was foiled by the treachery of Lee. 
Nevertheless, in view of the promptness with which Washington turned defeat into 
victory, and of the greatly increased efficiency which it showed in the 
soldiers, the moral advantage was doubtless with the Americans. It deepened the 
impression

p.66

produced by the recovery of Philadelphia, it silenced the cavillers against 
Washington, and its effect upon Clinton's army was disheartening. More than 
2,000 of his men, chiefly Hessians, deserted in the course of the following 
week.

During the night after the battle, the behaviour of Lee was the theme of excited 
discussion among the American officers. By the next day, having recovered his 
self-possession he wrote a petulant letter to Washington, demanding an apology 
for his language on the battlefield. Washington's reply was as follows:

"Sir - I received your letter, expressed, as I conceive, in terms highly 
improper. I am not conscious of making use of any very singular expressions at 
the time of meeting you, as you intimate. What I recollect to have said was 
dictated by duty and warranted by the occasion. As soon as circumstance will 
permit, you shall have an opportunity of justifying yourself to the army, to 
Congress, to America, and to the world in general; or of convincing them that 
you were guilty of a breach of orders, and of misbehaviour before the enemy on 
the 28th instant, in not attacking them as you had been directed, and in making 
an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat."

To this terrible letter Lee sent the following impudent answer: "You cannot 
afford me greater pleasure than in giving me the opportunity of showing to 
America the sufficiencey of her respective servants. I trust that temporary 
power of office and the tinsel dignity attending it will not

p.67

be able, by all the mists they can raise, to obfuscate the bright rays of 
truth." Washing-ton replied by putting Lee under arrest. A court-martial was at 
once convened, before which he was charged with disobedience of orders in not 
attacking the enemy, with misbehaviour on the field in making an unnecessary and 
shameful retreat and lastly, with gross disrespect to the commander-in-chief. 
After a painstaking trial, which lasted more than a month, he was found guilty 
on all three charges and suspended from command in the army for the term of one 
year.

This absurdly inadequate sentence is an example of the extreme and sometimes 
ill-judged humanity which has been wont to characterize judicial proceedings in 
America. Many a European soldier has been ruthlessly shot for less serious 
misconduct and on less convincing evidence. A general can be guilty of no 
blacker crime than knowingly to betray his trust on the field of battle. But in 
Lee's case, the very enormity of his crime went far to screen him from the 
punishment which it deserved. People are usually slow to believe in criminality 
that goes far beyond the ordinary wickedness of the society in which they live. 
If a candidate for Congress is accused of bribery or embesslement, we 
unfortunately find it easy to believe the charge; but if he were to be accused 
of attempting to poison his rival, we should find it very hard indeed to believe 
it. In the France of Catherine de' Medici or the Italy of Caesar Borgia, the one 
accusation would have been as credible as

p.68

the other, but we have gone far toward outgrowing some of the grosser forms of 
crime. In American history, as in modern English history, instances of downright 
treason have been very rare; and in proportion as we are impressed with with 
their ineffable wickedness are we slow to admit the possibility of their 
occurrence. In ancient Greece and in mediaeval Italy there were many Benedict 
Arnolds; in the United States a single plot for surrendering a stronghold to the 
enemy has consigned its author to a solitary immortality of infamy. But unless 
the proof of Arnold's treason had been absolutely irrefragable, many persons 
would have refused to believe it. In like manner, people were slow to believe 
that Lee could have been so deliberately wicked as to plan the defeat of the 
army in which he held so high a command, and some historians have preferred to 
regard his conduct as wholly unintelligible rather than adopt the only clue by 
which it can be explained. He might have been bewilder-ed, he might have been 
afraid, he might have been crazy, it was suggested; and to the latter hypothesis 
his well-known eccentricity gave some countenance. It was well for the court 
martial to give him the benefit of the doubt, but in any case it should have 
been obvious that he had proved himself permanently unfit for a command.

Historians for a long time imitated the clemency of the court-martial by 
speaking of the "way-wardness" of General Lee. Nearly eighty years elapsed 
before the discovery of that document which obliges us to put the worst 
interpretation

p.69

upon his acts, while it enables us clearly to understand the motives which 
prompted him. Lee was nothing but a selfish adventurer. He had no faith in the 
principles for which the Americans were fighting, or indeed in any principles. 
He came here to advance his own fortunes, and hoped to be made commander-in-
chief. Disappointed in this, he began at once to look with hatred and envy on 
Washington, and sought to thwart his purposes, while at the same time he 
intrigued with the enemy. He became infatuated with the idea of playing some 
such part in the American Revolution as Monk ahdplayed in the Restoration of 
Charles II. This explains his conduct in the autumn of 1776 when he refused to 
march to the support of Washington. Should Washington be defeated and captured, 
then Lee, as next in command and at the head of a separate army, might negotiate 
for peace. His conduct as prisoner in New York, first in soliciting an interview 
with Congress, then in giving aid and counsel to the enemy, is all to be 
explained in the same way. And his behaviour in the Monmouth campaign was part 
and parcel of the same crooked policy. Lord North's commissioners had just 
arrived from England to offer terms to the Americans, but in the exultation over 
Saratoga and the French alliance, now increased by the recovery of Philadelphia, 
there was little hope of their effecting anything. The spirits of these Yankees, 
though Lee, must not be suffered to rise too high, else they will never listen 
to reason. So he wished to build a bridge of gold for 

p.70

Clinton to retreat by; and when he found it impossible to prevent an attack, his 
second thoughts led him to take command, in order to keep the game in his own 
hands. Should Washington now incur defeat by adopting a course which Lee had 
emphatically condemned as impracticable, the impatient prejudices upon which the 
cabal had played might be re-vived. The downfall of Washington would perhaps be 
easy to compass; and the schemer would thus not only enjoy the humiliation of 
the man whom he so bitterly hated, but he might fairly hope to succeed him in 
the chief command, and thus have an opportunity of bringing the war to a 
"glorious" end through a negotiation with Lord North's commissioners. Such 
thoughts as these were, in all probability, at the bottom of Lee's extraordinary 
behaviour at Monmouth. they were the impracticable schemes of a vain, 
egotistical dreamer. That Washington and Chatham, had that great statesman been 
still alive, might have brought the war to an honourable close through open and 
frank negotiation was perhaps not impossible. That such a man as Lee, by 
paltering with agents of Lord North, should effect anything but mischief and 
confusion was inconceivable. But selfishness is always incompatible with sound 
judgement and Lee's wild schemes were quite in keeping with his character. The 
method he adopted for carrying them out was equally so. It would have been 
impossible for a man of strong military instincts to have relaxed his clutch 
upon an enemy in the field, as Lee did at the battle of Monmouth. If Arnold had 
been

p.71

there that day, with his head never so full of treason, an irrestible impulse 
would doubtless have led him to attack the enemy tooth and nail, and the treason 
would have waited till the morrow.

As usually happens in such cases, the selfish schemer overreached himself. 
Washington won a victory, after all; the treachery was detected, and the traitor 
disgraced. Maddened by the destruction of his air-castles, Lee now began writing 
scurrilous articles in the newspapers. He could not hear Washington's name 
mentioned without losing his temper, and his venomous tongue at length got him 
into a duel with Colonel Laurens, one of Washington's aids and son of the 
president of Congress. He came out of the affair with nothing worse than a wound 
in the side; but when, a little later he wrote an angry letter to Congress, he 
was summarily expelled from the army. "Ah, I see," he said, aiming a Parthian 
shot at Washington, "if you wish to become a great general in America, you must 
learn to grow tobacco;" and so he retired to a plantation which he had in the 
Shenandoah valley. He lived to behold the triumph of the cause which he had done 
so much to injure, and in October, 1782 he died in a mean public-house in 
Philadelphia, friendless and alone. His last wish was that he might not be 
buried in consecrated ground or within a mile of any church or meeting-house, 
because he had kept so much bad company in this world that he did not choose to 
continue it in the next. But in this he was not allowed to have his way. He was 
buried

p.72

in the cemetery of Christ Church in Philadelphia, and many worthy citizens came 
to the funeral.

When Washington, after the battle of Monmouth, saw that it was useless further 
to molest Clinton's retreat, he march straight for the Hudson river, and on the 
20th of July he en-camped at White Plains, while his adversary took refuge in 
New York. The opposing armies occupied the same ground as in the autumn of 1776; 
but the Americans were not the aggressive party. Howe's object in 1776 was the 
capture of Washington's army; Clinton's object in 1778 was limited to keeping 
possession of New York. There was now a chance for testing the worth of the 
French alliance. With the aid of a powerful French fleet, it might be possible 
to capture Clinton's army and thus end the war at a blow. But this was not to 
be. The French fleet of twelve ships-of-the-line ans six frigates, commanded by 
the Count d' Estaing, sailed from Toulon on the 13th of April, and after a 
tedious struggle with the head winds arrived at the mouth of the Delaware on the 
8th of July, just too late to intercept Lord Howe's squadron. The fleet 
contained a land force of 4,000 men, and brought over M. Gerard, the first 
minister from France to the United States. Finding nothing to do on the 
Delaware, the count proceeded to Sandy Hook, where he was boarded by 
Washington's aids, Laurens and Hamilton, and a council of war was held. As the 
British fleet in the harbour consisted of only six ships-of-the-line, with 
several frigates and gun-boats, it seemed

p.73

obvious that it might be destroyed or captured by Estaing's superior force, and 
then Clinton would be entrapped in the island city. But this plan was defeated 
by a strange obstacle. Though the harbour of New York is one of the finest in 
the world, it has, like most harbours situated at the mouths of great rivers, a 
bar at the entrance, which in 1778 was far more troublesome than it is today. 
Since that time the bar has shifted its position and been partially worn away, 
so that the largest ships can now freely enter, except at low tide. But when the 
American pilots examined Estaing's two largest ships, which carried eighty and 
ninety guns respectively, they declared it unsafe, even at high tide, for them 
to venture upon the bar. The enterprise was accordingly abandoned, but in its 
stead another one was undertaken, which, if successful might prove hardly less 
decisive than the capture of New York.

After their expulsion from Boston in the first year of the war, the British 
never regained their foothold upon the mainland of New England. But in December, 
1776, the island which gives its name to the state of Rhode Island had been 
seized by Lord Percy and the enemy had occupied it ever since. From its 
commanding position at the entrance to the Sound, it assisted them in 
threatening the Connecticut coast; and on the other hand, should occasion 
require, it might even enable them to threaten Boston with an overland attack. 
After Lord Percy's departure for England in the spring of 1777, the command 
devolved upon Major General Richard Prescott

p.74

an unmitigated brute. Under his rule no citizen of Newport was safe in his own 
house. He not only arrested people and threw the into jail without assigning any 
reason, but he en-couraged his soldiers in plundering houses and offering gross 
insults to ladies, as well as in cutting down shade-trees and wantonly defacing 
the beautiful lawns. A great loud-voiced, irascible fellow, swelling with the 
sense of his own importance, if he chanced to meet with a Quaker who failed to 
take off his hat, he would seize him by the collar and knock his head against 
the wall, or strike him over the shoulders with the big gnarled stick which he 
usually carried. One night in July, as this petty tyrant was sleeping at a 
country house about five miles from Newport, a party of soldiers rowed over from 
the mainland in boats, under the guns of three British frigates, and, taking the 
general out of bed, carried him off in his night-gown. He was sent to 
Washington's headquarters on the Hudson. As he passed through the village of 
Lebanon, Connecticut, he stopped to dine at an old inn kept by one Captain 
Alden. He was politely received, and in the course of the meal Mrs. Alden set 
upon the table a dish of succotash, whereupon Prescott, not knowing the 
delicious dish roared "What do you mean by offering me this hog's food?" And he 
threw it all upon the floor The good woman retreated in tears to the kitchen, 
and presently her husband, coming in with a stout horsewhip dealt with the boor 
as he deserved.

When Prescott was exchanged for General Lee, in April, 1778,

p.75

he resumed the command at Newport, but was soon superseded by the amiable an 
accomplished Sir Robert Pigott, under whom the garrison was increased to 6,000 
men.

New York and Newport were now the only places held by the enemy in the United 
States, and the capture of either, with its army of occupation, would be an 
event of prime importance. As soon as the enterprise was suggested, the New 
England militia began to muster in force, Massachusetts sending a strong 
contingent under John Hancock. General Sullivan had been in command at 
Providence since April. Washington now sent him 1,500 men of his Continental 
troops, with Greene, who was born hard by and knew every inch of the island; 
with Glover, of amphibious renown; and Lafayette, who was a kinsman of the Count 
d'Estaing. The New England yeomanry soon swelled this force to about 9,000, and 
with the 4,000 French regulars and the fleet, it might well be hoped that 
General Pigott would quickly be brought to surrender.

The expedition failed through the inefficient cooperation of the French and the 
insubordina-tion of the yeomanry. Estaing arrived off the harbour of Newport on 
the 29th of July and had a conference with Sullivan. It was agreed that the 
Americans should land upon the east side of the island while the French were 
landing upon the west side, thus intervening between the main garrison at 
Newport and a strong detachment which was stationed on Butts Hill, at the 
northern end

p.76

of the island. By such a movement this detachment might be isolated and 
captured, to begin with. But General Pigott, divining the purpose of the allies, 
withdrew the detachment, and concentrated all his forces in and around the city. 
At this moment the French troops were landing upon Conanicut island, intending 
to cross to the north of Newport on the morrow, according to the agreement. 
Sullivan did not wait for them, but seeing the commanding posi-tion on Butts 
Hill evacuated, he rightly pushed across the channel and seized it, while at the 
same time he informed Estaing of his reasons for doing so. The count, not 
understanding the situation, was somewhat offended at what he deemed undue haste 
on the part of Sullivan, but thus far nothing had happened to disturb the 
execution of their scheme. He had only to continue landing his troops and 
blockade the southern end of the island with his fleet, and Sir Robert Pigott 
was doomed. But the next day Lord Howe appeared off Point Judith, with thirteen 
ships-of-the-line, seven frigates, and several small vessels, and Estaing, re-
embarking the troops he had landed on Conanicut, straightway put out to sea to 
engage him. For two days the hostile fleets manoeuvred for the weather-gage, and 
just as they were getting ready for action there came up a terrific storm, which 
scattered them far and wide. Instead of trying to destroy one another, each had 
to bend all his energies to saving himself. So fierce was the storm that it was 
remembered in local tradition as lately

p.77

as 1850 as "the Great Storm." Windows in the town were encrusted with salt blown 
up in the ocean spray. Great trees were torn up by the roots, and much shipping 
was destroyed along the coast. It was not until the 20th of August that Estaing 
brought in his squadron, somewhat damaged from the storm. He now insisted upon 
going to Boston to refit, in accordance with general instructions received from 
the ministry before leaving home. It was urged in vain by Greene and Lafayette 
that the vessels could be repaired as easily in Narragansett Bay as in Boston 
harbour; that by the voyage around Cape Cod, in his crippled condition, he would 
only incur additional risk; that by staying he would strictly fulfil the spririt 
of his instructions; that an army had been brought here, and stores collected, 
in reliance upon his aid; that if the expedition were to be ruined through his 
failure to cooperate, it would sully the honour of France and give rise to hard 
feelings in America; and finally, that even if he felt constrained, in spite of 
sound arguments, to go and refit at Boston, there was no earthly reason for his 
taking the 4,000 French soldiers with him. The count was quite disposed to yield 
to these sensible remonstrances, but on calling a council of war he found 
himself overruled by his officers. Estaing was not himself a naval officer, but 
a lieutenant-general in the army, and it has been said that the officers of his 
fleet, vexed at having a land-lubber put over them, were glad of a chance to 
thwart him in his plans. However this may have been, it

p.78

was voted that the letter of the royal instructions must be blindly adhered to, 
and so on the 23d Estaing weighed anchor for Boston, taking the land forces with 
him, and leaving General Sullivan in the lurch.

Great was the exasperation in the American camp. Sullivan's vexation found 
indiscreet ex-pression in a general order, in which he hoped the event would 
prove America "able to pro-cure that by her own arms which her allies refuse to 
assist in obtaining." But the insub-ordination of the volunteers now came in to 
complicate the matter. Some 3,000 of them, despairing of success and impatient 
at being kept from home in harvest time, marched away in disgust and went about 
their business, thus reducing Sullivan's army to the same size as that of the 
enemy. The investment of Newport, by land had already been completed, but the 
speedy success of the enterprise depended upon a superiority of force, and in 
case of British reinforcements arriving from New York the American situation 
would become dangerous.

Upon these grounds, Sullivan, on the 28th, decided to retreat to the strong 
position of Butts Hill, and await events. Lafayette mounted his horse and rode 
the seventy miles to Boston in seven hours, to beg his kinsman to return as soon 
as possible. Estaing despaired of getting his ships ready for many days, but, 
catching a spark of the young man's enthusi-asm, he offered to bring up his 
troops by land. Fired with fresh hope, the young marquis spurred back as fast as 
he had come, but when he arrived

p.79

on the scene the action all was over. As soon as Sullivan's retreat was 
perceived the whole British army gave chase. After the Americans had retired to 
their lines on Butts Hill, Sir Robert Pigott tried to carry their position by 
storm, and there ensued an obstinate fight, in which the conditions were in many 
respects similar to those of Bunker Hill; but this time the Americans had powder 
enough and the British were totally defeated.

This slaughter of their brave men was useless. The next day Sullivan received a 
dispatch from Washington with the news that Clinton had started from New York 
with 5,000 men to re-inforce Sir Robert Pigott. Under these circumstances, it 
was rightly thought best to abandon the island. The services of General Glover, 
who had taken Washington's army across the East River after the defeat of Long 
Island, and across the Delaware before the victory of Trenton, were called into 
requisition and all the men and stores were ferried safely to the mainland; 
Lafayette arriving from Boston just in time to bring off the pickets and 
covering parties. The next day Clinton arrived with his 5,000 men, and the siege 
of Newport was over.

The failure of this enterprise excited much indignation, and seemed to justify 
the distrust with which so many people regarded the French alliance. In Boston 
the ill-feeling found vent in a riot on the wharves between French and American 
sailors, and throughout New England there was

p.80

loud discontent. It required all Washington's tact to keep peace between ill-
yoked allies. When Congress passed a politic resolution approving the course of 
the French commander, it met with no cordial assent from the people. When in 
November, Estaing took his fleet to the West Indies, for purposes solely French, 
the feeling was one of lively disgust, which was heightened by an indiscreet 
proclomation of the count inviting the people of Canada to return to their old 
allegiance.

For the American people regarded the work of Pitt as final, and at no time 
during the war did their feeling against Great Britain rise to such a point as 
to make them willing to see the French restored to their old position on this 
continent. The sagacious Vergennes understood this so well that Estaing's 
proclomation found little favour in his eyes. But it served none the less to 
irritate the Americans, and especially the people of New England.

So far as the departure of the fleet for the West Indies was concerned, the 
American com-plaints were not wholly reasonable; for the operations of the 
French in that quarter helped materially to diminish the force which Great 
Britain could spare for the war in the United States. On the very day of 
Estaing's departure, Sir Henry Clinton was obliged to send 5,000 men from New 
York to take part in the West India campaign. This new pressure put upon England 
by the necessity of warding off French attack went on increasing. In 1779, 
England had 314,000 men under arms in various parts of the world, but she had so 
many points to

p.81

defend that it was difficult for her to maintain a sufficient force in America. 
In the autumn of that year, Sir Henry Clinton did not regard his position in New 
York as secure enough to justify him any longer in sparing troops for the 
occupation of Newport, and the island was accordingly evacuated.

From this time till the end of the war, the only point which the British 
succeeded in holding, north of Virginia, was the city of New York. After the 
Rhode Island campaign of 1778, no further operations occurred at the North 
between the two principal armies which could properly be said to constitute a 
campaign. Clinton's resources were too slender for him to do anything but hold 
New York. Washington's resources were to slender for him to do anything but sit 
and watch Clinton. Whle the two commanders-in-chief thus held each other at bay, 
the rapid and violent work of the war was goingin the southern states, conducted 
by subordinate officers. During much of this time Washington's army formed a 
cordon about Manhattan Island, from Danbury in Connecticut to Elizabethtown in 
New Jersey, and thus blockaded the enemy. But while there were no decisive 
military operations in the northern states during this period, many interesting 
and important events occurred which demand consideration before we go on to 
treat of the great southern campaigns which ended the war.

CHAPTER XI
WAR ON THE FRONTIER


p.82

The barbarous border fighting of the Revolutionary War was largely due to the 
fact that powerful tribes of wild Indians still confronted us on every part of 
our steadily advancing frontier. They would have tortured and scalped our back-
woodsmen even if we had had no quarrel with George III., and there could be no 
lasting peace until they were crushed com-pletely. When the war broke out, their 
alliance with the British was natural, but the truculent spirit which sought to 
put that savage alliance to the worst uses was something which it would not be 
fair to acribe to the British commanders in general; it must be charged to the 
account of Lord George Germaine and a few unworthy men who were willing to be 
his tools.

In the summer of 1778 this horrible border warfare became the most conspicuous 
feature of the struggle, and has afforded themes for poetry and romance, in 
which the figures of the principal actors are seen in a lurid light. One of 
these figures is of such importance as to deserve especial mention. Joseph 
Brant, or Thayendanegea, was perhaps the greatest Indian of whom we have any 
knowledge; certainly

p.83

the history of the red men presents no more many-sided and interesting 
character. A pure-blooded Mohawk, descended from a line of distinguished 
chiefs,*

*footnote: He has been sometimes described incorrectly as a half-breed, and even 
as a son of Sir William Johnson. His father was a Mohawk, of the Wolf clan and 
son of one of the five chiefs who visited the court of Queen Anne in 1710. The 
name is sometimes wrongly written "Brandt." The Indian name is pronounced as if 
written "Thayendanauga," with accent on the penult. Brandt was not a sachem. His 
eminence was personal, not official. See Morgan - League of the Iroquois, p. 
103.

in early boyhood he became a favourite with Sir William Johnson and the laughing 
black eyes of his handsome sister, Molly Brandt, so fascinated the rough baronet 
that he took her to Johnson Hall as his wife, after the Indian fashion. Sir 
William Johnson believed that Indians could be tamed and taught the arts of 
civilized life and he laboured with great success, in this difficult task. The 
young Thayendanegea was sent to be educated at the school in Lebanon, 
Connecticut, which was afterwards transferred to New Hampshire and de-veloped 
into Dartmouth College. At this school he not only became expert in the use of 
the English language, in which he also acquired some inkling of general 
literature and history. He became a member of the Episcopal Church, and after 
leaving school he was for some time engaged in missionary work among the 
Mohawks, and translated the Prayer-Book and parts of the New Testament into his 
native language. He was a man of earnest and serious character and his devotion 
to the church endured 

p.84

throughout his life. Some years after the peace of 1783, the first Episcopal 
church ever built in Upper Canada was erected to Joseph Brant, from funds which 
he had collected for the purpose while on a visit to England. But with this 
character of devout missionary and earnest student Thayendanegea combined, in 
curious contrast, the attributes of an Iroquois war-chief developed to the 
highest degree of efficiency. There was no accomplishment prized by Indian 
braves in which he did not outshine all his fellows. He was early called to take 
the war-path. In the fierce struggle with Pontiac he fought with great 
distinction on the English side, and at the beginning of the War of Independence 
he was one of the most con-spicuous of Iroquois war-chiefs.

It was the most trying time that had ever come to these haughty lords of the 
wilderness, and called for all the valour and diplomacy which they could summon. 
Brant was equal to the occasion, and no chieftain ever fought a losing cause 
with greater spirit than he. We have seen how at Oriskany he came near turning 
the scale against us in one of the critical mo-ments of a great campaign. From 
the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna his name became a name of terror. Equally 
skilful and zealous, now in planning the silent night march and deadly ambush, 
now in preaching the gospel of peace, he reminds one of some newly reclaimed 
Frisian or Norman warrior of the Carolingian age. But in the eighteenth century 
the incongruity is more striking than in the tenth, in so far as the traits of 
the barbarian are more vividly

p.85

projected against the background of a higher civilization. It is odd to think of 
Thayen-danegea, who could outyell any of his tribe on the battlefield, sitting 
at the table with Burke and Sheridan, and behaving with the modest grace of an 
English gentleman. The tincture of civilization he had acquired, moreover, was 
by no means superficial. Though engaged in many a murderous attack, his conduct 
was not marked by the ferocity so character-istic of the Iroquois. Though he 
sometimes approved the slaying of prisoners on grounds of public policy, he was 
flatly opposed to torture, and never would allow it. He often went out of his 
way to rescue women and children from the tomahawk, and the instances of his 
magnanimity toward supliant enemies were very numerous.

At the beginning of the war the influence of the Johnsons had kept all the Six 
Nations on the side of the Crown, except the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, who were 
prevailed upon by New England missionaries to maintain an attitude of 
neutrality. The Indians in general were quite incapable of understanding the 
issue involved in the contest, but Brandt had some comprehension of it, and 
looked at the matter with Tory eyes. The loyalists in central New York were 
numerous, but the patriot party was the stronger, and such fierce enmities were 
aroused in this frontier society that most of the Tories were obliged to abandon 
their homes and flee to the wilds of western New York and Upper Canada, where 
they made the beginnings of the first English settlement in that country. There, 
under

p.86

their leaders, the Johnsons, with Colonel John Butler and his son Walter, they 
had their headquarters at Fort Niagara, where they were joined by Brant with his 
Mohawks. Secure in the possession of that remote stronghold, they made it the 
starting-point of their frequent and terrible excursions against the communities 
which had cast them forth. These rough frontiersmen, many of them Scotch 
Highlanders of the old stripe, whose raiding and reaving propensities had been 
little changed by their life in an American wilderness, were in every way fit 
comrades for their dusky allies. Clothed in blankets and moccasins, decked with 
beads and feathers, and hideous in war paint, it was not easy to distinguish 
them from the stalwart barbarians whose fiendish cruelties they often imitated 
and sometimes surpassed.

Border tradition tells of an Indian who, after murdering a young mother and her 
three children, as they sat by the evening fireside, was moved to pity by the 
sight of a little infant sweetly smiling at him from the cradle; but his Tory 
comrade picked up the babe with the point of his bayonet and as he held it 
writhing in mid-air, exclaimed, "Is not this also a damned rebel?" There are 
many tales of like import, and whether always true or not they seem to show the 
reputation which these wretched men had won. The Tory leaders took less pains 
than Thayendanegea to prevent useless slaughter, and some of the atrocities 
permitted by Walter Butler have never been outdone in the history of savage 
warfare. During the year 1778, the frontier became the

p.87

scene of misery such as had not been witnessed since the time of Pontiac. Early 
in July there came a blow at which the whole country stood aghast. The valley of 
Wyoming, situated in northeastern Pennsylvania, where the Susquehanna makes it 
way through a huge cleft in the mountains, had become celebrated for the 
unrivalled fertility and beauty which, like the fatal gift of some unfriendly 
power, served only to make it an occasion of strife. The lovely spot lay within 
the limits of the charter of Connecticut, granted in 1662, according to which 
that colony or plantation was to extend westward to the Pacific Ocean. It also 
lay within the limits of the charter of 1681, by which the proprietary colony of 
Pennsylvania had been founded. About one hundred people from Connecticut had 
settled in wyoming in 1762 but within a yer this little settlement was wiped out 
in blood and fire by the Delaware Indians. In 1768 some Pennsylvanians began to 
settle in the valley, but they were soon ousted by a second detachment of 
Yankees and for three years a miniature war was kept up, with varying fortunes, 
until at last the Connecticut men under Zebulon Butler and Lazarus Stewart were 
victorious. In 1771, the question was referred to the law-officers of the Crown, 
and the claim of Connecticut was sustained. Settlers now began to come rapidly, 
the forerunners of that great New England migration which in these latter days 
has founded so many thriving states in the West. By the year 1778 the population 
of the valley exceeded 3,000,

p.88

distributed in several pleasant hamlets, with town-meetings, schools and 
churches, and all the characteristics of New England orderliness and thrift. 
Most of the people were from Connecticut and were enthusiastice and devoted 
patriots, but in 1776 a few settlers from the Hudson valley had come in and, 
exhibiting Tory sympathies, were soon after expelled. Here was an excellent 
opportunity for the loyalist border ruffians to wreak summary veng-eance upon 
their enemies. Here was a settlement peculiary exposed in position, regarded 
with no friendly eyes by its Pennsylvania neighbors, and, moreover, ill provided 
with de-fenders, for it had sent the best part of its trained militia to serve 
in Washington's army.

These circumstances did not escape the keen eye of Colonel John Butler and in 
June, 1778, he took the war-path from Niagara, with a company of his own 
rangers, a regiment of Johnson's Greens and a band of Senecas; in all about 
1,200 men. Reaching the Susquehanna, they glided down the swift stream in bark 
canoes, landed a little above the doomed settle-ment, and began their work of 
murder and pillage. Consternation filled the valley. The women and children were 
huddled in a blockhouse and Colonel Zebulon Butler with 300 men, went out to 
meet the enemy. There seemed to be no choice but to fight, though the odds were 
so desperate. As the enemy came in sight, late in the afternoon of July 3d, the 
patriots charged upon them, and for about an hour there was a fierce struggle, 
till, over-whelmed by weight of

p.89

numbes, the little band of defenders broke and fled. Some made their way to the 
fort, and a few escaped to the mountains, but nearly all were overtaken and 
slain, save such as were reserved for the horrors of the night. The second 
anniversary of the independence was ushered in with dreadful orgies in the 
valley of Wyoming. Some of the prisoners were burned at the stake, some were 
laid upon hot embers and held down with pitchforks till they died, some were 
hacked with knives. Sixteen poor fellows were arranged in a circle, while an old 
half-breed hag, known as Queen Esther, and supposed to be a grandaughter of the 
famous Frontenac, danced slowly around the ring, shrieking a death-song as she 
slew one after the other with her tomahawk.

The next day, when the fort surrendered, no more lives were taken, but the 
Indians plundered and burned all the houses while the inhabitants fled to the 
woods or to the nearest settle-ments on the Lehigh and Delaware and the vale of 
Wyoming was for a time abandoned. Dread-ful sufferings attended the flight. A 
hundred women and children perished of fatigue and starvation in trying to cross 
the swamp, which has since been known to this day as the "Shades of Death." 
Several children were born in that fearful spot, only to died there with their 
unhappy mothers. Such horrors needed no exageration in the telling, yet from the 
confused reports of the fugitives, magnified by popular rumour, a tale of 
wholesale slaughter went abroad which was even worse than the reality, but which 
careful research has long since completely disproved.

p.90

The popular reputation of Brant as an incarnate demon rests largely upon the 
part which he was formerly supposed to have taken in the devastation of Wyoming. 
But the "monster Brant" who figures so conspicuously in Thomas Campbell's 
celebrated poem. "Gertrude of Wyoming" was not even present on this occasion. 
Thayendanegea was at that time at Niagara. It was not long, however, before he 
was concerned in a bloody affair in which Walter Butler was principal. The 
village of Cherry Valley in central New York, was destroyed on the 10th of 
November by a party of 700 Tories and Indians. Allthe houses were burned, and 
about fifty of the inhabitants murdered, without regard to age or sex.*

*footenote: It has been shown that on this occasion Thayendanegea did what he 
could to re-strain the ferocity of his savage followers. See Stone's Live of 
Brant, i. 379-381.

Many other atrocious things were done in the course of this year; but the 
affairs of Wyoming and Cherry Valley made a deeper impression than any of the 
others. Among the victims there were many refined gentlemen and ladies, well 
known in the northern states, and this was especially the case of Cherry Valley.

Washington made up his mind that exemplary vengeance must be taken, and the 
source of the evil extinguished as far as possible. An army of 5,000 men was 
sent out in the sumer of 1779, with instructions to lay waste the country of the 
hostile Iroquois and capture the nest of Tory miscreants at Fort Niagara. The 
command of the expedition was offered to Gates,

p.91

and when he testily declined it, as requiring too much hard work from a man of 
his years, it was given to Sullivan. To prepare such an army for penetrating to 
a depth of four hundred miles through the forest was no light task; and before 
they had reached the Iroquois country, Brant had sacked the town of Minisink and 
annihilated a force of militia sent to oppose him. Yet the expedition was well 
timed for the purpose of destroying the growing crops of the enemy. The army 
advanced in two divisions. The right wing, under General James Clinton, 
proceeded up the valley of the Mohawk as far as Canajoharie, and then turned to 
the southwest; while the left wing, under Sullivan himself, ascended the 
Susquehanna.

On the 22d of August the two columns met at Tioga and one week later they found 
the enemy at Newtown, on the site of the present town of Elmira, - 1,500 Tories 
and Indians, led by Sir John Johnson in person, with both the Butlers and 
Thayendanegea. In the battle which ensued, the enemy was routed with great 
slaughter, while the American loss was less than fifty. No further resistance 
was made, but the army was annoyed in every possible way, and stragglers were 
now and then caught and tortured to death. On one occasion, a young lieutenant 
named Boyd, was captured while leading a scouting party, and fell into the hands 
of one of the Butlers, who threatened to give him up to torture unless he should 
disclose whatever he knew of General Sullivan's plans. On his refusal, he was 
given into the hands of a Seneca demon,

p.92

named Little Beard; and after being hacked and plucked to pieces with a 
refinement of cruelty which the pen refuses to describe, his torments were ended 
by disembowelling. Such horrors served only to exasperate the American troops, 
and while they do not seem to have taken life unnecessarily, they certainly 
carried out their orders with great zeal and thoroughness. The Iroquois tribes 
were so far advanced in the agricultural stage of development that they were 
much more dependent upon their crops than upon the chase for subsistence; and 
they had besides learned some of the arts of civilization from their white 
neighbors. Their long wigwams were beginning to give place to framed houses, 
with chimneys; their extensive fields were planted with corn and beans; and 
their orchards yielded apples, pears and peaches in immense profusion. All this 
prosperity was now brought to an end.

From Tioga the American army marched through the entire country of the Cayugas 
and Senecas laying waste the cornfields, burning the houses, and cutting down 
all the fruit-trees. More than forty villages, the largest containing 128 
houses, were razed to the ground. So terri-ble a vengeance had not overtaken the 
Long House since the days of Frontenac. The region thus devasted had come to be 
the most important domain of the Confederacy, which never recovered from the 
blow thus inflicted. The winter of 1779/80 was one of the coldest ever known in 
America. So cold that the harbour of New York was frozen solid enough to bear 
troops

p.93

and artillery (Cannon were wheeled on the solid ice from Staten Island to the 
city. See Stone's Life of Brant, ii.54.) while the British in the city, deprived 
of the aid of their fleet, spent the winter in daily dread of attack. During 
this extreme season the house-less Cayugas and Senecas were overtaken by famine 
and pestilence, and the diminution in their numbes was never afterwards made 
good. The stronghold at Niagara, however, was not wrested from Thayendanegea. 
That part of Sullivan's expedition was a failure. From in-creasing sickness 
among the soldiers and want of proper food, he deemed it impracticable to take 
his large force beyond the Genesee river, and accordingly he turned back toward 
the seaboard, arriving in New Jersey at the end of October, after a total march 
of more than seven hundred miles.

