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Title:  Washington and his Comrades in Arms
Title:  A Chronicle of the War of Independence

Author:  George Wrong

July, 2001  [Etext #2704]
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THIS BOOK, VOLUME 12 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
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KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV AKMAN.


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THIS BOOK, VOLUME 12 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
JOHNSON, EDITOR, WAS DONATED TO PROJECT GUTENBERG BY THE JAMES J.
KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV AKMAN.
Scanned by Dianne Bean.


WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES IN ARMS, A CHRONICLE OF THE WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE

BY GEORGE M. WRONG




Volume 12 in the Chronicles of America Series. Abraham Lincoln Edition.




PREFATORY NOTE

The author is aware of a certain audacity in undertaking, himself
a Briton, to appear in a company of American writers on American
history and above all to write on the subject of Washington. If
excuse is needed it is to be found in the special interest of the
career of Washington to a citizen of the British Commonwealth of
Nations at the present time and in the urgency with which the
editor and publishers declared that such an interpretation would
not be unwelcome to Americans and pressed upon the author a task
for which he doubted his own qualifications. To the editor he
owes thanks for wise criticism. He is also indebted to Mr.
Worthington Chauncey Ford, of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, a great authority on Washington, who has kindly read the
proofs and given helpful comments. Needless to say the author
alone is responsible for opinions in the book.

University of Toronto,
June 16, 1920.


CONTENTS

I. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

II. BOSTON AND QUEBEC

III. INDEPENDENCE

IV. THE LOSS OF NEW YORK

V. THE LOSS OF PHILADELPHIA

VI. THE FIRST GREAT BRITISH DISASTER

VII. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES AT VALLEY FORGE

VIII. THE ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE AND ITS RESULTS

IX. THE WAR IN THE SOUTH

X. FRANCE TO THE RESCUE

XI. YORKTOWN

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE



WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES IN ARMS


CHAPTER I. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

Moving among the members of the second Continental Congress,
which met at Philadelphia in May, 1775, was one, and but one,
military figure. George Washington alone attended the sittings in
uniform. This colonel from Virginia, now in his forty-fourth
year, was a great landholder, an owner of slaves, an Anglican
churchman, an aristocrat, everything that stands in contrast with
the type of a revolutionary radical. Yet from the first he had
been an outspoken and uncompromising champion of the, colonial
cause. When the tax was imposed on tea he had abolished the use
of tea in his own household and when war was imminent he had
talked of recruiting a thousand men at his own expense and
marching to Boston. His steady wearing of the uniform seemed,
indeed, to show that he regarded the issue as hardly less
military than political.

The clash at Lexington, on the 19th of April, had made vivid the
reality of war. Passions ran high. For years there had been
tension, long disputes about buying British stamps to put on
American legal papers, about duties on glass and paint and paper
and, above all, tea. Boston had shown turbulent defiance, and to
hold Boston down British soldiers had been quartered on the
inhabitants in the proportion of one soldier for five of the
populace, a great and annoying burden. And now British soldiers
had killed Americans who stood barring their way on Lexington
Green. Even calm Benjamin Franklin spoke later of the hands of
British ministers as "red, wet, and dropping with blood."
Americans never forgot the fresh graves made on that day. There
were, it is true, more British than American graves, but the
British were regarded as the aggressors. If the rest of the
colonies were to join in the struggle, they must have a common
leader. Who should he be?

In June, while the Continental Congress faced this question at
Philadelphia, events at Boston made the need of a leader more
urgent. Boston was besieged by American volunteers under the
command of General Artemas Ward. The siege had lasted for two
months, each side watching the other at long range. General Gage,
the British Commander, had the sea open to him and a finely
tempered army upon which he could rely. The opposite was true of
his opponents. They were a motley host rather than an army. They
had few guns and almost no powder. Idle waiting since the fight
at Lexington made untrained troops restless and anxious to go
home. Nothing holds an army together like real war, and shrewd
officers knew that they must give the men some hard task to keep
up their fighting spirit. It was rumored that Gage was preparing
an aggressive movement from Boston, which might mean pillage and
massacre in the surrounding country, and it was decided to draw
in closer to Boston to give Gage a diversion and prove the mettle
of the patriot army. So, on the evening of June 16, 1775, there
was a stir of preparation in the American camp at Cambridge, and
late at night the men fell in near Harvard College.

Across the Charles River north from Boston, on a peninsula, lay
the village of Charlestown, and rising behind it was Breed's
Hill, about seventy-four feet high, extending northeastward to
the higher elevation of Bunker Hill. The peninsula could be
reached from Cambridge only by a narrow neck of land easily swept
by British floating batteries lying off the shore. In the dark
the American force of twelve hundred men under Colonel Prescott
marched to this neck of land and then advanced half a mile
southward to Breed's Hill. Prescott was an old campaigner of the
Seven Years' War; he had six cannon, and his troops were
commanded by experienced officers. Israel Putnam was skillful in
irregular frontier fighting, and Nathanael Greene, destined to
prove himself the best man in the American army next to
Washington himself, could furnish sage military counsel derived
from much thought and reading.

Thus it happened that on the morning of the 17th of June General
Gage in Boston awoke to a surprise. He had refused to believe
that he was shut up in Boston. It suited his convenience to stay
there until a plan of campaign should be evolved by his superiors
in London, but he was certain that when he liked he could, with
his disciplined battalions, brush away the besieging army. Now he
saw the American force on Breed's Hill throwing up a defiant and
menacing redoubt and entrenchments. Gage did not hesitate. The
bold aggressors must be driven away at once. He detailed for the
enterprise William Howe, the officer destined soon to be his
successor in the command at Boston. Howe was a brave and
experienced soldier. He had been a friend of Wolfe and had led
the party of twenty-four men who had first climbed the cliff at
Quebec on the great day when Wolfe fell victorious. He was the
younger brother of that beloved Lord Howe who had fallen at
Ticonderoga and to whose memory Massachusetts had reared a
monument in Westminster Abbey. Gage gave him in all some
twenty-five hundred men, and, at about two in the afternoon, this
force was landed at Charlestown.

The little town was soon aflame and the smoke helped to conceal
Howe's movements. The day was boiling hot and the soldiers
carried heavy packs with food for three days, for they intended
to camp on Bunker Hill. Straight up Breed's Hill they marched
wading through long grass sometimes to their knees and throwing
down the fences on the hillside. The British knew that raw troops
were likely to scatter their fire on a foe still out of range and
they counted on a rapid bayonet charge against men helpless with
empty rifles. This expectation was disappointed. The Americans
had in front of them a barricade and Israel Putnam was there,
threatening dire things to any one who should fire before he
could see the whites of the eyes of the advancing soldiery. As
the British came on there was a terrific discharge of musketry at
twenty yards, repeated again and again as they either halted or
drew back.

The slaughter was terrible. British officers hardened in war
declared long afterward that they had never seen carnage like
that of this fight. The American riflemen had been told to aim
especially at the British officers, easily known by their
uniforms, and one rifleman is said to have shot twenty officers
before he was himself killed. Lord Rawdon, who played a
considerable part in the war and was later, as Marquis of
Hastings, Viceroy of India, used to tell of his terror as he
fought in the British line. Suddenly a soldier was shot dead by
his side, and, when he saw the man quiet at his feet, he said,
"Is Death nothing but this?" and henceforth had no fear. When the
first attack by the British was checked they retired; but, with
dogged resolve, they re-formed and again charged up the hill,
only a second time to be repulsed. The third time they were more
cautious. They began to work round to the weaker defenses of the
American left, where were no redoubts and entrenchments like
those on the right. By this time British ships were throwing
shells among the Americans. Charlestown was burning. The great
column of black smoke, the incessant roar of cannon, and the
dreadful scenes of carnage had affected the defenders. They
wavered; and on the third British charge, having exhausted their
ammunition, they fled from the hill in confusion back to the
narrow neck of land half a mile away, swept now by a British
floating battery. General Burgoyne wrote that, in the third
attack, the discipline and courage of the British private
soldiers also broke down and that when the redoubt was carried
the officers of some corps were almost alone. The British stood
victorious at Bunker Hill. It was, however, a costly victory.
More than a thousand men, nearly half of the attacking force, had
fallen, with an undue proportion of officers.


Philadelphia, far away, did not know what was happening when,
two days before the battle of Bunker Hill, the Continental
Congress settled the question of a leader for a national army. On
the 15th of June John Adams of Massachusetts rose and moved that
the Congress should adopt as its own the army before Boston and
that it should name Washington as Commander-in-Chief. Adams had
deeply pondered the problem. He was certain that New England
would remain united and decided in the struggle, but he was not
so sure of the other colonies. To have a leader from beyond New
England would make for continental unity. Virginia, next to
Massachusetts, had stood in the forefront of the movement, and
Virginia was fortunate in having in the Congress one whose fame
as a soldier ran through all the colonies. There was something to
be said for choosing a commander from the colony which began the
struggle and Adams knew that his colleague from Massachusetts,
John Hancock, a man of wealth and importance, desired the post.
He was conspicuous enough to be President of the Congress. Adams
says that when he made his motion, naming a Virginian, he saw in
Hancock's face "mortification and resentment." He saw, too, that
Washington hurriedly left the room when his name was mentioned.

There could be no doubt as to what the Congress would do.
Unquestionably Washington was the fittest man for the post.
Twenty years earlier he had seen important service in the war
with France. His position and character commanded universal
aspect. The Congress adopted unanimously the motion of Adams and
it only remained to be seen Whether Washington would accept. On
the next day he came to the sitting with his mind made up. The
members, he said, would bear witness to his declaration that he
thought himself unfit for the task. Since, however, they called
him, he would try to do his duty. He would take the command but
he would accept no pay beyond his expenses. Thus it was that
Washington became a great national figure. The man who had long
worn the King's uniform was now his deadliest enemy; and it is
probably true that after this step nothing could have restored
the old relations and reunited the British Empire. The broken
vessel could not be made whole.

Washington spent only a few days in getting ready to take over
his new command. On the 21st of June, four days after Bunker
Hill, he set out from Philadelphia. The colonies were in truth
very remote from each other. The journey to Boston was tedious.
In the previous year John Adams had traveled in the other
direction to the Congress at Philadelphia and, in his journal, he
notes, as if he were traveling in foreign lands, the strange
manners and customs of the other colonies. The journey, so
momentous to Adams, was not new to Washington. Some twenty years
earlier the young Virginian officer had traveled as far as Boston
in the service of King George II. Now he was leader in the war
against King George III. In New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut
he was received impressively. In the warm summer weather the
roads were good enough but many of the rivers were not bridged
and could be crossed only by ferries or at fords. It took nearly
a fortnight to reach Boston.

Washington had ridden only twenty miles on his long journey when
the news reached him of the fight at Bunker Hill. The question
which he asked anxiously shows what was in his mind: "Did the
militia fight?" When the answer was "Yes," he said with relief,
"The liberties of the country are safe." He reached Cambridge on
the 2d of July and on the following day was the chief figure in a
striking ceremony. In the presence of a vast crowd and of the
motley army of volunteers, which was now to be called the
American army, Washington assumed the command. He sat on
horseback under an elm tree and an observer noted that his
appearance was "truly noble and majestic." This was milder praise
than that given a little later by a London paper which said:
"There is not a king in Europe but would look like a valet de
chambre by his side." New England having seen him was henceforth
wholly on his side. His traditions were not those of the
Puritans, of the Ephraims and the Abijahs of the volunteer army,
men whose Old Testament names tell something of the rigor of the
Puritan view of life. Washington, a sharer in the free and often
careless hospitality of his native Virginia, had a different
outlook. In his personal discipline, however, he was not less
Puritan than the strictest of New Englanders. The coming years
were to show that a great leader had taken his fitting place.


Washington, born in 1732, had been trained in self-reliance, for
he had been fatherless from childhood. At the age of sixteen he
was working at the profession, largely self-taught, of a surveyor
of land. At the age of twenty-seven he married Martha Custis, a
rich widow with children, though her marriage with Washington was
childless. His estate on the Potomac River, three hundred miles
from the open sea, recently named Mount Vernon, had been in the
family for nearly a hundred years. There were twenty-five hundred
acres at Mount Vernon with ten miles of frontage on the tidal
river. The Virginia planters were a landowning gentry; when
Washington died he had more than sixty thousand acres. The
growing of tobacco, the one vital industry of the Virginia of the
time, with its half million people, was connected with the
ownership of land. On their great estates the planters lived
remote, with a mail perhaps every fortnight. There were no large
towns, no great factories. Nearly half of the population
consisted of negro slaves. It is one of the ironies of history
that the chief leader in a war marked by a passion for liberty
was a member of a society in which, as another of its members,
Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, said,
there was on the one hand the most insulting despotism and on the
other the most degrading submission. The Virginian landowners
were more absolute masters than the proudest lords of medieval
England. These feudal lords had serfs on their land. The serfs
were attached to the soil and were sold to a new master with the
soil. They were not, however, property, without human rights. On
the other hand, the slaves of the Virginian master were property
like his horses. They could not even call wife and children their
own, for these might be sold at will. It arouses a strange
emotion now when we find Washington offering to exchange a negro
for hogsheads of molasses and rum and writing that the man would
bring a good price, "if kept clean and trim'd up a little when
offered for sale."

In early life Washington had had very little of formal education.
He knew no language but English. When he became world famous and
his friend La Fayette urged him to visit France he refused
because he would seem uncouth if unable to speak the French
tongue. Like another great soldier, the Duke of Wellington, he
was always careful about his dress. There was in him a silent
pride which would brook nothing derogatory to his dignity. No one
could be more methodical. He kept his accounts rigorously,
entering even the cost of repairing a hairpin for a ward. He was
a keen farmer, and it is amusing to find him recording in his
careful journal that there are 844,800 seeds of "New River Grass"
to the pound Troy and so determining how many should be sown to
the acre. Not many youths would write out as did Washington,
apparently from French sources, and read and reread elaborate
"Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and
Conversation." In the fashion of the age of Chesterfield they
portray the perfect gentleman. He is always to remember the
presence of others and not to move, read, or speak without
considering what may be due to them. In the true spirit of the
time he is to learn to defer to persons of superior quality.
Tactless laughter at his own wit, jests that have a sting of idle
gossip, are to be avoided. Reproof is to be given not in anger
but in a sweet and mild temper. The rules descend even to manners
at table and are a revelation of care in self-discipline. We
might imagine Oliver Cromwell drawing up such rules, but not
Napoleon or Wellington.

The class to which Washington belonged prided itself on good
birth and good breeding. We picture him as austere, but, like
Oliver Cromwell, whom in some respects he resembles, he was very
human in his personal relations. He liked a glass of wine. He was
fond of dancing and he went to the theater, even on Sunday. He
was, too, something of a lady's man; "He can be downright
impudent sometimes," wrote a Southern lady, "such impudence,
Fanny, as you and I like." In old age he loved to have the young
and gay about him. He could break into furious oaths and no one
was a better master of what we may call honorable guile in
dealing with wily savages, in circulating falsehoods that would
deceive the enemy in time of war, or in pursuing a business
advantage. He played cards for money and carefully entered loss
and gain in his accounts. He loved horseracing and horses, and
nothing pleased him more than to talk of that noble animal. He
kept hounds and until his burden of cares became too great was an
eager devotee of hunting. His shooting was of a type more heroic
than that of an English squire spending a day on a moor with
guests and gamekeepers and returning to comfort in the evening.
Washington went off on expeditions into the forest lasting many
days and shared the life in the woods of rough men, sleeping
often in the open air. "Happy," he wrote, "is he who gets the
berth nearest the fire." He could spend a happy day in admiring
the trees and the richness of the land on a neighbor's estate.
Always his thoughts were turning to the soil. There was poetry
in him. It was said of Napoleon that the one approach to poetry
in all his writings is the phrase: "The spring is at last
appearing and the leaves are beginning to sprout." Washington, on
the other hand, brooded over the mysteries of life. He pictured
to himself the serenity of a calm old age and always dared to
look death squarely in the face. He was sensitive to human
passion and he felt the wonder of nature in all her ways, her
bounteous response in growth to the skill of man, the delight of
improving the earth in contrast with the vain glory gained by
ravaging it in war. His most striking characteristics were energy
and decision united often with strong likes and dislikes. His
clever secretary, Alexander Hamilton, found, as he said, that his
chief was not remarkable for good temper and resigned his post
because of an impatient rebuke. When a young man serving in the
army of Virginia, Washington had many a tussle with the obstinate
Scottish Governor, Dinwiddie, who thought his vehemence
unmannerly and ungrateful. Gilbert Stuart, who painted several of
his portraits, said that his features showed strong passions and
that, had he not learned self-restraint, his temper would have
been savage. This discipline he acquired. The task was not easy,
but in time he was able to say with truth, "I have no
resentments," and his self-control became so perfect as to be
almost uncanny.