Though so much harrying had been done, the snake was only scotched, after all. 
Nothing short of the complete annihilation of the savage enemy would have put a 
stop to his in-roads. Before the winter was over dire vengeance fell upon the 
Oneidas, who were now regarded by their brethren as traitors to the Confederacy; 
they were utterly crushed by Thayendanegea. For two years more the tomahawk and 
firebrand were busy in the Mohawk valley. It was a reign of terror. Block-houses 
were erected in every neighborhood, into which forty or fifty families could 
crowd together at the first notof alarm. The farmers ploughed and harvested in 
companies, keeping their rifles within easy reach, while pickets and scouts 
peered in every direction

p.94

for signs of the stealthy foe. In battles with the militia, of which there were 
several, the enemy, with his greatly weakened force, was now generally worsted; 
but nothing could exceed the boldness of his raids. On one or two occasions he 
came within a few miles of Albany. Once a small party of Tories actually found 
their way into the city, with the intent to assassinate General Schuyler, and 
came very near succeeding. In no other part of the United States did the war 
entail so much suffering as on the New York border. During the five years ending 
with 1781, the population of Tryon county was reduced by two thirds of its 
amount, and in the remaining third there were more than three hundred widows and 
two thousand orphan children.

This cruel warfare, so damaging to the New York frontier settlements and so 
fatal to the Six Nations, was really part of a desultory conflict which raged at 
intervals from north to south along our whole western border, and resulted in 
the total overthrow of British author-ity beyond the Alleghanies. The vast 
region between these mountains and the Mississippi river - a territory more than 
twice as large as the German Empire, was at that time an almost broken 
wilderness. A few French towns garrisoned by British troops, as at Natchez, 
Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the Mississippi river, at Vincennes on the Wabash, and 
at Detroit, sufficed to represent the sovereignty of George III., and to 
exercise a very dubious control over the

p.95

wild tribes that roamed through these primeval solitudes. When the thirteen 
colonies de-clared themselves independent of the British Crown, the ownership of 
this western territory was for the moment left undecided. Portions of it were 
claimed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and 
Georgia, on the strength of their old charters, or of their relations with the 
Indian tribes. Little respect, however, was paid to the quaint terminology of 
charters framed in an age when almost nothing was known of American geography; 
and it was virtually left for circumstances to determined to whom the western 
country should belong.

It was now very fortunate for the United States that the policy of Pitt had 
wrested this all-important territory from the French. For to conquer from the 
British enemy so remote a region was feasible; but to have sought to obtain it 
from a power with which we were forming an alliance would have been dificult 
indeed.

The commanding approach to this territory was by the town and fortress of 
Pittsburgh, the "Gateway of the West," from which, through the Ohio river and 
its tributary streams, an army might penetrate with comparative ease to any part 
of the vast Mississippi valley. The possession of this gateway had for some 
years been a subject of dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Though the 
question was ultimately settled in favour of Pennsylvania, yet for the present, 
Virginia, which had the longest arm, kept her hold upon the commanding

p.96

citadel. To Virginia its possession was then a matter of peculiar importance, 
for her population had already begun to overflow its mountain barriers, and, 
pressing down the Ohio valley, had made the beginnings of the state of Kentucky. 
Virginia and North Carolina lying farther westward than any of the other old 
states, were naturally the first to send colonies across the Alleghanies. It was 
not long before the beginning of the war that Daniel Boone had explored the 
Kentucky river, and that Virginia surveyors had gone down the Ohio as far as the 
preent site of Louisville. Conflicts ensued with the Indians, so fierce and 
deadly that this region was long known as the "Dark and Bloody Ground."

During this troubled period, the hostile feeling between Pennsylvania and 
Virginia was nourished by the conflicting interests of the people of those two 
colonies in respect to the western country and its wild inhabitants. The 
Virginians entered the country as settlers, with intent to take possession of 
the soil and keep the Indians at a distance. But there were many people in 
Pennsylvania who reaped large profits from trade with the savages, and therefore 
did not wish to see them dispossessed of their border forests and driven 
westward. The Virginia frontiersmen were angry with the Pennsylvania traders for 
selling rifles and powder to the redskins and buying from them horses stolen 
from white men. This, they alleged, was practically inciting the Indians to 
deeds of plunder and outrage. In the spring of 1774, there seemed to be serious 
danger of an outbreak of hostilities at

p.97

Fort Pitt, when the attention of Virginia was all at once absorbed in a brief 
but hard-fought war, which had a most important bearing upon the issue of the 
American struggle for independence. This border war of 1774 has sometimes been 
known as "Cresap's War," but more recently, and with less impropriety, as "Lord 
Dunmore's War." It was conducted under the general direction of the Earl of 
Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia; and in the political excitement of the 
time there were some who believed that he actually con-trived to stir up the war 
out of malice aforethought, in order to hamper the Virginians in their impending 
struggle with the mother-country. Dunmore's agent, or lieutenant, in western 
Virginia, Dr. John Connolly, was a violent and unscrupulous man, whose arrogance 
was as likely to be directed against friendly as against hostile Indians, and it 
was supposed that he acted under the earl's secret orders with intent to bring 
on a war.

But the charge was ill-supported and quite improbable. According to some 
writers, the true cause of the war was the slaying of the whole family of the 
friendly chief Logan, and doubtless this event furnished the occasion for the 
outbreak of hostilities. It was conspicuous in a series of outrages that had 
been going on for years, such as are always apt to occur on the frontier between 
advancing civilization and resisting barbarism.

John Logan, or Tagahjute', was of Cayuga descent, a chief of the Mingos, a brave 
and honest man of fine and stately presence. He had always been kind and 
hospitable to the English settlers,

p.98

perhaps in accordance with the traditional policy of his Iroquois forefathers, a 
tradition which by 1774 had lost much of its strength. In April of that year 
some Indian depreda-tions occurred on the upper Ohio, which led Dr. Connolly to 
issue instructions, warning the settlers to be on their guard, as an attack from 
the Shawnees was to be apprehended. Capt. Michael Cresap was a pioneer from 
Maryland, a brave man and sterling patriot; but as for the Indians, his feelings 
toward them were like those of most backwoodsmen. Cresap not un-naturally 
interpreted the instuctions from Dunmore's lieutenant as equivalent to a 
declaration of war, and he proceeded forthwith to slay and scalp some friendly 
Shawnees. As is apt to be the case with reprisals and other unreasoning forms of 
popular vengeance, the blow fell in the wrong quarter, and innocent people were 
made scapegoats for the guilty. Cresap's party next started to attack Logan's 
camp at Yellow Creek; but presently bethinkin themselves of Logan's well-known 
friendliness toward the whites, as they argued with one another, they repented 
their purpose, and turned their steps in another direction. But hard by the 
Mingo encampment a wretch named Greathouse had set up a whiskey shop, and 
thither, on the last day of April, repaired Logan's family, nine thirsty 
barbarians, male and female, old and young. When they had become dead drunk, 
Greathouse and two or three of his cronies illustrated their peculiar view of 
the purport of Connolly's instructions by butchering them all in cold blood. The 
Indians

p.99

of the border needed no stronger provocation for rushing to arms. Within a few 
days Logan's men had taken a dozen scalps, half of them from young children. 
Mingos and Shawnees were joined by Wyandots, Delawares and Senecas and the 
dismal tale of blazing cabins and murdered women was renewed all along the 
frontier. It was in vain that Lord Dunmore and his lieut-enant disclaimed 
responsibility for the massacre at Yellow Creek. The blame was by all the 
Indians and many of the whites laid upon Cresap, whose name has been handed down 
to poster-ity as that of the arch-villain in this rough border romance. The 
pathetic speech of the bereaved Logan to Dunsmore's envoy, John Gibson, was 
preserved and immortalized by Jeffer-son in his "Notes on Virginia," and has 
been declaimed by thousands of American school-boys. In his comments Jefferson 
spoke of Cresap as "a man infamous for the many murders he had committed upon 
these injured people." Jefferson here simply gave voice to the tradition which 
had started into full life as early as June, 1774, when Sir William Johnson 
wrote that "a certain Mr. Cressop had trepanned and murdered forty Indians on 
the Ohio, -and that the unworthy author of this wanton act is fled." The charge 
made by Jefferson was answered at the time, but continued to live on in 
tradition, until finally disposed of in 1851 by Brantz Mayer* 

*footnote In a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society. See also his 
Logan and Cresap, Albany, 1867. The story is well told by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt 
in his admirable book, The Winning of the West, New York, 1889. Though I leave 
the present chapter mainly as it was written in 1883, I have, in revising it for 
publication, derived one or two valuable hints from Mr. Roosevelt's work.

The origin of the misconception is doubtless to be traced to the insignificance 
of Greathouse.

p.100

In trying to shield himself, Connolly deposed Cresap from command, but he was 
presently reinstated by Lord Dunmore.

In June of the next year, Captain Cresap marched to Cambridge at the head of 130 
Maryland riflemen; but during the early autumn he was seized with illness, and 
while making his way homeward died at New York, at the age of thirty-three. His 
grave is still to be seen in Trinity churchyard, near the door of the north 
transept. The Indian chief with whose name his has so long been associated was 
some time afterwards tomahawked by a brother Indian, in the course of a drunken 
affray.

The war thus ushered in by the Yellow Creek massacre was an event of cardinal 
importance in the history of our western frontier. It was ended by the decisive 
battle at Point Pleasant, on the Great Kanawha (October 10, 1774), in which the 
Indians, under the famous Shawnee chief Cornstalk, were totally defeated by the 
backwoodsmen under Andrew Lewis. This defeat so cowed the Indians that they were 
fain to purchase peace by surrendering all their claims upon the hunting-grounds 
south of the Ohio. It kept the northwestern tribes com-paratively quiet during 
the first two years of the Revolutionary War, and thus opened the way for white 
settlers to rush into Kentucky. The four years

p.101

following the battle of Point Pleasant saw remarkable and portentous changes on 
the frontier. It was just at the beginning of Lord Dunmore's war that Parliament 
passed the Quebec Act, of which the practical effect, had it ever been enforced, 
would have been the extension of Canada southward to the Ohio river. In 
contravention of old charters, it would have deprived the American colonies of 
the great northwestern territory. But the events that followed upon Lord 
Dunmore's war soon rendered this part of the Quebec Act a nullity.

In 1775, Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased from the Cherokees the 
tract be-tween the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers, and at the same time 
Boonsesborough and Harrods-burg were founded by Daniel Boone and James Harrod. 
As a party of these bold backwoodsmen were encamping near the sources of the 
southern fork of the Licking, they heard the news of the victory which ushered 
in the War of Independence, and forthwith gave the name of Lexington to the 
place of their encampment, on which a thriving city now stands. These new 
settlements were not long in organizing themselves into a state, which they 
called Transylvania. Courts were instituted, laws enacted, and a militia 
enrolled, and a dele-gate was sent to the Continental Congress; but finding that 
Virginia still claimed their allegiance, they yielded their pretensions as a 
county of the mother state. The so-called "county" of Kentucky, comprising the 
whole of

p.102

the present state of that name, with an area one fourth larger than that of 
Scotland, was indeed of formidable dimensions for a county. The settlement of 
Tennessee was going on at the same time. The movement of population for some 
time had a soughwestward trend along the great valleys inclosed by the 
Appalachian ranges, so that frontiersmen from Pennsylvania found their eay down 
the Shenandoah, and thence the stream of Virginian migration reached the 
Watauga, the Holston and the French Broad, in the midst of the most magnificent 
scenery east of the Rocky Mountains. At the same time there was a westward 
movement from North Carolina across the Great Smoky range, and the defeat of the 
Regulators by Governor Tryon at the battle of the Alamance in 1771 no doubt did 
much to give strength and volume to this movement. The way was prepared in 1770 
by James Robertson, who penetrated the wilderness as far as the banks of the 
Watauga. Forts were soon erected there and on the Nolichucky. The settlement 
grew apace, and soon came into conflict with the most warlike and powerful of 
the southern tribes of Indians. The Cherokees, like the Iroquois at the North, 
had fought on the English side in the Seven Years' War, and had rendered some 
service, though of small value, at the capture of Fort Duquesne. Early in the 
Revolutionary War, fierce feuds with the encroaching settlers led them to take 
sides with the British, and in company with Tory guerrillas they ravaged the 
frontier. In 1776, the Watauga settlement was

p.103

attacked, and invasions were made into Georgia and South Carolina. But the blow 
recoiled upon the Cherokees. Their country was laid waste by troops from the 
Carolinas, under Andrew Williamson and Griffith Rutherford; their attack upon 
the Wautauga settlement was defeated by James Robertson and John Sevier; and in 
1777 they were forced to make treaties renouncing for the most part their claims 
upon the territory between the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers.

Robertson and Sevier were the most commanding and picturesque figures in 
Tennessee history until Andrew Jackson came upon the scene; and their military 
successes, moreover, like those of "Old Hickory," were of the utmost importance 
to the whole country. This was especially true of their victory at the Watauga; 
for had the settlement there been swept away by the savages, it would have 
uncovered the great Wilderness Road to Lexington and Harrodsburg, and the 
Kentucky settlement thus fatally isolated, would very likely have had to be 
abandoned. The Watauga victory thus helped to secure in 1776 the ground won two 
years before at the Great Kanawha* (*this point has been well elucidated by Mr. 
Roosevelt in his Winning of the West, vol. i. pp 240, 306.)

Such were the beginnings of Kentucky and Tennessee, and such was the progress 
already made to the west of the mountains, when the next and longest step was 
taken by George Rogers Clark. During the years 1776 to 1777,

p.104

Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was busily engaged in 
preparing a general attack of Indian tribes upon the northwestern frontier. Such 
concerted action among these barbarians was difficult to organize, and the moral 
effect of Lord Dunmore's war doubtless served to postpone it. There were 
isolated assaults, however, upon Boones-borough and Wheeling and in the 
neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. While Hamilton was thus scheming and intriguing, a 
gallant young Virginian was preparing a most-effective counter-stroke. In the 
late autumn of 1777, George Rogers Clark, then just twenty-five years old, was 
making his way back from Kentucky along the Wilderness Road, and heard with 
exultation the news of Burgoyne's surrender. Clark was a man of bold 
originality. He had been well educated by that excellent Scotch school-master, 
Donald Robertson, among whose pupils was James Madison. In 1772, Clark was 
practising the profession of land surveyor upon the upper Ohio, and he rendered 
valuable service as a scout in the campaign of the Great Kanawha. For skill in 
woodcraft, as for indomitable perseverance and courage, he had few equals. He 
was a man of picturesque and stately presence, like an old Norse viking, tall 
and mass-ive with ruddy cheeks, auburn hair, and piercing blue eyes sunk deep 
under thick yellow brows. 

When he heard of the "convention" of Saratoga, Clark was meditating a stroke as 
momentous in the annals of the Mississippi valley as Burgoyne's overthrow in the 
annals of the Hudson.

p.105

He had sent spies through the Illinois country, without giving them any inkling 
of his purpose, and from what he could gather from their reports he had made up 
his mind that by a bold and sudden movement the whole region could be secured 
and the British commander checkmated. On arriving in Virginia, he laid his 
scheme before Governor Patrick Henry; and Jefferson, Wythe and Madison were also 
taken into his confidence. The plan met with warm approval; but as secrecy and 
dispatch were indispensable, it would not do to consult the legislature, and 
little could be done beyond authorizing the adventurous young man to raise a 
force of 350 men and collect material of war at Pittsburgh. People supposed that 
his object was merely to defend the Kentucky settlements. Clark had a hard 
winter's work in enlisting men, but a length in May, 1778, having collected a 
flotilla of boats and a few pieces of light artillery, he started from 
Pittsburgh with 180 picked riflemen and rowed swiftly down the Ohio river a 
thousand miles to its junction with the Mississippi. The British garrison at 
Kaskaskia had been removed, to strengthen the posts at Detroit and Niagara and 
the town was an easy prey. Hiding his boats in a creek, Clark marched across the 
prairie, and seized the place without resistance. The French inhabitants were 
not ill-disposed toward the change, especially when they heard of the new 
alliance between the United States and Louis XVI., and Clark showed consummate 
skill in playing upon their feelings. Cahokia and two other neighbouring

p.106

villages were easily persuaded to submit, and the Catholic priest Gibault 
volunteered to carry Clark's proposals to Vincennes, on the Wabash; upon 
receiving the message this import-ant post likewise submitted. As Clark had 
secured the friendship of the Spanish commandant at St. Louis, he felt secure 
from molestation for the present, and sent a party home to Virginia as the 
"county" of Illinois, and a force of 500 men was raised for its defence.

When these proceedings came to the ears of Colonel Hamilton at Detroit, he 
started out with a little army of 500 men, regulars, Tories, and Indians, and 
after a march of seventy days through the primeval forest reached Vincennes, and 
took possession of it. He spent the winter intriguing with the Indian tribes, 
and threatened the Spanish governor at St. Louis with dire vengeance if he 
should lend aid or countenance to the nefarious proceedings of the American 
rebels. Meanwhile, the crafty Virginian was busily at work. Sending a few boats, 
with light artillery and provisions, to ascend the Ohio and Wabash, Clark 
started overland from Kaskaskia with 130 men; and after an arduous winter march 
of sixteen days across the drowned lands in what is now the state of Illinois, 
he appeared before Vincennes in time to pick up his boats and cannon. In the 
evening of February 23d the town surrender-ed and the townspeope willingly 
assisted in the assault upon the fort. After a brisk can-nonade and

p.107

musket-fire for twenty hours, Hamilton surrendered at discretion, and British 
authority in this region was forever at an end. (Mr. Roosevelt's account of 
Clark's expedition -vol. ii. pp. 31-90 - is extremely graphic and spirited) An 
expedition descending from Pittsburgh in boats had already captured Natchez and 
ousted the British from the lower Mississippi. Shortly after, the Cherokees and 
other Indians whom Hamilton had incited to take the war-path were overwhelmed by 
Colonel Shelby, and on the upper Ohio and Alleghany the Indian country was so 
thoroughly devastated by Colonel Brodhead that all along the frontier there 
reigned a profound peace, instead of the carnival of burning and scalping which 
the British commander had contemplated.

The stream of immigration now began to flow steadily. Fort Jefferson was 
established on the Mississippi river to guard the mouth of the Ohio. Another 
fortress, higher up on the beautiful river which La Salle had discovered and 
Clark had conquered, became the site of Louisville, so named in honour of our 
ally, the French king. James Robertson again appeared on the scene, and became 
the foremost pioneer in middle Tennessee, as he had alread led the colonization 
of the eastern part of that great state. On a bold bluff on the southern bank of 
the Cumberland river, Robertson founded a city, which took its name from the 
gallant General Nash, who fell in the battle of Germantown; and among the cities 
of the fair South there is today none more thriving than Nashville. Thus by 
degrees was our 

p.108

grasp firmly fastened upon the western country, and year by year grew stronger. 
In the gallery of our national heroes, George Rogers Clark deserves a 
conspicuous and honourable place. It was due to his boldness and sagacity that 
when our commissioners at Paris in 1782, were engaged in their difficult and 
delicate work of thwarting our not too friendly French ally, while arranging 
terms of peace with the British enemy, the fortified posts on the Mississippi 
and the Wabash were held by American garrisons. Possession is said to be nine 
points in the law, and while Spain and France were intriguing to keep us out of 
the Mississippi valley, we were in possession of it. The military enterprise of 
Clark was crowned by the diplomacy of Jay. (see my Critical Period of American 
History, chap. i.)

The four cardinal events in the history of our western frontier during the 
Revolution are: (1) the defeat of the Shawnees and their allies at Point 
Pleasant in 1774; (2) the defeat of the Cherokees on the Watauga in 1776; (3) 
Clark's conquest of the Illinois country in 1778-79; (4) the detection and 
thwarting of the French diplomacy in 1782 by Jay. 

When Washington took command of the Continental army at Cambridge, in 1775, the 
population and jurisdiction of the thirteen united commonwealths scarcely 
reached beyond the Alleghanies; it was due to the series of events here briefly 
recounted that when he laid down his command at Annapolis, in 1783, the domain 
of the independent United States was bounded on the west by the Mississippi 
river.

p.109

Clark's last years were spent in poverty and obscurity at his sister's home, 
near Louis-ville, where he died in 1818. It was his younger brother, William 
Clark, who in company with Meriwether Lewis made the famous expedition to the 
Columbia river in 1804, thus giving the United States a hold upon Oregon.

To return to our story, - Lord George Germaine's plan for breaking the spirit of 
the Americans, in so far as it depended upon the barbarous aid which his Indian 
allies could render, had not thus far proved very successful. Terrible damage 
had been wrought on the frontier, especially in Pennsylvania and New York, but 
the net result had been to weaken the Indians and loosen the hold of the British 
upon the continent, while the American position was on the whole strengthened. 
The warfare which the British themselves conducted in the north after the 
Newport campaign, degenerated into a series of marauding expeditions unworthy of 
civilized soldiers. They seem to have learned a bad lesson from their savage 
allies. While Sir Henry Clinton's force was beleaguered in New York, he now and 
then found opportunities for detaching some small force by sea to burn and 
plunder defenceless villages on the coast, in accordance with Lord George's 
instructions. During the autumn of 1778, the pretty island of Martha's Vineyard 
was plundered from end to end, the towns of New Bedford and Fair Haven, with all 
the shipping in their harbours, were burned and similar havoc

p.110

was wrought on the coast of New Jersey. At Old Tappan some American dragoons, 
asleep, in a barn, were captured by Sir Charles Grey's troops - and thirty-seven 
of them were bayoneted in cold blood. Fifty-five light infantry belonging to 
Pulaski's legion were similarly sur-prised at night by Captain Ferguson and all 
but five were massacred. In May, 1779, General Mathews was sent with 2,500 men 
to Virginia where he sacked the towns of Portsmouth and Norfolk, with cruelties 
worthy of a mediaeval freebooter. Every house was burned to the ground, many 
unarmed citizens were murdered and delicate ladies were abandoned to the 
diabolical passions of a brutal soldiery. In July the enterprising Tryon 
conducted a raid-ing expedition along the coast of Connecticut. At New Haven he 
burned the ships in the Harbour and two or three streets of warehouses, and slew 
several citizens; his intention was to burn the whole town, but the neighbouring 
yeomanry quickly swarmed in and drove the British to their ships. Next day the 
British landed a Fairfield and utterly destroyed it. Next they burned Green 
Farms and then Norwalk. After this, just as they were about to proceed against 
New London, they were suddenly recalled to New York by bad news.

In so far as these bararous raids had any assignable military purpose, it was 
hoped that they might induce Washington to weaken his force at the Highlands by 
sending troops into Connecticut to protect private property and chastise the 
marauders. After the destruction of the Highland

p.111

forts in October, 1777, the defence of this most important position had been 
entrusted to the powerful fortifications lately erected at West Point. A little 
lower down the river two small but very strong forts, at Stony Point on the 
left, guarded the entrance to the Highlands. while the fort at Stony Point was 
building, Sir Henry Clinton came up the river and captured it, and then, with 
the aid of its batteries, subdued the opposite citadel also. Stony Point was a 
rocky promontory washed on three sides by the waters of the Hudson. It was 
separated from the mainland by a deep morass, over which ran a narrow causeway 
that was covered at high tide, but might be crossed when the water was low. This 
natural stronghold was armed with heavy batteries which commanded the morass, 
with its causeway, and the river, and the British garrisoned it with six hundred 
men, and built two additional lines of fortification rendering it well-nigh 
impregnable.

The acquisition of this spot seemed like the auspicious beginning of a summer 
campaign for Clinton's army, which had been cooped up in New York since the 
battle of Monmouth. To have kept on and captured West Point would have gone a 
long way toward retrieving the disaster of Saratoga, but Washington's force was 
so well disposed that Clinton did not venture to attempt so much as this. Such 
hopes, moreover, as he may have based upon the Connecticut raids proved entirely 
delusive. Washington's method

p.112

of relieving Connecticut and destroying Clinton's scheme was different from what 
was ex-pected. Among his generals was one whom the soldiers called "Mad Anthony" 
for his desperate bravery, but there was much more method than madness about 
Anthony Wayne. For the union of impetuous valour with a quick eye and a cool 
head, he was second to none. Twelve hundred light infantry were put at his 
disposal. Every dog within three miles was slaughtered, that no indiscreet bark 
might alarm the garrison. Not a gun was loaded, lest some untimely shot betray 
the approaching column. The bayonet was not to be put to more warlike use than 
the roasting of meat before a camp-fire. At midnight of the 15th of July the 
Americans crossed the causeway at low tide, and were close upon the outworks 
before their advance was dis-covered. The garrison sprang to arms, and a heavy 
fire was opened from the batteries, but Wayne's rush was rapid and sure. In two 
solid columns the Americans came up the slope so swiftly that the grape-shot 
made few victims. Shoulder to shoulder, in resistless mass, like the Theban 
phalanx of Epaminondas, they pressed over the works, heedless of obstacles and 
within a few minutes the garrison surrendered at discretion. In this assault the 
Americans lost fifteen killed and eighty three wounded and the British sixty-
three killed. the rest of the garrison, 553 in number, including the wounded, 
were made prisoneers, and not a man was killed in cold blood, though the 
shameful scenes in Virginia were fresh in men's memories, and

p.113

the embers of Fairfield and Norwalk still smouldered. The contemporary British 
historian Stedman praises Wayner for his humanity, and thinks that he "would 
have been fully justified in putting the garrison to the sword;: but certainly 
no laws or usages of war that have ever obtained in America would have justified 
such a barbarous proceeding, and Stedman's remark simply bears unconscious 
testimony to the higher degree of humanity which American civili-zation had 
reached as compared with the civiliation of Europe.

The capture of Stony Point served the desired purpose of relieving Connecticut, 
but the Americans held it but three days. Clinton at once drew his forces 
together and came up the Hudson, hoping to entice Washington into risking a 
battle for the sake of keeping his hold upon Stony Point. But Washington knew 
better than to do so. In case of defeat he would run risk of losing the far more 
important position at West Point. He was not the man to hazard his main citadel 
for the sake of an outpost. Finding that it would take more men than he could 
spare to defend Stony Point against a combined attack by land and water, he 
ordered it to be evacuated. The works wer all destroyed, and the garrison with 
the cannon and stores withdrawn into the Highlands. Sir Henry took possession of 
the place and held it for some time, but did not venture to advance against 
Washington. To give the British general a wholesome sense of his adversary's 
vigilance, a blow was struck in an unexpected quarter. At Paulus hook, on the 
site

p.114

of the present Jersey City, the British had a very strong fort. The "Hook" was a 
long, low neck of land reaching out into the Hudson. A sandy isthmus, severed by 
a barely fordable creek, connected it with the mainland. Within the line of the 
creek, a deep ditch had been dug across the whole isthmus and this could only be 
crossed by means of a drawbridge. Within the ditch were two lines of 
intrenchments. The place was garrisoned by 500 men, but relying on the strength 
of their works and their distance from the American lines, the garrison had 
grown somewhat careless. This fact was made known to Washington by Major Henry 
Lee, who volunteered to surprise the fort. On the night of the 18th of August, 
at the head of 300 picked men, Lee crossed the creek which divided Paulus Hook 
from the mainland. A foraging expedition had been sent out in the course of the 
day, and as the Americans approached they were at first mistaken by the 
sentinels for the foragers returning. Favour-ed by this mistake, they surmounted 
all the obstacles and got possession of the fort in a twinkling. Alarm guns, 
quickly answered by the ships in the river and the forts on the New York side, 
warned them to retreat as fast as they had come, but not until Lee had secured 
159 prisoners whom he carried off safely to the Highlands, losing of his own men 
only two killed and three wounded. This exploit, worthy of the good Lord James 
Douglas, has no military significance save for its example of skill and 
boldness; but it deserves mention for the personal interest

p.115

which must ever attach to its author. In the youthful correspondence of 
Washington mention is made of a "Lowland Beauty" for whom he entertained an 
unrequited passion. This lady married a member of the illustrious Virginian 
family to which Richard Henry Lee belonged. Her son, the hero of Paulus Hook, 
was always a favorite with Washington, and for his dashing exploits in the later 
years of the Revolutionary War, became endeared to the American people as "Light 
Horse Harry." His nobel son, Robert Edward Lee, must be ranked among the 
foremost generals of modern times.

CHAPTER XII.
WAR ON THE OCEAN.


p.116

Until the war of independence the Americans had no navy of their own, such 
maritime expeditions as that against Louisburg having been undertaken with the 
aid of British ships. when the war broke out, one of the chief advantages 
posessed by the British, in their offensive operations, was their entire control 
of the American waters. Not only were all the coast towns exposed to their 
sudden attack, but on the broad deep rivers they were sometimes able to 
penetrate to a considerable distance inland, and by means of their ships they 
could safely transport men and stores from point to point. Their armies always 
rested upon the fleets as bases of operations, and soon lost their efficiency 
when severed from these bases. General Howe was not safe in Philadelphia until 
his brother had gained control of the Delaware river, and Burgoyne's army 
invited capture as soon as its connection with the lakes was cut off. From first 
to last, the events of the war illustrated this dependence of the army upon the 
fleet. On the retreat from Lexington, it was only the ships that finally saved 
Lord Percy's weary troops from capture. At Yorktown it was only the momentary 
loss of

p.117

of naval superiority that made escape impossible for Cornwallis. For want of a 
navy, General Washington could not hold the island of New York in 1776; and for 
a like reason, in 1778, after the enemy had been reduced to the defensive, he 
could not prudently undertake its recapture. It ws through lack of effective 
naval aid that the Newport expedition failed; and the atrocities of 1779, in 
Virginia and Connectict bore sad testimony to the defenceless condition of our 
coasts.

Early in the war this crying want was earnestly considered by Congress, and 
efforts were made to repair it by the construction of a navy and the equipment 
of private cruisers. But the construction of a regular navy, which alone could 
serve the purpose, was beset with even greater difficulties than those which 
attended the organization of a permanent army. There was, indeed, no lack of 
good material, whether for ships or for seamen. New England, in particular, with 
its great length of seacoast and its extensive fisheries, had always possessed a 
considerable merchant marine, and nourished a hardy race of seafaring people. 
How formidable they could become in naval warfare, Great Britain was destined, 
nearly forty years afterward, to find out, to her astonishment and chagrin. But 
the absence of a central government was even more seriously felt in naval than 
in military affairs. The action of Congress was feeble, unintelligent, and 
vacillating. The "marine committees," "navy boards," and "boards of admiralty," 
to which the work of creating a navy was entrusted, were so often changed in 
their composition

p.118

and in their functions that it was difficult for any piece of work to be carried 
out in accordance with its original design. As there was a total absence of 
system in the department of admiralty, so there was utter looseness of 
discipline in the service. There were the same wranglings about rank as in the 
army, and the consequences were even more pernicious. It was difficult to enlist 
good crews, because of the uncertainty arising from the general want of system. 
The risks encountered were excessive, because of the overwhelming preponderance 
of the enemy from the outset. Of thirteen new cruisers laid down in the autumn 
of 1775, only six ever succeeded in getting out to sea. During the war one ship-
of-the-line was built, - the American 74; but she was given to the king of 
France while yet on the stocks. Between 1775 and 1783, there were twenty small 
frigates and twenty-one sloops of war in the service. Of these, fifteen frigates 
and ten sloops-of-war were either captured by the enemy, or destroyed to prevent 
their falling into the enemy's hands. The armaments of these ships were very 
light; the larges of them, the Bon Homme Richard, was constructed for a thirty-
eight, but her heaviest guns were only twelve-pounders.

Yet in spite of this light force, weak discipline, and unstead management, the 
litte American navy did some very good work in the course of the war, and it was 
efficiently helped by a multitude of private cruisers, just as the Continental 
army often got valuable aid from the militia. Before the French alliance

p.119

more than six hundred British vessels had fallen prey to the American cruisers, 
and so venturesome were these swift little craft that they even hovered around 
the coast of England and merchant vessels going from one British port to another 
needed the protection of a convoy. During the same period, about nine hundred 
American vessels were taken by British cruisers; so that the damaging power of 
the American marine seems to have amounted to about two thirds that of such part 
of the British marine as could be devoted to the injury of American shipping. 
The damage inflicted upon the Americans was the more serious, for it well-nigh 
ruined the New England fisheries and the coasting trade. On the other hand, the 
American cruisers caused marine insurance in England to rise to a far higher 
point than had ever before been known; and we learn from a letter of Silas Deane 
to Robert Morris that, shortly before the alliance between France and the United 
States, the docks of the Thames were crowded with French vessels loading with 
British goods that sought the shelter of a neutral flag.

In one respect the value of this work of the American cruisers was incalculable. 
It familiarized Europe with the sight of the American flag in European waters. 
It was of great importance that Europe should think of the new republic not as 
merely the theme of distant rumours, but as a maritime power, able to defend 
itself within sight of the British coasts; and in this respect it would be 
difficult to overrate the services rendered by the heroic captains who first

p.120

carried the stars and stripes across the ocean, and bearded the lion in his 
native lair. Of these gallent fellows, Lambert Wickes was the first, and his 
ship, the Reprisal 16, was the first American war vessel to visit the eastern 
shores of the Atlantic. After a brilliant cruise in the summer of 1777, she 
foundered off the banks of Newfoundland, with the loss of all onboard. Next came 
Gustavus Conyngham, with the Surprise and the Revenge, which in the same summer 
took so many prizes in the North Sea and the British Channel that insurance rose 
as high as twenty-five per cent, and in some instances ten per cent was demanded 
for the short passage between Dover and Calais. But the fame of both these 
captains was soon eclipsed by that of John Paul Jones, a Scotch sailer, who from 
boyhood had been engaged in the Virginia trade, and in 1773 had gone to Virginia 
to live. When war broke out Jones offered his services to Congress and in 
October, 1776, his name appears as eighteenth in the list of captains in the new 
navy. From the outset he was distinguished for skill and bravery and in 1778 
being then thirty years old, he was sent, with the Ranger 18, to prowl about the 
British coasts. In this little ship he made a successful cruise in the Irish 
Channel, burned some of the shipping in the port of Whitehaven, in Cumberland, 
andin a fierce fight off Carrickfergus captured the British sloop-of-war Drake 
20; losing only eight men in killed and wounded, whle the Drake lost forty-two. 
With the Drake and several merchant prizes, Jones made his way to Brest, and 
sent the Ranger

p.121

home to America, while he remained to take command of a more considerable 
expedition that was fitting out for the following year. Along with the other 
duties of Franklin, as minister of the United States at the French court, was 
joined a general superintendence of maritime affairs. He was a sort of agent 
plenipotentiary of Congress in all matters relating to the navy. He had 
authority from Congress to issue letters of marque and excercised it freely, 
while imposing restrictions that were characteristic of his magnanimous spirit. 
In 1779, he issued instructions to all American cruisers that, in whatsoever 
part of the sea they might happen to meet the great discoverer Captain Cook, 
they were to forget the temporary quarrel in which they were fighting, and not 
merely suffer him to pass unmolested, but offer him every aid and service in 
their power; since it would ill beseem Americans to lift their hands against one 
who had earned the reverence and gratitude of all mankind. So in the 
instructions to John Paul Jones, he ordered him not to burn defenceless towns on 
the British coast except in case of military necessity, and in such case he was 
to give notice, so that the women and childred with the sick and aged 
inhabitants, might be removed betimes.

The expedition of which Jones took command in the summer of 1779 was designed 
for a signal "demonstration" upon the coasts of Great Britain. The object of the 
British raids in Virginia and Connecticut were partly to terrify the Americans 
by a bold and savage assertion of the

p.122

ubiquity of British power. The expedition of Paul Jones was to serve as a sort 
of counter-irritant. The confused and indefinite character of the American naval 
service at that time could not have a better illustration than is to be found in 
the details of the little squadron with which he was called upon to undertake 
his perilous task. The flagship was an old Indiaman named the Duras, purchased 
by the French government and fitted up for the occasion. In compliment to the 
author of Poor Richard's maxims, her name was changed to the Bon Homme Richard. 
She was an exceedingly clumsy affair, with swelling bows and a tower-like poop 
such as characterized the ships of the seventeenth century. She was now pierced 
for a thirty-eight-gun frigate, but as there was delay in procuring the 
eighteen-pounders suited for such a craft, her main deck was armed with twelve-
pounders instead. In the gun-room below, Captain Jones had twelve portholes cut, 
in which he mounted six old eighteens, that could be shifted from side to side 
as occasion required. Leaving these eighteens out of the account, the force of 
the Bon Homme Richard was about equal to that of a thirty-two-gun frigate. This 
singular vessel was manned by a crew as nondescript as herself, a motley gang of 
sailors and marines from nearly every country in Europe, with half a dozen 
Malays into the bargain. To these a hundred New England men were afterwards 
added, bringing up the whole number to 380. For this flagship three consorts 
were supplied, under the direction of the French government. The Pallas,

p.123

a merchant vessel pierced for the occasion, was thus transformed into a thirty-
two-gun frigate; the Vengeance and Cerf were of smaller calibre. All these ships 
were French built. To these Franklin added the Alliance 32, which happened to be 
in a French port at the same time. The Alliance, lately built at Salisbury, in 
Massachusetts, and named in honor of the treaty between France and the United 
States, was a swift and beautiful ship, one of the finest in the American Navy. 
Unfortunately, it was thought desirable to pay a further compliment to our new 
allies by appointing a French captain to command her, and this step gave rise to 
so much discontent and insubordination as well-nigh to destroy her efficiency. 
Nor had Capt. Landais done anything to merit such distinction; he was simply an 
adventurer, seeking notoriety in the American service.

The ships in this motley squadron were not privateers. The Alliance was a 
regular member of our navy. The French-built ships were regarded as loaned to 
the United States, and were to resume their French nationality after the 
termination of the cruise; but they were all duly commissioned by Franklin, 
under the powers delegated to him by Congress. For the time being they were part 
of the American navy and subject to its regulations. Their commodore, Paul 
Jones, has often been spoken of as a privateer, sometimes as a pirate, but he 
was as much a regular captain in our navy as Greene was a regular general in our 
army. Though, however, there could be no doubt as to the legitimate naval

p.124

character of the expedition, a more ill-assorted or disorderly squadron was 
perhaps never sent to sea. The summer was spent in cruising about the British 
coasts, and many prizes were taken; but the insubordination of the French 
commanders was so gross that during a large part of the time the ships were 
scattered in all directions and Jones was left to cruise alone. On the 17th of 
September, having got his fleet together, he entered the Frith of Forth, and 
came within gunshot of Leith, which he intended to attack and capture. Sir 
Walter Scott, then a school-boy at Edinburgh, has given, in the introduction to 
"Waverly," a graphic description of the excitement which was felt upon that 
occasion.

But, as Scott says, "a steady and powerful west wind settled the matter by 
sweeping Paul Jones and his vessels out of the Frith of Forth." Four days later, 
the Bone Homme Richard and the Vengeance entred the river Humber and destroyed 
several vessels. On the 23d the Alliance and Pallas having come up, a British 
fleet of forty sail was descried off Flamborough Head. They were merchant 
vessels bound for the Baltic, under convoy of the Serapis 44, Captain Pearson, 
and the Countess of Scarborough 20, Captain Piercy. Captain Jones instantly gave 
chase, ordering his consorts to follow and form in line of battle; but the 
Alliance disobeyed and ran of to some distance, for a time disconcerting the 
Pallas, which could not understand the discrepancy between the signals and the 
movements. The British merchant ships crowded all sail to get out of the way, 
but the

p.125

two frigates accepted Jones's challenge, and came up to fight. The Countess of 
Scarborough was very inferior in size and armament to the Pallas, while on the 
other hand the Serapis was much more powerful than the Bon Homme Richard. She 
was a two-decker, mounting twenty eighteen-pounders on her quarter deck and 
forecastle; so that she could throw 300 pounds of metal on a broadside. The Bon 
Home Richard, with her six eighteens, could indeed throw 312 pounds on a 
broadside, but her weight of metal was very badly distributed among light guns. 
Without her eighteens, she could throw only 204 pounds on a broadside, being 
thus inferior to her opponent by one third. The Serapis had a crews of 320 well-
trained British sailors and she was a new and fast ship, perfect in all her 
appoitments.

The fight began at half past seven o'clock, on a dark, cloudy evening, in very 
smooth water. The two principal opponents delivered their entire broadsides at 
the same moment. At this first fire, two of the old eighteens in the American 
frigate burst, killing a dozen men. After this disaster, no one had confidence 
enough in such guns to fire them again, so that the Bon Homme Richard was at 
once reduced to two thirds the force of her antagonist, and in ordinary fight 
must soon have been overcome. A brisk cannonade was kept up for an hours, while 
the two ships manoeuvred for a raking position. The Serapis, being much the 
better sailer, was passing across her adversary's bow, 

p.126

with very little elbow-room, when Jones succeeded in running his vessel into her 
just aft of her weather beam. For a moment all firing ceased on both ships, and 
Captain Pearson called out, "Have you struck your colours?" "I have not yet 
begun to fight," replied Captain Jones. For a moment the ships separated, the 
Serapis running ahead almost in a line with the Bon Homme Richard. The Serapis 
now put her helm hard down and was box-hauled, in order to luff up athwart her 
adversary's bow, and thus regain her raking position; but the Bon Home Richard 
changed her tack, and presently, in a dense cloud of smoke, the two ships came 
together again, the British bowsprit passing over the high old-fashioned poop of 
the American vessel. This was just what Jones desired, and as he stood there on 
his quarter-deck he seized a stout rope, and lashed the enemy's jib-boom to his 
mizzen-mast. Thus tied fast, the pressure of the light wind brought the ships 
alongside, the head of the one lying opposite the stern of the other. Grappling 
hooks were now thrown into the quarter of the Serapis, and with repeated 
lashings fore and aft the two monsters were held together in deadly embrace. So 
close did they lie that their yards were interlocked and some of the guns of the 
Serapis became useless for want of room to use the rammers. The advantage of her 
superior armament was thus in some measure lost, while her advantage in 
quickness of movement was entirely neutralized. Still her heavy guns at this 
short range did frightful execution and the main deck of the Bon Homme Richard 
was soon covered with

p.127

mangled and dying men, while her timbers were badly shivered and many cannon 
were knocked from their carriages. Unable to bear this terrible fire, the 
Americans crowded upon the upper deck in such numbers as easily to defeat the 
British attempts to board. Parties of marksmen, climbing into the rigging, 
cleared the enemy's tops and shot down every man upon the Serapis who ventured 
from under cover. Hand grenades were thrown into her port-holes to slay the 
gunners; and presently one bold fellow, crawling out to the very end of theBon 
Homme Richard's main-yard just over the main hatchway of the Serapis, dropped 
one of these mischievous missiles through the hatchway, where it ignited a row 
of cartridges that were lying upon the main deck. The explosion ran swiftly 
along the line, as through a pack of gigantic firecrackers. More than twenty men 
were blown into fragments, their heads, arms, and legs flying in every 
direction, while forty others were disabled. With the havoc already wrought by 
the guns, the Serapis had now lost two fifths of her crew, and her fire 
perceptibly slackened; so that the Americans were able to go below and work 
their guns again, pouring into the British port-holes a storm of grape and 
canister which made an awful carnage.

It was now ten o'clock. All this while the Alliance had kept out of the fight, 
but the Pallas had attacked the Countess of Scarborough, and after a brisk 
cannonade compelled her to surrender. The Alliance now came down and stupidly 
poured a raking volley along the decks of the two chief com-

p.128

combatants, doing impartial damage to friend and foe. Warning shouts went up 
from the Bon Homme Richard, and her commander called out to Captain Landais to 
fall upon the farther side of the Serapis and board her. The Frenchman replied 
that he would do so, but instead he ran his ship off a couple of miles to the 
leeward and comfortably awaited the end of the battle. By this time the Serapis 
was on fire in several places, so that part of her crew had to leave their guns 
and bend all their energies to extinguishing the flames. The American ship was 
in still worse plight; she had not only been burning for half an hour, but so 
many holes had been shot in her hull that she began to sink. She had more than a 
hundred British prisoners below decks, and these men wer now set free and 
marshalled at the pumps. Few guns were worked on either ship, and the rest of 
the fight between the two exhausted combatants was a mere question of dogged 
tenacity. At last Captain Jones, with his own hands, directed a couple of guns 
against the enemy's mainmast, and just as it was threatening to fall she 
surrendered. The gallant British commander stood almost alone on the main deck 
of his ship, in the midst of an awful scene of death; while of his few men who 
remained unhurt, most had sunk down, panting and overcome with fatigue. No 
sooner were the ships cut asunder than the tottering mainmast of the Serapis 
went overboard, carrying with it the mizzen topmast and all the mizzen rigging. 
The Bon Homme Richard was with difficulty kept afloat till morning and all night 
long fresh men from her 

p.129

consorts were hard at work fighting the flames, while the wounded were being 
carried off. At ten o'clock next morning she sank. Thus ended one of the most 
obstinate and murderous struggles recorded in naval history. Of the men engaged, 
more than half were killed or badly wounded, and few got off without some scar 
or bruise to carry as a memento of this dreadful night. From a military point of 
view, the first considerable fight between British and American frigates had 
perhaps no great significance. But the moral effect, in Europe of such a victory 
within sight of the British coast was prodigious. The King of France made Paul 
Jones a knight of the order of merit, and from the Empress of Russia he received 
the ribbon of St. Anne. The King of Denmark settled a pension on him, while 
throughout Europe his exploit was told and told again in the gazettes, and at 
the drinking tables on street corners. On his arrival in Holland, whither he 
went with his prizes a fortnight after the battle, the British government 
peremptorily demanded that he should be given up, to be hanged as a pirate. The 
sympathies of the Dutch were decidedly with the Americans; but as they were not 
quite ready to go to war with England, a tardy notice was given to Jones, after 
ten weeks, that he had better quit the country. Though chased by a British 
fleet, he got safely to France in December and after various adventures, lasting 
through the ensuing year, he reached Philadelphia early in 1781. On inquiry into 
the extraordinary behavious of Captain

p.130

Landais, some doubt as to his sanity arose, so that he was not shot for 
disobedience of orders, but simply discharged from the navy. Paul Jones was put 
in command of the America 74, but the war was so nearly ended that he did not 
get to sea again and Congress presented his ship to the King of France. In 1788 
he passed into the Russian service with the rank of rear-admiral. He died in 
Paris in 1792 in the forty-fifth year of his age.

Here the question naturally arises, why should the King of Denmark and the 
Empress of Russia have felt so much interest in the victory of Paul Jones as to 
confer distinguished honours upon him for winning it? The answer, at which we 
shall presently arrive, will forcibly disclose to us the extent to which, by the 
end of the year 1779, the whole civilized world had become involved in the 
quarrel between England and her revolted colonies. As at the bridge of Concord 
the embattled farmers of Massachusetts had once fire a shot heard round the 
world, so those last guns aimed by John Paul Jones against the mainmast of the 
Serapis aroused an echo of which the reverberations were not to cease until it 
should be shown that henceforth nobler principles of international law must 
prevail upon the high seas than had ever yet been acknowledged. We have now to 
trace the origin and progress of the remarkable complication of affairs which at 
length, during the year 1780, brought all the other maritime powers of Europe 
into an attitude of hostility toward Great Britain.

p.131

For not until we have duly comprehended this can we understand the world-wide 
significance of our Revolutionary War, or estimate aright the bearings of the 
events which led to that grand twofold consummation - the recognition of the 
independence of the United States, and the overthrow of the personal government 
of George III. in England.

John Paul Jones was not the only enemy who hovered about the British coast in 
the summer of 1779. In June of that year, Spain declared war against England, 
but without recognizing the independence of the United States, or entering into 
an alliance with us. From the beginning, Count Vergennes had sought Spanish aid 
in his plans for supporting the Americans but anything like cordial cooperation 
between Spain and France in such an undertaking ws impossible, for their 
interests were in many respects directly opposite. So far as mere hatred toward 
England was concerned, Spain doubtless went even farther than France. Spain had 
not forgotten that she had once been mistress of the seas, or that it was 
England which had ousted her form this supremacy in the days of Queen Elizabeth. 
Of England, as the greatest of Protestant and constitutional powers, as the 
chief defender of political and religious liberty, priest-ridden and king-ridden 
Spain was the natural enemy. She had also, like France, the recollection of 
injuries lately suffered in the Seven Years' War to urge her to a policy of 
revenge. And to crown all, in the event of a successful war, she might hope to

p.132

regain Jamaica, or the Floridas, or Minorca, or above all, Gibraltar, that 
impregnable stronghold, the possession of which by England had for more than 
sixty years made Spaniards blush with shame. On the other hand, Spain regarded 
the Americans with a hatred probably not less rancorous than that which she felt 
toward the British. The mere existence of these English colonies in North 
America was a perpetual reminder of the days when the papal edict granting this 
continent to Spain had been set at naught by heretical cruisers and explorers. 
The obnoxious principles of civil and religious liberty were represented here 
with even greater emphasis than in England. In Mexico and South America the 
Spanish crown had still a vast colonial empire; and it was rightly foreseen that 
a successful revolt of the English colonies would furnish a dangerous precedent 
for the Spanish colonies to follow. Spain was, moreover, the chief upholder of 
the old system of commercial monopoly; and here her interests were directly 
opposed to those of France, which, since it had been deprived of its colonial 
empire, saw in the general overthrow of commercial monopoly the surest way of 
regaining its share of the trade of the world.

Under the influence of these conflicting motives, the conduct of Spain was 
marked for a time by hesitation and double-dealing. Between his various wishes 
and fears, the Spanish prime minister, Florida Blanca, knew not what course to 
pursue. When he heard of the alliance between France and the United States, 
which

p.133

was undertaken against his advice to Vergennes, his wrath knew no bounds. It was 
a treaty, he said, "worthy of Don Quixote." At first he intrigued with the 
British government, offering his services as mediator between England and 
France. Lord Weymouth, the British minister for foreign affairs, refused to 
enter into any negotiation so long as France should extend aid to "the rebel 
colonies." To the covert threat of the wily Spaniard, that if the war were to 
continue his royal master would doubtless feel compelled to take part with one 
side or the other, Lord Weymouth replied that the independence of the United 
States would prove fatal to the coninuance of Spanish control over Mexico and 
South America; and he suggested, accordingly, that the true interest of Spain 
lay in forming an alliance with Great Britain. While this secret discussion was 
going on, Florida Blanca also sounded Vergennes, proposing that peace should be 
made on such terms as to allow the British to retain possession of Rhode Island 
and New York. This, he thought, would prevent the formation of an American Union 
and would sow the seeds of everlasting dissension between Great Britain and the 
American States, whereby the energies of the English race would be frittered 
away in internecine conflict, leaving room for Spain to expand itself. But 
Vergennes would not hear of this. France had recognized the independence of the 
thirteen States, and had explicitly and publicly agreed to carry on the war 
until that independence should be ackknowledged by England; and from that 
position she could not

p.134

easily retreat. At the same time Vergennes intimated that France was in no way 
bound to protect the American claim to the Ohio valley, and was far from 
desiring that the people of the United States should control the whole of North 
America. Upon this suggestion the Spanish court finally acted. After six months 
more of diplomatic fencing, a treaty was concluded in April, 1779, between 
France and Spain, whereby it was agreed that these two powers should undertake a 
concerted invasion of England. For this undertaking, France was to furnish the 
land force, while both powers were to raise as great a naval armament as 
possible. France was to assist Spain in recovering Minorca and the Floridas, and 
if Newfoundland could be conquered, its fisheries were to be monopolized by the 
two parties to this treaty. Neither power was to make peace on any terms until 
England should have surrendered Gibralter to Spain.

This convention brought Spain into the lists against England without bringing 
her directly into alliance with the United States. She was left free to 
negotiate with Congress at her own good pleasure, and might ask for the whole 
Mississippi valley, if she chose, in return for her assistance. Gerard, the 
French minister at Philadelphia, sought to persuade Congress to give up the 
fisheries and relinquish all claim to the territory westof the Alleghanies. 
There were hot debates on this subject in 1779, and indeed the situation of 
affairs was sufficiently complicated to call for the excercise of skilful 
diplomacy. As the treaty between

p.135

France and Spain became known in America, it was felt to be in some respects 
inconsistent with the prior convention between France and the United States. In 
that convention it had been stipulated that neither party should make peace with 
Great Britain without the consent of the other. In the convention between France 
and Spain it was agreed that neither party should make peace until Great Britain 
should surrender Gibralter. But the Americans rightly felt that, should Great 
Britain be found willing to concede their independence, they were in no wise 
bound to keep up the war for the sole purpose which had never owed them any good 
will, and was at this very moment hoping to cut down their territory. The 
proposal to exclude America as well as Great Britain from the fisheries excited 
loud indignation in New England.

Meanwhile, the new allies had gone energetically to work. Early in 1779, a 
French fleet had captured the British settlements of Senegambia, and made a 
vigorous though unsuccessful assault upon the island of Jersey. In June, war was 
declared by Spain so suddenly that England was quite taken by surprise. Florida 
Blanca had lied with so grave a face that Lord North had not been looking out 
for such a step. In August, the allied French and Spanish fleets, numbering more 
than sixty ships-of-line, with a full complement of frigates, entered the 
English Channel with intent to repeat the experiment of the Invincible Armada; 
while a

p.136

French army lay at Havre, ready to cross at the first opportunity. To oppose 
this formidable force, Admiral Hardy was able to get together only thirty-eight 
ships-of-the-line, with the ordinary proportion of frigates. There was a panic 
in England, and the militia were called out. But owing to dissensions between 
the French and Spanish admirals and serious illness in the crews, nothing 
whatever was accomplished, and the great fleet retired crest-fallen from the 
channel. Everybody blamed everybody else, while an immense sum of money had been 
spent upon a wretched fiasco.

In America, however, the allies were more successful. Galvez, the Spanish 
governor of Louisiana, captured Baton Rouge and Mobile, with their British 
garrisons, and preparations were made for the siege of Pensacola, to complete 
the conquest of West Florida. In the West Indies, the islands of Grenada and St. 
Vincent were captured by Estaing. The moment that war was declared by Spain, 
there was begun that siege of Gibralter which, for the heroic defence, as well 
as for its long duration of nearly four years, has had no parallel in the annals 
of modern warfare.

It was only through maritime expeditions that the two new allies could directly 
assail England with any hope of success; but here on the sea her natural 
superiority was not long in asserting itself. Great efforts were made to 
increase the strength of the navy and in December, 1779, the command of the 
fleet in the West Indies was given to a man who among English sailors ranks with 
Blake and Hawke, on a plane inferior only to that occupied by Nelson. 

p.137

The brilliant career of Sir George Rodney began in the Seven Years' War, in the 
course of which he bombarded Havre, thus warding off a projected invasion of 
England, and moreover captured several islands in the West Indies. It was Pitt 
who first discerned his genius, and put him into a position in which he could 
win victories. After the peace of 1763 he became a member of Parliament but lost 
all he had in gambling and fled to France to get rid of his creditors. When war 
broke out between France and England in 1778, the venerable Marshal de Biron 
loaned him enough money to save him from the Marshalsea or the Fleet, and he 
returned to England to be appointed to the chief command in the West Indies. A 
vain and unscrupulous man, as many called him, he was none the less a most 
skilful and indomitable captain. He was ordered, on his way to the West Indies, 
to relieve Gibralter, which was beginning to suffer the horrors of famine, and 
never was such a task more brilliantly performed. First, he had the good fortune 
to fall in with fifteen Spanish ships, loaded with provisions and under the 
convoy of seven war vessels and all this fleet he captured. Then, at Cape St. 
Vincent, on a dark and stormy night, he gave chase to a Spanish fleet of eleven 
ships-of-the-line and two frigates, and in a sharp fight captured or destroyed 
all but four of them without losing one of his own ships. He thus reached 
Gibralter and after passing up to the fortress the welcome cargoes of the 
fifteen merchant prizes went on to the West Indies where his presence turned the

p.138

scale against the allies. A powerful French fleet under Count de Guichen was 
cruising in those waters; and it was hoped that this fleet would soon be able to 
come to New York and cooperate with Washington in an attempt to regain that 
city. But the arrival of Rodney changed all this, and the Count de Guichen, 
after being worsted in battle sailed away for France, while Rodney proceeded to 
New York, to relieve Sir Henry Clinton and foil the projects of Washington.

That very supremacy upon the sea, however, which enabled England to defy the 
combined fleets of France and Spain served, in it immediate consequences, only 
involved her in fresh difficulties. By the arrogant and indiscriminate manner in 
which she exercised the right of search, she soon succeeded in uniting against 
her all the neutral nations of Europe; and a principle of international law was 
laid down which in our own time has become fully established, and must in future 
essentially limit the areas over which wars are likely to extend. This new 
principle of international law related to the rights of merchant vessels 
belonging to neutral powers in time of war. In early times it was held that if 
one country went to war with another, its right to prey upon its enemy's 
commerce was virtually unlimited.

If it found its enemy's goods carried in a ship belonging to some neutral power, 
it had a right to seize and confiscate them; and in days when hostility was the 
rule and peace the exception, when warfare was deemed honourable and commerce 
ignoble, and when the usages of war

p.139

were rough and unscrupulous, the neutral ship itself, which carried the goods, 
was very likely to be confiscated also. As the neutral power whose ship was 
seized would be sure to resent such behaviour, it followed that any war between 
two maritime powers was likely to spread, until it involved every other power 
which possessed any merchant shipping or did any business upon the high seas. 
With a view to confining such evils within as narrow a limit as possible, the 
maritime code known as the Consolato del Mare, which represented the commercial 
interests of the Middle Ages, and was generally accepted as of the highest 
authority in maritime affairs, recognized the right of confiscating an enemy's 
goods found in a neutral ship, but did not recognize the right of confiscating 
the neutral ship.

In the Middle Ages maritime warfare played a subordinate part; but after 
colonies had been planted in America and the East Indies by the great maritime 
nations of Western Europe, the demand for fixed rules, where by the usages of 
such warfare should be regulated, soon came to be of transcendent importance. 
England and the Netherlands, as powers with whom industrial considerations were 
of the first consequence and military considerations only secondary, adhered 
firmly to the rule of the Consolato del Mare as the most liberal rule then in 
existence. France and Spain, as preeminently militant powers, caring more for 
the means of annoying an enemy than for the interests of commerce in general, 
asserted the principle that neutral ships detected in carrying an enemy's goods 
were themselves law-

p.140

ful subjects for seizure. France, however, did not hold this doctrine so firmly 
as Spain. Here, as in so many other respects France showed herself more advanced 
in civilization than Spain, while less advanced than England and the 
Netherlands. In 1655, by a treaty between Cromwell and Mazarin, France accepted 
the English rule; in 1681 under the retrograde government of Louis XIV., she 
went back to her ancient practice; in 1744, she again adopted the English rule, 
while Spain kept on with her old custom, until sharply called to account by 
Russia in 1780.

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the most liberal doctrines 
respecting maritime warfare had concerned themselves only with the protection of 
neutral ships. It had never occurred to anybody to maintain that the goods of an 
enemy should be guaranteed against scrutiny and seizure by the mere fact of 
their being carried on a neutral ship. That any belligerent could seize its 
antagonist's property, if found on a neutral ship, was the doctrine laid down 
alike by Vattel and Bynkershoek, the chief French and Dutch authorities on 
maritime law. In acting upon this principle, therefore, at the time of our 
Revolutionary War, England acted strictly in accordance with the recognized 
maritime law of Europe. She was not, as some American writers seem to have 
supposed, introducing a new principle of agression, in virtue of her position as 
chief among maritime powers. In stopping the defenceless merchant vessels of 
neutral or friendly powers, compelling them to show their bills of lading, 
searching their 

p.141

holds if need be, subjecting them to a hateful inquisition and vexatious delays, 
she did no more than every maritime nation had been in the habit of doing, and 
even less than Spain the right to do. It was quite natural too, that England 
should insist upon retaining this privilege, as something which no great naval 
power could afford to dispense with; for obviously, if in time of war your enemy 
can go on trading with everybody but yourself and can even receive timber and 
provisions from people not concerned in the struggle, your means of crippling 
him are very materially diminished.

Such reasoning seemed conclusive everywhere in Europe until after the middle of 
the eighteenth century. At that time, however, the unexampled naval 
preponderance of England began to lead other nations to take a new view of the 
case. By the maintenance of the old rule, England could damage other nations 
much more than they could damage her. Other nations, accordingly, began to feel 
that it would be a good thing if the flag of a neutral ship might be held to 
protect any merchandise whatsoever that she might happen to have on board.

This modern doctrine, that free ships make free goods, was first suggested by 
Prussia in 1752. Such a view naturally commended itself to a nation which had a 
considerable number of merchantmen afloat, without any navy fit to protect them; 
and it was accordingly likely to find favour in the eyes of such nations as 
Denmark, Sweden, Russia and the United States. But more than

p.142

this, it was a view entirely in accordance with the philosophic tendencies of 
the age. The great humanitarian movement, which in our time has borne rich and 
ample fruit, and which has tended in every practicable way to diminish the 
occasions for warfare and to resrict its scope, had its first brilliant literary 
representatives among the clear-sighted and enthusiastic French philosophers of 
the eighteenth century. The liberal tendencies in politics which hitherto 
England alone had represented practically, were caught up in France, as soon as 
the dismal and protracted tyranny of Louis XIV. had come to an end, with an 
eagerness that partook of fanaticism. English political ideas, without being 
thoroughly comprehended in their practical bearings, were seized and generalized 
by Montesquieu and Turgot, and a host of lesser writers, until they acquired a 
width of scope and a genial interest which excercised a prodigious influence 
upon the thought of Continental Europe. Never in any age, perhaps, since the 
days when Sokrates talked to enchanted crowds upon street corners in Athens, did 
men of broad philosophic ideas come so closely into contact with men absorbed in 
the pursuit of life's immediate ends as at the time when all Paris rushed to 
kiss the hand of Voltaire, and when ladies of the court went to sleep with the 
last brochure of Diderot or Helvetius under their pillows. The generous 
"enthusiasm of humanity," which revealed itself in every line of the writings of 
these great men, played an important part in the political history of the 
eighteenth century. It

p.143

was an age of crowned philosophers and benevolent despots. Joseph of Austria, 
Frederick of Prussia, and Catherine of Russia, in their several ways, furnished 
illustrations of this tendency. Catherine, who wrote letters to Voltaire and 
admired Fox above all other English statesmen, set almost as much store by free 
thought as by free love, and her interest in the amelioration of mankind in 
general was second only to her particular interest in the humiliation of the 
Turk. The idea of taking the lead in a general movement for the liberaton of 
maritime commerce was sure to prove congenial to her enlightened mind, and her 
action would have great weight with England, which at that time, isolated from 
all European sympathy, was especially desirous of an alliance with Russia, and 
especially anxious to avoid offending her.

At the beginning of 1778, Sir James Harris, afterward Earl of Malmesbury, was 
sent as ambassador to St. Petersburg, with instructions to leave no stone 
unturned to secure an offensive and defensive alliance between Russia and Great 
Britain, in order to offset and neutralize the alliance between France and the 
United States. Negotiations to this end were kept up as long as the war lasted, 
but they proved fruitless. While Catherine coquetted and temporized, the 
Prussian ambassador had her ear, and his advice was unfavourable to such an 
alliance. For the England of Pitt the great Frederick felt sympathy and 
gratitude; for the England of George III. he had nothing but hatred, and his 
counsels went far to

p.144

steady Catherine, if ever she showed signs of wavering. The weight of France was 
of course thrown into the same scale, and for four years the Russian court was 
the scene of brisk and multifarious intrigues. Harris said that his very valets 
were offered bribes by busybodies who wished to get a look at his papers; and 
when he went out, leaving his secretary writing he used to lock him up, not 
through doubts of his fidelity, but lest he should thoughtlessly leave the door 
ajar. From Prince Potemkin, one of Catherine's lovers whose favour Harris 
courted, he learned that nothing short of the cession of Minorca would induce 
the empress to enter into the desired alliance. Russia was already taking 
advantage of the situation to overrun and annex the Crimea, and the maritime 
outlook thus acquired, made her eager to secure some naval station on the 
Mediterranean. Minorca was England's to give. She had won it in the war of the 
Spanish Succession, and for seventy years it had been one of the brightest 
jewels in her imperial crown. Together with Gibraltar it had given her that firm 
grasp upon the Mediterranean which, strengthened in later times by the 
acquisition of Malta, Cyprus, and the isthmus of Suez, has gone far toward 
making that vast inland sea an English lake. So great a value did England set 
upon Minorca that when, in the Seven Year's War, it was lost for a moment, 
through an error of judgment on the part of Admiral Byng, the British people 
were seized with a bloodthirsty frenzy, and one of the foulest judicial murders 
known to history was

p.145

committed when that gallant commander was shot on his own quarter-deck. Yet even 
this island, by which England set such store, she was now ready to surrender in 
exchange for the help of Russia against her revolted colonies and the House of 
Bourbon. It was not, however, until 1781 that the offer of Minorca was made, and 
then Catherine had so far acceded to the general combination against that she 
could not but refuse it.

That such an offer should ever have been made shows how important an alliance 
with Russia seemed to England at the moment when France and Spain were leagued 
against her, and all the neutral powers looked on her with hostile eyes. We can 
thus the better appreciate the significance of the step which Russia was now to 
take with reference to the great question of maritime law which was beginning to 
agitate the civilized world.

In the summer of 1778, the French government, with intent to curb the 
depredations of British cruisers, issued a proclamation adopting the Prussian 
doctrine of 1752, that free ships make free goods, and Vergennes took occasion 
to suggest that Catherine should put herself at the head of a league of neutral 
powers for the purpose of protecting neutral commerce all over the world. For 
the moment no decided action was taken, but the idea was one of those broad 
ideas in which the empress delighted. Count Panin, her principal minister, who 
was strongly in sympathy with the King of Prussian, insisted upon the necessity 
of protecting the commerce of minor powers against England, which

p.148

since 1763 had become the great naval bully of the world. England was doubtless 
acting in strict accordance with time-honoured custom, but circumstances had 
changed, and the law must be changed to meet them. The first great war since 
1763 was now showing that England could destroy the commerce of all the rest of 
the world, without any fear of retaliation except through a universal war. 
During the summers of 1778 and 1779, Prussian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch ships 
were continually overhauled by British cruisers, and robbed of cargoes which 
they were carrying to France. Such gross outrages upon private property, however 
sanctioned by laws of war that had grown up in a barbarous age, awakened general 
indignation through-out Europe; and from whatever quarter complaints poured in, 
Vergennes and Frederick took good care that they should be laid before the 
Empress of Russia, until presently she came to look upon herself as the champion 
of little states and oppressed tradesmen.

The British depredations were, moreover, apt to be characterized by an arrogance 
which, while it rendered them all the more exasperating, sometimes transcended 
the limits of aggression prescribed by the rude maritime law of that day. Upon 
Netherland commerce, England was especialy severe, for the Dutch had more 
merchant shipping than any other people on the Continent, with a weak navy to 
protect it. England forbade the Dutch to send timber to France, as it would 
probably be used in building ships of war. On the 30th of December, 1779, 
seventeen Dutch vessels

p.147

laden with tar and hemp, and other materials useful in shipyards, were sailing 
through the English Channel, escorted by five ships-of-the-line under Count 
Bylandt, when toward night-fall they were overtaken and hailed by a British 
squadron of sixteen ship-of-the-line under Admiral Fielding. A lively parley 
ensued. Bylandt swore that his ships should not be searched, and Fielding 
threatened violence. While this was going on, twelve of the Dutch ships got away 
under cover of darkness, and reached in safety the French ports to which they 
were bound. Early in the morning, Bylandt fired upon the boat which was bringing 
a party of British officers to search the merchantmen that remained. Upon this, 
three British ships instantly poured their broadsides into the Dutch flagship, 
which returned the compliment and then hauled down its flag, as resistance was 
useless. Nobody was killed, but Fielding seized the five merchantmen and took 
them in to Portsmouth.

The States-General of the Netherlands complained of the outrage to Lord 
Stormont, the new foreign secretary, and demanded the restitution of the prizes. 
The matter was referred to the British court of admiralty and the singular 
doctrine was there laid down that the Dutch vessels were virtually blockade-
runners and as such were lawfully captured!. "Great Britain," said the judge, 
"by her insular position, blocks naturally all the ports of Spain and France and 
she has a right to avail herself of this position as a gift of Providence." But 
the States-General did not accept this inter-

p.148

pretation of the law and theology of the matter, and they appealed to the 
Empress of Russia. Just at this moment events occurred which compelled Catherine 
to take some decided stand on the question of neutral rights. Through fear of 
adding her to the list of their enemies, the British ministry had issued the 
most stringent orders that no Russian vessels should be searched or molested, 
under any circumstances. The Dutch and Danish flags might be insulted at 
pleasure, but that of Russia must be respected and so well were these orders 
obeyed that Catherine had no grounds for complaint against England on that 
score. Spain, on the other hand, was less cautious. In the winter of 1779-80, 
her cruisers captured two Russian vessels laden with wheat, in the mistaken 
belief that their cargoes were destined for Gibraltar. The ships were taken into 
Cadiz, their cargoes were sold at auction, and their penniless crews were 
outrageously treated by the people, and came little short of starving. Catherine 
was wild with rage, and instantly ordered out fifteen ships-of-the-line and five 
frigates for the protection of Russian commerce. For a moment war between Spain 
and Russia seemed imminent. But Panin moved with cautious shrewdness, and 
consulted the King of Prussia who persuaded Florida Blanca to restore the 
captured ships with compensation to the owners of the cargoes and an ample 
apology for the blunder. The empress was satisfied, and Panin assured her that 
now the time had come for her to act with magnanimity and power, laying down an 
impartial code for the protection

p.149

of maritime commerce and thus establishing a claim to the gratitude of mankind 
through all future ages. On the 8th of March, 1780, Catherine issued a 
proclomation, setting forth the principles of maritime law which she was 
henceforth resolved to defend by force, if necessary. Henceforth neutral ships 
were to sail unmolested from port to port, even on the coasts of countries at 
war. They were to be free to carry into such ports any goods or merchandise 
whatsoever, except arms and ammunition, and the right of search was to be 
tolerated as regarded such contraband articles, and for no other purpose. 
Hereafter no port was to be considered blockaded unless the enemy's ships of war 
should be near enough to make it dangerous to enter.