The assumption that Washington fought against an England grown
decadent is not justified. To admit this would be to make his
task seem lighter than it really was. No doubt many of the rich
aristocracy spent idle days of pleasure-seeking with the
comfortable conviction that they could discharge their duties to
society by merely existing, since their luxury made work and the
more they indulged themselves the more happy and profitable
employment would their many dependents enjoy. The eighteenth
century was, however, a wonderful epoch in England. Agriculture
became a new thing under the leadership of great landowners like
Lord Townshend and Coke of Norfolk. Already was abroad in society
a divine discontent at existing abuses. It brought Warren
Hastings to trial on the charge of plundering India. It attacked
slavery, the cruelty of the criminal law, which sent children to
execution for the theft of a few pennies, the brutality of the
prisons, the torpid indifference of the church to the needs of
the masses. New inventions were beginning the age of machinery.
The reform of Parliament, votes for the toiling masses, and a
thousand other improvements were being urged. It was a vigorous,
rich, and arrogant England which Washington confronted.

It is sometimes said of Washington that he was an English country
gentleman. A gentleman he was, but with an experience and
training quite unlike that of a gentleman in England. The young
heir to an English estate might or might not go to a university.
He could, like the young Charles James Fox, become a scholar, but
like Fox, who knew some of the virtues and all the supposed
gentlemanly vices, he might dissipate his energies in hunting,
gambling, and cockfighting. He would almost certainly make the
grand tour of Europe, and, if he had little Latin and less Greek,
he was pretty certain to have some familiarity with Paris and a
smattering of French. The eighteenth century was a period of
magnificent living in England. The great landowner, then, as now,
the magnate of his neighborhood, was likely to rear, if he did
not inherit, one of those vast palaces which are today burdens so
costly to the heirs of their builders. At the beginning of the
century the nation to honor Marlborough for his victories could
think of nothing better than to give him half a million pounds
to build a palace. Even with the colossal wealth produced by
modern industry we should be staggered at a residence costing
millions of dollars. Yet the Duke of Devonshire rivaled at
Chatsworth, and Lord Leicester at Holkham, Marlborough's building
at Blenheim, and many other costly palaces were erected during
the following half century. Their owners sometimes built in order
to surpass a neighbor in grandeur, and to this day great estates
are encumbered by the debts thus incurred in vain show. The heir
to such a property was reared in a pomp and luxury undreamed of
by the frugal young planter of Virginia. Of working for a
livelihood, in the sense in which Washington knew it, the young
Englishman of great estate would never dream.

The Atlantic is a broad sea and even in our own day, when instant
messages flash across it and man himself can fly from shore to
shore in less than a score of hours, it is not easy for those on
one strand to understand the thought of those on the other. Every
community evolves its own spirit not easily to be apprehended by
the onlooker. The state of society in America was vitally
different from that in England. The plain living of Virginia was
in sharp contrast with the magnificence and ease of England. It
is true that we hear of plate and elaborate furniture, of
servants in livery, and much drinking of Port and Madeira, among
the Virginians: They had good horses. Driving, as often they did,
with six in a carriage, they seemed to keep up regal style.
Spaces were wide in a country where one great landowner, Lord
Fairfax, held no less than five million acres. Houses lay
isolated and remote and a gentleman dining out would sometimes
drive his elaborate equipage from twenty to fifty miles. There
was a tradition of lavish hospitality, of gallant men and fair
women, and sometimes of hard and riotous living. Many of the
houses were, however, in a state of decay, with leaking roofs,
battered doors and windows and shabby furniture. To own land in
Virginia did not mean to live in luxurious ease. Land brought in
truth no very large income. It was easier to break new land than
to fertilize that long in use. An acre yielded only eight or ten
bushels of wheat. In England the land was more fruitful. One who
was only a tenant on the estate of Coke of Norfolk died worth
150,000 pounds, and Coke himself had the income of a prince. When
Washington died he was reputed one of the richest men in America
and yet his estate was hardly equal to that of Coke's tenant.

Washington was a good farmer, inventive and enterprising, but he
had difficulties which ruined many of his neighbors. Today much
of his infertile estate of Mount Vernon would hardly grow enough
to pay the taxes. When Washington desired a gardener, or a
bricklayer, or a carpenter, he usually had to buy him in the form
of a convict, or of a negro slave, or of a white man indentured
for a term of years. Such labor required eternal vigilance. The
negro, himself property, had no respect for it in others. He
stole when he could and worked only when the eyes of a master
were upon him. If left in charge of plants or of stock he was
likely to let them perish for lack of water. Washington's losses
of cattle, horses, and sheep from this cause were enormous. The
neglected cattle gave so little milk that at one time Washington,
with a hundred cows, had to buy his butter. Negroes feigned
sickness for weeks at a time. A visitor noted that Washington
spoke to his slaves with a stern harshness. No doubt it was
necessary. The management of this intractable material brought
training in command. If Washington could make negroes efficient
and farming pay in Virginia, he need hardly be afraid to meet any
other type of difficulty.

From the first he was satisfied that the colonies had before them
a difficult struggle. Many still refused to believe that there
was really a state of war. Lexington and Bunker Hill might be
regarded as unfortunate accidents to be explained away in an era
of good feeling when each side should acknowledge the merits of
the other and apologize for its own faults. Washington had few
illusions of this kind. He took the issue in a serious and even
bitter spirit. He knew nothing of the Englishman at home for he
had never set foot outside of the colonies except to visit
Barbados with an invalid half-brother. Even then he noted that
the "gentleman inhabitants" whose "hospitality and genteel
behaviour" he admired were discontented with the tone of the
officials sent out from England. From early life Washington had
seen much of British officers in America. Some of them had been
men of high birth and station who treated the young colonial
officer with due courtesy. When, however, he had served on the
staff of the unfortunate General Braddock in the calamitous
campaign of 1755, he had been offended by the tone of that
leader. Probably it was in these days that Washington first
brooded over the contrasts between the Englishman and the
Virginian. With obstinate complacency Braddock had disregarded
Washington's counsels of prudence. He showed arrogant confidence
in his veteran troops and contempt for the amateur soldiers of
whom Washington was one. In a wild country where rapid movement
was the condition of success Braddock would halt, as Washington
said, "to level every mole hill and to erect bridges over every
brook." His transport was poor and Washington, a lover of horses,
chafed at what he called "vile management" of the horses by the
British soldier. When anything went wrong Braddock blamed, not
the ineffective work of his own men, but the supineness of
Virginia. "He looks upon the country," Washington wrote in wrath,
"I believe, as void of honour and honesty." The hour of trial
came in the fight of July, 1755, when Braddock was defeated and
killed on the march to the Ohio. Washington told his mother that
in the fight the Virginian troops stood their ground and were
nearly all killed but the boasted regulars "were struck with such
a panic that they behaved with more cowardice than it is possible
to conceive." In the anger and resentment of this comment is
found the spirit which made Washington a champion of the colonial
cause from the first hour of disagreement.

That was a fatal day in March, 1765, when the British Parliament
voted that it was just and necessary that a revenue be raised in
America. Washington was uncompromising. After the tax on tea he
derided "our lordly masters in Great Britain." No man, he said,
should scruple for a moment to take up arms against the
threatened tyranny. He and his neighbors of Fairfax County,
Virginia, took the trouble to tell the world by formal resolution
on July 18, 1774, that they were descended not from a conquered
but from a conquering people, that they claimed full equality
with the people of Great Britain, and like them would make their
own laws and impose their own taxes. They were not democrats;
they had no theories of equality; but as "gentlemen and men of
fortune" they would show to others the right path in the crisis
which had arisen. In this resolution spoke the proud spirit of
Washington; and, as he brooded over what was happening, anger
fortified his pride. Of the Tories in Boston, some of them highly
educated men, who with sorrow were walking in what was to them
the hard path of duty, Washington could say later that "there
never existed a more miserable set of beings than these wretched
creatures."

The age of Washington was one of bitter vehemence in political
thought. In England the good Whig was taught that to deny Whig
doctrine was blasphemy, that there was no truth or honesty on the
other side, and that no one should trust a Tory; and usually the
good Whig was true to the teaching he had received. In America
there had hitherto been no national politics. Issues had been
local and passions thus confined exploded all the more fiercely.
Franklin spoke of George III as drinking long draughts of
American blood and of the British people as so depraved and
barbarous as to be the wickedest nation upon earth, inspired by
bloody and insatiable malice and wickedness. To Washington George
III was a tyrant, his ministers were scoundrels, and the British
people were lost to every sense of virtue. The evil of it is
that, for a posterity which listened to no other comment on the
issues of the Revolution, such utterances, instead of being
understood as passing expressions of party bitterness, were taken
as the calm judgments of men held in reverence and awe. Posterity
has agreed that there is nothing to be said for the coercing of
the colonies so resolutely pressed by George III and his
ministers. Posterity can also, however, understand that the
struggle was not between undiluted virtue on the one side and
undiluted vice on the other. Some eighty years after the American
Revolution the Republic created by the Revolution endured the
horrors of civil war rather than accept its own disruption. In
1776 even the most liberal Englishmen felt a similar passion for
the continued unity of the British Empire. Time has reconciled
all schools of thought to the unity lost in the case of the
Empire and to the unity preserved in the case of the Republic,
but on the losing side in each case good men fought with deep
conviction.



CHAPTER II. BOSTON AND QUEBEC

Washington was not a professional soldier, though he had seen the
realities of war and had moved in military society. Perhaps it
was an advantage that he had not received the rigid training of a
regular, for he faced conditions which required an elastic mind.
The force besieging Boston consisted at first chiefly of New
England militia, with companies of minute-men, so called because
of their supposed readiness to fight at a minute's notice.
Washington had been told that he should find 20,000 men under his
command; he found, in fact, a nominal army of 17,000, with
probably not more than 14,000 effective, and the number tended to
decline as the men went away to their homes after the first vivid
interest gave way to the humdrum of military life.

The extensive camp before Boston, as Washington now saw it,
expressed the varied character of his strange command. Cambridge,
the seat of Harvard College, was still only a village with a few
large houses and park-like grounds set among fields of grain, now
trodden down by the soldiers. Here was placed in haphazard style
the motley housing of a military camp. The occupants had followed
their own taste in building. One could see structures covered
with turf, looking like lumps of mother earth, tents made of sail
cloth, huts of bare boards, huts of brick and stone, some having
doors and windows of wattled basketwork. There were not enough
huts to house the army nor camp-kettles for cooking. Blankets
were so few that many of the men were without covering at night.
In the warm summer weather this did not much matter but bleak
autumn and harsh winter would bring bitter privation. The sick in
particular suffered severely, for the hospitals were badly
equipped.

A deep conviction inspired many of the volunteers. They regarded
as brutal tyranny the tax on tea, considered in England as a mild
expedient for raising needed revenue for defense in the colonies.
The men of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, meeting in September,
1774, had declared in high-flown terms that the proposed tax came
from a parricide who held a dagger at their bosoms and that those
who resisted him would earn praises to eternity. From nearly
every colony came similar utterances, and flaming resentment at
injustice filled the volunteer army. Many a soldier would not
touch a cup of tea because tea had been the ruin of his country.
Some wore pinned to their hats or coats the words "Liberty or
Death" and talked of resisting tyranny until "time shall be no
more." It was a dark day for the motherland when so many of her
sons believed that she was the enemy of liberty. The iron of this
conviction entered into the soul of the American nation; at
Gettysburg, nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln, in a noble
utterance which touched the heart of humanity, could appeal to
the days of the Revolution, when "our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty." The colonists
believed that they were fighting for something of import to all
mankind, and the nation which they created believes it still.

An age of war furnishes, however, occasion for the exercise of
baser impulses. The New Englander was a trader by instinct. An
army had come suddenly together and there was golden promise of
contracts for supplies at fat profits. The leader from Virginia,
untutored in such things, was astounded at the greedy scramble.
Before the year 1775 ended Washington wrote to his friend Lee
that he prayed God he might never again have to witness such lack
of public spirit, such jobbing and self-seeking, such "fertility
in all the low arts," as now he found at Cambridge. He declared
that if he could have foreseen all this nothing would have
induced him to take the command. Later, the young La Fayette, who
had left behind him in France wealth and luxury in order to fight
a hard fight in America, was shocked at the slackness and
indifference among the supposed patriots for whose cause he was
making sacrifices so heavy. In the backward parts of the colonies
the population was densely ignorant and had little grasp of the
deeper meaning of the patriot cause.

The army was, as Washington himself said, "a mixed multitude."
There was every variety of dress. Old uniforms, treasured from
the days of the last French wars, had been dug out. A military
coat or a cocked hat was the only semblance of uniform possessed
by some of the officers. Rank was often indicated by ribbons of
different colors tied on the arm. Lads from the farms had come in
their usual dress; a good many of these were hunters from the
frontier wearing the buckskin of the deer they had slain.
Sometimes there was clothing of grimmer material. Later in the
war in American officer recorded that his men had skinned two
dead Indians "from their hips down, for bootlegs, one pair for
the Major, the other for myself." The volunteers varied greatly
in age. There were bearded veterans of sixty and a sprinkling of
lads of sixteen. An observer laughed at the boys and the "great
great grandfathers" who marched side by side in the army before
Boston. Occasionally a black face was seen in the ranks. One of
Washington's tasks was to reduce the disparity of years and
especially to secure men who could shoot. In the first enthusiasm
of 1775 so many men volunteered in Virginia that a selection was
made on the basis of accuracy in shooting. The men fired at a
range of one hundred and fifty yards at an outline of a man's
nose in chalk on a board. Each man had a single shot and the
first men shot the nose entirely away.

Undoubtedly there was the finest material among the men lounging
about their quarters at Cambridge in fashion so unmilitary. In
physique they were larger than the British soldier, a result due
to abundant food and free life in the open air from childhood.
Most of the men supplied their own uniform and rifles and much
barter went on in the hours after drill. The men made and sold
shoes, clothes, and even arms. They were accustomed to farm life
and good at digging and throwing up entrenchments. The colonial
mode of waging war was, however, not that of Europe. To the
regular soldier of the time even earth entrenchments seemed a
sign of cowardice. The brave man would come out on the open to
face his foe. Earl Percy, who rescued the harassed British on the
day of Lexington, had the poorest possible opinion of those on
what he called the rebel side. To him they were intriguing
rascals, hypocrites, cowards, with sinister designs to ruin the
Empire. But he was forced to admit that they fought well and
faced death willingly.

In time Washington gathered about him a fine body of officers,
brave, steady, and efficient. On the great issue they, like
himself, had unchanging conviction, and they and he saved the
revolution. But a good many of his difficulties were due to bad
officers. He had himself the reverence for gentility, the belief
in an ordered grading of society, characteristic of his class in
that age. In Virginia the relation of master and servant was well
understood and the tone of authority was readily accepted. In New
England conceptions of equality were more advanced. The extent to
which the people would brook the despotism of military command
was uncertain. From the first some of the volunteers had elected
their officers. The result was that intriguing demagogues were
sometimes chosen. The Massachusetts troops, wrote a Connecticut
captain, not free, perhaps, from local jealousy, were "commanded
by a most despicable set of officers." At Bunker Hill officers of
this type shirked the fight and their men, left without leaders,
joined in the panicky retreat of that day. Other officers sent
away soldiers to work on their farms while at the same time they
drew for them public pay. At a later time Washington wrote to a
friend wise counsel about the choice of officers. "Take none but
gentlemen; let no local attachment influence you; do not suffer
your good nature to say Yes when you ought to say No. Remember
that it is a public, not a private cause." What he desired was
the gentleman's chivalry of refinement, sense of honor, dignity
of character, and freedom from mere self-seeking. The prime
qualities of a good officer, as he often said, were authority and
decision. It is probably true of democracies that they prefer and
will follow the man who will take with them a strong tone. Little
men, however, cannot see this and think to gain support by shifty
changes of opinion to please the multitude. What authority and
decision could be expected from an officer of the peasant type,
elected by his own men? How could he dominate men whose short
term of service was expiring and who had to be coaxed to renew
it? Some elected officers had to promise to pool their pay with
that of their men. In one company an officer fulfilled the double
position of captain and barber. In time, however, the authority
of military rank came to be respected throughout the whole army.
An amusing contrast with earlier conditions is found in 1779 when
a captain was tried by a brigade court-martial and dismissed from
the service for intimate association with the wagon-maker of the
brigade.

The first thing to do at Cambridge was to get rid of the
inefficient and the corrupt. Washington had never any belief in a
militia army. From his earliest days as a soldier he had favored
conscription, even in free Virginia. He had then found quite
ineffective the "whooping, holloing gentlemen soldiers" of the
volunteer force of the colony among whom "every individual has
his own crude notion of things and must undertake to direct. If
his advice is neglected he thinks himself slighted, abused, and
injured and, to redress his wrongs, will depart for his home."
Washington found at Cambridge too many officers. Then as later in
the American army there were swarms of colonels. The officers
from Massachusetts, conscious that they had seen the first
fighting in the great cause, expected special consideration from
a stranger serving on their own soil. Soon they had a rude
awakening. Washington broke a Massachusetts colonel and two
captains because they had proved cowards at Bunker Hill, two more
captains for fraud in drawing pay and provisions for men who did
not exist, and still another for absence from his post when he
was needed. He put in jail a colonel, a major, and three or four
other officers. "New lords, new laws," wrote in his diary Mr.
Emerson, the chaplain: "the Generals Washington and Lee are upon
the lines every day... great distinction is made between officers
and soldiers."

The term of all the volunteers in Washington's any expired by the
end of 1775, so that he had to create a new army during the siege
of Boston. He spoke scornfully of an enemy so little enterprising
as to remain supine during the process. But probably the British
were wise to avoid a venture inland and to remain in touch with
their fleet. Washington made them uneasy when he drove away the
cattle from the neighborhood. Soon beef was selling in Boston for
as much as eighteen pence a pound. Food might reach Boston in
ships but supplies even by sea were insecure, for the Americans
soon had privateers manned by seamen familiar with New England
waters and happy in expected gains from prize money. The British
were anxious about the elementary problem of food. They might
have made Washington more uncomfortable by forays and alarms.
Only reluctantly, however, did Howe, who took over the command on
October 10, 1775, admit to himself that this was a real war. He
still hoped for settlement without further bloodshed. Washington
was glad to learn that the British were laying in supplies of
coal for the winter. It meant that they intended to stay in
Boston, where, more than in any other place, he could make
trouble for them.

Washington had more on his mind than the creation of an army and
the siege of Boston. He had also to decide the strategy of the
war. On the long American sea front Boston alone remained in
British hands. New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and other ports
farther south were all, for the time, on the side of the
Revolution. Boston was not a good naval base for the British,
since it commanded no great waterway leading inland. The
sprawling colonies, from the rock-bound coast of New England to
the swamps and forests of Georgia, were strong in their
incoherent vastness. There were a thousand miles of seacoast.
Only rarely were considerable settlements to be found more than a
hundred miles distant from salt water. An army marching to the
interior would have increasing difficulties from transport and
supplies. Wherever water routes could be used the naval power of
the British gave them an advantage. One such route was the
Hudson, less a river than a navigable arm of the sea, leading to
the heart of the colony of New York, its upper waters almost
touching Lake George and Lake Champlain, which in turn led to the
St. Lawrence in Canada and thence to the sea. Canada was held by
the British; and it was clear that, if they should take the city
of New York, they might command the whole line from the mouth of
the Hudson to the St. Lawrence, and so cut off New England from
the other colonies and overcome a divided enemy. To foil this
policy Washington planned to hold New York and to capture Canada.
With Canada in line the union of the colonies would be indeed
continental, and, if the British were driven from Boston, they
would have no secure foothold in North America.

The danger from Canada had always been a source of anxiety to the
English colonies. The French had made Canada a base for attempts
to drive the English from North America. During many decades war
had raged along the Canadian frontier. With the cession of Canada
to Britain in 1763 this danger had vanished. The old habit
endured, however, of fear of Canada. When, in 1774, the British
Parliament passed the bill for the government of Canada known as
the Quebec Act, there was violent clamor. The measure was assumed
to be a calculated threat against colonial liberty. The Quebec
Act continued in Canada the French civil law and the ancient
privileges of the Roman Catholic Church. It guaranteed order in
the wild western region north of the Ohio, taken recently from
France, by placing it under the authority long exercised there of
the Governor of Quebec. Only a vivid imagination would conceive
that to allow to the French in Canada their old loved customs and
laws involved designs against the freedom under English law in
the other colonies, or that to let the Canadians retain in
respect to religion what they had always possessed meant a
sinister plot against the Protestantism of the English colonies.
Yet Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the greatest mind in the American
Revolution, had frantic suspicions. French laws in Canada
involved, he said, the extension of French despotism in the
English colonies. The privileges continued to the Roman Catholic
Church in Canada would be followed in due course by the
Inquisition, the burning of heretics at the stake in Boston and
New York, and the bringing from Europe of Roman Catholic settlers
who would prove tools for the destruction of religious liberty.
Military rule at Quebec meant, sooner or later, despotism
everywhere in America. We may smile now at the youthful
Hamilton's picture of "dark designs" and "deceitful wiles" on the
part of that fierce Protestant George III to establish Roman
Catholic despotism, but the colonies regarded the danger as
serious. The quick remedy would be simply to take Canada, as
Washington now planned.

To this end something had been done before Washington assumed the
command. The British Fort Ticonderoga, on the neck of land
separating Lake Champlain from Lake George, commanded the route
from New York to Canada. The fight at Lexington in April had been
quickly followed by aggressive action against this British
stronghold. No news of Lexington had reached the fort when early
in May Colonel Ethan Allen, with Benedict Arnold serving as a
volunteer in his force of eighty-three men, arrived in friendly
guise. The fort was held by only forty-eight British; with the
menace from France at last ended they felt secure; discipline was
slack, for there was nothing to do. The incompetent commander
testified that he lent Allen twenty men for some rough work on
the lake. By evening Allen had them all drunk and then it was
easy, without firing a shot, to capture the fort with a rush. The
door to Canada was open. Great stores of ammunition and a hundred
and twenty guns, which in due course were used against the
British at Boston, fell into American hands.

About Canada Washington was ill-informed. He thought of the
Canadians as if they were Virginians or New Yorkers. They had
been recently conquered by Britain; their new king was a tyrant;
they would desire liberty and would welcome an American army. So
reasoned Washington, but without knowledge. The Canadians were a
conquered people, but they had found the British king no tyrant
and they had experienced the paradox of being freer under the
conqueror than they had been under their own sovereign. The last
days of French rule in Canada were disgraced by corruption and
tyranny almost unbelievable. The Canadian peasant had been
cruelly robbed and he had conceived for his French rulers a
dislike which appears still in his attitude towards the
motherland of France. For his new British master he had assuredly
no love, but he was no longer dragged off to war and his property
was not plundered. He was free, too, to speak his mind. During
the first twenty years after the British conquest of Canada the
Canadian French matured indeed an assertive liberty not even
dreamed of during the previous century and a half of French rule.

The British tyranny which Washington pictured in Canada was thus
not very real. He underestimated, too, the antagonism between the
Roman Catholics of Canada and the Protestants of the English
colonies. The Congress at Philadelphia in denouncing the Quebec
Act had accused the Catholic Church of bigotry, persecution,
murder, and rebellion. This was no very tactful appeal for
sympathy to the sons of that France which was still the eldest
daughter of the Church and it was hardly helped by a maladroit
turn suggesting that "low-minded infirmities" should not permit
such differences to block union in the sacred cause of liberty.
Washington believed that two battalions of Canadians might be
recruited to fight the British, and that the French Acadians of
Nova Scotia, a people so remote that most of them hardly knew
what the war was about, were tingling with sympathy for the
American cause. In truth the Canadian was not prepared to fight
on either side. What the priest and the landowner could do to
make him fight for Britain was done, but, for all that, Sir Guy
Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting impossible.

Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which
held Canada. He saw that from Canada would be determined the
attitude of the savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the
interior; he saw, too, that Quebec as a military base in British
hands would be a source of grave danger. The easy capture of Fort
Ticonderoga led him to underrate difficulties. If Ticonderoga why
not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be occupied later, the Acadians
helping. Thus it happened that, soon after taking over the
command, Washington was busy with a plan for the conquest of
Canada. Two forces were to advance into that country; one by way
of Lake Champlain under General Schuyler and the other through
the forests of Maine under Benedict Arnold.

Schuyler was obliged through illness to give up his command, and
it was an odd fortune of war that put General Richard Montgomery
at the head of the expedition going by way of Lake Champlain.
Montgomery had served with Wolfe at the taking of Louisbourg and
had been an officer in the proud British army which had received
the surrender of Canada in 1760. Not without searching of heart
had Montgomery turned against his former sovereign. He was living
in America when war broke out; he had married into an American
family of position; and he had come to the view that vital
liberty was challenged by the King. Now he did his work well, in
spite of very bad material in his army. His New Englanders were,
he said, "every man a general and not one of them a soldier."
They feigned sickness, though, as far as he had learned, there
was "not a man dead of any distemper." No better were the men
from New York, "the sweepings of the streets" with morals
"infamous." Of the officers, too, Montgomery had a poor opinion.
Like Washington he declared that it was necessary to get
gentlemen, men of education and integrity, as officers, or
disaster would follow. Nevertheless St. Johns, a British post on
the Richelieu, about thirty miles across country from Montreal,
fell to Montgomery on the 3d of November, after a siege of six
weeks; and British regulars under Major Preston, a brave and
competent officer, yielded to a crude volunteer army with whole
regiments lacking uniforms. Montreal could make no defense. On
the 12th of November Montgomery entered Montreal and was in
control of the St. Lawrence almost to the cliffs of Quebec.
Canada seemed indeed an easy conquest.

The adventurous Benedict Arnold went on an expedition more
hazardous. He had persuaded Washington of the impossible, that he
could advance through the wilderness from the seacoast of Maine
and take Quebec by surprise. News travels even by forest
pathways. Arnold made a wonderful effort. Chill autumn was upon
him when, on the 25th of September, with about a thousand picked
men, he began to advance up the Kennebec River and over the
height of land to the upper waters of the Chaudiere, which
discharges into the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. There were
heavy rains. Sometimes the men had to wade breast high in
dragging heavy and leaking boats over the difficult places. A
good many men died of starvation. Others deserted and turned
back. The indomitable Arnold pressed on, however, and on the 9th
of November, a few days before Montgomery occupied Montreal, he
stood with some six hundred worn and shivering men on the strand
of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. He had not surprised the
city and it looked grim and inaccessible as he surveyed it across
the great river. In the autumn gales it was not easy to carry
over his little army in small boats. But this he accomplished and
then waited for Montgomery to join him.

By the 3d of December Montgomery was with Arnold before Quebec.
They had hardly more than a thousand effective troops, together
with a few hundred Canadians, upon whom no reliance could be
placed. Carleton, commanding at Quebec, sat tight and would hold
no communication with despised "rebels." "They all pretend to be
gentlemen," said an astonished British officer in Quebec, when he
heard that among the American officers now captured by the
British there were a former blacksmith, a butcher, a shoemaker,
and an innkeeper. Montgomery was stung to violent threats by
Carleton's contempt, but never could he draw from Carleton a
reply. At last Montgomery tried, in the dark of early morning of
New Year's Day, 1776, to carry Quebec by storm. He was to lead an
attack on the Lower Town from the west side, while Arnold was to
enter from the opposite side. When they met in the center they
were to storm the citadel on the heights above. They counted on
the help of the French inhabitants, from whom Carleton said
bitterly enough that he had nothing to fear in prosperity and
nothing to hope for in adversity. Arnold pressed his part of the
attack with vigor and penetrated to the streets of the Lower Town
where he fell wounded. Captain Daniel Morgan, who took over the
command, was made prisoner.

Montgomery's fate was more tragic. In spite of protests from his
officers, he led in person the attack from the west side of the
fortress. The advance was along a narrow road under the towering
cliffs of a great precipice. The attack was expected by the
British and the guard at the barrier was ordered to hold its fire
until the enemy was near. Suddenly there was a roar of cannon and
the assailants not swept down fled in panic. With the morning
light the dead head of Montgomery was found protruding from the
snow. He was mourned by Washington and with reason. He had
talents and character which might have made him one of the chief
leaders of the revolutionary army. Elsewhere, too, was he
mourned. His father, an Irish landowner, had been a member of the
British Parliament, and he himself was a Whig, known to Fox and
Burke. When news of his death reached England eulogies upon him
came from the Whig benches in Parliament which could not have
been stronger had he died fighting for the King.


While the outlook in Canada grew steadily darker, the American
cause prospered before Boston. There Howe was not at ease. If it
was really to be war, which he still doubted, it would be well to
seek some other base. Washington helped Howe to take action.
Dorchester Heights commanded Boston as critically from the south
as did Bunker Hill from the north. By the end of February
Washington had British cannon, brought with heavy labor from
Ticonderoga, and then he lost no time. On the morning of March 5,
1776, Howe awoke to find that, under cover of a heavy
bombardment, American troops had occupied Dorchester Heights and
that if he would dislodge them he must make another attack
similar to that at Bunker Hill. The alternative of stiff fighting
was the evacuation of Boston. Howe, though dilatory, was a good
fighting soldier. His defects as a general in America sprang in
part from his belief that the war was unjust and that delay might
bring counsels making for peace and save bloodshed. His first
decision was to attack, but a furious gale thwarted his purpose,
and he then prepared for the inevitable step.

Washington divined Howe's purpose and there was a tacit agreement
that the retiring army should not be molested. Howe destroyed
munitions of war which he could not take away but he left intact
the powerful defenses of Boston, defenses reared at the cost of
Britain. Many of the better class of the inhabitants, British in
their sympathies, were now face to face with bitter sorrow and
sacrifice. Passions were so aroused that a hard fate awaited them
should they remain in Boston and they decided to leave with the
British army. Travel by land was blocked; they could go only by
sea. When the time came to depart, laden carriages, trucks, and
wheelbarrows crowded to the quays through the narrow streets and
a sad procession of exiles went out from their homes. A profane
critic said that they moved "as if the very devil was after
them." No doubt many of them would have been arrogant and
merciless to "rebels" had theirs been the triumph. But the day
was above all a day of sorrow. Edward Winslow, a strong leader
among them, tells of his tears "at leaving our once happy town of
Boston." The ships, a forest of masts, set sail and, crowded with
soldiers and refugees, headed straight out to sea for Halifax.
Abigail, wife of John Adams, a clever woman, watched the
departure of the fleet with gladness in her heart. She thought
that never before had been seen in America so many ships bearing
so many people. Washington's army marched joyously into Boston.
Joyous it might well be since, for the moment, powerful Britain
was not secure in a single foot of territory in the former
colonies. If Quebec should fall the continent would be almost
conquered.

Quebec did not fall. All through the winter the Americans held on
before the place. They shivered from cold. They suffered from the
dread disease smallpox. They had difficulty in getting food. The
Canadians were insistent on having good money for what they
offered and since good money was not always in the treasury the
invading army sometimes used violence. Then the Canadians became
more reserved and chilling than ever. In hope of mending matters
Congress sent a commission to Montreal in the spring of 1776. Its
chairman was Benjamin Franklin and, with him, were two leading
Roman Catholics, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a great landowner
of Maryland, and his brother John, a priest, afterwards
Archbishop of Baltimore. It was not easy to represent as the
liberator of the Catholic Canadians the Congress which had
denounced in scathing terms the concessions in the Quebec Act to
the Catholic Church. Franklin was a master of conciliation, but
before he achieved anything a dramatic event happened. On the 6th
of May, British ships arrived at Quebec. The inhabitants rushed
to the ramparts. Cries of joy passed from street to street and
they reached the little American army, now under General Thomas,
encamped on the Plains of Abraham. Panic seized the small force
which had held on so long. On the ships were ten thousand fresh
British troops. The one thing for the Americans to do was to get
away; and they fled, leaving behind guns, supplies, even clothing
and private papers. Five days later Franklin, at Montreal, was
dismayed by the distressing news of disaster.