These principles were immediately adopted by Spain, France and the United 
States, the three powers actually at war with England. At the same time, Denmark 
and Sweden entered into an arrangement with Russia for the mutual protection of 
their commerce. It was announced that for every Danish, Swedish or Russian ship 
searched or seized by the cruisers of any belligerent power, a strict 
retaliation would be made by the allied navies of these three countries. This 
covenant, known as the Armed Neutrality, was practically a threat aimed at 
England, and through her unwilligness to alienate Russia it proved a very 
effective threat. We can now understand the interest shown by Denmark and Russia 
in the victory of Paul Jones, and we can also appreciate the prodigious moral 
effect of that

p.150

victory. So overwhelming was England's naval superiority that the capture of a 
single one of her war ships was a memorable event. To the lesser maritime powers 
it seemed to bring the United States at once into the front rank of 
belligerents. The British ministry was too well instructed to be brought under 
this spell; but in view of the great hostile combination now formed against it, 
for the moment it was at its wits' end. "An ambiguous and trimming answer was 
given," say Sir James Harris; "we seemed equally afraid to accept or dismiss the 
new-fangled doctrines. I was instructed secretly to oppose, but avowedly to 
acquiesce in them." In England, the wrath and disgust extended to all parties. 
Shelburne and Camden joined with North and Thurlow in denouncing Catherine's 
proclamation as an impudent attempt, on the part of an upstart power, hardly 
known on the sea till quite lately, to dictate maritime law to the greatest 
maritime power the world had ever seen. It was contended that the right to 
search neutral vessels and take an enemy's goods from them was a cardinal 
principle of international law; and jurists, of course, found the whole body of 
precedents on the side of this opinion. But in spite of all protests these "new-
fangled doctrines," subversive of all precedent, were almost immediately adopted 
throughout Europe. In December, 1780, the Netherlands joined the Armed 
Neutrality, under circumstances presently to be related. In May, 1781, it was 
joined by Prussia; in October, 1781, by the Empire; in July, 1782 by Portugal; 
in September 1782, by the Turk; in February 1783, by the Kingdom of Naples.

p.151

Though England's maritime strength exceeded that all the members of the league 
taken together, she could not afford to run the risk of war with all the world 
at once; and thus the doctrine that free ships make free goods acquired a firm 
foothold. In the chaos of the Napoleonic wars, indeed, paper blockades and 
illegal seizures abounded, and it fared ill with neutral commerce on the high 
seas. But the principles laid down by Catherine survived that terrible crisis, 
and at last they were formally adopted by England at the close of the Crimean 
War in 1856.

This successful assertion of the rights of neutrals was one of the greatest and 
most beneficent revolutions in the whole history of human warfare. It was the 
most emphatic declaration that had ever been made of the principle that the 
interests of peace are paramount and permanent, while those of war are 
subordinate and temporary. In the interest of commerce it put a mighty curb upon 
warfare, and announced that for the future the business of the producer is 
entitled to higher consideration than that of the destroyer. Few things have 
ever done so much to confine the area of warfare and limit its destructive 
power. If the old doctrine were in force at the present day, when commerce has 
expanded to such enormous dimensions, and every sea is populous with merchant 
ships, it would be well-nigh impossible for any two maritime powers to go to war 
without dragging all the rest of the world into the struggle. For the speedy 
accomplishment

p.152

of this great reform we have chiefly to thank the Empress Catherine, whose 
action at the critical moment was so prompt and decisive. It is curious to 
consider that an act which so distinctly subordinated military to industrial 
interests should have emanated from that country in Europe which had least 
outgrown the militant stage of civilization, and should have been chiefly 
opposed by that country which had advanced the farthest into the industrial 
stage. It is a brilliant instance of what may be achieved by an enlightened 
despot when circumstances are entirely favourable. Among the many acts of 
Catherine which, in spite of her horrible vices, have won the admiration of 
mankind, this is doubtless the most memorable; and as time goes on we shall 
realize its importance more and more.

The immediate effect of the Armed Neutrality was to deprive England of one of 
her principal weapons of offence. To add to her embarassment, there now came war 
with Holland. While there was strong sympathy between the British and Dutch 
governments, there was great jealousy between the peoples which had so long been 
rivals in the colonial world. Hence there were two parties in the Netherlands, 
the party of the Stadtholder, which was subservient to the policy of the British 
government, and the popular party, which looked with favour upon the American 
cause. The popular party was far the more numerous, including all the merchants 
of the most mercantile of countries, and it was especially strong in the city of 
Amsterdam. A brisk trade,

p.153

illicit from the British point of view, was carried on between Holland and the 
United States chiefly through the little Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the 
West Indies. An equally lively trade went on between Holland and France, and 
against this England felt that she had an especial right to make complaint. Her 
relations with Holland were regulated not simply by the ordinary law of nations, 
but by careful and elaborate treaties, made in the days when the two peoples 
were leagued in sympathy against the aggressive policy of Louis XIV. In 1678, it 
had been agreed that if either England or Holland should be attacked by France, 
both powers should make common cause against their common enemy; and in 1716 
this agreement had been renewed in such wise as to include the contingency of an 
attack by Spain, since a younger branch of the House of Bourbon had succeeded to 
the Spanish throne. When, in 1779, Spain declared war against England, the 
latter power accordingly called upon the Netherlands for aid; but no aid was 
given, for the Dutch felt they they had an especial right to complain of the 
conduct of England. By that same treaty which in 1674 had finally given New York 
to the English, it had been provided that in case either England or Holland 
should ever go to war with any other country, the ordinary rules of maritime law 
should not be enforced as between these two friendly commercial powers. It was 
agreed that either power might freely trade with the enemies of the other; and 
such a treaty was at that time greatly to the credit of both nations. It was 
made in a moment when

p.154

an honourable spirit of commercial equity prevailed. But it was one of the chief 
symptoms of the utter demoralization of the British government in 1778, after 
the untimely death of Lord Chatham that these treaty obligations were completely 
ignored; and in the general plunder of merchant shipping which went on at that 
time, no nation suffered like the Dutch. George III. now felt that he had got 
everything into his own hands, and when the Dutch complained he gave them to 
understand that treaty or no treaty, he should do as he pleased. Under such 
circumstances, it was rather cool for England to ask aid against Spain, and the 
Dutch very naturally turned a deaf ear to the demand.

It was thus a very pretty quarrel as it stood at the end of 1779, when Fielding 
fired upon the flagship of Count Bylandt and John Paul Jones was allowed to stay 
with his prizes ten weeks in a Dutch harbour. Each party was thus furnished with 
an "outrage." The righteous anger of the Dutch over the high-handed conduct of 
Fielding was matched by the British chagrin over the victory of Jones. The 
Stadtholder's weak efforts to keep the peace were quite overwhelmed in the storm 
of wrath that arose. After much altercation, England notified Holland that all 
treaties between the two countries must be considered as abrogated owing to the 
faithless behaviour of the Dutch in refusing aid against Spain, in trading with 
France and America, in resisting the right of search, and in sheltering John 
Paul Jones. Having thus got rid of the treaties, England proceeded to act as if 
there

p.155

were no such thing as international law where Dutchmen were concerned. During 
the summer of 1780, the wholesale robbery on the high seas grew worse than ever, 
and, with a baseness that seems almost incredible, the British ambassador at the 
Hague was instructed to act as a spy, and gather information concerning the 
voyages of Dutch merchants, so that British cruisers might know just where to 
pounce upon the richest prizes. Thus goaded beyond human endurance, Holland at 
last joined the Armed Neutrality, hoping thereby to enlist in her behalf the 
formidable power of Russia.

But the policy of England, though bold in the exteme, was so far well considered 
as to have provided against such an emergency. She was determined to make war on 
Holland, to punish her for joining the Armed Neutrality; but if she were to avow 
this reason, it would at once entail war with Russia also, so that it was 
necessary to find some other reason. The requisite bone of contention was 
furnished by a curiously opportune accident. In October, 1780, an American 
packet was captured off the banks of Newfoundland, and among the prisoners was 
Henry Laurens, lately president of Congress, now on his way to the Hague to 
negotiate a loan. He threw his papers overboard but a quick-witted tar jumped 
after them, and caught them in the water. Among them was found a project for the 
future treaty of commerce between the Netherlands and the United States, which 
had been secretly concerted two years before

p.156

Jean de Neufville, an Amsterdam merchant, and William Lee, an American 
commissioner to Berlin. It was signed also by Van Berckel, the chief magistrate 
of Amersterdam; but as it had neither been authorized nor sanctioned by the 
States-General or by Congress, it had no validity whatever. Quite naturally, 
however, the discovery of such a document caused much irritation in England, and 
it furnished just the sort of excuse for going to war which the minstry wanted. 
To impose upon the imagination of the common people, Laurens was escorted 
through the streets of London by a regiment of soldiers, and shut up in the 
Tower, where he was denied pen and paper, and no one was allowed to enter his 
room. A demand was made upon Holland to disavow the act of Van Berckel, and to 
inflict condign punishment upon him and his accomplices, "as disturbers of the 
public peace and violators of the rights of nations." In making this demand it 
was foreseen that the States-General would disavow the act of Van Berckel, but 
would nevertheless decline to regard his as a fit subject for punishment. The 
message was sent to the British ambassador at the Hague on the 3d of November.

It was then known in England that Holland contemplated joining the Northern 
league, but the decisive step had not yet been actually taken by the States-
General. The ambassador was secretely instructed by Lord Stormont not to present 
the demand for the disavowal and punishment of Van Berckel unless it should 
become absolutely certain that Holland had

p.157

joined the league. At their meeting in November, the States-General voted to 
join the league, and the demand was accordingly presented. Everything happened 
according to the programme. The States-General freely condemned and disavowed 
the Amsterdam affair, and offered to make reparation; but with regard to the 
punishment of Van Berckel, they decided that an inquiry must first be made as to 
the precise nature of his offence and the court most fit for trying him. England 
replied by a peremptory demand for the immediate punishment of Van Berckel, and, 
without waiting for an answer, proceeded to declare war against Holland on the 
20th of December. Four days before this, the swiftest ship that could be found 
ws sent to Admiral Rodney, who was then at Barbadoes, ordering him to seize upon 
St. Eusttius without a moment's delay.

Whatever other qualities may have been lacking in the British ministry at this 
time, they certainly were not wanting in pluck. England had now to fight single-
handed against four nations, three of which were, after herself, the chief naval 
powers of the world. According to the Malmesbury Diaries, "this bold conduct 
made a great and useful impression upon the Empress" of Russia. It was partly 
with a view to this moral effect that the ministry were so ready to declare war. 
It was just at this time that they were proposing, by the offer of Minorca, to 
tempt Catherine into an alliance with England; and they did not wish to have her 
interpret their eagerness to secure her aid as a confession

p.158

of weakness or discouragement. By making war on Holland, they sought to show 
themselves as full of the spirit of fight as ever. To strengthen the impression, 
Harris blustered and bragged. The Dutch, said he, "are ungrateful, dirty, 
senseless boors, and, since they will be ruined, must submit to their fate." But 
in all this the British government was sailing very near the wind. Prince 
Galitzin, the Russian ambassador at the Hague, correctly reported that the 
accession of Holland to the Armed Neutrality was the real cause of the war, and 
that the Amsterdam affair was only a pretext. The Empress hesitated; she knew 
the true state of the case as well as anyone, but it was open to her to accept 
the British story or not, as might seem best. Dispatches from Berlin announced 
that Frederick was very angry. When he first heard the news, he exclaimed "Well! 
since the English want a war with the whole world, they shall have it." 
Catherine then sat down and wrote with her own hand a secret letter to 
Frederick, asking him if he would join her in making war upon England. On second 
thoughts, the King of Prussia concluded there was no good reason for taking part 
in the affair and he advised Catherine also to keep her hands free. This decided 
the Empress. She did not care to make war upon England, except with such 
overwhelming force as to be sure of extorting very important concessions. She 
accordingly chose to believe the British story, and she refused to aid the Dutch

p.159

on the ground that their quarrel with England grew out of a matter with which 
the Armed Neutrality had nothing to do. At the same time, after dallying for 
awhile with the offer of Minorca, she refused that also, and decided to preserve 
to the end the impartial attitude which she had maintained from the beginning.

Meanwhile, on the 3d of February, 1781, a powerful fleet under Rodney, with the 
force of 5,000 men which had been detached in November, 1779, from Clinton's 
army in New York, appeared before the island of St. Eustatius and summoned it to 
surrender. The Dutch governor, ignorant of the fact that war had begun, had only 
fifty-five soldiers on the island. He had no choice but to surrender and the 
place was given up without a blow.

The British had an especial spleen against this wealthy little island which had 
come to be the center of an enormous trade between France and Holland and the 
United States. Rodney called it a nest of thieves, and declared that "this rock, 
only six miles in length and three in breadth, had one England more harm than 
all the arms of her most potent enemies, and alone supported the infamous 
American rebellin." His colleague, General Vaughan, who commanded the land 
force, regarded it as a feeder for the American "colonies" of which the summary 
extinction would go far toward ending the war. With such feelings, they made up 
their minds to do their work thoroughly; and accordingly they confiscated to the 
Crown not only all the public stores, but all the private property of the 
inhabitants.

p.160

Their orders were carried out with great brutality. The goods in the warehouses 
were seized and laden upon ships, to be carried away and sold at auctionn in the 
neighboring islands. Every kind of private and personal property was laid hold 
of, and the beggared inhabitants were turned out-of-doors and ordered to quit 
the island. The total value of the booty amounted to more than twenty million 
dollars. Among the victims of this robbery were many British merchants, who were 
no better treated than the rest. Rodney tore up their remonstrance without 
reading it, and exclaimed, "This island is Dutch and everything in it is Dutch, 
and as the Dutch you shall all be treated." The proceedings were fitly crowned 
by an act of treachery. The Dutch flag was kept flying as a decoy, and in the 
course of the next seven weeks more than fifty American ships, ignorant of the 
fate of the island, were captured by the aid of this dirty stratagem.

The conduct of the government in declaring war against Holland was denounced by 
the Whigs as criminal, and the true character of the shameful affair at St. 
Eustatius was shown up by Burke in two powerful speeches. But the government 
capped the climax when it deliberately approved the conduct of Rodney, and 
praised him for it. Many of the British victims, however, brought their cases 
before the courts, and obtained judgments which condemned as illegal the seizure 
of private property so far as they were concerned. On the continent of Europe, 
the outrage awakened general indignation, as an infraction of the laws and 
usages

p.161

of civilized warfare; the like of which had not been seen for many years; and it 
served to alienate from Great Britain the little sympathy that remained for her.

The position of England at this time was alarming, as well as ignominious. She 
had contrived to league herself, in various degrees of hostility, nearly the 
whole of the civilized world, and the most distressing part of the situation, to 
all liberal-minded Englishmen, was the undeniable fact that this hostility was 
well deserved. To the historian who appreciates the glorious part which England 
has played in history, the proceedings here recorded are painful to contemplate; 
and to no one should they be more painful than to the American, whose 
forefathers climbed with Wolfe the rugged bank of the St. Lawrence; or a century 
earlier from their homes in New England forests heard with delight of Naseby and 
Marston Moor; or back yet another hundred years, in Lincolnshire villages defied 
the tyranny of Gardiner and Bonner; or at yet a more remote period did yeoman's 
service in the army of glorious Earl Simon, or stood, perhaps, beside great 
Edward on the hallowed fields of Palestine. The pride with which one recalls 
such memories as these explains and justifies the sorrow and disgust with which 
one contemplates the spectacle of a truculent George Germaine, an unscrupulous 
Stormont, or a frivolous North; or hears the dismal stories of Indian massacres, 
of defenceless villages laid in ashes, of the slaughter of unarmed citizens, of

p.162

legalized robbery on the ocean highway, or of colossal buccaneering, such as 
that which was witnessed at St. Eustatius. The earlier part of the reign of 
George III. is that period of English history of which an enlightened Englishman 
must feel most ashamed, as an enlightened Frenchman must feel ashamed of the 
reigns of Louis XIV. and the two Bonapartes.

All these were periods of wholesale political corruption, of oppression at home 
and unrighteous warfare abroad, and all invited swift retribution in shape of 
diminished empire and temporary lowering of the national prestige. It was not 
until after the downfall of the personal government of George III. that England 
began to resume her natural place in the foremost rank of liberal and 
progressive powers. Toward that happy result, the renewal and purification of 
English political life, the sturdy fight sustained by the Americans in defence 
of their liberties did much to contribute. The winning of independence by the 
Americans was the winning of a higher political standpoint for England and for 
the world.

CHAPTER XIII.
A YEAR OF DISASTERS.


p. 163

After the surrender of Burgoyne, the military attitude of the British in the 
northern states became, as we have seen, purely defensive. Their efforts were 
almost exclusively directed toward maintaining their foothold, as first in the 
islands of New York and Rhode Island, afterward in New York, alone, whence their 
ships could ascend the Hudson as far as the the frowning crags which sentinel 
the entrance of the Highlands. Their offensive operations were restricted to a 
few plundering expeditions along the coast, well calculated to remind the worthy 
Connecticut farmers of the ubiquitousness of British power, and the vanity of 
hopes that might have been built upon the expectation of naval aid from France. 
But while the war thus languished at the centre, while at the same time it sent 
forth waves of disturbance that reverberated all the way from the Mississippi 
river to the Baltic Sea, on the other hand the southernmost American states were 
the scene of continuous and vigorous fighting. Upon the reduction of the 
Carolinas and Georgia the king and Lord George Germaine had set their hearts. If 
the rebellion could not be broken at the centre, it was hoped that it might at 
least be frayed away at the edges;

p.164

and should fortune so far smile upon the royal armies as to give them Virginia 
also, perhaps the campaigns against the wearied North might be renewed at some 
later time and under better auspices.

In this view there was much that was plausible. Events had shown that the 
ministry had clearly erred in striking the rebellion at its strongest point; it 
now seemed worth while to aim a blow where it was weakest. The people of New 
England were almost unanimous in their opposition to the king, and up to this 
time the status of Massachusetts and Connecticut in particular had done more to 
sustain the war than all the others put together. Georgia and the Carolinas, a 
thousand miles distant, might be regarded as beyond the reach of reinforcements 
from New England; and it might well be doubted whether they possessed the 
ability to defend themselves against a well-planned attack. Georgia was the 
weakest of the thirteen states, and bordered upon the British territory of 
Florida. In South Carolina the character of the population made it difficult to 
organize resistance. The citizens of Charleston, and the rich planters of 
English or Huguenot descent inhabiting the lowlands, were mostly ardent 
patriots, but they were outnubered by their negro slaves; and the peculiar 
features of slavery in South Carolina made this a very embarassing circumstance.

The relations between master and slave were not friendly there, as they were in 
Virginia; and while the state had kept up a militia during the whole colonial 
period, this

p.165

militia found plenty of employment in patrolling the slave quarters, in 
searching for hidden weapons, and in hunting fugitives. It was now correctly 
surmised that on the approach of an invading army the dread of negro 
insurrection, with all its nameless horrors, would paralyze the arm of the state 
militia. While the patriotic South Carolinians were thus handicapped in entering 
upon the contest, there were in the white population of the state many 
discordant elements. There were many Quakers and men of German ancestry who took 
little interest in politics, and were only too ready to submit to any authority 
that would protect them in their ordinary pursuits. A strong contrast to the 
political apathy of these worthy men was to be found in the rugged population of 
the upland counties. Here the small farmers of Scotch-Irish descent were, every 
man of them, Whigs, burning with a patriotic ardour that partook of the nature 
of religious fanaticism; while, on the other hand, the Scotchmen who had come 
over since Culloden were mostly Tories, and had by no means as yet cast off that 
half-savage type of Highland character which we find so vividly portrayed in the 
Waverley novels. It was not strange that the firebrands of war, thrown among 
such combustible material, should have flamed forth with a glare of unwonted 
cruelty, nor was it strange that a commonwealth containing such incongruous 
elements, so imperfectly blended, should have been speedily, though but for a 
moment overcome. The fit ground for wonder is is that, in spite of such adverse 
circumstances, the state of South Carolina should

p.166

have shown as much elastic strength as she did under the severest military 
stress which any American state was called upon to withstand during the 
Revolutionary War.

Since the defeat of the British fleet before Charleston in June, 1776, the 
southern state had been left unmolested until the autumn of 1778, when there was 
more or less frontier skirmishing between Georgia and Florida, - a slight 
premonitory symptom of the storm that was coming. the American forces in the 
southern department were then commanded by General Robert Howe, who was one of 
the most distinguished patriots of North Carolina, but whose military capacity 
seems to have been slender. In the autumn of 1778 he had his headquarters at 
Savannah, for there was war on the frontier. Guerrilla parties, made up chiefly 
of vindictive loyalist refugees, but aided by a few British regulars from 
General Augustine Prevost's force in Florida, invaded the rice plantations of 
Georgia, burning and murdering and carrying off negroes, - not to set them free, 
but to sell them for their own benefit.

As a counter-irritant, General Howe planned an expedition against St. Augustine, 
and advanced as far as St. Mary's river; but so many men were swept away by 
fever that he was obliged to retreat to Savannah. He had scarcely arrived there 
when 3,500 British regulars from New York, under Colonel Campbell, landed in the 
neighbourhood, and offered him battle. Though his own force numbered only 1,200, 
of whom half were militia, Howe accepted the challenge, relying upon

p.167

the protection of a great swamp which covered his flanks. But a path through the 
swamp was pointed out to the enemy by a negro, and the Americans, attacked in 
front and behind, were instantly routed. Some 500 prisoners were taken, and 
Savannah surrendered, with all its guns and stores; and this achievement cost 
the British but 24 men. A few days afterward, General Prevost advanced from 
Florida and captured Sunbury, with all its garrison, while Colonel Campbell 
captured Augusta. A proclamation was issued, offering protection to such of the 
inhabitants as would take up arms in behalf of the king's government, while all 
others wer by implication outlawed. The ferocious temper of Lord George Germaine 
was plainly visible in this proclamation and in the proceedings that followed. A 
shameless and promiscuous plunder was begun. The captive soldiers were packed 
into prison-ships and treated with barbarity. The more timid people sought to 
save their property by taking sides with the enemy, while the bolder spirits 
took refuge in the mountains; and thus General Prevost was enabled to write home 
that the state of Georgia was conquered.

At the request of the southern delegates in Congress, General Howe had already 
been super-seded by General Benjamin Lincoln, who had won distinction through 
his management of the New England militia in the Saratoga campaign. When Lincoln 
arrived in Charleston, in December, 1778, an attempt was made to call out the 
lowland militia of South Carolina, but the dread of the slaves kept them

p.168

from obeying the summons. North Carolina, however, sent 2,000 men under Samuel 
Ashe, one of the most eminent of the southern patriots; and with this force and 
600 Continentals the new general watched the Savannah river and waited his 
chances. But North Carolina sent foes as well as friends to take part in the 
contest. A party of 700 loyalists from that state were marching across South 
Carolina to join the British garrison at Augusta, when they were suddenly 
attacked by Colonel Andrew Pickens with a small force of upland militia. In a 
sharp fight the Tories were routed, and half their number were tkane prisoners. 
Indictments for treason were brought against many of these prisoners and, after 
trial before a civil court, some seventy were found guilty and five of them were 
hanged. The rashness of this step soon became apparent. The British had put in 
command of Augusta one Colonel Thomas Browne, a Tory, who had been tarred and 
feathered by his neighbours at the beginning of the war. As soon as Browne heard 
of these executions for treason, he forthwith hanged some of his Whig prisoners; 
and this was begun a long series of stupid and cruel reprisals, which, as time 
went on bore bitter fruit.

While these things were going on in the back country, the British on the coast 
attempted to capture Port Royal, but were defeated, with heavy loss, by General 
Moultrie. Lincoln now felt able to assume the offensive, and he sent General 
Ashe with 1,500 men to threaten Augusta. At his approach the British abandoned 
the town, and retreated

p.169

toward Savannah. Ashe pursued closely, but at Briar Creek on the 3d of March, 
1779, the British turned upon him. The Americans lost 400 in killed and wounded 
besides seven pieces of artillery and more than 1,000 stand of arms. Less than 
500 succeeded in making their way back to Lincoln's camp; and this victory cost 
the British but five men killed and eleven wounded. Augusta was at once retaken; 
the royal governor, Sir James Wright, was reinstated in office; and, in general, 
the machinery of government which had been in operation previous to 1776 was 
restored. Lincoln, however, was far from accepting the defeat as final. With the 
energetic cooperation of Governor Rutledge, to whom extraordinary powers were 
granted for the occasion, enough militia were got together to repair the losses 
suffered at Briar Creek; and in April, leaving Moultrie with 1,000 men to guard 
the lower Savannah, Lincoln marched upon Augusta with the rest of his army, 
hoping to capture it, and give the legislature of Georgia a chance to assemble 
there and destroy the moral effect of this apparent restoration of the royal 
government. But as soon as Lincoln had got out of the way, General Prevost 
crossed the Savannah with 3,000 men and advanced upon Charleston, laying waste 
the country and driving Moultrie before him. It was a moment of terror and 
confusion. In General Prevost there was at last found a man after Lord George 
Germaine's own heart. His march was a scene of wanton vandalism. The houses of 
the

p.170

wealthy planters were mercilessly sacked; their treasures of silver plate were 
loaded on carts and carried off; their mirrors and china were smashed, their 
family portraits cut to pieces, their gardens trampled out, their shade trees 
girdled and ruined; and as Prevost had a band of Cherokees with him, the horrors 
of the tomahawk and scalping knife in some instances crowned the shameful work. 
The cabins of the slaves were burned. Cattle, horses, dogs, and poultry, when 
not carried away, were slaughtered wholesale, and the destruction of food was so 
great that something like famine set in. More than a thousand negroes are said 
to have died of starvation.

In such wise did Prevost leisurely make his way toward Charleston; and reaching 
it on the 11th of May, he sent in a summons to surrender. A strangely 
interesting scene ensued. Events had occurred which had sorely perturbed the 
minds of the members of the state council. Pondering upon the best means of 
making the state militia available, Henry Laurens has hit upon the bold 
expedient of arming the most stalwart and courageous negroes and marching them 
off to camp under the lead of white officers. Such a policy might be expected to 
improve the relations between whites and blacks by uniting them against a common 
danger, while the plantations would be to some extent relieved of an abiding 
source of dread. The plan was warmly approved by Lauren's son, who was an 
officer on Washington's staff, as well as by Alexander Hamilton, who further 
suggested that the blacks thus enrolled as

p.171

militia should at the same time be given their freedom. Washington, on the other 
hand, feared that if the South Carolinians were to adopt such a policy the 
British would fore-stall them by offering better arms and equipments to the 
negroes, and thus muster them against their masters. It was a game, he felt, at 
which two could play. The matter was earnestly discussed, and at last was 
brought before Congress, which approved of Lauren's plan, and recommended it to 
the consideration of the people of South Carolina; and it was just before the 
arrival of Prevost and his army that the younger Laurens reached Charleston with 
this message from Congress.

The advice was received in anything but a grateful spirit. For a century the 
state had maintained an armed patrol to go about among the negro quarters and 
confiscate every pistol, gun or knife that could be found, and now it was 
proposed that three or four thousand slaves should actually be furnished with 
muskets by the state! People were startled at the thought, and there might well 
be a great diversity of opinion as to the feasibility of so bold a measure at so 
critical a moment. To most persons it seemed like jumping out of the frying pan 
into the fire. Coming, too, at a moment when the state was in such desperate 
need of armed assistance from Congress, this advice was very irritating. The 
people naturally could not make due allowance for the difficulties under which 
Congress laboured, and their wrath waxed hot. South Carolina seemed to be left 
in the lurch. Was it to

p.172

join such a league as this that she had cast off allegiance to Great Britain? 
She had joined in the Declaration of Independence reluctantly, and from an 
honourable feeling of the desirability of united action among the states. On 
that momentous day, of which it was not yet clear whether the result was to be 
the salvation or the ruin of America, her delegates had, with wise courtesy, 
changed their vote in deference to the opinions of the other states, in order 
that the American people might seem to be acting as a unit in so solemn a 
matter. And now that the state was invaded, her people robbed and insulted, and 
her chief city threatened, she was virtually bidden to shift for herself! Under 
the influence of such feelings as these, after a hot debate, the council, by a 
bare majority, decided to send a flag of truce to General Prevost, and to 
suggest that South Carolina should remain neutral until the end of the war, when 
it should be decided by treaty whether she should cast in her lot with Great 
Britain or with the United States. What might have come of this singular 
suggestion had it been seriously discussed we shall never know, for Prevost took 
no notice of it whatever. He refused to exchange question and answer with a 
branch of the rebel government of South Carolina, but to Moultrie, as military 
commandant, he announced that his only terms were unconditional surrender. We 
can imagine how the gallant heart of Moutrie must have sunk within him at what 
he could not but call the dastardly action of the council, and how it must have 
leaped with honest joy at the British general's ultimatum.

p.173

"Very good," said he simply; "we'll fight it out, then." In citing this incident 
for its real historic interest, we must avoid the error of making too much of 
it. At this moment of sudden peril, indignation at the fancied neglect of 
Congress was joined to the natural unwillingness, on the part of the council, to 
incur the risk of giving up the property of their fellow-citizens to the tender 
mercies of such a buccaneer as Prevost had shown himself to be. But there is no 
sufficient reason for supposing that, had the matter gone farther, the 
suggestion of the council would have been adopted by the legislature or 
acquiesced in by the people of South Carolina.

On this occasion the danger vanished as suddenly as it came. Count Pulaski, with 
his legion, arrived from the northern army, and Lincoln, as soon as he learned 
what was going on, retraced his steps, and presently attacked General Prevost. 
After an indecisive skirmish, the latter, judging his force inadequate for the 
work he had undertaken, retreated into Georgia, and nothing more was done till 
autumn. The military honours of the campaign, however, remained with the 
British; for by his march upon Charleston, Prevost had prevented Lincoln from 
disturbing the British supremacy in Georgia, and besides this he had gained a 
foothold in South Carolina; when he retreated he left a garrison in Beaufort 
which Lincoln was unable to dislodge.

The French alliance, which thus far had been of so little direct military value, 
now appears

p.174

again on the scene. During the year which had elapsed since the futile Rhode 
Island campaign, the French fleet had been busy in the West Indies. Honours were 
easy, on the whole, between the two great maritime antagonists, but the French 
had so far the advantage that in August, 1779, Estaing was able once more to 
give some attention to his American friends. On the first day of September he 
appeared off the coast of Georgia with a powerful fleet of twenty-two ships-of-
the-line and eleven frigates. Great hopes were now conceived by the Americans, 
and a plan was laid for the recapture of Savannah. By the 23d of the month the 
place was invested by the combined forces of Lincoln and Estaing and for three 
weeks the seige was vigorously carried on by a regular system of approaches, 
while the works were diligently bombarded by the fleet. At length Estaing grew 
impatient. There was not sufficient harbourage for his great ships and the 
captains feared that they might be overtaken by the dangerous autumnal gales for 
which that coast is noted. To reduce the town by a regular siege would perhaps 
take several weeks more, and it was accordingly thought best to try to carry it 
by storm. On the 9th of October a terrific assault was made in full force. Some 
of the outworks were carried, and for a moment the stars and stripes and the 
fleurs-de-lis were planted on the redoubts; but British endurance and the 
strength of the position at last prevailed. The assailants were totally 
defeated, losing more than 1,000 men, while the British in their sheltered 
position, lost but 55.

p.175

The gallant Pulaski was among the slain, and Estaing received two severe wounds. 
The French who had borne the brunt of the fight, now embarked and stood out to 
sea, but not in time to escape the October gale which they had been dreading. 
After weathering with difficulty a terrible storm, their fleet was divided; and 
while part returned to the West Indies, Estaing himself, with the remainder 
crossed to France. Thus the second attempt at concerted action between French 
and Americans had met with much more disastrous failure than the first. 

While these things were going on, Washington had hoped, and Clinton had feared, 
that Estaing might presently reach New York in such force as to turn the scale 
there against the British. As soon as he learned that the French fleet was out 
of the way, Sir Henry Clinton proceeded to carry out a plan which he had long 
had in contemplation. A year had now elapsed since the beginning of active 
operations in the south, and, although the British arms had been crowned with 
success, it was desirable to strike a still heavier blow. The capture of the 
chief southern city was not only the next step in the plan of the campaign, but 
it was an object of especial desire to Sir Henry Clinton personally, for he had 
not forgotten the humiliating defeat at Fort Moultrie in 1776. He accordingly 
made things as snug as possible at the north, by finally withdrawing the 
garrisons from Rhode Island and the advanced posts on the Hudson. In this way, 
while leaving Knyphausen with a

p.176

strong force in command of New York, he was enabled to embark 8,000 men on 
transports, under convoy of five ships-of-the-line; and on the day after 
Christmas, 1779, he set sail for Savannah, taking Lord Cornwallis with him.

The voyage was a rough one. Some of the transports foudered, and some were 
captured by American privateers. Yet when Clinton arrived in Georgia, and united 
his forces to those of Prevost, the total amounted to more than 10,000 men. He 
ventured, however, to weaken the garrison of New York still more, and sent back 
at once for 3,000 men under command of the young Lord Rawdon, of the famous 
family of Hastings, better known in after years as Earl of Moira and Marquis of 
Hastings, and destined, like Cornwallis, to serve with great distinction as 
governor-general of India. The event fully justified Clinton's sagacity in 
taking this step. New York was quite safe for the present; for so urgent was the 
need for troops in South carolina, and so great the difficulty of raising them, 
that Washington was obliged to detach from his army all the Virginia and North 
Carolina troops and send them down to aid General Lincoln. With his army thus 
weakened, it was out of the question for Washington to attack New York.

Lincoln, on the other hand, after his reinforcements arrived, had an army of 
7,000 men with which to defend the threatened state of South Carolina. It was an 
inadequate force, and its commander, a thoroughly brave and estimable man, was 
far from possessing the rare sagacity which

p.177

Washington displayed in baffling the schemes of the enemy. The government of 
South Carolina deemed the preservation of Charleston to be of the first 
importance, just as, in 1776, Congress had insisted upon the importance of 
keeping the city of New York. But we have seen how Washington, in that trying 
time, though he could not keep the city, never allowed himself to get his army 
into a position from which he could not withdraw it, and at last, through his 
sleepless vigilance, won all the honours of the campaign. In the defence of 
Charleston no such high sagacity was shown. Clinton advanced slowly overland, 
until on the 26th of February, 1780, he came in sight of the town. It had by 
that time become so apparent that his overwhelming superiority of force would 
enable him to encompass it on every side, that Lincoln should have evacuated the 
place without a moment's delay; and such was Washington's opinion as soon as he 
learned the facts. The loss of Charleston, however serious a blow, could in no 
case be so disastrous as the loss of the army. But Lincoln went on strengthening 
the fortifications, and gathering into the trap all the men and all the military 
resources he could find. For some weeks the connections with the country north 
of the Cooper river were kept open by two regiments of cavalry; but on the 14th 
of April these regiments were cut to pieces by Colonel Banastre Tarleton, the 
cavalry commander who now first appeared on the scene upon which he was soon to 
become so famous. Five days later, the reinforcement under Lord

p.178

Rawdon, arriving from New York, completed the investment of the doomed city. The 
ships entering the harbour did not attempt to batter down Fort Moultrie, but ran 
past it; and on the 6th of May this fortress, menaced by troops in the rear, 
surrendered.