Congress sent six regiments to reinforce the army which had fled
from Quebec. It was a desperate venture. Washington's orders were
that the Americans should fight the new British army as near
Quebec as possible. The decisive struggle took place on the 8th
of June. An American force under the command of General Thompson
attacked Three Rivers, a town on the St. Lawrence, half way
between Quebec and Montreal. They were repulsed and the general
was taken prisoner. The wonder is indeed that the army was not
annihilated. Then followed a disastrous retreat. Short of
supplies, ravaged by smallpox, and in bad weather, the invaders
tried to make their way back to Lake Champlain. They evacuated
Montreal. It is hard enough in the day of success to hold
together an untrained army. In the day of defeat such a force is
apt to become a mere rabble. Some of the American regiments
preserved discipline. Others fell into complete disorder as, weak
and discouraged, they retired to Lake Champlain. Many soldiers
perished of disease. "I did not look into a hut or a tent," says
an observer, "in which I did not find a dead or dying man." Those
who had huts were fortunate. The fate of some was to die without
medical care and without cover. By the end of June what was left.
of the force had reached Crown Point on Lake Champlain.

Benedict Arnold, who had been wounded at Quebec, was now at Crown
Point. Competent critics of the war have held that what Arnold
now did saved the Revolution. In another scene, before the summer
ended, the British had taken New York and made themselves masters
of the lower Hudson. Had they reached in the same season the
upper Hudson by way of Lake Champlain they would have struck
blows doubly staggering. This Arnold saw, and his object was to
delay, if he could not defeat, the British advance. There was no
road through the dense forest by the shores of Lake Champlain and
Lake George to the upper Hudson. The British must go down the
lake in boats. This General Carleton had foreseen and he had
urged that with the fleet sent to Quebec should be sent from
England, in sections, boats which could be quickly carried past
the rapids of the Richelieu River and launched on Lake Champlain.
They had not come and the only thing for Carleton to do was to
build a flotilla which could carry an army up the lake and attack
Crown Point. The thing was done but skilled workmen were few and
not until the 6th of October were the little ships afloat on Lake
Champlain. Arnold, too, spent the summer in building boats to
meet the attack and it was a strange turn in warfare which now
made him commander in a naval fight. There was a brisk struggle
on Lake Champlain. Carleton had a score or so of vessels; Arnold
not so many. But he delayed Carleton. When he was beaten on the
water he burned the ships not captured and took to the land. When
he could no longer hold Crown Point he burned that place and
retreated to Ticonderoga.

By this time it was late autumn. The British were far from their
base and the Americans were retreating into a friendly country.
There is little doubt that Carleton could have taken Fort
Ticonderoga. It fell quite easily less than a year later. Some of
his officers urged him to press on and do it. But the leaves had
already fallen, the bleak winter was near, and Carleton pictured
to himself an army buried deeply in an enemy country and
separated from its base by many scores of miles of lake and
forest. He withdrew to Canada and left Lake Champlain to the
Americans.



CHAPTER III. INDEPENDENCE

Well-meaning people in England found it difficult to understand
the intensity of feeling in America. Britain had piled up a huge
debt in driving France from America. Landowners were paying in
taxes no less than twenty per cent of their incomes from land.
The people who had chiefly benefited by the humiliation of France
were the colonists, now freed from hostile menace and secure for
extension over a whole continent. Why should not they pay some
share of the cost of their own security? Certain facts tended to
make Englishmen indignant with the Americans. Every effort had
failed to get them to pay willingly for their defense. Before the
Stamp Act had become law in 1765 the colonies were given a whole
year to devise the raising of money in any way which they liked
better. The burden of what was asked would be light. Why should
not they agree to bear it? Why this talk, repeated by the Whigs
in the British Parliament, of brutal tyranny, oppression, hired
minions imposing slavery, and so on. Where were the oppressed?
Could any one point to a single person who before war broke out
had known British tyranny? What suffering could any one point to
as the result of the tax on tea? The people of England paid a tax
on tea four times heavier than that paid in America. Was not the
British Parliament supreme over the whole Empire? Did not the
colonies themselves admit that it had the right to control their
trade overseas? And if men shirk their duty should they not come
under some law of compulsion?

It was thus that many a plain man reasoned in England. The plain
man in America had his own opposing point of view. Debts and
taxes in England were not his concern. He remembered the recent
war as vividly as did the Englishman, and, if the English paid
its cost in gold, he had paid his share in blood and tears. Who
made up the armies led by the British generals in America? More
than half the total number who served in America came from the
colonies, the colonies which had barely a third of the population
of Great Britain. True, Britain paid the bill in money but why
not? She was rich with a vast accumulated capital. The war,
partly in America, had given her the key to the wealth of India.
Look at the magnificence, the pomp of servants, plate and
pictures, the parks and gardens, of hundreds of English country
houses, and compare this opulence with the simple mode of life,
simplicity imposed by necessity, of a country gentleman like
George Washington of Virginia, reputed to be the richest man in
America. Thousands of tenants in England, owning no acre of land,
were making a larger income than was possible in America to any
owner of broad acres. It was true that America had gained from
the late war. The foreign enemy had been struck down. But had he
not been struck down too for England? Had there not been far more
dread in England of invasion by France and had not the colonies
by helping to ruin France freed England as much as England had
freed them? If now the colonies were asked to pay a share of the
bill for the British army that was a matter for discussion. They
had never before done it and they must not be told that they had
to meet the demand within a year or be compelled to pay. Was it
not to impose tyranny and slavery to tell a people that their
property would be taken by force if they did not choose to give
it? What free man would not rather die than yield on such a
point?

The familiar workings of modern democracy have taught us that a
great political issue must be discussed in broad terms of high
praise or severe blame. The contestants will exaggerate both the
virtue of the side they espouse and the malignity of the opposing
side; nice discrimination is not possible. It was inevitable that
the dispute with the colonies should arouse angry vehemence on
both sides. The passionate speech of Patrick Henry in Virginia,
in 1763, which made him famous, and was the forerunner of his
later appeal, "Give me Liberty or give me Death, " related to so
prosaic a question as the right of disallowance by England of an
act passed by a colonial legislature, a right exercised long and
often before that time and to this day a part of the
constitutional machinery of the British Empire. Few men have
lived more serenely poised than Washington, yet, as we have seen,
he hated the British with an implacable hatred. He was a humane
man. In earlier years, Indian raids on the farmers of Virginia
had stirred him to "deadly sorrow," and later, during his retreat
from New York, he was moved by the cries of the weak and infirm.
Yet the same man felt no touch of pity for the Loyalists of the
Revolution. To him they were detestable parricides, vile
traitors, with no right to live. When we find this note in
Washington, in America, we hardly wonder that the high Tory,
Samuel Johnson, in England, should write that the proposed
taxation was no tyranny, that it had not been imposed earlier
because "we do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he is
an ox," and that the Americans were "a race of convicts, and
ought to be thankful for anything which we allow them short of
hanging." Tyranny and treason are both ugly things. Washington
believed that he was fighting the one, Johnson that he was
fighting the other, and neither side would admit the charge
against itself.

Such are the passions aroused by civil strife. We need not now,
when they are, or ought to be, dead, spend any time in deploring
them. It suffices to explain them and the events to which they
led. There was one and really only one final issue. Were the
American colonies free to govern themselves as they liked or
might their government in the last analysis be regulated by Great
Britain? The truth is that the colonies had reached a condition
in which they regarded themselves as British states with their
own parliaments, exercising complete jurisdiction in their own
affairs. They intended to use their own judgment and they were as
restless under attempted control from England as England would
have been under control from America. We can indeed always
understand the point of view of Washington if we reverse the
position and imagine what an Englishman would have thought of a
claim by America to tax him.

An ancient and proud society is reluctant to change. After a long
and successful war England was prosperous. To her now came
riches from India and the ends of the earth. In society there was
such lavish expenditure that Horace Walpole declared an income of
twenty thousand pounds a year was barely enough. England had an
aristocracy the proudest in the world, for it had not only rank
but wealth. The English people were certain of the invincible
superiority of their nation. Every Englishman was taught, as
Disraeli said of a later period, to believe that he occupied a
position better than any one else of his own degree in any other
country in the world. The merchant in England was believed to
surpass all others in wealth and integrity, the manufacturer to
have no rivals in skill, the British sailor to stand in a class
by himself, the British officer to express the last word in
chivalry. It followed, of course, that the motherland was
superior to her children overseas. The colonies had no
aristocracy, no great landowners living in stately palaces. They
had almost no manufactures. They had no imposing state system
with places and pensions from which the fortunate might reap a
harvest of ten or even twenty thousand pounds a year. They had no
ancient universities thronged by gilded youth who, if noble,
might secure degrees without the trying ceremony of an
examination. They had no Established Church with the ancient
glories of its cathedrals. In all America there was not even a
bishop. In spite of these contrasts the English Whigs insisted
upon the political equality with themselves of the American
colonists. The Tory squire, however, shared Samuel Johnson's view
that colonists were either traders or farmers and that colonial
shopkeeping society was vulgar and contemptible.

George III was ill-fitted by nature to deal with the crisis. The
King was not wholly without natural parts, for his own firm will
had achieved what earlier kings had tried and failed to do; he
had mastered Parliament, made it his obedient tool and himself
for a time a despot. He had some admirable virtues. He was a
family man, the father of fifteen children. He liked quiet
amusements and had wholesome tastes. If industry and belief in
his own aims could of themselves make a man great we might
reverence George. He wrote once to Lord North: "I have no object
but to be of use: if that is ensured I am completely happy." The
King was always busy. Ceaseless industry does not, however,
include every virtue, or the author of all evil would rank high
in goodness. Wisdom must be the pilot of good intentions. George
was not wise. He was ill-educated. He had never traveled. He had
no power to see the point of view of others.

As if nature had not sufficiently handicapped George for a high
part, fate placed him on the throne at the immature age of
twenty-two. Henceforth the boy was master, not pupil. Great
nobles and obsequious prelates did him reverence. Ignorant and
obstinate, the young King was determined not only to reign but to
rule, in spite of the new doctrine that Parliament, not the King,
carried on the affairs of government through the leader of the
majority in the House of Commons, already known as the Prime
Minister. George could not really change what was the last
expression of political forces in England. The rule of Parliament
had come to stay. Through it and it alone could the realm be
governed. This power, however, though it could not be destroyed,
might be controlled. Parliament, while retaining all its
privileges, might yet carry out the wishes of the sovereign. The
King might be his own Prime Minister. The thing could be done if
the King's friends held a majority of the seats and would do what
their master directed. It was a dark day for England when a king
found that he could play off one faction against another, buy a
majority in Parliament, and retain it either by paying with
guineas or with posts and dignities which the bought Parliament
left in his gift. This corruption it was which ruined the first
British Empire.

We need not doubt that George thought it his right and also his
duty to coerce America, or rather, as he said, the clamorous
minority which was trying to force rebellion. He showed no lack
of sincerity. On October 26, 1775, while Washington was besieging
Boston, he opened Parliament with a speech which at any rate made
the issue clear enough. Britain would not give up colonies which
she had founded with severe toil and nursed with great kindness.
Her army and her navy, both now increased in size, would make her
power respected. She would not, however, deal harshly with her
erring children. Royal mercy would be shown to those who admitted
their error and they need not come to England to secure it.
Persons in America would be authorized to grant pardons and
furnish the guarantees which would proceed from the royal
clemency.

Such was the magnanimity of George III. Washington's rage at the
tone of the speech is almost amusing in its vehemence. He, with a
mind conscious of rectitude and sacrifice in a great cause, to
ask pardon for his course! He to bend the knee to this tyrant
overseas! Washington himself was not highly gifted with
imagination. He never realized the strength of the forces in
England arrayed on his own side and attributed to the English, as
a whole, sinister and malignant designs always condemned by the
great mass of the English people. They, no less than the
Americans, were the victims of a turn in politics which, for a
brief period, and for only a brief period, left power in the
hands of a corrupt Parliament and a corrupting king.

Ministers were not all corrupt or place-hunters. One of them, the
Earl of Dartmouth, was a saint in spirit. Lord North, the king's
chief minister, was not corrupt. He disliked his office and
wished to leave it. In truth no sweeping simplicity of
condemnation will include all the ministers of George III except
on this one point that they allowed to dictate their policy a
narrow-minded and ignorant king. It was their right to furnish a
policy and to exercise the powers of government, appoint to
office, spend the public revenues. Instead they let the King say
that the opinions of his ministers had no avail with him. If we
ask why, the answer is that there was a mixture of motives. North
stayed in office because the King appealed to his loyalty, a plea
hard to resist under an ancient monarchy. Others stayed from love
of power or for what they could get. In that golden age of
patronage it was possible for a man to hold a plurality of
offices which would bring to himself many thousands of pounds a
year, and also to secure the reversion of offices and pensions to
his children. Horace Walpole spent a long life in luxurious ease
because of offices with high pay and few duties secured in the
distant days of his father's political power. Contracts to supply
the army and the navy went to friends of the government,
sometimes with disastrous results, since the contractor often
knew nothing of the business he undertook. When, in 1777, the
Admiralty boasted that thirty-five ships of war were ready to put
to sea it was found that there were in fact only six. The system
nearly ruined the navy. It actually happened that planks of a
man-of-war fell out through rot and that she sank. Often ropes
and spars could not be had when most needed. When a public loan
was floated the King's friends and they alone were given the
shares at a price which enabled them to make large profits on the
stock market.

The system could endure only as long as the King's friends had a
majority in the House of Commons. Elections must be looked after.
The King must have those on whom he could always depend. He
controlled offices and pensions. With these things he bought
members and he had to keep them bought by repeating the benefits.
If the holder of a public office was thought to be dying the King
was already naming to his Prime Minister the person to whom the
office must go when death should occur. He insisted that many
posts previously granted for life should now be given during his
pleasure so that he might dismiss the holders at will. He watched
the words and the votes in Parliament of public men and woe to
those in his power if they displeased him. When he knew that Fox,
his great antagonist, would be absent from Parliament he pressed
through measures which Fox would have opposed. It was not until
George III was King that the buying and selling of boroughs
became common. The King bought votes in the boroughs by paying
high prices for trifles. He even went over the lists of voters
and had names of servants of the government inserted if this
seemed needed to make a majority secure. One of the most
unedifying scenes in English history is that of George making a
purchase in a shop at Windsor and because of this patronage
asking for the shopkeeper's support in a local election. The King
was saving and penurious in his habits that he might have the
more money to buy votes. When he had no money left he would go to
Parliament and ask for a special grant for his needs and the
bought members could not refuse the money for their buying.

The people of England knew that Parliament was corrupt. But how
to end the system? The press was not free. Some of it the
government bought and the rest it tried to intimidate though
often happily in vain. Only fragments of the debates in
Parliament were published. Not until 1779 did the House of
Commons admit the public to its galleries. No great political
meetings were allowed until just before the American war and in
any case the masses had no votes. The great landowners had in
their control a majority of the constituencies. There were scores
of pocket boroughs in which their nominees were as certain of
election as peers were of their seats in the House of Lords. The
disease of England was deep-seated. A wise king could do much,
but while George III survived--and his reign lasted sixty
years--there was no hope of a wise king. A strong minister could
impose his will on the King. But only time and circumstance could
evolve a strong minister. Time and circumstance at length
produced the younger Pitt. But it needed the tragedy of two long
wars--those against the colonies and revolutionary France--before
the nation finally threw off the system which permitted the
personal rule of George III and caused the disruption of the
Empire. It may thus be said with some truth that George
Washington was instrumental in the salvation of England.

The ministers of George III loved the sports, the rivalries, the
ease, the remoteness of their rural magnificence. Perverse
fashion kept them in London even in April and May for "the
season," just when in the country nature was most alluring.
Otherwise they were off to their estates whenever they could get
away from town. The American Revolution was not remotely affected
by this habit. With ministers long absent in the country
important questions were postponed or forgotten. The crisis which
in the end brought France into the war was partly due to the
carelessness of a minister hurrying away to the country. Lord
George Germain, who directed military operations in America,
dictated a letter which would have caused General Howe to move
northward from New York to meet General Burgoyne advancing from
Canada. Germain went off to the country without waiting to sign
the letter; it was mislaid among other papers; Howe was without
needed instructions; and the disaster followed of Burgoyne's
surrender. Fox pointed out, that, at a time when there was a
danger that a foreign army might land in England, not one of the
King's ministers was less than fifty miles from London. They were
in their parks and gardens, or hunting or fishing. Nor did they
stay away for a few days only. The absence was for weeks or even
months.

It is to the credit of Whig leaders in England, landowners and
aristocrats as they were, that they supported with passion the
American cause. In America, where the forces of the Revolution
were in control, the Loyalist who dared to be bold for his
opinions was likely to be tarred and feathered and to lose his
property. There was an embittered intolerance. In England,
however, it was an open question in society whether to be for or
against the American cause. The Duke of Richmond, a great
grandson of Charles II, said in the House of Lords that under no
code should the fighting Americans be considered traitors. What
they did was "perfectly justifiable in every possible political
and moral sense." All the world knows that Chatham and Burke and
Fox urged the conciliation of America and hundreds took the same
stand. Burke said of General Conway, a man of position, that when
he secured a majority in the House of Commons against the Stamp
Act his face shone as the face of an angel. Since the bishops
almost to a man voted with the King, Conway attacked them as in
this untrue to their high office. Sir George Savile, whose
benevolence, supported by great wealth, made him widely respected
and loved, said that the Americans were right in appealing to
arms. Coke of Norfolk was a landed magnate who lived in regal
style. His seat of Holkham was one of those great new palaces
which the age reared at such elaborate cost. It was full of
beautiful things--the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and
Van Dyke, rare manuscripts, books, and tapestries. So magnificent
was Coke that a legend long ran that his horses were shod with
gold and that the wheels of his chariots were of solid silver. In
the country he drove six horses. In town only the King did this.
Coke despised George III, chiefly on account of his American
policy, and to avoid the reproach of rivaling the King's estate,
he took joy in driving past the palace in London with a donkey as
his sixth animal and in flicking his whip at the King. When he
was offered a peerage by the King he denounced with fiery wrath
the minister through whom it was offered as attempting to bribe
him. Coke declared that if one of the King's ministers held up a
hat in the House of Commons and said that it was a green bag the
majority of the members would solemnly vote that it was a green
bag. The bribery which brought this blind obedience of Toryism
filled Coke with fury. In youth he had been taught never to trust
a Tory and he could say "I never have and, by God, I never will."
One of his children asked their mother whether Tories were born
wicked or after birth became wicked. The uncompromising answer
was: "They are born wicked and they grow up worse."

There is, of course, in much of this something of the malignance
of party. In an age when one reverend theologian, Toplady, called
another theologian, John Wesley, "a low and puny tadpole in
Divinity" we must expect harsh epithets. But behind this
bitterness lay a deep conviction of the righteousness of the
American cause. At a great banquet at Holkham, Coke omitted the
toast of the King; but every night during the American war he
drank the health of Washington as the greatest man on earth. The
war, he said, was the King's war, ministers were his tools, the
press was bought. He denounced later the King's reception of the
traitor Arnold. When the King's degenerate son, who became George
IV, after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual
visit to Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on
Tuesdays." It was an independent and irate England which spoke in
Coke. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who
governed. America was not getting fair play. Both Coke and Fox,
and no doubt many others, wore waistcoats of blue and buff
because these were the colors of the uniforms of Washington's
army.

Washington and Coke exchanged messages and they would have been
congenial companions; for Coke, like Washington, was above all a
farmer and tried to improve agriculture. Never for a moment, he
said, had time hung heavy on his hands in the country. He began
on his estate the culture of the potato, and for some time the
best he could hear of it from his stolid tenantry was that it
would not poison the pigs. Coke would have fought the levy of a
penny of unjust taxation and he understood Washington. The
American gentleman and the English gentleman had a common
outlook.


Now had come, however, the hour for political separation. By
reluctant but inevitable steps America made up its mind to
declare for independence. At first continued loyalty to the King
was urged on the plea that he was in the hands of evil-minded
ministers, inspired by diabolical rage, or in those of an
"infernal villain" such as the soldier, General Gage, a second
Pharaoh; though it must be admitted that even then the King was
"the tyrant of Great Britain." After Bunker Hill spasmodic
declarations of independence were made here and there by local
bodies. When Congress organized an army, invaded Canada, and
besieged Boston, it was hard to protest loyalty to a King whose
forces were those of an enemy. Moreover independence would, in
the eyes at least of foreign governments, give the colonies the
rights of belligerents and enable them to claim for their
fighting forces the treatment due to a regular army and the
exchange of prisoners with the British. They could, too, make
alliances with other nations. Some clamored for independence for
a reason more sinister--that they might punish those who held to
the King and seize their property. There were thirteen colonies
in arms and each of them had to form some kind of government
which would work without a king as part of its mechanism. One by
one such governments were formed. King George, as we have seen,
helped the colonies to make up their minds. They were in no mood
to be called erring children who must implore undeserved mercy
and not force a loving parent to take unwilling vengeance. "Our
plantations" and "our subjects in the colonies" would simply not
learn obedience. If George III would not reply to their petitions
until they laid down their arms, they could manage to get on
without a king. If England, as Horace Walpole admitted, would not
take them seriously and speakers in Parliament called them
obscure ruffians and cowards, so much the worse for England.

It was an Englishman, Thomas Paine, who fanned the fire into
unquenchable flames. He had recently been dismissed from a post
in the excise in England and was at this time earning in
Philadelphia a precarious living by his pen. Paine said it was
the interest of America to break the tie with Europe. Was a whole
continent in America to be governed by an island a thousand
leagues away? Of what advantage was it to remain connected with
Great Britain? It was said that a united British Empire could
defy the world, but why should America defy the world?
"Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation."
Interested men, weak men, prejudiced men, moderate men who do not
really know Europe, may urge reconciliation, but nature is
against it. Paine broke loose in that denunciation of kings with
which ever since the world has been familiar. The wretched
Briton, said Paine, is under a king and where there was a king
there was no security for liberty. Kings were crowned ruffians
and George III in particular was a sceptered savage, a royal
brute, and other evil things. He had inflicted on America
injuries not to be forgiven. The blood of the slain, not less
than the true interests of posterity, demanded separation. Paine
called his pamphlet "Common Sense". It was published on January
9, 1776. More than a hundred thousand copies were quickly sold
and it brought decision to many wavering minds.

In the first days of 1776 independence had become a burning
question. New England had made up its mind. Virginia was keen for
separation, keener even than New England. New York and
Pennsylvania long hesitated and Maryland and North Carolina were
very lukewarm. Early in 1776 Washington was advocating
independence and Greene and other army leaders were of the same
mind. Conservative forces delayed the settlement, and at last
Virginia, in this as in so many other things taking the lead,
instructed its delegates to urge a declaration by Congress of
independence. Richard Henry Lee, a member of that honored family
which later produced the ablest soldier of the Civil War, moved
in Congress on June 7, 1776, that "these United Colonies are,
and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States." The
preparation of a formal declaration was referred to a committee
of which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were members. It is
interesting to note that each of them became President of the
United States and that both died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams related
long after that he and Jefferson formed the sub-committee to
draft the Declaration and that he urged Jefferson to undertake
the task since "you can write ten times better than I can."
Jefferson accordingly wrote the paper. Adams was delighted "with
its high tone and the flights of Oratory" but he did not approve
of the flaming attack on the King, as a tyrant. "I never
believed," he said, "George to be a tyrant in disposition and in
nature." There was, he thought, too much passion for a grave and
solemn document. He was, however, the principal speaker in its
support.

There is passion in the Declaration from beginning to end, and
not the restrained and chastened passion which we find in the
great utterances of an American statesman of a later day, Abraham
Lincoln. Compared with Lincoln, Jefferson is indeed a mere
amateur in the use of words. Lincoln would not have scattered in
his utterances overwrought phrases about "death, desolation and
tyranny" or talked about pledging "our lives, our fortunes and
our sacred honour." He indulged in no "Flights of Oratory." The
passion in the Declaration is concentrated against the King. We
do not know what were the emotions of George when he read it. We
know that many Englishmen thought that it spoke truth.
Exaggerations there are which make the Declaration less than a
completely candid document. The King is accused of abolishing
English laws in Canada with the intention of "introducing the
same absolute rule into these colonies." What had been done in
Canada was to let the conquered French retain their own
laws--which was not tyranny but magnanimity. Another clause of
the Declaration, as Jefferson first wrote it, made George
responsible for the slave trade in America with all its horrors
and crimes. We may doubt whether that not too enlightened monarch
had even more than vaguely heard of the slave trade. This phase
of the attack upon him was too much for the slave owners of the
South and the slave traders of New England, and the clause was
struck out.

Nearly fourscore and ten years later, Abraham Lincoln, at a
supreme crisis in the nation's life, told in Independence Hall,
Philadelphia, what the Declaration of Independence meant to him.
"I have never," he said, "had a feeling politically which did not
spring from the sentiments in the Declaration of Independence";
and then he spoke of the sacrifices which the founders of the
Republic had made for these principles. He asked, too, what was
the idea which had held together the nation thus founded. It was
not the breaking away from Great Britain. It was the assertion of
human right. We should speak in terms of reverence of a document
which became a classic utterance of political right and which
inspired Lincoln in his fight to end slavery and to make "Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness" realities for all men. In England
the colonists were often taunted with being "rebels." The answer
was not wanting that ancestors of those who now cried "rebel" had
themselves been rebels a hundred years earlier when their own
liberty was at stake.

There were in Congress men who ventured to say that the
Declaration was a libel on the government of England; men like
John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and John Jay of New York, who
feared that the radical elements were moving too fast.
Radicalism, however, was in the saddle, and on the 2d of July the
"resolution respecting independency " was adopted. On July 4,
1776, Congress debated and finally adopted the formal Declaration
of Independence. The members did not vote individually. The
delegates from each colony cast the vote of the colony. Twelve
colonies voted for the Declaration. New York alone was silent
because its delegates had not been instructed as to their vote,
but New York, too, soon fell into line. It was a momentous
occasion and was understood to be such. The vote seems to have
been reached in the late afternoon. Anxious citizens were waiting
in the streets. There was a bell in the State House, and an old
ringer waited there for the signal. When there was long delay he
is said to have muttered: "They will never do it! they will never
do it!" Then came the word, "Ring! Ring!" It is an odd fact that
the inscription on the bell, placed there long before the days of
the trouble, was from Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty throughout all
the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The bells of
Philadelphia rang and cannon boomed. As the news spread there
were bonfires and illuminations in all the colonies. On the day
after the Declaration the Virginia Convention struck out "O Lord,
save the King" from the church service. On the l0th of July
Washington, who by this time had moved to New York, paraded the
army and had the Declaration read at the head of each brigade.
That evening the statue of King George in New York was laid in
the dust. It is a comment on the changes in human fortune that
within little more than a year the British had taken
Philadelphia, that the clamorous bell had been hid away for
safety, and that colonial wiseacres were urging the rescinding of
the ill-timed Declaration and the reunion of the British Empire.



CHAPTER IV. THE LOSS OF NEW YORK

Washington's success at Boston had one good effect. It destroyed
Tory influence in that Puritan stronghold. New England was
henceforth of a temper wholly revolutionary; and New England
tradition holds that what its people think today other Americans
think tomorrow. But, in the summer of this year 1776, though no
serious foe was visible at any point in the revolted colonies, a
menace haunted every one of them. The British had gone away by
sea; by sea they would return. On land armies move slowly and
visibly; but on the sea a great force may pass out of sight and
then suddenly reappear at an unexpected point. This is the
haunting terror of sea power. Already the British had destroyed
Falmouth, now Portland, Maine, and Norfolk, the principal town in
Virginia. Washington had no illusions of security. He was anxious
above all for the safety of New York, commanding the vital artery
of the Hudson, which must at all costs be defended. Accordingly,
in April, he took his army to New York and established there his
own headquarters.

Even before Washington moved to New York, three great British
expeditions were nearing America. One of these we have already
seen at Quebec. Another was bound for Charleston, to land there
an army and to make the place a rallying center for the numerous
but harassed Loyalists of the South. The third and largest of
these expeditions was to strike at New York and, by a show of
strength, bring the colonists to reason and reconciliation. If
mildness failed the British intended to capture New York, sail up
the Hudson and cut off New England from the other colonies.

The squadron destined for Charleston carried an army in command
of a fine soldier, Lord Cornwallis, destined later to be the
defeated leader in the last dramatic scene of the war. In May
this fleet reached Wilmington, North Carolina, and took on board
two thousand men under General Sir Henry Clinton, who had been
sent by Howe from Boston in vain to win the Carolinas and who now
assumed military command of the combined forces. Admiral Sir
Peter Parker commanded the fleet, and on the 4th of June he was
off Charleston Harbor. Parker found that in order to cross the
bar he would have to lighten his larger ships. This was done by
the laborious process of removing the guns, which, of course, he
had to replace when the bar was crossed. On the 28th of June,
Parker drew up his ships before Fort Moultrie in the harbor. He
had expected simultaneous aid by land from three thousand
soldiers put ashore from the fleet on a sandbar, but these troops
could give him no help against the fort from which they were cut
off by a channel of deep water. A battle soon proved the British
ships unable to withstand the American fire from Fort Moultrie.
Late in the evening Parker drew off, with two hundred and
twenty-five casualties against an American loss of thirty-seven.
The check was greater than that of Bunker Hill, for there the
British took the ground which they attacked. The British sailors
bore witness to the gallantry of the defense: "We never had such
a drubbing in our lives," one of them testified. Only one of
Parker's ten ships was seaworthy after the fight. It took him
three weeks to refit, and not until the 4th of August did his
defeated ships reach New York.

A mighty armada of seven hundred ships had meanwhile sailed into
the Bay of New York. This fleet was commanded by Admiral Lord
Howe and it carried an army of thirty thousand men led by his
younger brother, Sir William Howe, who had commanded at Bunker
Hill. The General was an able and well-informed soldier. He had a
brilliant record of service in the Seven Years' War, with Wolfe
in Canada, then in France itself, and in the West Indies. In
appearance he was tall, dark, and coarse. His face showed him to
be a free user of wine. This may explain some of his faults as a
general. He trusted too much to subordinates; he was leisurely
and rather indolent, yet capable of brilliant and rapid action.
In America his heart was never in his task. He was member of
Parliament for Nottingham and had publicly condemned the quarrel
with America and told his electors that in it he would take no
command. He had not kept his word, but his convictions remained.
It would be to accuse Howe of treason to say that he did not do
his best in America. Lack of conviction, however, affects action.
Howe had no belief that his country was in the right in the war
and this handicapped him as against the passionate conviction of
Washington that all was at stake which made life worth living.

The General's elder brother, Lord Howe, was another Whig who had
no belief that the war was just. He sat in the House of Lords
while his brother sat in the House of Commons. We rather wonder
that the King should have been content to leave in Whig hands his
fortunes in America both by land and sea. At any rate, here were
the Howes more eager to make peace than to make war and commanded
to offer terms of reconciliation. Lord Howe had an unpleasant
face, so dark that he was called "Black Dick"; he was a silent,
awkward man, shy and harsh in manner. In reality, however, he was
kind, liberal in opinion, sober, and beloved by those who knew
him best. His pacific temper towards America was not due to a
dislike of war. He was a fighting sailor. Nearly twenty years
later, on June 1, 1794, when he was in command of a fleet in
touch with the French enemy, the sailors watched him to find any
indication that the expected action would take place. Then the
word went round: "We shall have the fight today; Black Dick has
been smiling." They had it, and Howe won a victory which makes
his name famous in the annals of the sea.

By the middle of July the two brothers were at New York. The
soldier, having waited at Halifax since the evacuation of Boston,
had arrived, and landed his army on Staten Island, on the day
before Congress made the Declaration of Independence, which, as
now we can see, ended finally any chance of reconciliation. The
sailor arrived nine days later. Lord Howe was wont to regret that
he had not arrived a little earlier, since the concessions which
he had to offer might have averted the Declaration of
Independence. In truth, however, he had little to offer. Humor
and imagination are useful gifts in carrying on human affairs,
but George III had neither. He saw no lack of humor in now once
more offering full and free pardon to a repentant Washington and
his comrades, though John Adams was excepted by name* in
repudiating the right to exist of the Congress at Philadelphia,
and in refusing to recognize the military rank of the rebel
general whom it had named: he was to be addressed in civilian
style as "George Washington Esq." The King and his ministers had
no imagination to call up the picture of high-hearted men
fighting for rights which they held dear.

* Trevelyan, "American Revolution", Part II, vol. I (New Ed.,
vol. II), 261.


Lord Howe went so far as to address a letter to "George
Washington Esq. &c. &c.," and Washington agreed to an interview
with the officer who bore it. In imposing uniform and with the
stateliest manner, Washington, who had an instinct for effect,
received the envoy. The awed messenger explained that the symbols
" &c. &c." meant everything, including, of course, military
titles; but Washington only said smilingly that they might mean
anything, including, of course, an insult, and refused to take
the letter. He referred to Congress, a body which Howe could not
recognize, the grave question of the address on an envelope and
Congress agreed that the recognition of his rank was necessary.
There was nothing to do but to go on with the fight.