The British army now held Charleston engirdled with a cordon of works on every 
side, and were ready to begin an assault which, with the disparity of forces in 
the case, could have but one possible issue. On the 12th of May, to avoid a 
wanton waste of life, the city was surrrendered and Lincoln and his whole army 
became prisoners of war. The Continental troops, some 3,000 in number were to be 
held as prisoners till regularly discharged. The militia were allowed to return 
home on parole, and all the male citizens were reckoned as militia and paroled 
likewise. The victorious Clinton as once sent expeditions to take possession of 
Camden and other strategic points in the interior of the state. One regiment of 
the Virginia line, under Colonel Buford, had not reached Charleston, and on 
hearing of the great catastrophe it retreated northward with all possible speed. 
But Tarleton gave chase as far as Waxhaws, near the North Carolina border, and 
there, overtaking Buford cut his force to pieces, slaying 113 and capturing the 
rest. Not a vestige of an American army was left in all South Carolina.

"We look on America as at our feet." said Horace Walpole; and doubtless, after 
the capture of Fort Washington, this capture of Lincoln's army

p.179

at Charleston was the most considerable disaster which befell the American army 
during the whole course of the war. It was of less critical importance than the 
affair of Fort Washington, as it occurred a what everyone must admit to have 
been a less critical moment. The loss of Fort Washington, taken in connection 
with the misconduct of Charles Lee, came within a hair's-breadth of wrecking the 
cause of American independence at the outset; andit put matters into so bad a 
shape that nothing short of Washington's genius could have wrought victory out 
of them. The loss of South Carolina, in May, 1780, serious as it was, did not so 
obviously imperil the whole American cause. The blow did not come at quite so 
critical a time, or in quite so critical a place. The loss of South Carolina 
would not have dismembered the confederacy of states, and in course of time, 
with the American cause elsewhere successful, she might have been recovered.

The blow was nevertheless very serious indeed, and, if all the consequences 
which Clinton contemplated, the overthrow may well have seemed greater than that 
of Fort Washington. The detachments which Clinton sent into the interior met 
with no resistance. Many of the inhabitants took the oath of allegiance to the 
Crown; others gave their parole not to serve against the British during the 
remainder of the war. Clinton issued a circular, inviting all well-disposed 
people to assemble

p.180

and organize a loyal militia for the purpose of supressing any future attempts 
at rebellion. All who should again venture to take up arms against the king were 
to be dealt with as traitors, and their estates were to be confiscated; but to 
all who should now return to their allegiance, a free pardon wasoffered for past 
offences, except in the case of such people as had taken part in the hanging of 
the Tories. Having struck this great blow, Sir Henry Clinton returned, in June 
to New York, taking back with him the larger part of his force, but leaving 
Cornwallis with 5,000 men to maintain and extend the conquests already made.

Just before starting, however, Sir Henry, in a too hopeful moment, issued 
another proclamation, which went far toward destroying the effect of his 
previous measures. This new proclamation required all the people of South 
Carolina to take an active part in reestablishing the royal government under 
penalty of being dealt with as rebels and traitors. At the same time, all 
paroles were discharged except in the case of prisoners captured in ordinary 
warfare, and thus everybody was compelled to declare himself as favourable or 
hostile to the cause of the invaders. The British commander could hardly have 
taken a more injudicious step. Under the first proclamation, many of the people 
were led to comply with the British demands because they wished to avoid 
fighting altogether; under the second, a neutral attitude became impossible, and 
these lovers of peace and quiet, when they found

p.181

themselves constrained to take an active part on one side or the other, 
naturally preferred to help their friends rather than their enemies. Thus the 
country soon showed itself restless under British rule, and this feeling was 
strengthened by the cruelties which, after Clinton's departure, Cornwallis found 
himself unable to prevent. Officers endowed with civil and military powers 
combined were sent about the country in all directions, to make full lists of 
the inhabitants for the purpose of enrolling loyalist militia. In the course of 
these unwelcome circuits many affrays occurred, and instances were not rare in 
which people were murdered in cold blood. Debtors took occasion to accuse their 
creditors of want of loyalty and the creditor was obliged to take the oath of 
allegiance before he could collect his dues. Many estates were confiscated, and 
the houses of such patriots as had sought refuge in the mountains were burned. 
Bands of armed men, whose aim ws revenge or plunder, volunteered their services 
in preserving order, and, getting commissions, went about making disorder more 
hideous and wreaking their evil will without let or hindrance. The loyalists, 
indeed, asserted that they behaved no worse than the Whigs when the latter got 
the upper hand, and in this there was much truth. Cornwallis, who was the most 
conscientious of men and very careful in his statements of fact, speaks, 
somewhat later, of "the shocking tortures and inhuman murders which are every 
day committed by the enemy, not only on those who have taken part with us, but 
on many

p.182

who refuse to join them." There can be no doubt that Whigs and Tories were alike 
guilty of cruelty and injustice. But on the present occasion all this served to 
throw discredit on the British, as the party which controlled the country, and 
must beheld responsible accordingly.

Organized resistance was impossible. The chief strategic points on the coast 
were Charleston, Beaufort and Savannah; in the interior, Augusta was the gateway 
of Georgia and the communications between this point and the wild mountains of 
North Carolina were dominated by a village known as "Ninety-Six," because it was 
just that number of miles distant from Keowee, the principal town of the 
Cherokees. Eighty miles to the northeast of Ninety-Six lay the still more 
important post of Camden, in which centered all the principal inland roads by 
which South Carolina could be reached from the North. All these strategic points 
were held in force by the British, and save by help from without there seemed to 
be no hope of releasing the state from their iron grasp. Among the patriotic 
Whigs, however, there were still some stout hearts that did not despair. 
Retiring to the dense woods, the tangled swamps, or the steep mountain defiles, 
these sagacious and resolute men kept up a romantic partisan warfare, full of 
midnight marches, sudden surprises, and desperate hand-to-hand combats. Foremost 
among these partisan commanders for enterprise and skill, were James Williams, 
Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion.

p.183

Of all thepicturesque characters of our Revolutionary period, there is perhaps 
no one who, in the memory of the people, is so closely associated with romantic 
adventure as Francis Marion. He belonged to that gallant race of men of whose 
services France had been forever deprived, when Louis XIV. revoked the edict of 
Nantes. His father had been a planter near Georgetown, on the coast, and the son 
while following the same occupation, had been called off to the western frontier 
by the Cherokee war of 1759, in the course of which he had made himself an adept 
in woodland strategy. He was now forty-seven years old, a man of few words and 
modest demeanour, small in stature and slight in frame, delicately organized, 
but endowed with wonderful nervous energy and sleepless intelligence. Like a 
woman in quickness of sympathy, he was a knight in courtesy, truthfullness and 
courage.

The brightness of his fame was never sullied by an act of cruelty. "Never shall 
a house be burned by one of my people," said he, "to distress poor women and 
children is what I detest." To distress the enemy in legitimate warfare was on 
the other hand, a business in which few partisan commanders have excelled him. 
For swiftness and secrecy he was unequalled and the boldness of his exploits 
seemed almost incredible, when compared with the meagreness of his resources. 
His force sometimes consisted of less than twenty men, and seldom exceeded 
seventy. To arm them, he was obliged to take the saws from sawmills and have 
them wrought into rude swords at the country

p.184

forge, while pewter mugs and spoons were cast into bullets. With such equipment 
he would attack and overwhelm parties of more than two hundred Tories; or he 
would even swoop upon a column of British regulars on their march, throw them 
into disorder, set free their prisoners, slay and disarm a score or two, and 
plunge out of sight in the darkling forest as swiftly and mysteriously as he had 
come.

Second to Marion alone in this wild warfare was Thomas Sumter, a tall and 
powerful man, stern in countenance and haughty in demeanor. Born in Virginia in 
1734, he was present at Braddock's defeat in 1755, and after prolonged military 
service on the frontier found his way to South Carolina before the beginning of 
the Revolutionary War. He lived nearly a hundred years; sat in the Senate of the 
United States during the War of 1812, served as minister to Brazil, and 
witnessed the nullification acts of his adopted state under the stormy 
presidency of Jackson. During the summer of 1780 he kept up so brisk a guerrilla 
warfare in the upland regions north of Ninety-Six that Cornwallis called him 
"the greatest plague in the country." "But for Sumter and Marion," said the 
British commander, "South Carolina would be at peace." The first advantage of 
any sort gained over the enemy since Clinton's landing was the destruction of a 
company of dragoons by Sumter, on the 12th of July. Three weeks later, he made a 
desperate attack on the British at Rocky Mount, but was repulsed. On the 6th of 
August, he surprised the

p.185

enemy's post at Hanging Rock, and destroyed a whole regiment. It was on this 
occasion that Andrew Jackson made his first appearance in history, an orphan boy 
of thirteen, staunch in the fight as any of his comrades.

But South Carolina was too important to be left dependent upon the skill and 
bravery of its partisan commanders alone. Already, before the fall of 
Charleston, it had been felt that' further reinforcements were needed there, and 
Washington had sent down some 2,000 Maryland and Delaware troops under Baron 
Kalb, an excellent officer. It was a long march and the 20th of June had arrived 
when Kalb halted at Hillsborough in North Carolina, to rest his men and seek the 
cooperation of General Caswell, who commanded the militia of that state. By this 
time the news of the capture of Lincoln's army had reached the north, and the 
emergency was felt to be a desperate one. Fresh calls for militia were made upon 
all the states south of Pennsylvania. That resources obtained with such 
difficulty should not be wasted, it was above all desirable that a competent 
general should be chosen to succeed the unfortunate Lincoln. The opinions of the 
commander-in-chief with reference to this matter were well known. Washington 
wished to have Greene appointed, as the ablest general in the army. But the 
glamour which enveloped the circumstances of the great victory at Saratoga was 
not yet dispelled. Since the downfall of the Conway Cabal, Gates had never 
recovered the extraordinary

p.186

place which he had held in public esteem at the beginning of 1778, but there 
were few as yet who seriously questioned the reputation he had so lightly won 
for generalship. Many people now called for Gates, who had for the moment 
retired from active service and was living on his plantation in Virginia, and 
the suggestion found favour with Congress. On the 18th of June Gates was 
appointed to the chief command of the southern department, and eagerly accepted 
the position. The good wishes of the people went with him. Richard Peters, 
secretary of the Board of War, wrote him a very cordial letter saying, "Our 
affairs to the southward look blue; so they did when you took command before the 
Burgoynade. I can only now say, Go and do likewise - God bless you." Charles 
Lee, who was then living in disgrace on his Virginia estate, sent a very 
different sort of greeting. Lee and Gates had always been friends, linked 
together, perhaps, by pettiness of spirit and a common hatred for the commander-
in-chief, whose virtues were a perpetual rebuke to them. But the cynical Lee 
knew his friend too well to share in the prevailing delusion as to his military 
capacity, and he bade him goodbye with the ominous warning, "Take care that your 
northern laurels do not change to southern willows!"

With this word of ill omen, which doubtless he little heeded, the "hero of 
Saratoga" made his way to Hillsborough, where he arrived on the 19th of July, 
and relieved Kalb of the burden of anxiety that had been thrust upon him. Gates 
found

p.187

things in a most deplorable state; lack of arms, lack of tents, lack of food, 
lack of medications and, above all, lack of money. The all-pervading neediness 
which in those days beset the Amererican people, through their want of an 
efficient government, was never more thoroughly exemplified. It required a very 
different man from Gates to mend matters. Want of judgment and want of decision 
were faults which he had not outgrown, and all his movements were marked by 
weakness and rashness. He was adventurous where caution was needed, and timid 
when he should have been bold. The objective point of his campaign was the town 
of Camden. Once in possession of this important point, he could force the 
British from their other inland positions and throw them upon the defensive at 
Charleston. It was not likely that so great an object would be attained without 
a battle, but there was a choice of ways by which the strategic point might be 
approached. Two roads led from Hillsborough to Camden. The westerly route passed 
through Salisbury and Charlotte, in a long arc of a circle, coming down upon 
Camden from the northwest. The country through which it passed was fertile, and 
the inhabitants were mostly Scotch-Irish Whigs. By following this road, the 
danger of a sudden attack by the enemy would be slight, wholesome food would be 
obtained in abundance, and in case of defeat it afforded a safe line of retreat. 
The easterly route formed the chord of this long arc, passing from Hillsborough 
to Camden almost in a straight line 160 miles in length. It was 50

p.188

miles shorter than the other route, but it lay through a desolate region of pine 
barrens, where farmouses and cultivated fields were very few and far between and 
owned by the Tories. This line of march was subject to flank attacks, it would 
yeild no food for the army, and a retreat through it on the morrow of an 
unsuccessful battle, would simply mean destruction. The only advantage of this 
route was its directness. The British forces were more or less scattered about 
the country. Lord Rawdon held Camden with a comparatively small force, and Gates 
was anxious to attack and overwhelm him before Cornwallis could come up from 
Charleston.

Gates accordingly chose the shorter route, with all its disadvantages, in spite 
of the warnings of Kalb and other officers, and on the 27th of July he put his 
army in motion. On the 3d of August, having entered South Carolina and crossed 
the Pedee river, he was joined by Colonel Porterfield with a small force of 
Virginian regulars, which had been hovering on ther border since the fall of 
Charleston. On the 7th he effected a junction with General Caswell and his North 
Carolina militia, and on the 10th his army, thus reinforced, reached Little 
Lynch's Creek, about fifteen miles northeast of Camden, and confronted the 
greatly inferior force of Lord Rawdon. The two weeks' march had been 
accomplished at the rate of about eleven miles a day, with no end of fatique and 
suffering. The few lean kine slaughtered by the roadside had proved quite 
insufficient to feed the army,

p.189

and for want of any better diet the half-starved men had eaten, voraciously of 
unripe corn, green apples and peaches. All were enfeebled and many were dying of 
dysentary and cholera morbus, so that the American camp presented a truly 
distressing scene.

Rawdon's force stood across the road, blocking the way to Camden, and the chance 
was offered for Gates to strike the sudden blow for the sake of which he had 
chosen to come by this bad road. There was still, however, a choice of methods. 
The two roads, converging toward their point of intersection at Camden, were now 
very near together. Gates might either cross the creed in front, and trust to 
his superior numbers to overwhelm the enemy, or, by a forced march of ten miles 
to the right, he might turn Rawdon's flank and gain Camden before him. A good 
general would have done either the one of these things or the other, and Kalb 
recommended the immediate attack. But now at the supreme moment Gates was as 
irresolute as he had been impatient when 160 miles away. He let the opportunity 
slip, waited two days where he was, and on the 13th marched slowly to the right 
and took up his position at Clermont, on the westerly road; thus abandoning the 
whole purpose for the sake of which he had refused to advance by that road in 
the first place. On the 14th he was joined by General Stevens with 700 Virginia 
militia; but on the same day Lord Cornwallis reached Camden with his regulars, 
and the golden moment for crushing the British in detachments was gone forever.

p.190

The American army now numbered 3,052 men, but only 1,400 were regulars, chiefly 
of the Maryland line. The rest were mostly raw militia. The united force under 
Cornwallis amounted to only 2,000 men, but they were all thoroughly trained 
soldiers. It was rash for the Americans to hazard an attack under such 
circumstances, especially in their forlorn condition, faint as they were with 
hunger and illness, and many of them hardly fit to march or take the field. But, 
strange as it may seem, a day and a night passed by and Gates had not yet 
learned that Cornwallis had arrived, but still supposed he had only Rawdon to 
deal with. It was no time for him to detach troops on distant expeditions, but 
on the 14th he sent 400 of his best Maryland regulars on a long march southward, 
to cooperate with Sumter in cutting off the enemy's supplies on the road between 
Charleston and Camden. At ten o'clock on the night of the 15th, Gates moved his 
army down the road from Clermont to Camden, intending to surprise Lord Rawdon 
before daybreak. The distance was ten miles through the woods, by a rough road, 
hemmed in on either side now by hills, and now by impassable swamps.

At the very same hour, Cornwallis started up the road with the similar purpose 
of surprising General Gates. A little before three in the morning, the British 
and American advance guards of light infantry encountered each other on the 
road, five miles north of Camden, and a brisk skirmish ensued, in which the 
Americans were routed and the gallant Colonel Porterfield was slain. Both 
armies,

p.191

however, having failed in their scheme of surprising each other, lay on their 
arms and waited for daylight. Some prisoners who fell into the hands of the 
Americans now brought the news that the army opposed to them was commanded by 
Cornwallis himself, and they over-stated its numbers at 3,000 men. The 
astonished Gates called together his officers, and asked what was to be done. No 
one spoke for a few moments, until General Stevens exclaimed "Well, gentlemen, 
is it not too late now to do anything but fight?" Kalb's opinion was in favour 
of retreating to Clermont and taking a strong position there; but his advice had 
so often been unheeded that he no longer urged it, and it was decided to open 
the battle by an attack on the British right.

The rising sun presently showed the two armies close together. Huge swamps, at a 
short distance from the road, on either side, covered both flanks of both 
armies. On the west side of the road the British left was commanded by Lord 
Rawdon, on the east side their right was led by Colonel James Webster, while 
Tarleton and his cavalry hovered a little in the rear. The American right wing, 
opposed to Rawdon, was commanded by Kalb, and consisted of the Delaware regiment 
and the second Maryland brigade in front, supported by the first Maryland 
brigade at some distance in the rear. The American left wing, opposed to 
Webster, consisted of the militia from Virginia and North Carolina, under 
Generals Stevens and Caswell. Such an arrangement

p.192

of troops invited disaster. The battle was to begin with an attack on the 
British right, an attack upon disciplined soldiers; and the lead in this attack 
was entrusted to raw militia who had hardly ever been under fire, and did not 
even understand the use of the bayonet! This work should have been given to 
those splendid Maryland troops that had gone to help Sumter. The militia, 
skilled in woodcraft, should have been sent on that expedition, and the regulars 
should have been retained for the battle. The militia did not even know how to 
advance properly, but became tangled up and while they were straightening their 
lines, Colonel Webster came down upon them in a furious charge. The shock of the 
British column was resistless. The Virginia militia threw down their guns and 
fled without firing a shot. The North Carolina militia did likewise, and with 
fifteen minutes the whole American left became a mob of struggling men, smitten 
with mortal panic, and huddling like sheep in their wild flight, while 
Tarleton's cavalry gave chase and cut them down by scores.

Leaving Tarleton to deal with them, Webster turned upon the first Maryland 
brigade and slowly pushed it off the field, after an obstinate resistance. The 
second Maryland brigade, on the other hand, after twice repelling the assault of 
Lord Rawdon, broke through his left with a spirited bayonet charge, and remained 
victorious upon that part of the field, until the rest of the fight was ended; 
when being attacked in flank by Webster, these stalwart troops retreated 
westerly by a narrow road between swamp and hillside, and made

Map - Battle of Camden August 16, 1780.

p.193

their escape in good order. Long after the battle was lost in every other 
quarter, the gigantic form of Kalb, unhorsed and fighting on foot, was seen 
directing the movements of his brave Maryland and Delaware troops, till he fell 
dying from eleven wounds. Gates, caught in the throng of fugitives at the 
beginning of the action, was borne in headlong flight as far as Clermont, where, 
taking a fresh horse, he made the distance of nearly two hundred miles to 
Hillsborough in less than four days. The laurels of Saratoga had indeed changed 
into willows. It was the most disastrous defeat ever inflicted upon an American 
army, and ignominious withal, since it was incured through a series of the 
grossest blunders. The Maryland troops lost half their number, the Delaware 
regiment was almost entirely destroyed, and the rest of the army was dispersed. 
The number of killed and wounded has never been fully ascertained, but it can 
hardly have been less than 1,000, while more than 1,000 prisoners were takne, 
with seven pieces of artillery and 2,000 muskets. The British loss in killed and 
wounded was 324.

The reputation of General Gates never recovered from this sudden overthrow, and 
his swift flight to Hillsborough was made the theme of unsparing ridicule. Yet, 
if duly considered, that was the one part of his conduct for which he cannot 
fairly be blamed. The best of generals may be caught in a rush of panic-stricken 
fugitives and hurried off the battle-field; the flight of Frederick the Great at 
Mollwitz was

p.194

much more ignominious than that of Gates at Camden. When once, moreover the full 
extent of the disaster had become apparent, it was certainly desirable that 
Gates should reach Hillsborough as soon as possible, since it was the point from 
which the state organization of North Carolina was controlled, and accordingly 
the point at which a new army might soonest be collected. Gates's flight was a 
singularly dramatic and appropriate end to his silly career, but our censure 
should be directed to the wretched generalship by which the catastrophe was 
prepared; to the wrong choice of roads, the fatal hesitation at the critical 
moment, the weakening of the army on the eve of battle; and, above all, to the 
rashness in fighting at all after the true state of affairs had become known. 
The campaign was an epitome of the kind of errors which Washington always 
avoided; and it admirably illustrated the inanity of John Adams's toast, "A 
short and volent war," against an enemy of superior strength.

If the 400 Maryland regulars who had been sent to help General Sumter had 
remained with the main army and been entrusted with the assault on the British 
right, the result of this battle would doubtless have been very different. It 
might not have been a victory, but it surely would not have been a rout. On the 
day before the battle, Sumter had attacked the British supply train on its way 
from Charleston, and captured all the stores, with more than 100 prisoners. But 
the defeat at Camden deprived ths exploit of its value. Sumter retreated up the 
Wateree river to Fishing Creek

p.195

but on the 18th Tarleton for once caught him napping, and routed him; taking 300 
prisoners, setting free the captured British and recovering all the booty. The 
same day witnessed an American success in another quarter. At Musgrove's Mills, 
in the western part of the state, Colonel James Williams defeated a force of 500 
British and Tories, killing and wounding nearly one third of their number. Two 
days later, Marion performed one of his charactistic expolits. A detachment of 
the British army was approaching Nelson's Ferry, where the Santee river crosses 
the road from Camden to Charleston, when Marion, with a handful of men, suddenly 
darting upon these troops, captured twenty-six of their number, set free 150 
Maryland prisoners whom they were taking down to the coast, and got away without 
losing a man.

Such deeds showed that the life of South Carolina was not quite extinct, but 
they could not go far toward relieving the gloom which overspread the country 
after the defeat of Camden. For a second time within three months the American 
army in the south had been swept out of existence Gates could barely get 
together 1,000 men at Hillsborough and Washington could not well spare any more 
from his already depleted force. To must and train a fresh army of regulars 
would be slow and difficult work, and it was as certain as anything could be 
that Cornwallis would immediately proceed to attempt the conquest of North 
Carolina.

p.196

Never was the adage that the darkest time comes just before day, more aptly 
illustrated than in the general aspect of American affairs during the summer and 
fall of 1780. The poplular feeling had not so much the character of panic as in 
those "times which tried men's souls," when the broad Delaware river screened 
Washington's fast dwindling army from destruction. It was not now a feelingof 
quick alarm so much as of utter weariness and depression. More than four years 
had passed since the Declaration of Independence, and although the enemy had as 
yet gained no firm foothold in the northern states except in the city of New 
York, it still seemed impossible to dislodge them from that point, while 
Cornwallis, flushed with victory, boasted that he would soon conquer all the 
country south of Susquehanna. For the moment it began to look as if Lord George 
Germaine's policy of tiring the Americans out might prove successful, after all. 
The country was still without anything fit to be called a general government. 
After three years' discussion, the Articles of Confederation, establishing a 
"league of friendship" between the thirteen states, had not yet been adopted. 
the Continental Congress had continued to decline in reputation and capacity. 
From this state of things, rather than from any real poverty of the country, 
there had ensued a general administrative paralysis, which went on increasing 
even after the war was ended, until it was brought to a close by the adoption of 
the Federal Constitution. It was not because the thirteen states were lacking in 
material

p.197

resources or in patriotism that the conduct of the war languished as it did. The 
resources were sufficient, had there been any means of concentrating and 
utilizing them. The relations of the states to each other were not defined; and 
while there were thirteen powers which could plan and criticise, there was no 
single power which could act efficiently. Hence the energies of the people were 
frittered away.

The disease was most plainly visible in those money matters which form the basis 
of all human activity. The condition of the American finance in 1780 was simply 
horrible. The "greenback" delusion possessed people's minds even more strongly 
then, than in the days following our Civil War. Pelatiah Webster, the ablest 
political economist in America at that time, a thinker far in advance of his 
age, was almost alone in insisting upon taxation. The popular feeling was 
expressed by a delegate in Congress who asked, with unspeakable scorn, why he 
should vote to tax the people, when a Philadelphia printing-press could turn out 
money by the bushel. But indeed, without an amendment, Congress had no power to 
lay any tax, save through requisitions upon the state governments. There seemed 
to be no alternative but to go on issuing this money, which many people 
glorified as the "safest possible currency," because "nobody could take it out 
of the country."

As Webster truly said, the country has suffered more from this cause than from 
the arms of the enemy. "The people of the states at that time," he said, "had 
been worried and

p.198

fretted, disappointed and put out of humour, by so many tender acts, limitations 
of prices and other compulsory methods to force value into paper money, and 
compel the circulation of it and by so many vain funding schemes and 
declarations and promises, all which issued from Congress, but died under the 
most zealous efforts to put them into operation, that their patience was 
exhausted. These irritations and disappointments had so destroyed the courage 
and confidence of the people that they appeared heartless and almost stupid when 
their attentions was called to any new proposal." During the summer of 1780 this 
wretched "Continental" currency fell into contempt. As Washington said, it took 
a wagon-load of money to buy a wagon-load of provisions. At the end of the year 
1778, the paper dollar was worth sixteen cents and before the end of the year it 
took ten paper dollars to make a cent.

In October, Indian corn sold wholesale in Boston for $150 a bushel, butter was 
$12 a pound,' tea $90, sugar $10, beef $8, coffee, $12 and a barrel of flour 
cost $1,575. Samuel Adams paid $2,000 for a hat and suit of clothes. The money 
soon ceased to circulate, debts could not be collected, and there was a general 
prostration of credit. To say that a thing was "not worth a Continental" became 
the strongest possible expression of contempt. A barber in Philadelphia papered 
his shop with bills, and a dog was led up and down the streets, smeared with tar 
with this unhappy money sticking all over him,

p.199

a sorry substitute for the golden-fleeced sheep of the old Norse legend. Save 
for the scanty pittance of gold which came in from the French alliance, from the 
little foreign commerce that was left, and from trade with the British army 
itself, the country was without any circulating medium. In making its 
requisitions upon the states, Congress resorted to a measure which reminds one 
of the barbaric ages of barter. Insted of asking for money, it requested the 
states to send in their "specific supplies" of beef and pork, flour and rice, 
salt and hay, tobacco and rum. The finances of what was so soon to become the 
richest of nations were thus managed on the principle whereby the meagre 
salaries of country clergymen in New England used to be eked out. It might have 
been called a continental system of "donation parties."

Under these circumstances it became almost impossible to feed and clothe the 
army. The commissaries, without either money or credit could do but little; and 
Washington, sorely against his will, was obliged to levy contributions on the 
country surrounding his camp. It was done as gently as possible. The county 
magistrates were called on for a specified quantity of flour and meat; the 
supplies brought in were duly appariased and certificates were given in exchange 
for them by the commissaries. Such certificates were received at their nominal 
value in payment of taxes. But this measure, which simply introduced a new kind 
of paper money, served only to add to the general confusion. These difficulties, 
enhanced by

p.200

the feeling that the war was dragged out to an interminable length, made it 
impossible to keep the army properly recruited. When four months' pay of a 
private soldier would not buy a single bushel of wheat for his family, and when 
he could not collect even this pittance, while most of the time he went barefoot 
and half-famished, it was not strange that he should sometimes feel mutinous. 
The desertions to the British lines at this time averaged more than a hundred a 
month. Ternay, the French admiral, wrote to Vergennes that the fate of North 
America was as yet very uncertain, and the Revolution by no means so far 
advanced as people in Europe supposed. The accumulated evils of the time had 
greatly increased the number of persons who, to save the remnant of their 
fortunes, were ready to see peace purchased at any price. In August, before he 
had heard of the disaster at Camden, Washington wrote to President Huntington, 
reminding him that the term of service of half the army would expire at the end 
of the year. "The shadow of an army that will remain," said Washington, "will 
have every motive except mere patriotism to abandon the service, without the 
hope, which has hitherto supported them, of a change for the better. This is 
almost extinguished now, and certainly will
not admit of an alteration, we may

.201

expect soon to be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of 
America in America upheld by foreign arms." To appreciate the full force of 
this, we must remember that, except in South Carolina, there had been no 
fighting worthy of mention during the year. The southern campaign absorbed the 
energies of the British to such an extent that they did nothing whateverin the 
north but make an unsuccessful attempt at invading New Jersey in June. While 
this fact shows how severely the strength of England was taxed by the coalition 
that had been formed against her, it shows even more forcibly how the vitality 
of America had been sapped by causes that lay deeper down than the mere presence 
of war. It was, indeed, becoming painfully apparent that little was to be hoped 
save through the aid of France. The alliance had thus far achieved but little 
that was immediately obvious to the American people, but it had really been of 
enormous indirect benefit to us. Both in itself and in the European 
complacations to which it had led, the action of France had vey seriously 
crippled the efficient military power of England. It locked up and neutralized 
much British energy that would otherwise have been directed against the 
Americans. The French government had also furnished Congress with large sums of 
money. But as for any direct share in military enterprises on American soil or 
in American waters, France had as yet done almost nothing. An evil star had 
presided over both the joint expeditions for the recovery of Newport and 
Savannah,

p.202

and no French army had been landed on our shores to cast in its lot with 
Washington's brave Continentals in a great and decisive campaign.

It had long been clear that France could in no way more effectively further the 
interests which she shared with the United States than by sending a strong force 
of trained soldiers to act under Washington's command. Nothing could be more 
obvious than the inference that such a general, once provided with an adequate 
force, might drive the British from New York, and thus deal a blow which would 
go far toward ending the war. This had long been Washington's most cherished 
scheme. In February, 1779, Lafayette had returned to France to visit his family, 
and to urge that aid of this sort might be granted. To chide him for his 
naughtiness in running away to America in defiance of the royal mandate, the 
king ordered him to be confined for a week at his father-in-law's house in 
Paris. Then he received him quite graciously at court, while the queen begged 
him to "tell us good news of our dearly beloved Americans." The good Lafayette, 
to whom, in the dreadful years that were to come, the dull king and his bright, 
unhappy queen were to look for compassionate protection, now ventured to give 
them some sensible words of advice. "The money that you spend on one of your 
court balls," he said, "would go far toward sending a serviceable army to 
America and dealing England a blow where she would most feel it." For several 
months he persisted in urging Vergennes to send over at least 12,000 men with a 
good general, and

p.203

to put them distinctly under Washington's command, so that there might be no 
disastrous wrangling about precedence and no repetition of such 
misunderstandings as had ruined the Newport campaign. When Estaing arrived in 
Paris, early in 1780, after his defeat at Savannah, he gave similar advice. The 
idea commended itself to Vergennes, and when, in April, 1780, Lafayette returned 
to the United States, he was authorized to inform Washington that France would 
soon send the desired reinforcement.

On the 10th of July, Admiral Ternay, with seven ships-of-the-line and three 
frigates arrived at Newport, bringing with him a force of 6,000 men, commanded 
by a good general, Count Rochambeau. This was the first installment of an army 
of which the remainder was to be sent as soon as adequate means of transport 
could be furnished. On the important question of military etiquette, Lafayette's 
advice had been strictly heeded. Rochambeau was told to put himself under 
Washington's command and to consider his troops as part of the American army, 
while American officers were to take precedence of French officers of equal 
rank. this French army was excellent in discipline and equipment, and among its 
officers were some, such as the Duke de Lauzun-Biron and the Marquis de 
Chastellux, who had won high distinction. Rochambeau wrote to Vergennes that on 
his arrival he found the people of Rhode Island sad and discouraged. Everybody 
thought the country was going to the dogs. But when it was understood

p.204

that this was but the advance guard of a considerable army and that France was 
this time in deadly earnest, their spirits rose, and the streets of Newport were 
noisy with hurrahs and brilliant with fireworks.

the hearts of the people, however, were still further to be sickened with hope 
deferred. Several British ships-of-the-line, arriving at New York, gave the 
enemy such a preponderance upon the water that Clinton resolved to take the 
offensive, and started down the Sound with 6,000 men to attack the French at 
Newport. Washington foiled this scheme by a sudden movement against New York, 
which obliged the British commander to fall back hastily for its defence; but 
the French fleet was nevertheless blockaded in Narragansett Bay by a powerful 
British squadron, and Rochambeau felt it necessary to keep his troops in Rhode 
Island to aid the admiral in case of such contingencies as might arise. The 
second installment of the French army on which their hopes had been built, never 
came, for a British fleet of thirty-two sail held it blockaded in the harbour of 
Brest.

The maritime supremacy of England thus continued to stand in the way of any 
great enterprise; and for a whole year the gallant army of Rochambeau was kept 
idle in Rhode Island, impatient and chafing under the restraint. The splendid 
work it was destined to perform under Washington's leadership lay hidden in the 
darkness of the future, and for the moment to gloom which had overspread the 
country was only deepened. Three

p.205

years had passed since the victory of Saratoga, but the vast consequences which 
were already flowing from that event had not yet disclosed their meaning. 
Looking only at the surface of things, it might well be asked, - and many did 
ask - whether that great victory had really done anything more than to prolong a 
struggle which was essentially vain and hopeless. Such themes formed the burden 
of discourse at gentlemen's dinner-tables and in the back parlours of country 
inns, where stout yeomen reviewed the situation of affairs through clouds of 
tobacco smoke; and never, perhaps, were the Tories more jubilant or the Whigs 
more crestfallen than at the close of this doleful summer.

It was just at this moment that the country was startled by the sudden 
disclosure of a scheme of blackest treason. For the proper explanation of this 
afffair, a whole chapter will be required.

CHAPTER XIV.
BENEDICT ARNOLD.


p.206

To understand the proximate causes of Arnold's treason, we must start from the 
summer of 1778, when Philadelphia was evacuated by the British. On that 
occasion, as General Arnold was incapacitated for active service by the wound he 
had received at Saratoga, Washington placed him in command of Philadelphia. This 
step brought Arnold into direct contact with Congress, toward which he bore a 
fierce grudge for the slights it had put upon him; and, moreover, the command 
was in itself a difficult one. The authority vested in the commandant was not 
clearly demarcated from that which belonged to the state government, so that 
occasions for dispute were sure to be forthcoming. While the British had held 
the city many of the inhabitants had given them active aid and encouragement, 
and there was now more or less property to be confiscated. By a resolve of 
Congress, all public stores belonging to the enemy were to be appropriated for 
the use of the army, and the commander-in-chief was directed to suspend the sale 
or transfer of goods until the general question of ownership should have been 
determined by a joint committee of Congress and of the Executive Council of 
Pennsylvania.

p.207

It became Arnold's duty to carry out this order, which not only wrought serious 
disturbance to business, but made the city a hornet's nest of bickerings and 
complaints. The qualities needed for dealing successfully with such an affair as 
this were very different from the qualities which had distinguished Arnold in 
the field. The utmost delicacy of tact was required, and Arnold was blunt, and 
self-willed, and deficient in tact. He was accordingly soon a loggerheads with 
the state government, and lost, besides, much of the personal popularity with 
which he had started. Stories were whispered about to his discredit. It was 
charged against Arnold that the extrvagance of his style of living was an 
offence against republican simplicity, and a scandal in view of the distressed 
condition of the country; that in order to obtain the means of meeting his heavy 
expenses he resorted to peculation and extortion; and that he showed too much 
favour to the Tories.

These charges were doubtless not without some foundation. This era of paper 
money and failing credit was an era of ostentatious expenditure, not altogether 
unlike that which, in later days, preceded the financial break-down of 1873. 
People in the towns lived extravagantly and in no other town was this more 
conspicuous than in Philadelphia; while perhaps no one in Philadelphia kept a 
finer stable of horses or gave more costly dinners than General Arnold. He ran 
in debt, and engaged in commercial speculations to remedy the evil; and, in view 
of the light afterward thrown upon his character, it is not unlikely that he may

p.208

have sometimes availed himself of his high position to aid these speculations. 
The charge of favouring the Tories may find its explanation in a circumstance 
which possibly throws a side-light upon his lavish use of money. Miss Margaret 
Shippen, daughter of a gentleman of moderate Tory sympathies, who some years 
afterward became chief justice of Pennsylvania, was one of the most beautiful 
and fascinating women in America, and at that time the reigning belle of 
Philadelphia; and no sooner had the new commandant arrived at his post than he 
was taken captive. The lady was scarcely twenty years old, while Arnold was a 
widower of thirty-five, with three sons; but his handsome face, his gallant 
bearing and his splendid career outweighed these disadvantages, and in the 
autumn of 1778 he was betrothed to Miss Shippen and thus entered into close 
relations with a prominent Tory family. In the moderate section of the Tory 
party, to which the Shippens belonged, there were many people who, while 
strongly opposed to the Declaration of Independence, would nevertheless have 
deemed it dishonourable to lend active aid to the enemy. In 1778, such people 
thought that Congress did wrong in making an alliance with France instead of 
accepting the liberal proposals of Lord North. The Declaration of Independence, 
they argued, would never have been made had it been supposed that the 
constitutional lieberties of the American people could any otherwise be securely 
protected. Even Samuel Adams admitted this. In the war

p.209

which had been undertaken in defence of these liberties, the victory of Saratoga 
had driven the British government to pledge itself to concede them once and 
forever. Then why not be magnanimous in the hour of triumph? Why not consider 
the victory of Saratoga as final, instead of subjecting the resources of the 
country to a terrible strain in the doubtful attempt to secure a result which, 
only three years before, even Washington himself had regarded as undesirable? 
Was it not unwise and unpatriotic to reject the overtures of our kinsmen, and 
cast in our lot with that Catholic and despotic power which had ever been our 
deadliest foe?

Such were the arguments to which Arnold must have listened again and again, 
during the summer and autumn of 1778. How far he may have been predisposed 
toward such views it would be impossible to say. He always declared himself 
disgusted with the French alliance (the story of his attempt to enter the 
services of Luzerne, the French minister, rests upon insufficient authority), 
and in this thee is nothing improbable. But, that, under the circumstances, he 
should gradually have drifted into the Tory position was, in a man of his 
temperment, almost inevitable. His nature was warm, implulsive and easily 
impressible, while he was deficient in breadth of intelligence and in rigorous 
moral conviction; and his opinions on public matters took their hue largely from 
his personal feelings. It was not surprising that such a man, in giving splendid 
entertainments, should invite to them the Tory

p.210

friends of the lady whose favour he was courting. His course excited the wrath 
of the Whigs. General Reed wrote indignantly to General Greene that Arnold had 
actually given a party at which "not only common Tory ladies, but the wives and 
daughters of persons proscribed by the state, and now with the enemy at New 
York," were present in considerable numbers. When twitted with such things, 
Arnold used to reply that it was the part of a true soldier to fight his enemies 
in the open field, but not to proscribe or persecute their wives and daughters 
in private life. But such an explanation naturally satisfied no one. His 
quarrels with the Executive Council, sharpened by such incidents as these, grew 
more and more violent, until when, in December, his most active enemy, Joseph 
Reed, became president of the Council, he suddenly made up his mind to resign 
his post and leave the army altogether. He would quit the turmoil of public 
affairs, obtain a grant of land in western New York, settle it with his old 
soldiers, with whom he had always been a favorite, and lead henceforth a life of 
Arcadian simplicity. In this mood he wrote to Schuyler, in words which today 
seem strange and sad, that his ambition was not so much to "shine in history" as 
to be "a good citizen;" and about the 1st of January, 1779, he set out for 
Albany to consult with the New York legislature about the desired land.

His scheme was approved by John Jay and others, and in all likelihood would have 
succeeded; but as he stopped for a day at Morristown, to visit

p.211

Washington, a letter overtook him, with the information that as soon as his back 
had been turned upon Philadelphia he had been publicly attacked by President 
Reed and the Council. Formal charges were brought against him: 

1. Of having improperly granted a pass for a ship to come into port.

2. Of having once used some public wagons for the transportation of private 
property.

3. Of having usurped the privilege of the Council in allowing people to enter 
the enemy's lines.

4. Of having illegally bought up a lawsuit over a prize vessel.

5. Of having "imposed menial offices upon the sons of freemen serving in the 
militia.

6. Of having made purchases for his private benefit at the time when by his own 
order, all shops were shut.

These charges were promulgated in a most extraordinary fashion. Not only were 
they laid before Congress, but copies of them were sent to the governors of all 
the states, accompanied by a circular letter from President Reed requesting the 
governors to communicate them to their respective legislatures. Arnold was 
naturally enraged at such an elaborate attempt to prepossess the public mind 
against him, but his first concern was for the possible effect it might have on 
Miss Shippen. He instantly returned to Philadelphia, and demanded an 
investigation. He had obtained Washington's permission to resign his command, 
but deferred acting upon it until the inquiry should have ended. The charges 
were investigated by a committee of Congress, and about the middle of March this 
committee brought in a re-

p.212

port stating that all the accusations were groundless, save the two which 
related to the use of the wagons and the irregular granting of a pass; and since 
in these instances there was no evidence of wrong intent, the committee 
recommended an unqualified verdict of aquittal.

Arnold, thereupon, considering himself vindicated, resigned his command. But 
Reed now represented to Congress that further testimony was forthcoming, and 
urged that the case should be reconsidered. Accordingly, Congress referred the 
matter anew to a joint committee of Congress and the Assembly and Council of 
Pennsylvania. This joint committee shirked the matter by recommending that the 
case be referred to a court-martial, and this recommendation was adopted by 
Congress on the 3d of April. The vials of Arnold's wrath were now full to 
overflowing; but he had no cause to complain of Miss Shippen, for their marriage 
took place in less than a week after this action of Congress. Washington, who 
sympathized with Arnold's impatience, appointed the court-martial for the 1st of 
May, but the Council of Pennsylvania begged for more time to collect evidence. 
And thus, in one way and another, the summer and autumn were frittered away, so 
that the trial did not begin until the 19th of December. All this time Arnold 
kept clamouring for a speedy trial, and Washington did his best to soothe him 
while paying due heed to the representations of the Council.

In the excitement of this fierce controversy the

p.213

Arcadian project seems to have been forgotten. Up to this point Arnold's anger 
had been chiefly directed toward the authorities of Pennsylvania; but when 
Congress refused to act upon the report of its committee exonerating him from 
blame, he became incensed against the whole party which, as he said, had so ill 
requited his services. It is supposed to have been about that time, in April, 
1779, that he wrote a letter to Sir Henry Clinton, in disguised handwriting and 
under the signature of "Gustavius," describing himself as an American officer of 
high rank, who, through disgust at the French alliance and other recent 
proceedings of Congress, might perhaps be persuaded to go over to the British, 
provided he could be indemnified for any losses he might incur by so doing. The 
beginning of this correspondence - if this was really the time - coincided 
curiously with the date of Arnold's marriage, but it is in the highest degree 
probable that down to the final catastrophe Mrs. Arnold knew nothing whatever of 
what was going on. (The charge against Mrs. Arnold, in Parton's Life of Burr, 
i.126, is conclusively refuted by Sabine, in his Loyalists of the American 
Revolution, i. 172-178. I think there can be no doubt that Burr lied.)

The correspondence waskept up at intervals, Sir Henry's replies being written by 
Major John Andre', his adjutant-general, over the signature of "John Anderson." 
Nothing seems to have been thought of at first beyond the personal desertion of 
Arnold to the enemy; the betrayal of a fortress was a later development of 
infamy. For the present, too,

p.214

we may suppose that Arnold was merely playing with fire, while he awaited the 
result of the court-martial.

The summer was not a happy one. His debts went on increasing, while his accounts 
with Congress remained unsettled, and he found it impossible to collect large 
sums that were due him. At last the court-martial met and sat for five weeks. On 
the 26th of January, 1780, the verdict was rendered, and in substance it agreed 
exactly with that of the committee of Congress ten months before. Arnold was 
fully acquitted of all the charges which alleged dishonourable dealings. The 
pass which he had granted was irregular, and public wagons which were standing 
idle, had once been used to remove private property that was in imminent danger 
from the enemy. The court exonerated Arnold of all intentional wrong, even in 
these venial matters, which it characterized as "imprudent;" but, as a sort of 
lame concession to the Council of Pennsylvania, it directed that he whould 
receive a public reprimand for from the commander-in-chief for his imprudence in 
the use of wagons, and for hurriedly giving a pass in which all due forms were 
not attended to. The decision of the court-martial was promptly confirmed by 
Congress, and Washington had no alternative but to issue the reprimand, which he 
couched in words as delicate and gracious as possible. (The version of the 
reprimand given by Marbois, however, is somewhat aprocryphal).

p.215

It was too late, however. The damage was done. Arnold had long felt persecuted 
and insulted. He had already dallied with temptation, and the poison was not 
working in his veins. His sense of public duty was utterly distorted by the 
keener sense of his private injuries. We may imagine him brooding over some 
memorable incidents in the careers of Monk, of the great Montrose and the 
greater Marlborough, until he persuaded himself that to change sides in a civil 
war was not so heinous a crime after all. Especially the example of Monk, which 
had already led Charles Lee to disgrace, seems to have riveted the attention of 
Arnold, although only the most shallow scrutiny could discover any resemblance 
between what the great English general had done and what Arnold purposed to do. 
There was not a more scrupulously honourable soldier in his day than George 
Monk. Arnold's thoughts may have run somewhat as follows. He would not become an 
ordinary deserter, a villain on a small scale. He would not sell himself cheaply 
to the devil; but he would play as signal a part in his new career as he had 
played in the old one. He would overwhelm this blundering Congress, and 
triumphantly carry the country back to its old allegiance. To play such a part, 
however, would require the blacksest treachery. Fancy George Monk, "honest old 
George," asking for the command of a fortress in order to betray it to the 
enemy! When Arnold had committed himself to this evil course, his story becomes 
a sickening one,

p.216

lacking no element of horror, whether in its foul beginnings or in its wretched 
end. To play his new part properly, he must obtain an important command, and the 
place which obviously suggested itself was West Point.

Since Burgoyne's overthrow, Washington had built a chain of strong fortresses 
there, for he did not intend that the possession of the Hudson river should ever 
again be put in question, so far as fortifications could go. Could this cardinal 
position be delivered up to Clinton, the prize would be worth tenfold the recent 
triumphs at Charleston and Camden. It would be giving the British what Burgoyne 
had tried in vain to get; and now it was the hero of Saratoga who plotted to 
undo his own good work at the dictates of perverted ambition and unhallowed 
revenge.

To get possession of this stronghold, it was necessary to take advantage of the 
confidence with which his great commander had always honoured him. From 
Washington, in July, 1780, Arnold sought the command of West Point, alleging 
that his wounded leg still kept him unfit for service in the field; and 
Washington immediately put him in charge of this all-important post, thus giving 
him the strongest proof of unabated confidence and esteem which it was in his 
power to give; and among all the dark shades in Arnold's treason, perhaps none 
seems darker than this personal treachery toward the man who had always trusted 
and defended him. What must the traitor's feelings have been when

p.217

he read the affectionate letters which Schuyler wrote him at this very time? In 
better days he had shown much generosity of nature. Can it be that this is the 
same man who on the field of Saratoga saved the life of the poor soldier who in 
honest fight had shot him and broken his leg? Such are the strange contrasts 
that we sometimes see in characters that are governed by impulse, and not by 
principle. Their virtues may be real enough while it lasts, but it does not 
weather the storm; and when once wrecked, the very same emotional nature by 
which alone it was supported often prompts to deeds of incredible wickedness.

After taking command of West Point, the correspondence with Andre' carefully 
couched in such terms as to make it seem to refer to some commercial enterprise, 
was vigorously kept up; and hints were let drop which convinced Sir Henry 
Clinton that the writer was Arnold, and the betrayal of the highland stronghold 
his purpose. Troops were accordingly embarked on the Hudson, and the flotilla 
was put in command of Admiral Rodney, who had looked in at New York on his way 
to the West Indies. To disguise the purpose of the embarkation, a rumor was 
industriously circulated that a force was to be sent southward to the 
Chesapeake. To arrange some important details of the affair, it seemed desirable 
that the two correspondents, "Gustavus" and "John Anderson," should meet, and 
talk over matters which could not safely be committed to paper. On the 18th of 
September, Washington, accompanied by Lafayette and Hamilton,

p.218

set out for Hartford, for an interview with Rochambeau; and advantage was taken 
of his absence to arrange a meeting between the plotters. On the 20th Andre' was 
taken up the river on the Vulture, sloop-of-war, and on the night of the 21st 
Arnold sent out a boat which brought him ashore about four miles below Stony 
Point. There in a thicket of fir-trees, under the veil of blackest midnight, the 
scheme was matured; but as gray dawn came on before all the details had been 
arranged, the boatmen becamed alarmed, and refused to take Andre' back to the 
ship, and he was accordingly persuaded, though against his will, to accompany 
Arnold within the American lines. The two conspirators walked up the bank a 
couple of miles to the house of one Joshua Smith, a man of doubtful allegiance, 
who does not seem to have understood the nature and extent of the plot, or to 
have known who Arnold's visitor was. It was thought that they might spend the 
day discussing their enterprise, and when it should have grown dark Andre' could 
be rowed back to the Vulture.

But now a quite unforseen accident occurrred. Colonel Livingston, commanding the 
works on the opposite side of the river, was provoked by the sight of a British 
ship standing so near; and he opened such a lively fire upon the Vulture that 
she was obliged to withdraw from the scene. As the conspirators were waiting in 
Smith's house for breakfast to be served, they heard the booming of the guns, 
and Andre' rushing to the window, beheld with dismay the ship on whose presence 
so much depended dropping out of sight down the stream.

p.219

On second thoughts, however, it was clear that she would not go far, as her 
commander had orders not to return to New York without Andre', and it was still 
thought that he might regain her. After breakfast he went to an upper chamber 
with Arnold and several hours were spent in perfecting their plans. Immeditely 
upon Andre's return to New York, the force under Clinton and Rodney was to 
ascend the river. To obstruct the approach of a hostile flotilla, an enormous 
chain lay stretched across the river, guarded by water-batteries. Under pretence 
of repairs, one link was to be taken out for a few days, and supplied by a rope 
which a slight blow would tear away. The approach of the British was to be 
announced by a concerted system of signals, and the American forces were to be 
so distributed that they could be surrounded and captured in detail, until at 
the proper moment, Arnold, taking advantage of the apparent defeat, was to 
surrender the works, with all the troops - 3,000 in number - under his command. 
It was not unreasonably supposed that such a catastrophe coming on the heels of 
Charleton and Camden and general bankruptcy, would put a stop to the war and 
lead to negotiations, in which Arnold, in view of such decisive service, might 
hope to play a leading part.

When Andre' set out on this perilous undertaking, Sir Henry Clinton specially 
warned him not to adopt any disguise or to carry any papers which might 
compromise his safety. But Andre' disregarded the advice and took from Arnold 
six

p.220

papers, all but one of them in the traitor's own handwriting, containing 
descriptions of the fortresses and information as to the disposition of the 
troops. Much risk might have been avoided by putting this information into 
cipher, or into a memorandum which would have been meaningless save to the 
parties concerned. But Andre' may perhaps have doubted Arnold's fidelity, and 
feared lest under a false pretence of treason he might be drawing the British 
away into a snare. The documents which he took, being in Arnold's handwriting 
and unmistakable in their purport, were such as to put him in Clinton's power, 
and compel him, for the sake of his own safety, to perform his part of the 
contract. Andre' intended, before getting into the boat, to tie up these papers 
in a bundle loaded with a stone, to be dropped into the water in case of a 
sudden challenge; but in the mean time he put them where they could not so 
easily be got rid of, between his stockings and the soles of his feet. Arnold 
furnished the requisite passes for Smith and Andre' to go either by boat or by 
land and, having thus apparently provided for all contingencies, took leave 
before noon, and returned in his barge to his headquarters, ten miles up the 
stream. 

As evening approached, Smith, who seems to have been a man of unsteady nerves, 
refused to take Andre' out to the Vulture. He had been alarmed by the firing in 
the morning and feared there would be more risk in trying to reach the ship than 
in travelling down to the British lines by land, and he promised to ride all 
night with Andre' if he would go that way.

p.221

The young officer reluctantly consented, and partially disguised himself in some 
of Smith's clothes. At sundown the two crossed the river at King's Ferry, and 
pursued their journey on horseback toward White Plains.

The roads east of the Hudson, between the British and the American lines, were 
at this time infested by robbers, who committed their depredations under 
pretence of keeping up a partisan warfare. There were two sets of these scape-
graces, - the Cowboys," or cattle thieves and the "Skinners," who took 
everything they could find. These epithets, however, referred to the political 
complexion they chose to assume, rather than to any difference in their evil 
practices. The Skinners professed to be Whigs, and the Cowboys called themselves 
Tories but in point of fact the two parties were alike political enemies to any 
farmer or wayfarer whose unprotected situation offered a prospect of booty; and 
though murder was not often committed, nobody's property was safe. 

It was a striking instance of the demoralization wrought in a highly civilized 
part of the country through its having so long continued to be the actual seat 
of the war. Rumours that the Cowboys were out in force made Smith afraid to 
continue the journey by night, and the impatient Andre'was thus obliged to stop 
at a farmhouse with his timid companion. Rising before dawn, they kept on until 
they reached the Croton river, which marked the upper boundary of the neutral 
ground between the British and the

p.222

American lines. Smith's instructions had been, in case of adopting the land 
route, not to leave his charge before reaching White Plains; but he now became 
uneasy to return, and Andre', who was beginning to consider himself out of 
danger, was perhaps not unwilling to part with a comrade who annoyed him by his 
loquacious and inquisitive disposition. So Smith made his way back to 
headquarters, and informed Arnold that he had escorted "Mr. Anderson" within a 
few miles of the British lines, which he must doubtless by this time have 
reached in safety. 

Meanwhile, Andre', left to himself, struck into the road which led through 
Tarrytown, expecting to meet no worse enemies than Cowboys, who would either 
respect a British officer, or, if bent on plunder, might be satisfied by his 
money and watch. But it happened that morning that a party of seven young men 
had come out to intercept some Cowboys who were expected up the road; and about 
nine o'clock, as Andre' was approaching the creek above Tarrytown, a short 
distance from the far-famed Sleepy Hollow, he was suddenly confronted by three 
of this party, who sprang from the bushes and, with levelled muskets, ordered 
him to halt. These men had let several persons, with whose faces they were 
familiar, pass unquestioned; and if Smith, who was known to almost every one in 
that neighborhood, had been with Andre', they too would doubtless have been 
allowed to pass. Andre' was stopped because he was a stranger. One of these men 
happened to have on a coat of a Hessian soldier. Held

p.223

by the belief that they must be Cowboys, or members of what was sometimes 
euphemistically termed the "lower party," Andre' expressed a hope that such was 
the case; and on being assured that it was so, his caution deserted him and, 
with that sudden sense of relief which is apt to come after unwonted and 
prolonged constraint, he avowed himself a British officer, travelling on 
business of great importance. To his dismay, he now learned his mistake. John 
Paulding, the man in the Hessian coat, informed him that they were Americans and 
ordered him to dismount. When he now showed them Arnold's pass they disregarded 
it, and insisted upon searching him, until presently the six papers were 
discovered where he had hidden them. "By God, he is a spy!" exclaimed Paulding, 
as he looked over the papers. Threats and promises were of no avail. The young 
men, who were not to be bought or cajoled took their prisoner twelve miles up 
the river, and delivered him into the hands of Col. John Jameson, a Virginian 
officer, who commanded a cavalry outpost at North Castle. When Jameson looked 
over the papers, they seemed to him very extraordinary documents to be 
travelling toward New York in the stockings of a stranger who could give no 
satisfactory account of himself. But so far from his suspecting Arnold of any 
complicity in the matter, he could think of nothing better than to send the 
prisoner straightway to Arnold himself, together with a brief letter in which he 
related what had happened. To the honest Jameson it seemed that this must be 
some foul ruse of the

p.224

enemy, some device for stirring up suspicion in the camp, - something, at any 
rate, which could not too quickly be brought to his general's notice. But the 
documents themselves he prudently sent by an express-rider to Washington, 
accompanying them with a similar letter of explanation. Andre', in charge of a 
military guard, had already proceeded some distance toward West Point when 
Jameson's second in command, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, came in from some errand 
on which he had been engaged. On hearing what had happened, Tallmadge suspected 
that all was not right with Arnold, and insisted that Andre' and the letter 
should be recalled. After a hurried discussion, Jameson sent out a party which 
brought Andre' back; but he still thought it his duty to inform Arnold, and so 
the letter which saved the traitor's life was allowed to proceed on its way.

Now, if Washington had returned from Hartford by the route which it was supposed 
he would take, through Danbury and Peekskill, Arnold would not even thus have 
been saved. For some reason Washington returned two or three days sooner than 
had been expected; and, moreover he chose a more northerly route, through 
Farmington and Litchfield, so that the messenger failed to meet him. It was on 
the evening of Saturday, the 23d, that Jameson's two letters started. On Sunday 
afternoon Washington arrived at Fishkill, eighteen miles above West Point, and 
was just starting down the river road when he met Luzerne, the French minister 
who was on his way to consult with

p.225

Rochambeau. Wishing to have a talk with this gentleman, Washington turned back 
to the nearest inn, where they sat down to supper and chatted, all 
unconsciously, with the very Joshua Smith from whom Andre' had parted at the 
Croton river on the morning of the day before. Word was sent to Arnold to expect 
the commander-in-chief and his suite to breakfast the next morning, and before 
daybreak of Monday they were galloping down the wooded road. As they approached 
the Robinson House, where Arnold had his headquarters, opposite West Point, 
Washington turned his horse down toward the river, whereat Lafayette reminded 
him that they were late already, and ought not to keep Mrs. Arnold waiting. "Ah, 
marquis," said Washington, laughing, "I know you young men are all in love with 
Mrs. Arnold; go and get your breakfast, and tell her not to wait for me." 
Lafayette did not adopt the suggestion. He accompanied Washington and Knox while 
they rode down the examine the redoubts. Hamilton and the rest of the party kept 
on to the house, and sat down to breakfast in its cheerful wainscoted dining-
room, with Arnold and his wife and several of his officers.

As they sat at table, a courier entered, and handed to Arnold the letter in 
which Colonel Jameson informed him that one John Anderson had been taken with 
compromising documents in his possession, which had been forwarded to the 
commander-in-chief. With astonishing presence of mind, he folded the letter and 
put it in his pocket, finished the remark

p.226

which had been on his lips when the courier entered, and then, rising, said tht 
he was suddenly called across the river to West Point, but would return to meet 
Washington without delay; and he ordered his barge to be manned. None of the 
officers observed anything unusual in his manner, but the quick eye of his wife 
detected something wrong, and as he left the room she excused herself and 
hurried after him. Going up to their bedroom, he told her that he was a ruined 
man and must fly for his life; and as she screamed and fainted in his arms, he 
laid her upon the bed, called in the maid to attend her, stooped to kiss his 
baby boy who was sleeping in the cradle, rushed down to the yard, leaped on a 
horse that was standing ther and galloped down a by-path to his barge. It had 
promptly occurred to his quick mind that the Vulture would be waiting for Andre' 
some miles down stream, and he told the oarsmen to row him thither without 
delay, as he must get back soon to meet Washington.

A brisk row of eighteen miles brought them to the Vulture, whose commander was 
still wondering why Andre' did not come back. From the cabin of the Vulture 
Arnold sent a letter to Washington, assuring him of Mrs. Arnold's innocence, and 
begging that she might be allowed to return to her family in Philadelphia, or 
come to her husband, as she might choose. Then the ill-omened ship weighed 
anchor, and reached New York next morning.

Meanwhile about noonday, Washington came in for his breakfast, hearing that 
Arnold had crossed the river to West Point, soon hurried off

p.227

to meet him there, followed by all his suite except Hamilton. As they were 
ferried across, no salute of cannon greeted them, and on landing they learned 
with astonishment that Arnold had not been there that morning; but no one as yet 
had a glimmer of suspicion. When they returned to the Robinson House, about two 
o'clock, they found Hamilton walking up and down before the door in great 
excitement. Jameson's courier had arrived, with the letters for Washington, 
which the aide had just opened and read. The commander and his aide went alone 
into the house, and examined the papers, which, taken in connection with the 
traitor's flight but too plainly told the story. From Mrs. Arnold, who was in 
hysterics, Washington could learn nothing. He privately sent Hamilton and 
another aide in pursuit of the fugitive; and coming out to meet Lafayette and 
Knox, his voice choking and tears rolling down his cheeks, he exclaimed, "Arnold 
is a traitor, and has fled to the British!" Whom can we trust now?"

In a moment, however, he had regained his wonted composure. It was no time for 
giving way to emotion. It was as yet impossible to tell how far the scheme might 
have extended. Even now the enemy's fleet might be ascending the river (as but 
for Andre's capture it doubtless would have been doing that day), and an attack 
might be made before the morrow. Riding anxiously about the works, Washington 
soon detected the treacherous arrangements that had been made, and by seven in 
the evening he had done much to correct them and to make ready for

p.228

an attack. As he was taking supper in the room which Arnold had so hastily 
quitted in the morning, the traitor's letter from the Vulture was handed him. 
"Go to Mrs. Arnold," said he quietly to one of his officers, "and tell her that 
though my duty required no means should be neglected to arrest General Arnold, I 
have great pleasure in acquainting her that he is safe on board a British 
vessel."

But while the principal criminal was safe it was far otherwise with the agent 
who had been employed in this perilous business. On Sunday, from his room in 
Jameson's quarters, Andre' had written a letter to Washington, pathetic in its 
frank simplicity, setting forth his high position in the British army, and 
telling his story without any attempt at evasion. From the first there could be 
no doubt as to the nature of his case, yet Andre' for the moment did not fully 
comprehend it. On the Thursday, the 28th, he was taken across the river to 
Tappan, where the main army was encamped. His escort, Major Tallmadge, was a 
graduate of Yale College and a classmate of Nathan Hale, whom General Howe had 
hanged as a spy four years before. Tallmadge had begun to feel a warm interest 
in Andre' and as they rode their horses side by side into Tappan, when his 
prisoner asked how his case would probably be regarded, Tallmadge's countenance 
fell, and it was not until the question had been twice repeated that he replied 
by a gentle allusion to the fate of his lamented classmate. "But surely," said 
poor Andre', "you do not consider his case and mine alike!"

p.229

"They are precisely similar," answered Tallmadge gravely, "and similar will be 
your fate." Next day a military commission of fourteen generals was assembled, 
with Greene presiding, to sit in judgement on the unfortunate young officer. "It 
is impossible to save him," said the kindly Steuben, who was one of the judges. 
"Would to God the wretch who has drawn him to his death might be made to suffer 
in his stead!" The opinion of the court was unamimous that Andre' had acted as a 
spy and incurred the penalty of death. Washington allowed a brief respite, that 
Sir Henry Clinton's views might be considered. The British commander, in his 
sore distress over the danger of his young friend, could find no better grounds 
to allege in his defence than that he had, presumably, gone ashore under a flag 
of truce, and that when taken he certainly was travelling under the protection 
of a pass which Arnold, in the ordinary excercise of his authority, had a right 
to grant. But clearly these safeguards were vitiated by the treasonable purpose 
of the commander who granted them, and in availing himself of them, Andre', who 
wasprivy to this treasonable purpose, took his life in his hands as completely 
as any ordinary spy would do. Andre' himself had already candidly admitted 
before the court, "that it was impossible for him to suppose that he came ashore 
under the sanction of a flag;" and Washington struck to the root of the matter 
as he invariably did, in his letter to Clinton, where he said that Andre' "was

p.230

employed in the execution of measures very foreign to the objects of flags of 
truce, and such as they were never meant to authorize or countenance in the most 
distant degree." The argument was conclusive, but it was not strange that the 
British general should have been slow to admit its force. He begged that the 
question might be submitted to an impartial committee, consisting of Knyphausen 
from the one army and Rochambeau from the other; but as no question had arisen 
which the military commission was not thoroughly competent to decide, Washington 
very properly refused to permit such an unusual proceeding. Lastly, Clinton 
asked that Andre' might be exchanged for Christopher Gadsden, who had been taken 
in the capture of Charleston and was then imprisoned at St. Augustine. At the 
same time, a letter from Arnold to Washington, with characteristic want of tact, 
hinting at retaliation upon the persons of sundry South Carolinian prisoners, 
was received with silent contempt.

There was a generl feeling in the American army that if Arnold himself could be 
surrendered to justice, it might perhaps be well to set free the less guilty 
victim by an act of executive clemency; and Greene gave expression to this 
feeling in an interview with Lieutenant-General Robertson, whom Clinton sent up 
on Sunday, the 1st of October to plead for Andre's' life. No such suggestion 
could be made in the form of an official proposal. Under no circumstances could 
Clinton be expected to betray the man from whose crime he had sought to profit, 
and who had now thrown himself upon

p.231

him for protection. Nevertheless, in a roundabout way the suggestion was made. 
On Saturday, Captain Ogden, with an escort of twenty-five men and a flag of 
truce, was sent down to Paulus Hook with letters for Clinton, and he contrived 
to whisper to the commandant there that if in any way Arnold might be suffered 
to slip into the hands of the Americans Andre' would be set free. It was 
Lafayette who had authorized Ogden to offer the suggestion and so, apparently, 
Washington must have connived at it, but Clinton, naturally, refused to 
entertain the idea for a moment. The conference between Greene and Robertson led 
to nothing. A petition form Andre' in which he begged to be shot rather than 
hanged, was duly considered and rejected; and, accordingly, on Monday, the 2d of 
October, the ninth day after his capture by the yeomen at Tarrytown, the 
adjutant-general of the British army was led to the gallows. His remains were 
buried ner the spot where he suffered, but in 1821 they were disinterred and 
removed to Westminster Abbey.

The fate of this gallant young officer has always called forth tender 
commiseration, due partly to his high position and his engaging personal 
qualities, but chiefly, no doubt to the fact that, while he suffered the penalty 
of the law, the chief conspirator escaped. One does not easily get rid of a 
vague sense of injustice in this, but the injustice was not of a man's 
contriving. But for the remarkable series of accidents - if it be philo-sophical 
to call them so, - resulting in Andre's capture, the

p.232

treason would very likely have been successful, and the cause of American 
independence might have been for the moment ruined. But for an equally 
remarkable series of accidents Arnold would not have received warning in time to 
escape. If both had been captured, both would have been hanged. Certainly both 
alike had inccured the penalty of death. In was not the fault of Washington or 
of the court-martial that the chief offender went unpunished, and in no wise was 
Andre' made a scapegoat for Arnold. It is right that we should feel pity for the 
fate of Andre'; but it is unfortunate that pity should be permitted to cloud the 
judgment of the historian, as in the case of Lord Stanhope, who stands almost 
alone among competent writers in impugning the justice of Andre's sentence. One 
remark of Lord Stanhope's I am tempted to quote, as an amusing instance of that 
certain air of "condescension" which Mr. Lowell has observed in our British 
cousins. He seeks to throw discredit upon the military commission by gravely 
assuming that the American generals must, of course, have been ignorant men, 
"who had probably never so much as heard the names of Vattel or Puffendorf," 
and, accordingly, "could be no fit judges on any nice or doubtful point" of 
military law. Now of the twelve American generals who sat in judgement on Andre' 
at least seven were men of excellent education, two of them having taken degrees 
at Harvard, and two at English universities. Greene, the president, a self-
educated man, who used, in leisure moments, to read Latin poets by

p.233

the light of his camp-fire, had paid especial attention to military law, and had 
carefully red and copiously annotated his copy of Vattel. The judgment of these 
twelve men agreed with that of Steuben (formerly a staff office of Frederick the 
Great) and Lafayette, who sat with them on the commission; and moreover, no nice 
or intricate questions were raised. It was natural enough that Andre's friends 
should make the most of the fact that when captured he was travelling under a 
pass granted by the commander of West Point; but to ask the court to accept such 
a plea was not introducing any nice or doubtful question; it was simply 
contending that "the wilful abuse of a privilege is entitled to the same respect 
as its legitimate exercise." Accordingly, historians on both sides of the 
Atlantic have generally admitted the justice of Andre's sentence, though 
sometimes its rigorous execution has been censured as an act of unnecessary 
severity. Yet if we withdraw our attention for a momen from the irrelevant fact 
that the British adjutant-general was an amiable and interesting young man, and 
concentrate it upon the essential fact that he had come within our lines to aid 
a treacherous commander in betraying his post, we cannot fail to see that there 
is no principle of military policy upon which ordinary spies are rigorously put 
to death which does not apply with tenfold force to the case of Andre'. 
Moreover, while it is an undoubted fact that military morality permits, and 
sometimes applauds, such enterprises as that in which Andre' lost his life, I 
cannot but feel that

p.234

the flavour of treachery which clings about it must somewhat weaken the sympathy 
we should otherwise freely accord; and I find myself agreeing with the British 
historian, Mr. Massey, when he doubts "whether services of this character 
entitle his memory to the honours of Westminster Abbey."

As for Arnold, his fall had been as terrible as that of Milton's rebellious 
archangel, and we may well believe his state of mind to have been desperate. It 
was said that on hearing of Captain Ogden's suggestion as to the only possible 
means of saving Andre', Arnold went to Clinton and offered to surrender himself 
as a ransom for his fellow-conspirator. This story was published in the London 
"Morning Herald" in February, 1782, by Captain Battersby of the 29th Regiment, 
one of the "Sam Adams" regiments. Battersby was in New York in September, 1780 
and was on terms of intimacy with members of Clinton's staff. In the absence of 
further evidence, one must beware of attaching too much weight to such a story. 
Yet it is not inconsistent with what we know of Arnold's impulsive nature. In 
the agony of his sudden overthrow it may well have seemed that there was nothing 
left to live for, and a death thus savouring of romantic self-sacrifice might 
serve to lighten the burden of his shame as nothing else could. Like many men of 
weak integrity, Arnold was over sensitive to public opinion, and his treason, as 
he had planned it, though equally indefensible in point of morality, was 
something very different from what it seemed now that it was frustrated. It was 
not for this that he had

p.235

bartered his soul to Satan. He had aimed at an end so vast that, when once 
attained, it might be hoped that the nefarious means employed would be 
overlooked, and that in Arnold, the brilliant general who had restored America 
to her old allegiance, posterity would see the counterpart of that other general 
who, for bringing back Charles Stuart to his father's throne, was rewarded with 
the dukedom of Albemarle. Now he had lost everything, and got nothing in 
exchange but £6,000 sterling and a brigadiership in the British army. He had 
sold himself cheap, after all, and incurred such hatred and contempt that for a 
long time, by a righteous retribution, even his past services were forgotten. 
Even such weak creatures as Gates could now point the finger of scorn at him, 
while Washington, his steadfast friend, could never speak of him again without a 
shudder. From men less reticent than Washington strong words were heard. "What 
do you think of the damnable doings of that diabolical dog?" wrote Colonel Otho 
Williams to Arnold's old friend and fellow in the victory of Saratoga, Daniel 
Morgan. "Curse on his folly and perfidy," said Greene, "how mortifying to think 
that he is a New Englander!" These were the men who could best appreciate the 
hard treatment Arnold had received from Congress. But in the frightful abyss of 
his crime all such considerations were instantly swallowed up and lost. No 
amount of personal wrong could for a moment excuse or even palliate such a false 
step as he had taken. Within three months from the time when his

p.236

treason was discovered, Arnold was sent by Sir Henry Clinton on a marauding 
expedition into Virginia and in the course of one of his raids an American 
captain was taken prisoner. "What do you suppose my fate would be," Arnold is 
said to have inquired, "if my misguided countrymen were to take me prisoner?" 
The Captain's reply was prompt and frank: "They would cut off the leg that was 
wounded at Quebec and Saratoga and bury it with honours of war, and the rest of 
you they would hang on a gibbet."