Washington's army held the city of New York, at the southerly
point of Manhattan Island. The Hudson River, separating the
island from the mainland of New Jersey on the west, is at its
mouth two miles wide. The northern and eastern sides of the
island are washed by the Harlem River, flowing out of the Hudson
about a dozen miles north of the city, and broadening into the
East River, about a mile wide where it separates New York from
Brooklyn Heights, on Long Island. Encamped on Staten Island, on
the south, General Howe could, with the aid of the fleet, land at
any of half a dozen vulnerable points. Howe had the further
advantage of a much larger force. Washington had in all some
twenty thousand men, numbers of them serving for short terms and
therefore for the most part badly drilled. Howe had twenty-five
thousand well-trained soldiers, and he could, in addition, draw
men from the fleet, which would give him in all double the force
of Washington.

In such a situation even the best skill of Washington was likely
only to qualify defeat. He was advised to destroy New York and
retire to positions more tenable. But even if he had so desired,
Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and
he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded
New York that enemy cannon planted there would make the city
untenable. Accordingly Washington placed half his force on Long
Island to defend Brooklyn Heights and in doing so made the
fundamental error of cutting his army in two and dividing it by
an arm of the sea in presence of overwhelming hostile naval
power.

On the 22d of August Howe ferried fifteen thousand men across the
Narrows to Long Island, in order to attack the position on
Brooklyn Heights from the rear. Before him lay wooded hills
across which led three roads converging at Brooklyn Heights
beyond the hills. On the east a fourth road led round the hills.
In the dark of the night of the 26th of August Howe set his army
in motion on all these roads, in order by daybreak to come to
close quarters with the Americans and drive them back to the
Heights. The movement succeeded perfectly. The British made
terrible use of the bayonet. By the evening of the twenty-seventh
the Americans, who fought well against overwhelming odds, had
lost nearly two thousand men in casualties and prisoners, six
field pieces, and twenty-six heavy guns. The two chief
commanders, Sullivan and Stirling, were among the prisoners, and
what was left of the army had been driven back to Brooklyn
Heights. Howe's critics said that had he pressed the attack
further he could have made certain the capture of the whole
American force on Long Island.

Criticism of what might have been is easy and usually futile. It
might be said of Washington, too, that he should not have kept an
army so far in front of his lines behind Brooklyn Heights facing
a superior enemy, and with, for a part of it, retreat possible
only by a single causeway across a marsh three miles long. When
he realized, on the 28th of August, what Howe had achieved, he
increased the defenders of Brooklyn Heights to ten thousand men,
more than half his army. This was another cardinal error. British
ships were near and but for unfavorable winds might have sailed
up to Brooklyn. Washington hoped and prayed that Howe would try
to carry Brooklyn Heights by assault. Then there would have been
at least slaughter on the scale of Bunker Hill. But Howe had
learned caution. He made no reckless attack, and soon Washington
found that he must move away or face the danger of losing every
man on Long Island.

On the night of the 29th of August there was clear moonlight,
with fog towards daybreak. A British army of twenty-five thousand
men was only some six hundred yards from the American lines. A
few miles from the shore lay at anchor a great British fleet
with, it is to be presumed, its patrols on the alert. Yet, during
that night, ten thousand American troops were marched down to
boats on the strand at Brooklyn and, with all their stores, were
carried across a mile of water to New York. There must have been
the splash of oars and the grating of keels, orders given in
tones above a whisper, the complex sounds of moving bodies of
men. It was all done under the eye of Washington. We can picture
that tall figure moving about on the strand at Brooklyn, which he
was the last to leave. Not a sound disturbed the slumbers of the
British. An army in retreat does not easily defend itself. Boats
from the British fleet might have brought panic to the Americans
in the darkness and the British army should at least have known
that they were gone. By seven in the morning the ten thousand
American soldiers were for the time safe in New York, and we may
suppose that the two Howes were asking eager questions and
wondering how it had all happened.

Washington had shown that he knew when and how to retire. Long
Island was his first battle and he had lost. Now retreat was his
first great tactical achievement. He could not stay in New York
and so sent at once the chief part of the army, withdrawn from
Brooklyn, to the line of the Harlem River at the north end of the
island. He realized that his shore batteries could not keep the
British fleet from sailing up both the East and the Hudson Rivers
and from landing a force on Manhattan Island almost where it
liked. Then the city of New York would be surrounded by a hostile
fleet and a hostile army. The Howes could have performed this
maneuver as soon as they had a favorable wind. There was, we
know, great confusion in New York, and Washington tells us how
his heart was torn by the distress of the inhabitants. The
British gave him plenty of time to make plans, and for a reason.
We have seen that Lord Howe was not only an admiral to make war
but also an envoy to make peace. The British victory on Long
Island might, he thought, make Congress more willing to
negotiate. So now he sent to Philadelphia the captured American
General Sullivan, with the request that some members of Congress
might confer privately on the prospects for peace.

Howe probably did not realize that the Americans had the British
quality of becoming more resolute by temporary reverses. By this
time, too, suspicion of every movement on the part of Great
Britain had become a mania. Every one in Congress seems to have
thought that Howe was planning treachery. John Adams, excepted by
name from British offers of pardon, called Sullivan a "decoy
duck" and, as he confessed, laughed, scolded, and grieved at any
negotiation. The wish to talk privately with members of Congress
was called an insulting way of avoiding recognition of that body.
In spite of this, even the stalwart Adams and the suave Franklin
were willing to be members of a committee which went to meet Lord
Howe. With great sorrow Howe now realized that he had no power to
grant what Congress insisted upon, the recognition of
independence, as a preliminary to negotiation. There was nothing
for it but war.

On the 15th of September the British struck the blow too long
delayed had war been their only interest. New York had to sit
nearly helpless while great men-of-war passed up both the Hudson
and the East River with guns sweeping the shores of Manhattan
Island. At the same time General Howe sent over in boats from
Long Island to the landing at Kip's Bay, near the line of the
present Thirty-fourth Street, an army to cut off the city from
the northern part of the island. Washington marched in person
with two New England regiments to dispute the landing and give
him time for evacuation. To his rage panic seized his men and
they turned and fled, leaving him almost alone not a hundred
yards from the enemy. A stray shot at that moment might have
influenced greatly modern history, for, as events were soon to
show, Washington was the mainstay of the American cause. He too
had to get away and Howe's force landed easily enough. Meanwhile,
on the west shore of the island, there was an animated scene. The
roads were crowded with refugees fleeing northward from New York.
These civilians Howe had no reason to stop, but there marched,
too, out of New York four thousand men, under Israel Putnam, who
got safely away northward. Only leisurely did Howe extend his
line across the island so as to cut off the city. The story, not
more trustworthy than many other legends of war, is that Mrs.
Murray, living in a country house near what now is Murray Hill,
invited the General to luncheon, and that to enjoy this pleasure
he ordered a halt for his whole force. Generals sometimes do
foolish things but it is not easy to call up a picture of Howe,
in the midst of a busy movement of troops, receiving the lady's
invitation, accepting it, and ordering the whole army to halt
while he lingered over the luncheon table. There is no doubt that
his mind was still divided between making war and making peace.
Probably Putnam had already got away his men, and there was no
purpose in stopping the refugees in that flight from New York
which so aroused the pity of Washington. As it was Howe took
sixty-seven guns. By accident, or, it is said, by design of the
Americans themselves, New York soon took fire and one-third of
the little city was burned.

After the fall of New York there followed a complex campaign. The
resourceful Washington was now, during his first days of active
warfare, pitting himself against one of the most experienced of
British generals. Fleet and army were acting together. The aim of
Howe was to get control of the Hudson and to meet half way the
advance from Canada by way of Lake Champlain which Carleton was
leading. On the 12th of October, when autumn winds were already
making the nights cold, Howe moved. He did not attack Washington
who lay in strength at the Harlem. That would have been to play
Washington's game. Instead he put the part of his army still on
Long Island in ships which then sailed through the dangerous
currents of Hell Gate and landed at Throg's Neck, a peninsula on
the sound across from Long Island. Washington parried this
movement by so guarding the narrow neck of the peninsula leading
to the mainland that the cautious Howe shrank from a frontal
attack across a marsh. After a delay of six days, he again
embarked his army, landed a few miles above Throg's Neck in the
hope of cutting off Washington from retreat northward, only to
find Washington still north of him at White Plains. A sharp
skirmish followed in which Howe lost over two hundred men and
Washington only one hundred and forty. Washington, masterly in
retreat, then withdrew still farther north among hills difficult
of attack.

Howe had a plan which made a direct attack on Washington
unnecessary. He turned southward and occupied the east shore of
the Hudson River. On the 16th of November took place the worst
disaster which had yet befallen American arms. Fort Washington,
lying just south of the Harlem, was the only point still held on
Manhattan Island by the Americans. In modern war it has become
clear that fortresses supposedly strong may be only traps for
their defenders. Fort Washington stood on the east bank of the
Hudson opposite Fort Lee, on the west bank. These forts could not
fulfil the purpose for which they were intended, of stopping
British ships. Washington saw that the two forts should be
abandoned. But the civilians in Congress, who, it must be
remembered, named the generals and had final authority in
directing the war, were reluctant to accept the loss involved in
abandoning the forts and gave orders that every effort should be
made to hold them. Greene, on the whole Washington's best
general, was in command of the two positions and was left to use
his own judgment. On the 15th of November, by a sudden and rapid
march across the island, Howe appeared before Fort Washington and
summoned it to surrender on pain of the rigors of war, which
meant putting the garrison to the sword should he have to take
the place by storm. The answer was a defiance; and on the next
day Howe attacked in overwhelming force. There was severe
fighting. The casualties of the British were nearly five hundred,
but they took the huge fort with its three thousand defenders and
a great quantity of munitions of war. Howe's threat was not
carried out. There was no massacre.

Across the river at Fort Lee the helpless Washington watched this
great disaster. He had need still to look out, for Fort Lee was
itself doomed. On the nineteenth Lord Cornwallis with five
thousand men crossed the river five miles above Fort Lee. General
Greene barely escaped with the two thousand men in the fort,
leaving behind one hundred and forty cannon, stores, tools, and
even the men's blankets. On the twentieth the British flag was
floating over Fort Lee and Washington's whole force was in rapid
flight across New Jersey, hardly pausing until it had been
ferried over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.

Treachery, now linked to military disaster, made Washington's
position terrible. Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, and Richard
Montgomery were three important officers of the regular British
army who fought on the American side. Montgomery had been killed
at Quebec; the defects of Gates were not yet conspicuous; and Lee
was next to Washington the most trusted American general. The
names Washington and Lee of the twin forts on opposite sides of
the Hudson show how the two generals stood in the public mind.
While disaster was overtaking Washington, Lee had seven thousand
men at North Castle on the east bank of the Hudson, a few miles
above Fort Washington, blocking Howe's advance farther up the
river. On the day after the fall of Fort Washington, Lee received
positive orders to cross the Hudson at once. Three days later
Fort Lee fell, and Washington repeated the order. Lee did not
budge. He was safe where he was and could cross the river and get
away into New Jersey when he liked. He seems deliberately to have
left Washington to face complete disaster and thus prove his
incompetence; then, as the undefeated general, he could take the
chief command. There is no evidence that he had intrigued with
Howe, but he thought that he could be the peacemaker between
Great Britain and America, with untold possibilities of ambition
in that role. He wrote of Washington at this time, to his friend
Gates, as weak and "most damnably deficient." Nemesis, however,
overtook him. In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to
northern New Jersey. Here many of the people were Tories. Lee
fell into a trap, was captured in bed at a tavern by a
hard-riding party of British cavalry, and carried off a prisoner,
obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and slippers. Not
always does fate appear so just in her strokes.

In December, though the position of Washington was very bad, all
was not lost. The chief aim of Howe was to secure the line of the
Hudson and this he had not achieved. At Stony Point, which lies
up the Hudson about fifty miles from New York, the river narrows
and passes through what is almost a mountain gorge, easily
defended. Here Washington had erected fortifications which made
it at least difficult for a British force to pass up the river.
Moreover in the highlands of northern New Jersey, with
headquarters at Morristown, General Sullivan, recently exchanged,
and General Gates now had Lee's army and also the remnants of the
force driven from Canada. But in retreating across New Jersey
Washington had been forsaken by thousands of men, beguiled in
part by the Tory population, discouraged by defeat, and in many
cases with the right to go home, since their term of service had
expired. All that remained of Washington's army after the forces
of Sullivan and Gates joined him across the Delaware in
Pennsylvania, was about four thousand men.

Howe was determined to have Philadelphia as well as New York and
could place some reliance on Tory help in Pennsylvania. He had
pursued Washington to the Delaware and would have pushed on
across that river had not his alert foe taken care that all the
boats should be on the wrong shore. As it was, Howe occupied the
left bank of the Delaware with his chief post at Trenton. If he
made sure of New Jersey he could go on to Philadelphia when the
river was frozen over or indeed when he liked. Even the Congress
had fled to Baltimore. There were British successes in other
quarters. Early in December Lord Howe took the fleet to Newport.
Soon he controlled the whole of Rhode Island and checked the
American privateers who had made it their base. The brothers
issued proclamations offering protection to all who should within
sixty days return to their British allegiance and many people of
high standing in New York and New Jersey accepted the offer. Howe
wrote home to England the glad news of victory. Philadelphia
would probably fall before spring and it looked as if the war was
really over.

In this darkest hour Washington struck a blow which changed the
whole situation. We associate with him the thought of calm
deliberation. Now, however, was he to show his strongest quality
as a general to be audacity. At the Battle of the Marne, in 1914,
the French General Foch sent the despatch: "My center is giving
way; my right is retreating; the situation is excellent: I am
attacking." Washington's position seemed as nearly hopeless and
he, too, had need of some striking action. A campaign marked by
his own blundering and by the treachery of a trusted general had
ended in seeming ruin. Pennsylvania at his back and New Jersey
before him across the Delaware were less than half loyal to the
American cause and probably willing to accept peace on almost any
terms. Never was a general in a position where greater risks must
be taken for salvation. As Washington pondered what was going on
among the British across the Delaware, a bold plan outlined
itself in his mind. Howe, he knew, had gone to New York to
celebrate a triumphant Christmas. His absence from the front was
certain to involve slackness. It was Germans who held the line of
the Delaware, some thirteen hundred of them under Colonel Rahl at
Trenton, two thousand under Von Donop farther down the river at
Bordentown; and with Germans perhaps more than any other people
Christmas is a season of elaborate festivity. On this their first
Christmas away from home many of the Germans would be likely to
be off their guard either through homesickness or dissipation.
They cared nothing for either side. There had been much
plundering in New Jersey and discipline was relaxed.

Howe had been guilty of the folly of making strong the posts
farthest from the enemy and weak those nearest to him. He had,
indeed, ordered Rahl to throw up redoubts for the defense of
Trenton, but this, as Washington well knew, had not been done for
Rahl despised his enemy and spoke of the American army as already
lost. Washington's bold plan was to recross the Delaware and
attack Trenton. There were to be three crossings. One was to be
against Von Donop at Bordentown below Trenton, the second at
Trenton itself. These two attacks were designed to prevent aid to
Trenton. The third force with which Washington himself went was
to cross the river some nine miles above the town.

Christmas Day, 1776, was dismally cold. There was a driving storm
of sleet and the broad swollen stream of the Delaware, dotted
with dark masses of floating ice, offered a chill prospect. To
take an army with its guns across that threatening flood was
indeed perilous. Gates and other generals declared that the
scheme was too difficult to be carried out. Only one of the three
forces crossed the river. Washington, with iron will, was not to
be turned from his purpose. He had skilled boatmen from New
England. The crossing took no less than ten hours and a great
part of it was done in wintry darkness. When the army landed on
the New Jersey shore it had a march of nine miles in sleet and
rain in order to reach Trenton by daybreak. It is said that some
of the men marched barefoot leaving tracks of blood in the snow.
The arms of some were lost and those of others were wet and
useless but Washington told them that they must depend the more
on the bayonet. He attacked Trenton in broad daylight. There was
a sharp fight. Rahl, the commander, and some seventy men, were
killed and a thousand men surrendered.

Even now Washington's position was dangerous. Von Donop, with two
thousand men, lay only a few miles down the river. Had he marched
at once on Trenton, as he should have done, the worn out little
force of Washington might have met with disaster. What Von Donop
did when the alarm reached him was to retreat as fast as he could
to Princeton, a dozen miles to the rear towards New York, leaving
behind his sick and all his heavy equipment. Meanwhile
Washington, knowing his danger, had turned back across the
Delaware with a prisoner for every two of his men. When, however,
he saw what Von Donop had done he returned on the twenty-ninth to
Trenton, sent out scouting parties, and roused the country so
that in every bit of forest along the road to Princeton there
were men, dead shots, to make difficult a British advance to
retake Trenton.

The reverse had brought consternation at New York. Lord
Cornwallis was about to embark for England, the bearer of news of
overwhelming victory. Now, instead, he was sent to drive back
Washington. It was no easy task for Cornwallis to reach Trenton,
for Washington's scouting parties and a force of six hundred men
under Greene were on the road to harass him. On the evening of
the 2d of January, however, he reoccupied Trenton. This time
Washington had not recrossed the Delaware but had retreated
southward and was now entrenched on the southern bank of the
little river Assanpink, which flows into the Delaware.
Reinforcements were following Cornwallis. That night he sharply
cannonaded Washington's position and was as sharply answered. He
intended to attack in force in the morning. To the skill and
resource of Washington he paid the compliment of saying that at
last he had run down the "Old Fox."

Then followed a maneuver which, years after, Cornwallis, a
generous foe, told Washington was one of the most surprising and
brilliant in the history of war. There was another "old fox" in
Europe, Frederick the Great, of Prussia, who knew war if ever man
knew it, and he, too, from this movement ranked Washington among
the great generals. The maneuver was simple enough. Instead of
taking the obvious course of again retreating across the Delaware
Washington decided to advance, to get in behind Cornwallis, to
try to cut his communications, to threaten the British base of
supply and then, if a superior force came up, to retreat into the
highlands of New Jersey. There he could keep an unbroken line as
far east as the Hudson, menace the British in New Jersey, and
probably force them to withdraw to the safety of New York.

All through the night of January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires
burned brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of
voices and of the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up
entrenchments. The fires died down towards morning and the
British awoke to find the enemy camp deserted. Washington had
carried his whole army by a roundabout route to the Princeton
road and now stood between Cornwallis and his base. There was
some sharp fighting that day near Princeton. Washington had to
defeat and get past the reinforcements coming to Cornwallis. He
reached Princeton and then slipped away northward and made his
headquarters at Morristown. He had achieved his purpose. The
British with Washington entrenched on their flank were not safe
in New Jersey. The only thing to do was to withdraw to New York.
By his brilliant advance Washington recovered the whole of New
Jersey with the exception of some minor positions near the sea.
He had changed the face of the war. In London there was momentary
rejoicing over Howe's recent victories, but it was soon followed
by distressing news of defeat. Through all the colonies ran
inspiring tidings. There had been doubts whether, after all,
Washington was the heaven-sent leader. Now both America and
Europe learned to recognize his skill. He had won a reputation,
though not yet had he saved a cause.



CHAPTER V. THE LOSS OF PHILADELPHIA

Though the outlook for Washington was brightened by his success
in New Jersey, it was still depressing enough. The British had
taken New York, they could probably take Philadelphia when they
liked, and no place near the seacoast was safe. According to the
votes in Parliament, by the spring of 1777 Britain was to have an
army of eighty-nine thousand men, of whom fifty-seven thousand
were intended for colonial garrisons and for the prosecution of
the war in America. These numbers were in fact never reached, but
the army of forty thousand in America was formidable compared
with Washington's forces. The British were not hampered by the
practice of enlisting men for only a few months, which marred so
much of Washington's effort. Above all they had money and
adequate resources. In a word they had the things which
Washington lacked during almost the whole of the war.

Washington called his success in the attack at Trenton a lucky
stroke. It was luck which had far-reaching consequences. Howe had
the fixed idea that to follow the capture of New York by that of
Philadelphia, the most populous city in America, and the seat of
Congress, would mean great glory for himself and a crushing blow
to the American cause. If to this could be added, as he intended,
the occupation of the whole valley of the Hudson, the year 1777
might well see the end of the war. An acute sense of the value of
time is vital in war. Promptness, the quick surprise of the
enemy, was perhaps the chief military virtue of Washington;
dilatoriness was the destructive vice of Howe. He had so little
contempt for his foe that he practised a blighting caution. On
April 12, 1777, Washington, in view of his own depleted force, in
a state of half famine, wrote: "If Howe does not take advantage
of our weak state he is very unfit for his trust." Howe remained
inactive and time, thus despised, worked its due revenge. Later
Howe did move, and with skill, but he missed the rapid
combination in action which was the first condition of final
success. He could have captured Philadelphia in May. He took the
city, but not until September, when to hold it had become a
liability and not an asset. To go there at all was perhaps
unwise; to go in September was for him a tragic mistake.

From New York to Philadelphia the distance by land is about a
hundred miles. The route lay across New Jersey, that "garden of
America" which English travelers spoke of as resembling their own
highly cultivated land. Washington had his headquarters at
Morristown, in northern New Jersey. His resources were at a low
ebb. He had always the faith that a cause founded on justice
could not fail; but his letters at this time are full of
depressing anxiety. Each State regarded itself as in danger and
made care of its own interests its chief concern. By this time
Congress had lost most of the able men who had given it dignity
and authority. Like Howe it had slight sense of the value of time
and imagined that tomorrow was as good as today. Wellington once
complained that, though in supreme command, he had not authority
to appoint even a corporal. Washington was hampered both by
Congress and by the State Governments in choosing leaders. He had
some officers, such as Greene, Knox, and Benedict Arnold, whom he
trusted. Others, like Gates and Conway, were ceaseless
intriguers. To General Sullivan, who fancied himself constantly
slighted and ill-treated, Washington wrote sharply to abolish his
poisonous suspicions.

Howe had offered easy terms to those in New Jersey who should
declare their loyalty and to meet this Washington advised the
stern policy of outlawing every one who would not take the oath
of allegiance to the United States. There was much fluttering of
heart on the New Jersey farms, much anxious trimming in order, in
any event, to be safe. Howe's Hessians had plundered ruthlessly
causing deep resentment against the British. Now Washington found
his own people doing the same thing. Militia officers,
themselves, "generally" as he said, "of the lowest class of the
people," not only stole but incited their men to steal. It was
easy to plunder under the plea that the owner of the property was
a Tory, whether open or concealed, and Washington wrote that the
waste and theft were "beyond all conception." There were shirkers
claiming exemption from military service on the ground that they
were doing necessary service as civilians. Washington needed maps
to plan his intricate movements and could not get them. Smallpox
was devastating his army and causing losses heavier than those
from the enemy. When pay day came there was usually no money. It
is little wonder that in this spring of 1777 he feared that his
army might suddenly dissolve and leave him without a command. In
that case he would not have yielded. Rather, so stern and bitter
was he against England, would he have plunged into the western
wilderness to be lost in its vast spaces.

Howe had his own perplexities. He knew that a great expedition
under Burgoyne was to advance from Canada southward to the
Hudson. Was he to remain with his whole force at New York until
the time should come to push up the river to meet Burgoyne? He
had a copy of the instructions given in England to Burgoyne by
Lord George Germain, but he was himself without orders.
Afterwards the reason became known. Lord George Germain had
dictated the order to cooperate with Burgoyne, but had hurried
off to the country before it was ready for his signature and it
had been mislaid. Howe seemed free to make his own plans and he
longed to be master of the enemy's capital. In the end he
decided to take Philadelphia--a task easy enough, as the event
proved. At Howe's elbow was the traitorous American general,
Charles Lee, whom he had recently captured, and Lee, as we know,
told him that Maryland and Pennsylvania were at heart loyal to
the King and panting to be free from the tyranny of the
demagogue. Once firmly in the capital Howe believed that he would
have secure control of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He
could achieve this and be back at New York in time to meet
Burgoyne, perhaps at Albany. Then he would hold the colony of New
York from Staten Island to the Canadian frontier. Howe found that
he could send ships up the Hudson, and the American army had to
stand on the banks almost helpless against the mobility of sea
power. Washington's left wing rested on the Hudson and he held
both banks but neither at Peekskill nor, as yet, farther up at
West Point, could his forts prevent the passage of ships. It was
a different matter for the British to advance on land. But the
ships went up and down in the spring of 1777. It would be easy
enough to help Burgoyne when the time should come.

It was summer before Howe was ready to move, and by that time he
had received instructions that his first aim must be to cooperate
with Burgoyne. First, however, he was resolved to have
Philadelphia. Washington watched Howe in perplexity. A great
fleet and a great army lay at New York. Why did they not move?
Washington knew perfectly well what he himself would have done in
Howe's place. He would have attacked rapidly in April the weak
American army and, after destroying or dispersing it, would have
turned to meet Burgoyne coming southward from Canada. Howe did
send a strong force into New Jersey. But he did not know how weak
Washington really was, for that master of craft in war
disseminated with great skill false information as to his own
supposed overwhelming strength. Howe had been bitten once by
advancing too far into New Jersey and was not going to take
risks. He tried to entice Washington from the hills to attack in
open country. He marched here and there in New Jersey and kept
Washington alarmed and exhausted by counter marches, and always
puzzled as to what the next move should be. Howe purposely let
one of his secret messengers be taken bearing a despatch saying
that the fleet was about to sail for Boston. All these things
took time and the summer was slipping away. In the end Washington
realized that Howe intended to make his move not by land but by
sea. Could it be possible that he was not going to make aid to
Burgoyne his chief purpose? Could it be that he would attack
Boston? Washington hoped so for he knew the reception certain at
Boston. Or was his goal Charleston? On the 23d of July, when the
summer was more than half gone, Washington began to see more
clearly. On that day Howe had embarked eighteen thousand men and
the fleet put to sea from Staten Island.

Howe was doing what able officers with him, such as Cornwallis,
Grey, and the German Knyphausen, appear to have been unanimous in
thinking he should not do. He was misled not only by the desire
to strike at the very center of the rebellion, but also by the
assurance of the traitorous Lee that to take Philadelphia would
be the effective signal to all the American Loyalists, the
overwhelming majority of the people, as was believed, that
sedition had failed. A tender parent, the King, was ready to have
the colonies back in their former relation and to give them
secure guarantees of future liberty. Any one who saw the fleet
put out from New York Harbor must have been impressed with the
might of Britain. No less than two hundred and twenty-nine ships
set their sails and covered the sea for miles. When they had
disappeared out of sight of the New Jersey shore their goal was
still unknown. At sea they might turn in any direction.
Washington's uncertainty was partly relieved on the 30th of July
when the fleet appeared at the entrance of Delaware Bay, with
Philadelphia some hundred miles away across the bay and up the
Delaware River. After hovering about the Cape for a day the fleet
again put to sea, and Washington, who had marched his army so as
to be near Philadelphia, thought the whole movement a feint and
knew not where the fleet would next appear. He was preparing to
march to New York to menace General Clinton, who had there seven
thousand men able to help Burgoyne when he heard good news. On
the 22d of August he knew that Howe had really gone southward and
was in Chesapeake Bay. Boston was now certainly safe. On the 25th
of August, after three stormy weeks at sea, Howe arrived at
Elkton, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, and there landed his army.
It was Philadelphia fifty miles away that he intended to have.
Washington wrote gleefully "Now let all New England turn out and
crush Burgoyne." Before the end of September he was writing that
he was certain of complete disaster to Burgoyne.

Howe had, in truth, made a ruinous mistake. Had the date been May
instead of August he might still have saved Burgoyne. But at the
end of August, when the net was closing on Burgoyne, Howe was
three hundred miles away. His disregard of time and distance had
been magnificent. In July he had sailed to the mouth of the
Delaware, with Philadelphia near, but he had then sailed away
again, and why? Because the passage of his ships up the river to
the city was blocked by obstructions commanded by bristling
forts. The naval officers said truly that the fleet could not get
up the river. But Howe might have landed his army at the head of
Delaware Bay. It is a dozen miles across the narrow peninsula
from the head of Delaware Bay to that of Chesapeake Bay. Since
Howe had decided to attack from the head of Chesapeake Bay there
was little to prevent him from landing his army on the Delaware
side of the peninsula and marching across it. By sea it is a
voyage of three hundred miles round a peninsula one hundred and
fifty miles long to get from one of these points to the other, by
land only a dozen miles away. Howe made the sea voyage and spent
on it three weeks when a march of a day would have saved this
time and kept his fleet three hundred miles by sea nearer to New
York and aid for Burgoyne.

Howe's mistakes only have their place in the procession to
inevitable disaster. Once in the thick of fighting he showed
himself formidable. When he had landed at Elkton he was fifty
miles southwest of Philadelphia and between him and that place
was Washington with his army. Washington was determined to delay
Howe in every possible way. To get to Philadelphia Howe had to
cross the Brandywine River. Time was nothing to him. He landed at
Elkton on the 25th of August. Not until the l0th of September was
he prepared to attack Washington barring his way at Chadd's Ford.
Washington was in a strong position on a front of two miles on
the river. At his left, below Chadd's Ford, the Brandywine is a
torrent flowing between high cliffs. There the British would find
no passage. On his right was a forest. Washington had chosen his
position with his usual skill. Entrenchments protected his front
and batteries would sweep down an advancing enemy. He had
probably not more than eleven thousand men in the fight and it is
doubtful whether Howe brought up a greater number so that the
armies were not unevenly matched. At daybreak on the eleventh the
British army broke camp at the village of Kenneth Square, four
miles from Chadd's Ford, and, under General Knyphausen, marched
straight to make a frontal attack on Washington's position.

In the battle which followed Washington was beaten by the
superior tactics of his enemy. Not all of the British army was
there in the attack at Chadd's Ford. A column under Cornwallis
had filed off by a road to the left and was making a long and
rapid march. The plan was to cross the Brandywine some ten miles
above where Washington was posted and to attack him in the rear.
By two o'clock in the afternoon Cornwallis had forced the two
branches of the upper Brandywine and was marching on Dilworth at
the right rear of the American army. Only then did Washington
become aware of his danger. His first impulse was to advance
across Chadd's Ford to try to overwhelm Knyphausen and thus to
get between Howe and the fleet at Elkton. This might, however,
have brought disaster and he soon decided to retire. His movement
was ably carried out. Both sides suffered in the woodland
fighting but that night the British army encamped in Washington's
position at Chadd's Ford, and Howe had fought skillfully and won
an important battle.

Washington had retired in good order and was still formidable. He
now realized clearly enough that Philadelphia would fall. Delay,
however, would be nearly as good as victory. He saw what Howe
could not see, that menacing cloud in the north, much bigger than
a man's hand, which, with Howe far away, should break in a final
storm terrible for the British cause. Meanwhile Washington meant
to keep Howe occupied. Rain alone prevented another battle before
the British reached the Schuylkill River. On that river
Washington guarded every ford. But, in the end, by skillful
maneuvering, Howe was able to cross and on the 26th of September
he occupied Philadelphia without resistance. The people were
ordered to remain quietly in their houses. Officers were billeted
on the wealthier inhabitants. The fall resounded far of what Lord
Adam Gordon called a "great and noble city," "the first Town in
America," "one of the Wonders of the World." Its luxury had been
so conspicuous that the austere John Adams condemned the "sinful
feasts" in which he shared. About it were fine country seats
surrounded by parklike grounds, with noble trees, clipped hedges,
and beautiful gardens. The British believed that Pennsylvania was
really on their side. Many of the people were friendly and
hundreds now renewed their oath of allegiance to the King.
Washington complained that the people gave Howe information
denied to him. They certainly fed Howe's army willingly and
received good British gold while Washington had only paper money
with which to pay. Over the proud capital floated once more the
British flag and people who did not see very far said that, with
both New York and Philadelphia taken, the rebellion had at last
collapsed.