After the close of the war, when Arnold, accompanied by his wife, made England 
his home, it is said that he sometimes had to encounter similar expressions of 
contempt. The Earl of Surrey once, seeing him in the gallery of the House of 
Commons, asked the Speaker to have him put out, that the House might not be 
contaminated by the presence of such a traitor. The story is not well 
authenticated; but it is certain that in 1792 the Earl of Lauderdale used such 
language about him in the House of Lords as to lead to a bloodless duel between 
Arnold and the noble earl. It does not appear, however, that Arnold was 
universally despised in England. Influenced by the political passions of the 
day, many persons were ready to condone his crime; and his generous and 
affectionate nature won him many friends. It is said that so high-minded a man 
as Lord Cornwallis became attached to him, and always treated him with respect.

Mrs. Arnold proved herself a devoted wife and mother; and the record of her four 
sons, during

p.237

longs years of service to the British army, was highly honourable. The second 
son, Lieutenant General Sir James Robertson Arnold, served with distinction in 
the wars against Napoleon

A grandson who was killed in the Crimean war was especially mentioned by Lord 
Raglan for valour and skill. Another grandson, the Rev. Edward Arnold, is now 
(1891) rector of Great Massingham, in Norfolk. The family has intermarried with 
the peerage, and has secured for itself an honourable place among the landed 
gentry of England. But the disgrace of their ancestor has always been keenly 
felt by them. At Surinam in 1804, James Robertson Arnold then a lieutenant, 
begged the privilege of leading a desperate forlorn hope, that he might redeem 
the family name from the odium which attached to it; and he acquitted himself in 
a way that was worthy of his father in the days of Quebec and Saratoga. All the 
family tradition goes to show that the last years of Benedict Arnold in London 
were years of bitter remorse and self-reproach. The great name which he had so 
gallantly won and wretchedly lost left him no repose by night or day. The iron 
frame, which had withstood the fatigue of so many trying battlefields and still 
more trying marches through the wilderness broke down at last under the slow 
torture of lost friendships and merited disgrace. In the last sad says in 
London, in June, 1801, the family tradition says that Arnold's mind kept 
reverting to his old friendship with Washington. He had always carefully 
preserved the American uniform which he wore on the day when

p.238

he made his escape to the Vulture; and now as, broken in spirit and weary of 
life, he felt the last moments coming, he called for this uniform and put it on, 
and decorated himself with the epaulettes and sword-knot which Washington had 
given him after the victory of Saratoga. "Let me die," said he, "in this old 
uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever putting on any 
other!"

As we thus reach the end of one of the saddest episodes in American history, our 
sympathy cannot fail for the moment to go out toward the sufferer, nor can we 
help contrasting these passionate dying words with the last cynical scoff ot 
that other traitor, Charles Lee, when he begged that he might not be buried 
within a mile of any church, as he did not wish to keep bad company after death. 
From the beginning to end the story of Lee is little more than a vulgar 
melodrama; but into the story of Arnold there enters that element of awe and 
pity which, as Aristotle pointed out, is an essential part of real tragedy. That 
Arnold had been very shabbily treated, long before any thought of treason 
entered his mind, is not to be denied. That he may honestly have come to 
consider the American cause hopeless, that he may really have lost his interest 
in it because of the French alliance, - all this is quite possible. Such 
considerations might have justified him in resigning his commission, or even, 
had he openly and frankly gone over to the enemy, much as we should have 
deplored such a step, some persons would always have been found to judge

p.239

him leniently, and accord him the credit of acting upon principle. But the dark 
and crooked course which he did choose left open no alternative but that of 
unqualified condemnation. If we feel less of contempt and more of sorrow in the 
case of Arnold than in the case of such a weakling as Charles Lee, our verdict 
is not the less unmitigated. Arnold's fall was by far the more terrible, as he 
fell from a greater height, and into a depth than which none could be lower. It 
is only fair that we should recall his services to the cause of American 
independence, which were unquestionably greater than those of any other man in 
the Continental army except Washington and Greene. But it is part of the natural 
penalty that attaches to backsliding such as his, that when we hear the name of 
Benedict Arnold these are not the things which it suggests to our minds but the 
name stands, and will always stand, as a symbol of unfaithfulness to trust.

The enormity of Arnold's conduct stands out in all the stronger relief when we 
contrast with it the behaviour of the common soldiers whose mutiny furnished the 
next serious obstacle with which Washington had to contend at this period of the 
war.

In the autumn of 1780, owing to the financial and administrative chaos which had 
over-taken the country, the army was in a truly pitiable condition. The soldiers 
were clothed in rags and nearly starved, and many of them had not seen a dollar 
of pay since the beginning of the year. As the

p.240

winter frosts came on there was much discontent, and the irritation was greates 
among the soldiers of the Pennsylvania line who were encamped on the heights of 
Morristown. Many of these men had enlisted at the beginning of 1778, to serve 
"for three years or during the war;" but at that bright and hopeful period, just 
after the victory of Saratoga, nobody supposed that the war could last for three 
years more, and the alternative was inserted only to insure them against being 
kept in service for the full term of three years in spite of the cessation of 
hostilities. Now the three years had passed, the war was not ended and the 
prospect seemed less hopeful than in 1778. The men felt that their contract was 
fulfilled and asked to be discharged. But the officers, unwilling to lose such 
disciplined troops, the veterans of Monmouth and Stony Point, insisted that the 
contract provided for three years' service or more, in case the war should last 
longer; and they refused the requested discharge. On New Year's Day, 1781, after 
an extra ration of grog, 1,300 Pennsylvania troops marched out of camp, in 
excellent order, under command of their sergents and seizing six field-pieces, 
set out for Philadelphia, with declared intent to frighten Congress and obtain 
redress for their wrongs. Their commander, General Wayne, for whom the 
entertained great respect and affection, was unable to stop them, and after an 
affray in which one man was killed and a dozen wounded, they were perforce 
allowed to go on their way. Alarm guns were fired, couriers were sent to 
forewarn

p.241

Congress and to notify Washington, and Wayne, attended by two colonels, galloped 
after the mutineers, to keep an eye upon them, and restrain their passions so 
far as possible. Washington could not come to attend to the affair in person, 
for the Hudson was not yet frozen and the enemy's fleet was in readiness to 
ascend to West Point the instant he should leave his post. Congress sent out a 
committee from Philadelphia, accompanied by President Reed, to parley with the 
insurgents, who had halted at Princeton andwere behaving themselves decorously, 
doing no harm to the people in person or property. They allowed Wayne and his 
colonels to come into their camp, but gave them to understand that they would 
take no orders from them. A sergeant-major acted as chief-commander, and his 
orders were implicitly obeyed. When Lafayette, with St. Clair and Laurens came 
to them from Washington's headquarters, they were politely but firmly told to go 
about their business. And so matters went on for a week. President Reed came as 
far as Trenton and wrote to Wayne requesting an interview outside of Princeton 
as he did not wish to come to the camp himself and run the risk of such 
indignity as that wich Washington's officers had just been treated.

As the troops assembled on parade Wayne read them this letter. Such a rebuke 
from the president of their native state touched these poor fellows in a 
sensitive point. Tears rolled down many a bronzed and haggard cheek. They stood 
about in little groups, talking and pondering and not half liking the business 
which they had undertaken.

p.242

At this moment it was discovered that two emissaries from Sir Henry Clinton were 
in the camp, seeking to tamper with the sergeant-major, and promising high pay, 
with bounties and pensions, if they would come over to Paulus Hook or Staten 
Island and cast in their lot with the British. In a fury of wrath the tempters 
were seized and carried to Wayne to be dealt with as spies. "We will have 
General Clinton understand," said the men, "that we are not Benedict Arnolds!" 
Encouraged by this incident, President Reed came to the camp the next day, and 
was received with all due respect. He proposed at once to discharge all those 
who had enlisted for three years or the war, to furnish them at once with such 
clothing as they most needed, and to give paper certificates for the arrears of 
their pay, to be redeemed as soon as possible. These terms, which granted 
unconditionally all the demands of the insurgents, were instantly accepted. All 
those not included in the terms received six weeks' furlough and thus the whole 
force was dissolved. The two spies wer tried by court-martial and promptly 
hanged.

The quickness with which the demands of these men were granted was an index to 
the alarm which their defection had excited; and Washington feared that their 
example would be followed by the soldiers of other states. On the 20th of 
January, indeed, a part of the New Jersey troops mutinied at Pompton and 
declared their intention to do like the men of Pennsylvania. The case was 
becoming serious;

p.243

it threatened the very existence of the army; and a sudden blow was needed. 
Washington sent from West Point a brigade of Massachusetts troops, which marched 
quickly to Pompton, surprised the mutineers before daybreak and compelled them 
to lay down their arms without a struggle. Two of the ringleaders were summarily 
shot and so the insurrection was quelled.

Thus the disastrous year which had begun when Clinton sailed against Charleston, 
the year which had witnessed the annihilation of two American armies and the 
bankruptcy of Congress, came at length to an end amid treason and mutiny. It was 
not strange that many Americans despaired of their country. Yet, as we have 
already seen, the resources of Great Britain attcked as she was by the united 
fleets of France, Spain and Holland, wer scarcely less exhausted than those of 
the United States. The moment had come when a decided military success must turn 
the scale irrevocably the one way or the other; and events had already occurred 
at the South which were soon to show that all the disasters of 1780 were but the 
darkness that heralds the dawn.

CHAPTER XV.
YORKTOWN.


p.244

In the invasion of the South by Cornwallis, as in the invasion of the North by 
Burgoyne, the first serious blow which the enemy received was dealt by the 
militia. After his great victory over Gates, Cornwallis remained nearly a month 
at Camden resting his troops, who found the August heat intolerable.

By the middle of September, 1780, he had started on his march to North Carolina, 
of which he expected to make an easy conquest. But his reception in that state 
was anything but hospit-able. Advancing as far as Charlotte, he found himself in 
the midst of that famous Mecklen-burg County which had issued its "declaration 
of independence" immediately on receiving the news of the battle of Lexington. 
These rebels, he said, were the most obstinate he had found in America, and he 
called their country a "hornets nest." Bans of yeomanry lurking about every 
woodland road cut off his foraging parties, slew his couriers, and captured his 
dispatches. It was difficult for him to get any information; but bad news 
proverbially travels fast, and it was not long before he received intelligence 
of dire disaster.

p.245

Before leaving South Carolina Cornwallis had detached Major Ferguson - whom, 
next to Tarleton, he considered his best partisan officer - to scour the 
highlands and enlist as large a force of Tory auxiliaries as possible, after 
which he was to join the main army at Charlotte. Ferguson took with him 200 
British light infantry and 1,000 Tories, whom he had drilled until they had 
become excellent troops. It was not supposed that he would meet with serious 
opposition, but in case of any unforeseen danger he was to retreat with all 
possible speed and join the main army. Now the enterprising Ferguson undertook 
to en-trap and capture a samll force of American partisans; and while pursuing 
this bait, he pushed into the wilderness as far as Gilbert Town, in the heart of 
what is now the county of Rutherford, when all at once he became aware that 
enemies were swarming about him on every side. The approach of a hostile force 
and the rumour of Indian war had aroused the hardy backwoodsmen who dwelt in 
these wild and romantic glens. Accustomed to Indian raids, these quick and 
resolute men were always ready to assemble at a moment's warning; and now they 
came pouring from all directions, through the defiles of the Alleghanies, a 
picturesque and motley crowd, in fringed and tasselled hunting-shirts, with 
sprigs of hemlock in their hats, and armed with long knives and rifles that 
seldom missed their aim. From the south came James Williams of Ninety-Six with 
his 400 men; from the north, William Campbell of Virginia, Benjamin 

p.246

Cleveland and Charles McDowell of North Carolina, with 560 followers; from the 
west, Isaac Shelby and John Sevier, whose names were to become so famous in the 
early history of Kentucky and Tennessee. By the 30th of September 3,000 of these 
"dirty mongrels," as Ferguson called them, - men in whose veins flowed the blood 
of Scottish Covenanters and French Huguenots and English sea rovers, had 
gathered in such threatening proximity that the British commander started in all 
haste on his retreat toward the main army in Charlotte, sending messengers 
ahead, who were duly waylaid and shot down before they could reach Cornwallis 
and inform him of the danger. The pursuit was vigorously pressed, and on the 
night of the 6th of October, finding escape impossible without a fight, Ferguson 
planted himself on the top of King's Mountain, a ridge about half a mile in 
length and 1,700 feet above sea level, situated just on the border line between 
the two Carolinas. The crest is approached on three sides by rising ground, 
above which the steep summit towers for a hundred feet; on the north side it is 
an unbroken precipice. The mountain was covered with tall pine-trees, beneath 
which the ground, though little cumbered with underbrush, was obstructed on 
every side by huge moss-grown boulders. Perched with 1,125 staunch men on this 
natural stronghold, as the bright autumn sun came up on the morning of the 7th, 
Ferguson looked about him exultingly, and cried, "Well, boys, here is a place 
from which all the rebels outside of hell cannot drive us!"

p.247

He was dealing, however, with men who were used to climbing mountains. About 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the advanced party of Americans, 1,000 picked 
men, arrived in the ravine below the mountain, and, tying their horses to the 
trees, prepared to storm the position. The precipice on the north was too steep 
for the enemy to descend, and thus effectually cut off their retreat. Divided 
into three equal parties, the Americans ascended the other three sides 
simultaneously. Campbell and Shelby pushed up in front until near the crest, 
when Ferguson opened fire on them. They then fell apart behind trees, returning 
the fire most effectively, but suffering little themselves, while slowly they 
crept up nearer the crest. As the British then charged down upon them with 
bayonets, they fell back, until the British ranks were suddenly shaken by a 
deadly flank fire from the division of Sevier and McDowell on the right. Turning 
furiously to meet these new assailants, the British received a volley in their 
backs from the left division, under Cleveland and Williams, while the centre 
division promptly rallied, and attacked them on what was now their flank. Thus 
dreadfully entrapped, the British fired wildly and with little effect, while the 
trees and boulders prevented the compactness needful for a bayonet charge. The 
Americans, on the other hand, sure of their prey, crept on steadily toward the 
summit, losing scarcely a man, and firing with great deliberation and precision, 
while hardly a word was spoken. As they closed in upon the ridge a rifleball 
pierced the brave Ferguson's

p.248

heart, and he fell from his white horse, which sprang wildly down the mountain 
side. All further resistance being hopeless, a white flag was raised and the 
firing was stopped. Of Ferguson's 1,125 men, 389 were killed or wounded and 20 
were missing and the remaining 716 now surrendered themselves as prisoners of 
war, with 1,500 stand of arms. The total American loss was 28 killed and 60 
wounded; but among the killed was the famous partisan commander James Williams, 
whose loss might be regarded as offsetting that of Major Ferguson.

This brilliant victory at King's Mountain resembled the victory at Bennington in 
its suddenness and completness, as well as in having been gained by militia. It 
was also the harbinger of greater victories at the South, as Bennington had been 
the harbinger of great-er victories in the North. The backwoodsmen who had dealt 
such a blow did not, indeed, follow it up, and hover about the flanks of 
Cornwallis, as the Green Mountain Boys had hovered about the flanks of Burgoyne. 
Had there been an organized army opposed to Corn-wallis, to serve as a nucleus 
for them, perhaps they might have done so. As it was, they soon dispersed and 
returned to their homes, after having sullied their triumph by hanging a dozen 
prisoners, in revenge for some of their own party who had been massacred at 
Augusts. The had, nevertheless, warded off for the moment the threatened 
invasion of North Carolina. Thoroughly alarmed by this blow, Cornwallis lost no 
time in falling back upon Winnsborough, there to wait for reinforcements,

p.249

for he was in no condition to afford the loss of 1,100 men. General Leslie had 
been sent by Sir Henry Clinton to Virginia with 3,000 men and Corwallis ordered 
his force to join him without delay.

Hope began now to return to the patriots of South Carolina, and during the 
months of October and November their activity was greatly increased. Marion in 
the northeastern part of the state, and Sumter in the northwest, redoubled their 
energies, andit was more than even Tarleton could do to look after them both. On 
the 20th of November Tarleton was defeated by Sumter in a sharp action at 
Blackstock Hill, and the disgrace of the 18th of August was thus wiped out. On 
the retreat of Cornwallis, the remnants of the American regular army, which 
Gates had been slowly collecting at Hillsborough, advanced and occupied Char-
lotte. There were scarcely 1,400 of them, all told, and their condition was 
forlorn enough. But reinforcements from the North were at hand; and first of all 
came Daniel Morgan, always a host in himself. Morgan, like Arnold, had been ill-
treated by Congress. His services at Quebec and Saratoga had been hardly 
inferior to Arnold's, yet, in 1779, he had seen junior officers promoted over 
his head, and had resigned his commission, and re-tired to his home in Virginia. 
When Gates took command of the southern army, Morgan was urged to enter the 
service again; but, as it was not proposed to restore him to his relative rank, 
he refused. After Camden, however, he declared that it was no time

p.250

to let personal considerations have any weight, and he straightway came down and 
joined Gates at Hillsborough in September. At last, on the 13th of October, 
Congress had the good sense to give Morgan the rank to which he was entitled; 
and it was not long, as we shall see, before it had reason to congratulate 
itself upon this act of justice.

But, more than anything else, the army which it was now sought to restore needed 
a new commander-in-chief. It was well known that Washington had wished to have 
Greene appointed to that position in the first place. Congress had persisted in 
appointing it own favourite instead and had lost an army in consequence. It 
could now hardly do better, though late in the day, than take Washington's 
advice. It would not do to run the risk of another Camden. In every campaign 
since the beginning of the war Greene had been Washington's right arm; and for 
indefatigable industry, for strength and breadth of intelligence, and for 
unselfish devotion to the public service, he was scarcely inferior to the 
commander-in-chief. Yet he too had been repeatedly insulted and abused by men 
who liked to strike at Washington through his favourite officers. As 
quatermaster-general, since the spring of 1778, Greene had been malevolently 
persecuted by a party in Congress, until, in July, 1780, his patience gave way, 
and he resigned in disgust. His enemies seized the occasion to urge his 
dismissal from the army, and but for his own keen sense of public duty and 
Washington's unfailing tact his services might have been

p.251

lost to the country at a most critical moment. On the 5th of October Congress 
called upon Washington to name a successor to Gates, and he immediately 
appointed Greene, who arrived at Charlotte and took command on the 2d of 
December. Steuben accompanied Greene as far as Virginia, and was placed in 
command in that state, charged with the duty of collecting and forwarding 
supplies and reinforcements to Greene and of warding off the forces which Sir 
Henry Clinton sent to the Chesapeake to make diversions in aid of Cornwallis. 
The first force of this sort, under General Leslie, had just been obliged to 
proceed by sea to South Carolina, to make good the loss inflicted upon 
Cornwallis by the battle of King's Mountain; and to replace Leslie in Virginia, 
Sir Henry Clinton, in December, sent the traitor Arnold fresh from the scene of 
his treason, with 1,600 men, mostly New York loyalists. Steuben's duty was to 
guard Virginia against Arnold, and to keep open Greene's communications with the 
North. At the same time, Washington sent down with Greene the engineeer 
Kosciusko and Henry Lee with his admirable legion of cavalry. Another superb 
cavalry commander now appears for the first time upon the scene in the person of 
Lieutenant-Colonel William Washington of Virginia, a distant cousin of the 
commander-in-chief.

The southern army, though weak in numbers, was thus extraordinarily strong in 
the talent of its officers. They were men who knew how to accomplish great 
results with small means, and Greene understood how far he might rely upon them. 

p.252

No sooner had he taken command than he began a series of movements which, though 
daring in the extreme, were as far as possible from partaking of the unreasoned 
rashness which had characterized the advance of Gates. That unintelligent 
commander had sneered at cavalry as useless, but Greene largely based his plan 
of operations upon what could be done by such swift blows as Washington and Lee 
knew how to deal. Gates had despised the aid of partisan chiefs, but Greene saw 
at once the importance of utilizing such men as Sumter and Marion. His army as a 
solid whole was too weak to cope with that of Cornwallis. By a bold and happy 
thought, he divided it, for the moment, into two great partisan bodies. The 
larger body, 1,100 strong, he led in person to Cheraw Hill on the Pedee river, 
where he cooperated with Marion. From this point Marion and Lee kept up a series 
of rapid movements which threatened Corwallis's communications to the coast. On 
one occasion they actually galloped into George-town and captured the commander 
of that post. Cornwallis was thus gravely annoyed, but he was unable to advance 
upon these provoking antagonists without risking the loss of Augusta and Ninety-
Six; for Greene had thrown the other part of his little army, 900 strong under 
Morgan, to the westward, so as to threaten those important inland posts and to 
cooperate with the mountain militia. With Morgan's force went William 
Washington, who accomplished a most brilliant raid, penetrating the enemy's 
lines, and destroying a party of 250 men at a single blow.

p.253

Thus worried and menaced upon both his flanks, Cornwallis hardly knew which way 
to turn. He did not underrate his adversaries. He had himself seen what sort of 
man Greene was, at Princeton and Brandywine and Germantown, while Morgan's 
abilities were equally well known. He could not leave Morgan and attack Greene 
without losing his hold upon the interior; but if he were to advance in full 
force upon Morgan, the wily Greene would be sure to pounce upon Charleston and 
cut him off from the coast. In this dilemma, Cornwallis at last de-cided to 
divide his own forces. With his main body, 2,000 strong, he advanced into North 
Carolina, hoping to draw Greene after him; while he sent Tarleton with the rest 
of his army, 1,100 strong to take care of Morgan. By this division the 
superiority of the British force was to some extent neutralized. Both commanders 
were playing a skilful but hazardous game, in which much depended on the 
sagacity of their lieutenants; and now the brave but over confident Tarleton was 
outmarched and outfought.

On his approach, Morgan retreated to a grazing ground known as Cowpens, a few 
miles from King's Mountain, where he could fight on ground of his own choosing. 
His choice was in-deed a peculiar one, for he had a broad river in his rear, 
which cut off retreat; but this, he said, was just what he wanted, for his 
militia would know that thee was no use in running away. It was cheaper than 
stationing regulars in the rear, to shoot down the cowards. Morgan's daring was 
justified by the

p.254

result. The ground, a long rising slope, commanded the enemy's approach for a 
great dis-tance. On the morning of January 17, 1781, as Tarleton's advance was 
descried, Morgan formed his men in order of battle. First he arranged his 
Carolinian and Georgian militia in a line about three hundred yards in length, 
and exhorted them not to give way until they should have delivered at least two 
volleys "at killing distance." One hundred and fifty yards in the rear of this 
line, and along the brow of the gentle hill, he stationed the splendid American 
brigade which Kalb had led at Camden, and supported it by some excellent 
Virginia troops. Still one hundred and fifty yards farther back, upon a second 
rising ground, he placed Colonel William Washington with his cavalry. Arranged 
in this wise, the army awaited the British attack.

Tarleton's men had been toiling half the night over muddy roads and wading 
through swollen brooks, but nothing could restrain his eagerness to strike a 
sudden blow, and just about sunrise he charged upon the first American line. The 
militia, who were commanded by the redoubtable Pickens, behaved very well and 
delivered, not two, but many deadly volleys at close range, causing the British 
lines to waver for a moment. As the British recovered themselves and pressed on, 
the militia retired behind the line of the Continentals; while the British line, 
in pursuing, became so extended as to threaten the flanks of the Contin-ental 
line. To avoid being overlapped, the Continentals retreated in perfect

Map - Battle of the Cowpens January 17, 1781.

p.255

order to the second hill, and the British followed them hastily and in some 
confusion, having become too confident of victory. At this moment, Colonel 
Washington, having swept down from his hill in a semicircle, charged the British 
right flank with fatal effect; Pickens's militia, who had reformed in the rear 
and marched around the hill, advanced upon their left flank; while the 
Continentals, in front, broke their ranks with a deadly fire at thirty yards, 
and instantly rushed upon them with the bayonet. The greater part of the British 
army thereupon threw down their arms and surrendered, while the rest were 
scattered in flight. It was a complete rout. The British lost 230 in killed and 
wounded, 600 prisoners, two field pieces, and 1,000 stand of arms. Their loss 
was about equal to the whole American force engaged. Only 270 escaped from the 
field, among them Tarleton, who barely saved him-self in a furious single combat 
with Washington. The American loss, in this astonishing battle was 12 killed and 
61 wounded. In point of tactics, it was the most brilliant battle of the War for 
Independence.

Having struck this crushing blow, which deprived Cornwallis of one third of his 
force, Morgan did not rest for a moment. The only direct road by which he could 
rejoin Greene lay to the northward, across the fords of the Catawba river, and 
Cornwallis was at this instant nearer than himself to these fords. By a superb 
march, Morgan reached the river first, and, crossing it, kept on northeastward 
into North Carolina, with Cornwallis

p.256

following closely upon his heels. On the 24th of January, one week after the 
battle of the Cowpens, the news of it reached Greene in his camp on the Pedee, 
and he learned the nature of Morgan's movements after the battle. Now was the 
time for putting into execution a brilliant scheme. If he could draw the British 
general far enough to the northward, he might compel him to join battle under 
disadvantageous circumstances and at a great distance for his base of operatons. 
Accordingly, Greene put his main army in motion under General Huger, telling him 
to push steadily to the northward; while he himself, taking only a sergeant's 
guard of dragoons rode with all possible spped a hundred and fifty miles across 
the country, an don the morning of the 30th reached the valley of the Catawba 
and put him-self at the head of Morgan's force, which Cornwallis was still 
pursuing. Now the gallant earl realized the deadly nature of the blows which at 
King's Mountain and the Cowpens had swept away nearly al his light troops. In 
his eagerness and mortification, he was led to destroy the heavy baggage which 
encumbered his headlong march. He was falling into the trap. A most exciting 
game of strategy was kept up for the next ten days; Greene steadily pushing 
northeastward on a line converging toward that taken by his main army, 
Cornwallis vainly trying to get near enough to compel him to fight. The weather 
had been rainy, and an interesting feature of the retreat was the swelling of 
the

p.257

rivers, which rendered them unfordable. Greene took advantage of this 
circumstance, having with admirable forethought provided himself with boats, 
which were dragged overland on light wheels and speedily launched as they came 
to a river; carrying as part of their freight the wheels upon which they were 
again to be mounted so soon as they should have crossed. On the 9th of February 
Greene reached Guilford Court-House, in the northern part of North Carolina, 
only thirty miles from the Virginia border; and there he effected a junction 
with the main army, which Huger had brought up from the camp on the Pedee. On 
the next day, the gallant Morgan, broken down by illness, was obliged to give up 
his command.

It had not been a part of Greene's plan to retreat any farther. He had intended 
to offer battle at his point, and had sent word to Steuben to forward 
reinforcements from Virginia for this purpose. But Arnold's invasion of Virginia 
had so far taxed the good baron's resources that he had not yet been able to 
send on the reinforcements; and as Greene's force was still inferior to the 
enemy's he decided to continue his retreat. After five days of fencing, he 
placed his army on the north side of the Dan, a broad and rapid stream, which 
Cornwallis had no means of crossing. Thus baulked of his prey, the earl 
proceeded to Hillsborough and issued a proclamation announcing that he had 
conquered North Carolina, and inviting the loyalists to rally around his 
standard. A few Tories came out and enlisted, but these proceedings were soon 
checked by the news

p.258

that the American general had recrossed the river, and was advancing in a 
threatening manner. Greene had intended to await his reinforcements on the 
Virginia side of the river, but he soon saw that it would not do to encourage 
the Tories by the belief that he had abandoned North Carolina. On the 23d he 
recrossed the Dan, and led Cornwallis a will-of-the wisp chase, marching and 
countermarching and foiling every attempt to bring him to bay, until, on the 
14th of March, having at last been reinforced till his army numbered 4,404 men, 
he suddenly pulled at at Guilford Court-House, and offered his adversary the 
long coveted battle. Cornwallis had only 2,213 men, but they were all veterans, 
and a battle had come to be for him an absolute military necessity. He had 
rished everything in this long march and could not maintain himself in an 
exposed position, so far from support, without inflict-ing a crushing defeat 
upon his opponent. To Greene a battle was now almost equally desirable but it 
need not necessarily be an out-and-out victory; it was enough that he should 
seriously weaken and damage the enemy.

On the morning of March 15th Greene drew up his army in three lines. The first, 
consisting of North Carolina militia, was placed in front of an open cornfield. 
It was expected that these men would give way before the onset of the British 
regulars; but it was thought that they could be depended upon to fire two or 
three volleys first, and, as they were excellent marksmen, this would make gaps 
in the

Map - Grene and Corwallis in the Carolinas January - April, 1781

p.259

British line. In a wood three hundred yards behind stood the second line, 
consisting of Virginia militia, whose fire was expected still further to impede 
the enemy's advance. On a hill four hundred yards in the rear of these were 
stationed the regulars of Maryland and Virginia. The flanks were guarded by 
Campbell's riflemen and the cavarly under Washington and Lee. Early in the 
afternoon the British opened the battle by a charge upon the North Carolina 
militia, who were soon driven from the field in confusion. The Virginia line, 
however, stood its ground bravely, and it was only after a desperate struggle 
that the enemy slowly pushed it back. The attack upon the third American line 
met with varied fortunes. On the right the Maryland troops prevailed, and drove 
the British at the point of the bayonet; but on the left the other Maryland 
brigade was overpowered and forced back, with the loss of two cannon. A charge 
by Colonel Washington's cavalry restored the day, the cannon were retaken, and 
for a while the victory seemed secured for the Americans.

Cornwallis was thrown upon the defensive, but after two hours of hard fighting 
he succeeded in restoring order among his men and concentrating them upon the 
hill near the court-house, where all attempts to break their line proved futile. 
As evening came on, Greene retired, with a loss of more than 400 men, leaving 
the enemy in possession of the field, but too badly crippled to move. The 
British fighting was magnificent - worthy to be compared with that of Thomas and 
his men at Chickamauga. In the course of five hours they

p.260

had lost about 600 men, more than one fourth of their number. This damage was 
irretrievable. The little army, thus cut down to a total of scarcely 1,600 men, 
could not afford to rish another battle. Greene's audacious scheme had been 
crowned with success. He had lured Cornwallis far into a hostile country, more 
than two hundred miles distant from his base of operations. The earl now saw too 
late that he had been out-generaled. To march back to South Carolina was more 
than he dared to venture, and he could not stay where he was. Accordingly, on 
the third day after the battle of Guilford, abandoning the wounded, Corn-wallis 
started in all haste for Wilmington, the nearest point on the coast at which he 
could look for aid from the fleet.

By this movement Lord Cornwallis virtually gave up the game. The battle of 
Guilford, though tactically a defeat for the Americans, was strategically a 
decisive victory, and the most important one since the capture of Burgoyne. Its 
full significancce was soon made apparent. When Cornwallis, on the 7th of April, 
arrived at Wilmington, what was he to do next? To transport his army by sea to 
Charleston, and thus begin his work over again, would be an open confession of 
defeat. the most practicable course appeared to be to shift the scene 
altogether, and march into Virginia, where a fresh opportunity seemed to present 
itself.

Sir Henry Clinton had just sent General Phillips down to Virginia, with a force 
which, if combined with that of Cornwallis, would amount to more than 5,000 men; 

p.261

and with this army it might prove possible to strike a heavy blow in Virginia, 
and after-ward invade the Carolinas from the north. Influenced by such 
considerations, Cornwallis started from Wilmington on the 25th of April and 
arrived on the 20th of May at Petersburg, in Virginia, where he effected a 
junction with the forces of Arnold and Phillips. This important movement was 
made by Cornwallis on his own responsibility. It was never sanctioned by Sir 
Henry Clinton, and in after years it became the occasion of bitter controversy 
between the two generals; but the earl was at this time a favorite with Lord 
George Germaine, and the commander-in-chief was obliged to modify his own plans 
in order to support a movement of which he disapproved.

But while Cornwallis was carrying out this extensive change of programme, what 
was his adversary doing? Greene pursued the retreating enemy about fifty miles, 
from Guilford Court-House to Ramsay's Mills, a little above the fork of the Cape 
Fear river, and then suddenly left him to himself, and faced about for South 
Carolina. Should Cornwallis de-cide to follow him, at least the state of North 
Carolina would be relieved; but Greene had builded even better than he knew. He 
had really eliminated Cornwallis from the game, had thrown him out on the margin 
of the chessboard; and now he could go to work with his hands free and redeem 
South Carolina. The strategic points there were still held by the enemy; Camden,

p.262

Ninety-Six and Augusta were still in their possession. Camden, the most 
important of all, was held by Lord Rawdon with 900 men; and toward Camden, a 
hundred and sixty miles distant, Greene turned on the 6th of April, leaving 
Cornwallis to make his way unmolested to the seaboard. Greene kept his counsel 
so well that his own officers failed to understand the drift of his profound and 
daring strategy. The movement which he now made had not been taken into account 
by Cornwallis, who had expected by his own movements at least to detain his 
adversary. That Greene should actually ignore him was an idea which he had not 
yet taken in, and by the time he fully comprehended the situation he was already 
on his way to Virginia, and committed to his new programme. The patriots in 
South Carolina had also failed to understand Greene's sweeping movements, and 
his long absence had cast down their hopes; but on his return without 
Cornwallis, there was a revulsion of feeling. People began to look for victory.