Once in possession of Philadelphia Howe made his camp at
Germantown, a straggling suburban village, about seven miles
northwest of the city. Washington's army lay at the foot of some
hills a dozen miles farther away. Howe had need to be wary, for
Washington was the same "old fox" who had played so cunning a
game at Trenton. The efforts of the British army were now
centered on clearing the river Delaware so that supplies might be
brought up rapidly by water instead of being carried fifty miles
overland from Chesapeake Bay. Howe detached some thousands of men
for this work and there was sharp fighting before the troops and
the fleet combined had cleared the river. At Germantown Howe kept
about nine thousand men. Though he knew that Washington was
likely to attack him he did not entrench his army as he desired
the attack to be made. It might well have succeeded. Washington
with eleven thousand men aimed at a surprise. On the evening of
the 3d of October he set out from his camp. Four roads led into
Germantown and all these the Americans used. At sunrise on the
fourth, just as the attack began, a fog arose to embarrass both
sides. Lying a little north of the village was the solid stone
house of Chief Justice Chew, and it remains famous as the central
point in the bitter fight of that day. What brought final failure
to the American attack was an accident of maneuvering. Sullivan's
brigade was in front attacking the British when Greene's came up
for the same purpose. His line overlapped Sullivan's and he
mistook in the fog Sullivan's men for the enemy and fired on them
from the rear. A panic naturally resulted among the men who were
attacked also at the same time by the British on their front. The
disorder spread. British reinforcements arrived, and Washington
drew off his army in surprising order considering the panic. He
had six hundred and seventy-three casualties and lost besides
four hundred prisoners. The British loss was five hundred and
thirty-seven casualties and fourteen prisoners. The attack had
failed, but news soon came which made the reverse unimportant.
Burgoyne and his whole army had surrendered at Saratoga.



CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST GREAT BRITISH DISASTER

John Burgoyne, in a measure a soldier of fortune, was the younger
son of an impoverished baronet, but he had married the daughter
of the powerful Earl of Derby and was well known in London
society as a man of fashion and also as a man of letters, whose
plays had a certain vogue. His will, in which he describes
himself as a humble Christian, who, in spite of many faults, had
never forgotten God, shows that he was serious minded. He sat in
the House of Commons for Preston and, though he used the language
of a courtier and spoke of himself as lying at the King's feet to
await his commands, he was a Whig, the friend of Fox and others
whom the King regarded as his enemies. One of his plays describes
the difficulties of getting the English to join the army of
George III. We have the smartly dressed recruit as a decoy to
suggest an easy life in the army. Victory and glory are so
certain that a tailor stands with his feet on the neck of the
King of France. The decks of captured ships swim with punch and
are clotted with gold dust, and happy soldiers play with diamonds
as if they were marbles. The senators of England, says Burgoyne,
care chiefly to make sure of good game laws for their own
pleasure. The worthless son of one of them, who sets out on the
long drive to his father's seat in the country, spends an hour in
"yawning, picking his teeth and damning his journey" and when
once on the way drives with such fury that the route is marked by
"yelping dogs, broken-backed pigs and dismembered geese."

It was under this playwright and satirist, who had some skill as
a soldier, that the British cause now received a blow from which
it never recovered. Burgoyne had taken part in driving the
Americans from Canada in 1776 and had spent the following winter
in England using his influence to secure an independent command.
To his later undoing he succeeded. It was he, and not, as had
been expected, General Carleton, who was appointed to lead the
expedition of 1777 from Canada to the Hudson. Burgoyne was given
instructions so rigid as to be an insult to his intelligence. He
was to do one thing and only one thing, to press forward to the
Hudson and meet Howe. At the same time Lord George Germain, the
minister responsible, failed to instruct Howe to advance up the
Hudson to meet Burgoyne. Burgoyne had a genuine belief in the
wisdom of this strategy but he had no power to vary it, to meet
changing circumstances, and this was one chief factor in his
failure.

Behold Burgoyne then, on the 17th of June, embarking on Lake
Champlain the army which, ever since his arrival in Canada on the
6th of May, he had been preparing for this advance. He had rather
more than seven thousand men, of whom nearly one-half were
Germans under the competent General Riedesel. In the force of
Burgoyne we find the ominous presence of some hundreds of Indian
allies. They had been attached to one side or the other in every
war fought in those regions during the previous one hundred and
fifty years. In the war which ended in 1763 Montcalm had used
them and so had his opponent Amherst. The regiments from the New
England and other colonies had fought in alliance with the
painted and befeathered savages and had made no protest. Now
either times had changed, or there was something in a civil war
which made the use of savages seem hideous. One thing is certain.
Amherst had held his savages in stern restraint and could say
proudly that they had not committed a single outrage. Burgoyne
was not so happy.

In nearly every war the professional soldier shows distrust, if
not contempt, for civilian levies. Burgoyne had been in America
before the day of Bunker Hill and knew a great deal about the
country. He thought the "insurgents" good enough fighters when
protected by trees and stones and swampy ground. But he thought,
too, that they had no real knowledge of the science of war and
could not fight a pitched battle. He himself had not shown the
prevision required by sound military knowledge. If the British
were going to abandon the advantage of sea power and fight where
they could not fall back on their fleet, they needed to pay
special attention to land transport. This Burgoyne had not done.
It was only a little more than a week before he reached Lake
Champlain that he asked Carleton to provide the four hundred
horses and five hundred carts which he still needed and which
were not easily secured in a sparsely settled country. Burgoyne
lingered for three days at Crown Point, half way down the lake.
Then, on the 2d of July, he laid siege to Fort Ticonderoga. Once
past this fort, guarding the route to Lake George, he could
easily reach the Hudson.

In command at Fort Ticonderoga was General St. Clair, with about
thirty-five hundred men. He had long notice of the siege, for the
expedition of Burgoyne had been the open talk of Montreal and the
surrounding country during many months. He had built Fort
Independence, on the east shore of Lake Champlain, and with a
great expenditure of labor had sunk twenty-two piers across the
lake and stretched in front of them a boom to protect the two
forts. But he had neglected to defend Sugar Hill in front of Fort
Ticonderoga, and commanding the American works. It took only
three or four days for the British to drag cannon to the top,
erect a battery and prepare to open fire. On the 5th of July, St.
Clair had to face a bitter necessity. He abandoned the untenable
forts and retired southward to Fort Edward by way of the
difficult Green Mountains. The British took one hundred and
twenty-eight guns.

These successes led the British to think that within a few days
they would be in Albany. We have an amusing picture of the effect
on George III of the fall of Fort Ticonderoga. The place had been
much discussed. It had been the first British fort to fall to the
Americans when the Revolution began, and Carleton's failure to
take it in the autumn of 1776 had been the cause of acute
heartburning in London. Now, when the news of its fall reached
England, George III burst into the Queen's room with the glad
cry, "I have beat them, I have beat the Americans." Washington's
depression was not as great as the King's elation; he had a
better sense of values; but he had intended that the fort should
hold Burgoyne, and its fall was a disastrous blow. The Americans
showed skill and good soldierly quality in the retreat from
Ticonderoga, and Burgoyne in following and harassing them was led
into hard fighting in the woods. The easier route by way of Lake
George was open but Burgoyne hoped to destroy his enemy by direct
pursuit through the forest. It took him twenty days to hew his
way twenty miles, to the upper waters of the Hudson near Fort
Edward. When there on the 30th of July he had communications open
from the Hudson to the St. Lawrence.

Fortune seemed to smile on Burgoyne. He had taken many guns and
he had proved the fighting quality of his men. But his cheerful
elation had, in truth, no sound basis. Never during the two and a
half months of bitter struggle which followed was he able to
advance more than twenty-five miles from Fort Edward. The moment
he needed transport by land he found himself almost helpless.
Sometimes his men were without food and equipment because he had
not the horses and carts to bring supplies from the head of water
at Fort Anne or Fort George, a score of miles away. Sometimes he
had no food to transport. He was dependent on his communications
for every form of supplies. Even hay had to be brought from
Canada, since, in the forest country, there was little food for
his horses. The perennial problem for the British in all
operations was this one of food. The inland regions were too
sparsely populated to make it possible for more than a few
soldiers to live on local supplies. The wheat for the bread of
the British soldier, his beef and his pork, even the oats for his
horse, came, for the most part, from England, at vast expense for
transport, which made fortunes for contractors. It is said that
the cost of a pound of salted meat delivered to Burgoyne on the
Hudson was thirty shillings. Burgoyne had been told that the
inhabitants needed only protection to make them openly loyal and
had counted on them for supplies. He found instead the great mass
of the people hostile and he doubted the sincerity even of those
who professed their loyalty.

After Burgoyne had been a month at Fort Edward he was face to
face with starvation. If he advanced he lengthened his line to
flank attack. As it was he had difficulty in holding it against
New Englanders, the most resolute of all his foes, eager to
assert by hard fighting, if need be, their right to hold the
invaded territory which was claimed also by New York. Burgoyne's
instructions forbade him to turn aside and strike them a heavy
blow. He must go on to meet Howe who was not there to be met. A
being who could see the movements of men as we watch a game of
chess, might think that madness had seized the British leaders;
Burgoyne on the upper Hudson plunging forward resolutely to meet
Howe; Howe at sea sailing away, as it might well seem, to get as
far from Burgoyne as he could; Clinton in command at New York
without instructions, puzzled what to do and not hearing from his
leader, Howe, for six weeks at a time; and across the sea a
complacent minister, Germain, who believed that he knew what to
do in a scene three thousand miles away, and had drawn up exact
instructions as to the way of doing it, and who was now eagerly
awaiting news of the final triumph.

Burgoyne did his best. Early in August he had to make a
venturesome stroke to get sorely needed food. Some twenty-five
miles east of the Hudson at Bennington, in difficult country, New
England militia had gathered food and munitions, and horses for
transport. The pressure of need clouded Burgoyne's judgment. To
make a dash for Bennington meant a long and dangerous march. He
was assured, however, that a surprise was possible and that in
any case the country was full of friends only awaiting a little
encouragement to come out openly on his side. They were Germans
who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum, an
efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New
Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to
send Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of
these mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing
loyalists, seemingly eager to take the oath of allegiance, met
and delayed Baum. When near Bennington he found in front of him a
force barring the way and had to make a carefully guarded camp
for the night. Then five hundred men, some of them the cheerful
takers of the oath of allegiance, slipped round to his rear and
in the morning he was attacked from front and rear.

A hot fight followed which resulted in the complete defeat of the
British. Baum was mortally wounded. Some of his men escaped into
the woods; the rest were killed or captured. Nor was this all.
Burgoyne, scenting danger, had ordered five hundred more Germans
to reinforce Baum. They, too, were attacked and overwhelmed. In
all Burgoyne lost some eight hundred men and four guns. The
American loss was seventy. It shows the spirit of the time that,
for the sport of the soldiers, British prisoners were tied
together in pairs and driven by negroes at the tail of horses. An
American soldier described long after, with regret for his own
cruelty, how he had taken a British prisoner who had had his left
eye shot out and mounted him on a horse also without the left
eye, in derision at the captive's misfortune. The British
complained that quarter was refused in the fight. For days tired
stragglers, after long wandering in the woods, drifted into
Burgoyne's camp. This was now near Saratoga, a name destined to
be ominous in the history of the British army.

Further misfortune now crowded upon Burgoyne. The general of that
day had two favorite forms of attack. One was to hold the enemy's
front and throw out a column to march round the flank and attack
his rear, the method of Howe at the Brandywine; the other method
was to advance on the enemy by lines converging at a common
center. This form of attack had proved most successful eighteen
years earlier when the British had finally secured Canada by
bringing together, at Montreal, three armies, one from the east,
one from the west, and one from the south. Now there was a
similar plan of bringing together three British forces at or near
Albany, on the Hudson. Of Clinton, at New York, and Burgoyne we
know. The third force was under General St. Leger. With some
seventeen hundred men, fully half of whom were Indians, he had
gone up the St. Lawrence from Montreal and was advancing from
Oswego on Lake Ontario to attack Fort Stanwix at the end of the
road from the Great Lakes to the Mohawk River. After taking that
stronghold he intended to go down the river valley to meet
Burgoyne near Albany.

On the 3d of August St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix garrisoned
by some seven hundred Americans. With him were two men deemed
potent in that scene. One of these was Sir John Johnson who had
recently inherited the vast estate in the neighborhood of his
father, the great Indian Superintendent, Sir William Johnson, and
was now in command of a regiment recruited from Loyalists, many
of them fierce and embittered because of the seizure of their
property. The other leader was a famous chief of the Mohawks,
Thayendanegea, or, to give him his English name, Joseph Brant,
half savage still, but also half civilized and half educated,
because he had had a careful schooling and for a brief day had
been courted by London fashion. He exerted a formidable influence
with his own people. The Indians were not, however, all on one
side. Half of the six tribes of the Iroquois were either neutral
or in sympathy with the Americans. Among the savages, as among
the civilized, the war was a family quarrel, in which brother
fought brother. Most of the Indians on the American side
preserved, indeed, an outward neutrality. There was no hostile
population for them to plunder and the Indian usually had no
stomach for any other kind of warfare. The allies of the British,
on the other hand, had plenty of openings to their taste and they
brought on the British cause an enduring discredit.

When St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix he heard that a force of
eight hundred men, led by a German settler named Herkimer, was
coming up against him. When it was at Oriskany, about six miles
away, St. Leger laid a trap. He sent Brant with some hundreds of
Indians and a few soldiers to be concealed in a marshy ravine
which Herkimer must cross. When the American force was hemmed in
by trees and marsh on the narrow causeway of logs running across
the ravine the Indians attacked with wild yells and murderous
fire. Then followed a bloody hand to hand fight. Tradition has
been busy with its horrors. Men struggled in slime and blood and
shouted curses and defiance. Improbable stories are told of pairs
of skeletons found afterwards in the bog each with a bony hand
which had driven a knife to the heart of the other. In the end
the British, met by resolution so fierce, drew back. Meanwhile a
sortie from the American fort on their rear had a menacing
success. Sir John Johnson's camp was taken and sacked. The two
sides were at last glad to separate, after the most bloody
struggle in the whole war. St. Leger's Indians had had more than
enough. About a hundred had been killed and the rest were in a
state of mutiny. Soon it was known that Benedict Arnold, with a
considerable force, was pushing up the Mohawk Valley to relieve
the American fort. Arnold knew how to deal with savages. He took
care that his friendly Indians should come into contact with
those of Brant and tell lurid tales of utter disaster to Burgoyne
and of a great avenging army on the march to attack St. Leger.
The result was that St. Leger's Indians broke out in riot and
maddened themselves with stolen rum. Disorder affected even the
soldiers. The only thing for St. Leger to do was to get away. He
abandoned his guns and stores and, harassed now by his former
Indian allies, made his way to Oswego and in the end reached
Montreal with a remnant of his force.

News of these things came to Burgoyne just after the disaster at
Bennington. Since Fort Stanwix was in a country counted upon as
Loyalist at heart it was especially discouraging again to find
that in the main the population was against the British. During
the war almost without exception Loyalist opinion proved weak
against the fierce determination of the American side. It was
partly a matter of organization. The vigilance committees in each
State made life well-nigh intolerable to suspected Tories. Above
all, however, the British had to bear the odium which attaches
always to the invader. We do not know what an American army would
have done if, with Iroquois savages as allies, it had made war in
an English county. We know what loathing a parallel situation
aroused against the British army in America. The Indians, it
should be noted, were not soldiers under British discipline but
allies; the chiefs regarded themselves as equals who must be
consulted and not as enlisted to take orders from a British
general.

In war, as in politics, nice balancing of merit or defect in an
enemy would destroy the main purpose which is to defeat him. Each
side exaggerates any weak point in the other in order to
stimulate the fighting passions. Judgment is distorted. The
Baroness Riedesel, the wife of one of Burgoyne's generals, who
was in Boston in 1777, says that the people were all dressed
alike in a peasant costume with a leather strap round the waist,
that they were of very low and insignificant stature, and that
only one in ten of them could read or write. She pictures New
Englanders as tarring and feathering cultivated English ladies.
When educated people believed every evil of the enemy the
ignorant had no restraint to their credulity. New England had
long regarded the native savages as a pest. In 1776 New Hampshire
offered seventy pounds for each scalp of a hostile male Indian
and thirty-seven pounds and ten shillings for each scalp of a
woman or of a child under twelve years of age. Now it was
reported that the British were offering bounties for American
scalps. Benjamin Franklin satirized British ignorance when he
described whales leaping Niagara Falls and he did not expect to
be taken seriously when, at a later date, he pictured George III
as gloating over the scalps of his subjects in America. The
Seneca Indians alone, wrote Franklin, sent to the King many bales
of scalps. Some bales were captured by the Americans and they
found the scalps of 43 soldiers, 297 farmers, some of them burned
alive, and 67 old people, 88 women, 193 boys, 211 girls, 29
infants, and others unclassified. Exact figures bring conviction.
Franklin was not wanting in exactness nor did he fail, albeit it
was unwittingly, to intensify burning resentment of which we have
echoes still. Burgoyne had to bear the odium of the outrages by
Indians. It is amusing to us, though it was hardly so to this
kindly man, to find these words put into