On the 18th of April the American army approached Camden, while Lee was detached 
to cooper-ate with Marion in reducing Fort Watson. This stronghold, standing 
midway between Camden and Charleston, commanded Lord Rawdon's line of 
communications with the coast. The execu-tion of this cardinal movement was 
marked by a picturesque incident. Fort Watson was built on an Indian mound, 
rising forty feet sheer above the champaign country in which it stood, and had 
no doubt witnessed many a wild siege before ever the white man came to Carolina.

p.263

It was garrisoned by 120 good soldiers, but neither they nor the besiegers had 
any cannon. Lee looked with disgust on the low land about him. Oh for a hill 
which might command this fortress even as Ticonderoga was overlooked on that 
memorable day when Phillips dragged his guns up Mount Defiance! A happy thought 
now flashed upon Major Mayham, one of Marion's officers. Why not make a hill? 
There grew nearby a forest of superb yellow pine, heavy and hard as stone. For 
five days and nights the men worked like beavers in the depths of the wood, 
quite screened from the sight of the garrison. Forest trees were felled, and 
saws, chisels and adzes worked them into shape. Great beams werefitted with 
mortise and tenon; and at last, in a single night, they were dragged out before 
the fortress and put together, as in an old-fashioned New England "house-
raising." At daybreak on April 23, the British found themselves overlooked by an 
enormous wooden tower, surmounted by a platform crowded with marksmen, ready to 
pic off the garrison at their leisure; while its base was protected by a 
breastwork of logs, behind which lurked a hundred deadly rifles. Before the sun 
was an hour high, a white flag was hung out, and Fort Watson was surrendered at 
discretion.

while these things were going on Greene reached Camden and finding his force 
insufficient either to assault or to invest it, took up a strong position at 
Hobkirk's Hill, about two miles to the north. On the 25th of April Lord Rawdon 
advanced

p.264

to drive him from this position, and a battle ensued, in which the victory, 
nearly won, slipped through Greene's fingers. The famous Maryland brigade, which 
in all these southern campaigns had stood forth pre-eminent, like Caesar's tenth 
legion, - which had been the last to leave the disastrous field of Camden, which 
had overwhelmed Tarleton at the Cowpens, and had so nearly won the day at 
Guilford, - now behaved badly, and, falling into confusion through a 
misunderstanding of orders, deranged Greene's masterly plan of battle. He was 
driven from his position, and three days later retreated ten miles to Clermont; 
but, just as at Guilford, his plan of campaign was so good that he proceeded 
forthwith to reap all the fruits of victory.

The fall of Fort Watson, breaking Rawdon's communications with the coast, made 
it impossible for him to stay where he was. On the 10th of May the British 
general retreated rapidly, until he reached Monk's Corner, within thirty miles 
of Charleston; and the all-important post of Camden, the first great prize of 
the campaign, fell into Greene's hands.

Victories followed now in quick succession. Within three weeks Lee and Marion 
had taken Fort Motte and Fort Granby, Sumter had taken Orangeburg and on the 5th 
of June, after an obstinate defence, Augusta surrendered to Lee, thus throwing 
open the state of Georgia. Nothing was left to the British but Ninety-Six, which 
was strongly garrisoned and now withstood a vigorous siege of twenty-eight days.

p.265

Determined not to lose this last hold upon the interior, and anxious to crush 
his adversary in battle, if possible, Lord Rawdon collected all the force he 
could, well-nigh stripping Charleston of its defenders, and thus, with 2,000 
men, came up in all haste to raise the siege of Ninety-Six. His bold movement 
was successful for the moment. Greene, too prudent to risk a battle, withdrew, 
and the frontier fortress was relieved. It was impossible, however, for Rawdon 
to hold it and keep his army there, so far from the seaboard, after all the 
other inland posts had fallen, and on the 29th of June he evacuated the place, 
and re-treated upon Orangeburg; while Greene, following him, took up a strong 
position on the High Hills of Santee. Thus, within three months after Greene's 
return from Guilford, the upper country of South Carolina had been completely 
reconquered, and only one successful battle was now needed to drive the enemy 
back upon Charleston. But first it was necessary to take some rest and recruit 
the little army, which had toiled so incessantly since the last December. The 
enemy, too, felt the need of rest, and the heat was intolerable. Both armies, 
accordingly, lay and watched each other until after the middle of August.

During this vacation, Lord Rawdon, worn out and ill from his rough campaigning, 
embarked for England, leaving Colonel Stuart in command of the forces in South 
Carolina. Greene busied himself in recruiting his army, until it numbered 2,600 
men, though 1,000 of

p.266

these were militia. His position on the High Hills of Santee was by an air line, 
distant only sixteen miles from the British army. The intervening space was 
filled by meadows, through which the Wateree and Congaree rivers flowed to meet 
each other; and often, as now, when the swift waters, swollen by rain, 
overflowed the lowlands, it seemed like a vast lake, save for the tops of tall 
pine trees that here and there showed themselves in deepest green, protruding 
from the mirror-like surface. Greene understood the value of this meadow land as 
a barrier, when he chose the site for his summer camp. The enemy could reach him 
only by a circuitous march of seventy miles. On the 22nd of August, Greene broke 
up his camp very quietly, and started out on the last of his sagacious 
campaigns. The noonday heat was so intense that he marched only in the morning 
and evening, in order to keep his men fresh and active; while by vigilant 
scouting parties he so completely cut off the enemy's means of information that 
Stuart remained ignorant of his approach until he was close at hand. The British 
commander then fell back upon Eutaw Springs, about fifty miles from Charleston, 
where he waited in a strong position.

The battle of Eutaw Springs may be resolved into two brief actions between 
sunrise and noon of the 8th of September, 1781. In the first action the British 
line was broken and driven from the field. In the second Stuart succeeded in 
forming a new line, supported by a brick house and palisaded garden, and from

p.267

this position Greene was unable to drive him. It has therefore been set down as 
a British victory. If so, it was a victory followed the next evening by the 
hasty retreat of the victors, who were hotly pursued for thirty miles by Marion 
and Lee. Strategically con-sidered, it was a decisive victory for the Americans. 
The state government was restored to supremacy and, though partisan scrimmages 
were kept up for another year, these were but the dying embers of the fire. The 
British were cooped up in Charleston till the end of the war, protected by their 
ships. Less than thirteen months had elapsed since the disaster of Camden had 
seemed to destroy all hope of saving the state. All this change had been wrought 
by Greene's magnificent generalship. Coming upon the scene under almost every 
imaginable disadvantage, he had reorganized the remnant of Gates's broken and 
dispirited army, he had taken the initiative from the first, and he had held the 
game in his own hands till the last blow was struck. So consummate had been his 
strategy that whether victorious or defeated on the field, he had, in every 
instance, gained the object for which the campaign was made. Under one 
disadvantage, indeed, he had not laboured; he had excellent officers. Seldom had 
a more brilliant group been seen than that which comprised Morgan, Campbell, 
Marion, Sumter, Pickens, Otho Williams, William Washington and the father of 
Robert Edward Lee. It is only an able general, however, who knows how to use 
such admirable instruments. Men of narrow intelligence do not

p.268

like to have able men about them, and do not know how to deal with them. Gates 
had Kalb and Otho Williams, and put them in places where their talent was 
unavailable and one of them was uselessly sacrificed, while he was too dull to 
detect the extraordinary value of Marion. But genius is quick to see genius and 
knows what to do with it. Greene knew what each one of his officers would do, 
and took it into the account in planning his sweeping movements. Un-less he had 
known that he could depend upon Morgan as certainly as Napolean, in after years 
relied upon Davoust on the day of Jena and Auerstadt, it would have been 
foolhardy for him to divide his force in the beginning of the campaign - a move 
which, though made in apparent violation of military rules, neverthe less gave 
him the initiative in his long and triumph-ant game. What Greene might have 
accomplished on a wider field and with more ample re-sources can never be known. 
But the intellectual qualities which he showed in his southern campaign were 
those which have characterized some of the foremost strategists of modern times.

When Lord Cornwallis heard, from time to time, what was going on in South 
Carolina, he was not cheered by the news. But he was too far away to interfere, 
and it was on the very day of Eutaw Springs that the toils were drawn about him 
which were to compass his downfall. When he reached Petersburg, on the 20th of 
May, the youthfull Lafayette, whom Washington had sent down to watch and check 
the movements of the traitor, Arnold,

p.269

was stationed at Richmond, with a little army of 3,000 men, two thirds of them 
raw militia. To oppose this small force Cornwallis had now 5,000 veterans, 
comprising the men whom he had brought away from Guilford, together with the 
forces lately under Arnold and Phillips. Arnold, after some useless burning and 
plundering, had been recalled to New York. Phillips died of a fever just before 
Cornwallis arrived. The earl entertained great hopes. His failure in North 
Carolina rankled in his soul, and he was eager to make a grand stroke and 
retrieve his reputation. Could the powerful state of Virginia be conquered, it 
seemed as if every-thing south of the Susquehanna must fall, in spite of 
Greene's successes. With his soul thus full of chivalrous enterprise, Cornwallis 
for the moment saw things in rose colour, and drew wrong conclusions. He 
expected to find half the people Tories, and he also expected to find a state of 
chronic hostility between the slaves and their masters. On both points he was 
quite mistaken.

But while Cornwallis underrated the difficulty of the task, he knew, 
nevertheless that 5,000 men were not enough to conquer so strong a state, and he 
tried to persuade Clinton to abandon New York if necessary, so that all the 
available British force might be concentrated upon Virginia. Clinton wisely 
refused. A state like Virginia, which, for the want of a loyalist party, could 
be held only by sheer conquest, was not fit for a basis of operations against 
the other states; while the abandoning of New York, the recognized strategic 
centre of the

p.270

Atlantic coast, would be interpreted by the whole world, not as a change of 
base, but as a confession of defeat. Clinton's opinion was thus founded upon a 
truer and clearer view of the whole situation than Cornwallis's; nor is it 
likely that the latter would ever have urged such a scheme had he not been, in 
such a singular and unexpected way, elbowed out of North Carolina. Being now in 
Virginia, it was incumbent on him to do something, and, with the force at his 
disposal, it seemed as if he might easily begin by crushing Lafayette. "The boy 
cannot escape me," said Cornwallis; but the young Frenchman turned out to be 
more formidable than was supposed. Lafayette has never been counted a great 
general, and, indeed, though a noble and interesting character, he was in no 
wise a man of original genius; but he had much good sense and was quick at 
learning. He was now twenty-three years old, buoyant and kind, full of wholesome 
enthusiasm, and endowed with no mean sagacity. A Fabian policy was all that 
could be adopted for the moment. When Cornwallis advanced from Petersburg to 
Richmond, Lafayette began the skilful retreat which proved him an apt learner in 
the school of Washington and Greene. From Richmond toward Fredericksburg - over 
the ground since made doubly famous by the deeds of Lee and Grant, the youthful 
general kept up his retreat, never giving the eager earl a chance to deal him a 
blow; for, as with naive humour he wrote to Washington, "I am not strong enough 
even to be beaten." On the 4th of June, Lafayette crossed

p.271

the Rapidan at Ely's Ford, and placed himself in a secure position; while 
Cornwallis, re-fraining from the pursuit, sent Tarleton on a raid westward to 
Charlottesville, to break up the legislature, which was in session there, and to 
capture the governor, Thomas Jeffer-son. The raid, though conducted with 
Tarleton's usual vigor, failed of its principal prey; for Jefferson, forewarned 
in the nick of time, got off to the mountains about twenty minutes before the 
cavalry surrounded his house at Monticello. It remained for Tarleton to seize 
the military stores collected at Albemarle; but on the 7th of June, Lafayette 
effect a junction with 1,000 Pennsylvania regulars under Wayne, and thereupon 
succeeded in placing his whole force between Tarleton and the prize he was 
striving to reach. Unable to break through this barrier, Tarleton had nothing 
left him but to rejoin Conrwallis; and as Lafay-ette's army was reinforced from 
various sources until it amounted to more than 4,000 men, he became capable of 
annoying the earl in such wise as to make him think it worth while to get nearer 
to the sea. Cornwallis, turning southward from the Northa Anna river, had pro-
ceeded as far inland as Point of Forks, when Tarleton joined him. On the 15th of 
June, the British commander, finding that he could not catch "the boy," and was 
accomplishing nothing by his marches and countermarches in the interior, 
retreated down the James river to Rich-mond. In so doing he did not yet put 
himself upon the defensive. Lafayette was still too weak to risk a battle, or to 
prevent

p.272

his going wherever he liked. But Cornwallis was too prudent a general to remain 
at a long distance from his base of operations, among a people whom he had 
found, to his great dis-appointment, thoroughly hostile. By retreating to the 
seaboard, he could make sure of supplies and reinforcements, and might presently 
resume the work of invasion. Accordingly, on the 20th he continued his retreat 
from Richmond, crossing the Chickahominy a little above White Oak Swamp, and 
marching down the York peninsula as far as Williamsburg. Lafay-ette having been 
further reinforced by Steuben, so that his army numbered more than 5,000, 
pressed closely on the rear of the British all the way down the peninsula; and 
on the 6th of July an action was fought between parts of the two armies, at 
Green Spring, near Williams-burg, in which the Americans were repulsed with a 
loss of 145 men. The campaign was ended by the first week in August, when 
Cornwallis occupied Yorktown, adding the garrison of Portsmouth to his army, so 
that it numbered 7,000 men, while Lafayette planted himself on Malvern Hill, and 
awaited further developments. Throughout this game of strategy, Lafayette had 
shown commendable skill, proving himself a worthy antagonist for the ablest of 
the British generals. But a far greater commander than either the Frenchman or 
the Englishman was not to enter unexpectedly upon the scene. The elements of the 
catastrophe were pre-pared, and it only remained for a master hand to strike the 
blow.

Map - Cornwallis and Lafayette in Virginia May - September, 1781.

p.273

As early as the 22d of May, just two days before the beginning of this Virginia 
campaign, Washington had held a conference with Rochambeau at Wethersfield in 
Connecticut, and it was there decided that a combined attack should be made upon 
New York by the French and American armies. If they should succeed in taking the 
city, it would ruin the British cause; and, at all events, it was hoped that if 
New York was seriously threatened, Sir Henry Clinton would take reinforcements 
from Cornwallis and thus relieve the pressure upon the southern states. In order 
to undertake the capture of New York, it would be necessary to have the aid of a 
powerful French fleet; and the time had at last arrived when such assistance was 
confidently to be expected. The naval war between France and England in the West 
Indies had now raged for two years, with varying fortunes. The French government 
had exerted itself to the utmost, and early in the spring of this year had sent 
out a magnificent fleet of twenty-eight ships-of-the-line and six frigates, 
carrying 1,700 guns and 20,000 men, comanded by Count de Grasse, one of the 
ablest of the French admirals. It was de-signed to take from England the great 
island of Jamaica; but as the need for naval coopera-tion upon the North 
American coast had been strongly urged upon the French ministry, Grasse was 
ordered to communicate with Washington and Rochambeau and to seize the earliest 
opportu-nity of acting in concert with them. The arrival of this fleet would 
introduce a feature

p.274

into the war such as had not existed at any time since hostilities had begun. It 
would interrupt the British control over the water. The utmost force the British 
were ready to oppose to it amounted only to nineteen ships-of-the-line, carrying 
1,400 guns and 13,000 men, and this disparity was too great to be surmounted by 
anything short of the genius of a Nelson. The conditions of the struggle were 
thus about to be suddenly and decisively altered. The retreat of Cornwallis upon 
Yorktown had been based entirely upon the assumption of that British naval 
supremacy which had hitherto been uninterrupted. The safety of his position 
depended wholly upon the ability of the British fleet to control the virginia 
waters. Once let the French get the upper hand there, and the earl, if assailed 
in front by an overwhelming land force, would be literally "between the devil 
and the deep sea." He would be no better off than Burgoyne in the forests of 
northern New York.

It ws not yet certain, however, where Grasse would find it best to strike the 
coast. the elements of the situation disclosed themselves but slowly, and it 
required the master mind of Washington to combine them. Intelligence travelled 
at snail's pace in those days, and operations so vast in extent were not within 
the compass of anything but the highest military genius. It took ten days for 
Washington to hear from Lafayette, and it took a month for him to hear from 
Greene, while there was no telling just when definite informa-tion would arrive 
from Grasse. But so soon as Washington

p.275

heard from Greene, in April, how he had manoeuvred Cornwallis up into Virginia, 
he began secretly to consider the possibility of leaving a small force to guard 
the Hudson while taking the bulk of his army southward to overwhelm Cornwallis. 
At the Wethersfield con-ference, he spoke of this to Rochambeau, but to no one 
else; and a dispatch to Grasse gave him the choice of sailing either for the 
Hudson or the Chesapeake. So matters stood till the middle of August, while 
Washinton, grasping all the elements of the problem, vigilantly watched the 
whole field, holding himself in readiness for either alternative, to strike New 
York close at hand, or to hurl his army to a distance of four hundred miles. On 
the 14th of August a message came from Grasse that he was just starting from the 
West Indies for Chesapeake Bay, with his whole fleet, and hoped that whatever 
the armies had to do might be done quickly, as he should be obliged to return to 
the West Indies by the middle of October. Washington could now couple with this 
the information, just received from Lafayette, that Cornwallis had established 
himself at Yorktown, where he had deep water on three sides of him and a narrow 
neck in front.

The supreme moment of Washington's military career had come - the moment for 
realizing a conception which had nothing of a Fabian character about it, for it 
was a conception of the same order as those in which Caesar and Napoleon dealt. 
He decided at once to transfer his army to Virginia and overwhelm Cornwallis. He 
had every

p.276

thing in readiness. The army of Rochambeau had marched through Connecticut and 
joined him on the Hudson in July. He could afford to leave West Point with a 
comparatively small force, for that strong fortress could be taken only by a 
regular siege and he had planned his march so as to blind Sir Henry Clinton 
completely. This was one of the finest points in Washington's scheme, in which 
the perfection of the details matched the audacious grandeur of the whole.

Sir Henry was profoundly unconscious of any such movement as Washington was 
about to execute; but he was anxiously looking out for an attack upon New York. 
Now, from the American head-quarters near West Point, Washington could take his 
army more than halfway through New Jersey without arousing any suspicion at all; 
for the enemy would be sure to interpret such a movement as preliminary to an 
occupation of Staten Island, as a point from which to assail New York. Sir Henry 
knew that the French fleet might be expected at any moment; but he had not the 
clue which Washington held, and his anxious thoughts were concerned with New 
York harbour and not with Chesapeake Bay. Besides all this, the sheer audacity 
of the movement served still further to screen its true meaning. It would take 
some time for the enemy to comprehend so huge a sweep as that from New York to 
Virginia, and doubtless Washington could reach Philadelphia before his purpose 
could be fathomed. The events justified his foresight. On the 19th

p.277

of August, five days after receiving the dispatch from Grasse, Washington's army 
crossed the Hudson at King's Ferry and began its march. Lord Stirling was left 
with a small force at Saratoga, and General Heath, with 4,000 men, remained at 
West Point. Washington took with him southward 2,000 Continentals and 4,000 
Frenchmen. It was the only time during the war that French and American land 
forces marched together, save on the occasion of the disastrous attack upon 
Savannah. None save Washington and Rochambeau knew whither they were going. So 
precious was the secret that even the genral officers supposed, until New 
Brunswick was passed, that their destination was Staten Island. So rapid was the 
movement that, however much the men might have begun to wonder, they had reached 
Philadelphia before the purpose of the expedition was distinctly understood.

As the army marched through the streets of Philadelphia, there was an outburst 
of exulting hope. The plan could no longer be concealed. Congress was informed 
of it and a fresh light shone upon the people, already elated by the news of 
Greene's career of triumph. The windows were thronged with fair ladies, who 
threw sweet flowers on the dusty soliders as they passed, while the welkin rang 
with shouts, anticipating the great deliverance that was so soon to come. The 
column of soldiers, in the loose order adapted to its swift march, was nearly 
two miles in length. First came the war-worn Americans, clad in rough toggery, 
which eloquently told the story of the meagre

p.278

resources of a country without a government. Then followed the gallant 
Frenchmen, clothed in gorgeous trappings, such as could be provided by a 
government which at that time took three fourths of the earnings of its people 
in unrighteous taxation. There was some parading of these soldiers before the 
president of Congress, but time was precious. Washington, in his eagerness 
galloping on to Chester, received and sent back the joyful intelligence that 
Grasse had arrived in Chesapeake Bay, and then the glee of the people knew no 
bounds. Bands of music played in the streets, every house hoisted its stars-and-
stripes, and all the roadside taverns shouted success to the bold general. "Long 
live Washington!" was the toast of the day. "He has gone to catch Cornwallis in 
his mousetrap."

But these things did not stop for a moment the swift advance of the army. It was 
on the 1st of September that they left Trenton behind them, and by the 5th they 
had reached the head of Chesapeake Bay, whence they were conveyed in ships, and 
reached the scene of action near Yorktown by the 18th.

Meanwhile, all things had been working together most auspiciously. On the 31st 
of August the great French squadron had arrived on the scene, and the only 
Englishman capable of defeating it under the existing odds was far away. Admiral 
Rodney's fleet had followed close upon its heels from the West Indies, but 
Rodney himself was not in command. He had been taken ill suddenly and had sailed 
for England, and Sir Samuel Hood

Map - Washington's March Upon Yorktown August 19 - September 26, 1781.

p.279

commanded the fleet. Hood outsailed Grasse, passed him on the ocean without 
knowing it, looked in at the Chesapeake on the 25th of August and finding no 
enemy there, sailed on to New York to get instructions from Admiral Graves, who 
commanded the naval force in the North. This was the first that Graves or 
Clinton knew of the threatened danger. Not a moment was to be lost. The winds 
were favourable, and Graves, now chief in command, crowded sail for the 
Chesapeake and arrive on the 5th of September, the very day on which 
Washington's army was embarking at the head of the great bay. Graves found the 
French fleet blocking the entrance to the bay, and instantly attacked it. A 
decisive naval victory for the British would at this moment have ruined 
everything. But after a sharp fight of two hours' duration, in which some 700 
men were killed and wounded on the two fleets, Admiral Graves withdrew. Three of 
his ships were badly damaged and after manoeuv-ring for four days he returned, 
baffled and despondent to New York, leaving Grasse in full possession of the 
Virginia waters. the toils were thus fast closing around Lord Cornwallis. He 
knew nothing as yet of Washington's approach but there was just a chance that he 
might realize his danger, and, crossing the James river, seek safety in a 
retreat upon North Carolina. Lafayette upon the arrival of the French squadron, 
the troops of the Marquis de Saint-Simon, 3,000 in number, had been set on shore 
and added to Lafayette's army;

p.280

and with this increased force, now amounting to more than 8,000 men, "the boy " 
came down on the 7th of September, and took his stand across the neck of the 
peninsula at Williamsburg cutting off Cornwallis's retreat. Thus, on the morning 
of the 8th, the very day on which Greene, in South Carolina, was fighting has 
last battle at Eutaw Springs, Lord Cornwallis, in Virginia found himself 
surrounded. The door of the mousetrap was shut. Still, but for the arrival of 
Washington, the plan would probably have failed. It was still in Cornwallis's 
power to burst the door open. His force was nearly equal to Lafayette's in 
numbers and better in quality, for Lafayette's contained 3,000 militia. 
Cornwallis carefully reconnoitred the American lines and seriously thought of 
breaking through; but the risk was considerable and heavy loss was inevitable. 
He had not the slightest inkling of Washington's movements and he believed that 
Graves would soon return with force enough to drive away Grasse's blockading 
squadron. So he decided to wait before striking a hazardous blow. It was losing 
his last chance. On the 14th Washington reached Lafayette's headquarters and 
took command. On the 18th the northern army began arriving in detachments, and 
by the 26th it was all con-centrated at Williamsburg, more than 16,000 strong. 
The problem was solved. The surrender of Cornwallis was only a question of time. 
It was the great military surprise of the Revolutionary War. Had any one 
predicted, eight months before, that Washington

p.281

on the Hudson and Cornwallis on the Catawaba, eight hundred miles apart, would 
so soon come together and terminate the war on the coast of Virginia, he would 
have been thought a wild prophet indeed. For thoroughness of elaboration and 
promptness of execution, the movement, on Washington's part was as remarkable as 
the march of Napolean in the autumn of 1805 when he swooped from the shore of 
the English Channel into bavaria, and captured the Austrian army at Ulm.

By the 2d of September, Sir Henry Clinton, learning that the American army had 
reached the Delaware and coupling with this the information he had got from 
Admiral Hood, began to suspect the true nature of Washington's movement, and was 
at his wit's end. The only thing he could think of was to make a counterstroke 
on the coast of Connecticut, and he accordingly detached Benedict Arnold with 
2,000 men to attack New London.

It was the boast of this sturdy little state that no hostile force had ever 
slept a night upon her soil. Such blows as her coast towns had received had been 
dealt by an enemy who retreated as quickly as he had come; and such was again to 
be the case. The approach to New London was guarded by two forts on opposite 
banks of the river Thames, but Arnold's force soon swept up the west bank 
bearing down all opposition and capturing the city. In Fort Griswold, on the 
east bank, 157 militia were gathered and made a desperate resistance. The fort 
was attacked by 600 regulars and after

p.282

losing 192 men, or 35 more than the entire number of the garrison, they carried 
it by storm. No quarter was given, and of the little garrison only 26 escaped 
unhurt. The town of New London was laid in ashes; minute-men came swarming by 
hundreds; the enemy re-embarked before sunset and returned up the Sound. And 
thus, on the 6th of September, 1781, with this wanton assault upon the peaceful 
neighbourhood where the earliest years of his life had been spent, the brilliant 
and wicked Benedict Arnold disappears from American history.

A thoroughly wanton assault it was, for it did not and could not produce the 
slightest effect upon the movements of WAshington. By the time the news of it 
had reached Virginia the combination against Cornwallis had been completed, and 
day by day the lines were drawn more closely about the doomed army. Yorktown was 
invested, and on the 6th of October the first parallel was opened by General 
Lincoln. On the 11th, the second parallel, within three hundred yards of the 
enemy's works, was opened by Steuben. On the night of the 14th Alexander 
Hamilton and the Baron de Viomenil carried two of the British redoubts by storm. 
On the next night the British made a gallant but fruitless sortie. By noon of 
the 16th their works were fast crumbling to pieces, under the fire of seventy 
cannon. On the 17th the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrender, Cornwallis 
hoisted the white flag. The terms of the surrender were like those of Lincoln's 
at Charleston. The British army became prisoners

p.283

of war subject to the ordinary rules of exchange. The only delicate question 
related to the American loyalists in the army, whom Cornwallis felt it wrong to 
leave in the lurch. This point was neatly disposed of by allowing him to send a 
ship to Sir Henry Clinton, with news of the catastrophe, and to embark in it 
such troops as he might think proper to send to New York, and no questions 
asked. On a little matter of etiquette the Americans were more exacting. The 
practice of playing the enemy's tunes had always been cherished as an 
inalienable prerogative of British soldiery; and at the surrender of Charleston, 
in token of humiliation General Lincoln's army had been expressly forbidden to 
play any but an American tune.

Colonel Laurens, who not conducted the negotiations, directed that Lord 
Cornwallis's sword should be received by General Lincoln and that the army, on 
marching out to lay down its arms, should play a British or a German air. There 
was no help for it; and on the 19th of October, Cornwallis's army, 7,247 in 
number, with 840 seamen, marched out with colours furled and cased while the 
band played a quaint old English melody, of which the significant title was "The 
World Turned Upside Down."!

On the very same day tht Cornwallis surrendered, Sir Henry Clinton, having 
received naval reinforcements, sailed from New York with twenty-five ships-of-
the-line and ten frigates and 7,000 of his best troops. Five days brought him to 
the mouth of the Chesapeake, where he learned that

p.284

he was too late, as had been the case four years before, when he tried to 
relieve Burgoyne. A fortnight earlier, this force could hardly have failed to 
alter the result, for the fleet was strong enough to dispute with Grasse the 
control over the coast. The French have always taken to themselves the credit of 
the victory of Yorktown. In the palace of Versailles there is a room the walls 
of which are covered with huge paintings depicting the innumerable victories of 
France, from the days of Chlodwig to those of Napoleon. Near the end of the long 
series, the American visitor cannot fail to notice a scene which is labelled 
"Bataille de Yorcktown" (mispelled, as is the Frenchman's wont in dealing with 
the words of outer barbarians), in which General Rochambeau occupies the most 
commanding position, while General Washington is perforce contented with a 
subordinate place. This is not correct history, for the glory of conceivings and 
conducting the movement undoubtedly belongs to Washington. But it should never 
be forgotten, not only that the 4,000 men of Rochambeau and the 3,000 of Saint-
Simon were necessary for the successful execution of the plan, but also that 
without the formidable fleet of Grasse the plan could not even have been made.

How much longer the war might have dragged out its tedious length, or what might 
have been its final issue, without this timely assistance, can never be known; 
and our debt of gratitude to France for her aid on this supreme occasion is 
something which cannot be too heartily acknowledged.

p.285

Early on a dark morning of the fourth week in October, an honest old German, 
slowly pacing the streets of Philadelphia on his night watch, began shouting, 
"Basht dre o'glock, und Gornvallis ish dakendt!" and light sleepers sprant out 
of bed and threw up their windows. Washington's courier laid the dispatches 
before Congress in the forenoon, and after dinner a service of prayer and 
thanksgiving was held in the Lutheran Church. At New Haven and Cambridge the 
students sang triumphal hymns and every village green in the country was ablaze 
with bonfires. The Duke de Lauzun sailed for France in a swift ship, and on the 
27th of November all the houses in Paris were illuminated and the aisles of 
Notre Dame resounded with the Te Deum. At noon of November 25, the news was 
brought to Lord George Germaine, at his house in Pall Mall. Getting into a cab, 
he drove hastily to the Lord Chancellor's house in Great Russell Street, 
Bloomsbury, and took him in; and then they drove to Lord North's office in 
Downing Street. At the staggering news, all the Prime Minister's wonted gayety 
forsook him. He walked wildly up and down the room, throwing his arms about and 
cryng, "O God! it is all over! it is all over! it is all over!" A dispatch was 
sent to the king at Kew and when Lord George received the answerthat evening at 
dinner, he observed that his Majesty wrote calmly, but had forgotten to date his 
letter, - a thing which had never happened before.

"The tidings," says Wraxall, who narrates these

p.286

incidents, "were calculated to diffuse a gloom over the most convivial society, 
and opened a wide field for political speculation." There were many people in 
England, however, who looked at the matter differently from Lord North. This 
crushing defeat was just what the Duke of Richmond, at the beginning of the war, 
had publicly declared he hoped for. Charles Fox always took especial delight in 
reading about the defeats of invading armies, from Marathon and Salamis 
downward; and over the news of Cornwallis's surrender he leaped from his chair 
and clapped his hands. In a debate in Parliament, four months before, the youth-
ful Pitt had denounced the American war as "most accursed, wicked, barbarous, 
cruel, un-natural, unjust and diabolical," which led Burke to observe, "He is 
not a chip of the old block; he is the old block itself."

The fall of Lord North's ministry, and with it the overthrow of the personal 
government of George III., was now close at hand. For a long time the government 
had been losing favour. In the summer of 1780, the British victories in South 
Carolina had done something to strengthen it; yet when, in the autumn of that 
year, Parliament was dissolved, although the king complained that his expenses 
for purposes of corruption had been twice as great as ever before, the new 
Parliament was scarcely more favourable to the ministry than the old one. 
Misfortunes and perlexities crowded in the path of Lord North and his 
colleagues. The example of American resistance had told upon Ireland, and it was 
in

p.287

the full tide of that agitation which is associated with the names of Flood and 
Grattan that the news of Cornwallis's surrender was received. For more than a 
year there had been war in India, where Hyder Ali, for the moment, was carrying 
everything with him. France, eager to regain her lost foothold upon Hindustan, 
sent a strong armament thither, and insisted that England must give up all her 
Indian conquests except Bengal. For a moment England's great Eastern empire 
tottered, and was saved only by the superhuman exertions of Warren Hastings, 
aided by the wonderful military genius of Sir Eyre Coote. In May, 1781, the 
Spaniards had taken Pensacola thus driving the British from their last position 
in Florida. In February 1782, the Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and the siege 
of Gibraltar, which had been kept up for nearly three years was pressed with 
redoubled energy. During the winter the French recaptured St. Eustatius and 
handed it over to Holland; and Grasse's great fleet swept away all the British 
possessions in the West Indies, except Jamaica, Barbadoes and Antiqua. All this 
time the Northern League kept up its jealous watch upon British cruisers in the 
narrow seas, and among all the powers of Europe the government of George III. 
could not find a single friend.

The maritime supremacy of England was, however, impaired but for a moment. 
Rodney was sent back to the West Indies and on the 12th of April, 1782, his 
fleet of thirty-six ships en-countered the French near the island of Sainte-
Marie-Galante. The battle of eleven hours which

p.288

ensued, and in which 5,000 men were killed or wounded, was one of the most 
tremendous contests ever witnessed upon the ocean before the time of Nelson. The 
French were totally defeated, and Grasse was taken prisoner - the first French 
commander-in-chief, by sea or land, who had fallen into an enemy's hands since 
Marshall Tallard gave up his sword to Marlborough, on the terrible day of 
Blenheim. France could do nothing to repair this crushing disaster. Her naval 
power was eliminated from the situation at a single blow; and in the course of 
the summer the English achieved another great success by overthrowing the 
Spaniards at Gibralter, after a struggle which for dogged tenacity, is scarcely 
paralledled in the annals of modern war-fare. By the autumn of 1782, England, 
defeated in the United States, remained victorious and defiant as regarded the 
other parties to the war.

But these great successes came too late to save the doomed ministry of Lord 
North. After the surrendor of Cornwallis, no one but the king thought of 
pursuing the war in America any further. Even he gave up all hope of subduing 
the United States; but he insisted upon re-taining the state of Georgia, with 
the cities of Charleston and New York; and he vowed that, rather than 
acknowledge the independence of the United States, he would abdicate the throne 
and retire to Hanover. Lord George Germaine was dismissed from office, Sir Henry 
Clinton was superseded by Sir Guy Carleton and the king began to dream of a

p.289

new campaign. But his obstinacy was of no avail. During the winter and spring, 
General Wayne, acting under Greene's orders, drove the British from Georgia, 
while at home the country squires began to go over to the opposition; and Lord 
North, utterly discouraged and disgusted, refused any longer to pursue a policy 
of which he disapproved. The baffled and beaten king, like the fox in the fable, 
declared that the Americans were a wretched set of knaves and he was glad to be 
rid of them. The House of Commons began to talk of a vote of censure on the 
administration. A motion of Conway's, petitioning the king to stop the war, was 
lost by only a single vote; and at last, on the 20th of March, 1782, Lord North 
bowed to the storm, and resigned. Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister and with 
him, came into office Shelburne, Camden and Grafton, as well as Fox and Conway, 
the Duke of Richmond and Lord John Cavendish, - staunch friends of America all 
of them, whose appointment in-volved the recognition of the independence of the 
United States.

Lord North observed that he had often been accused of issuing lying bulletins, 
but he had never told so big a lie as that with which the new ministry announced 
its entrance into power; for in introducing the name of each of these gentlemen, 
the official bulletin used the words, "His Majesty has been pleased to appoint"! 
It was indeed a day of bitter humiliation for George III., and the men who had 
been his tools. But it was a day of

p.290

happy omen for the English race, in the Old World as in the New. For the advent 
of Lord Rockingham's ministry meant not merely the independence of the United 
States; it meant the downfall of the only serious danger with which English 
liberty has been threatened since the expulsion of the Stuarts. The personal 
government which George III. had sought to establish, with its wholesale 
corruption, its shameless violations of public law, and its attacks upon freedom 
of speech and of the press, became irredeemably discredited, and tottered to its 
fall; while the great England of William III., of Walpole, of Chatham, of the 
younger Pitt, of Peel, and of Gladstone ws set free to pursue its noble career.

Such was the priceless boon which the younger nation, by its sturdy insistence 
upon the principles of political justice, conferred upon the elder. The decisive 
battle of freedom in England, as well as in America, and in that vast colonial 
world for which Chatham prophesied the dominion of the future, had now been 
fought and won. And foremost in accomplishing this glorious work had been the 
lofty genius of Washington, and the steadfast valour of the men who suffered 
with him at Valley Forge, and whom he led to victory at Yorktown.

End.

Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth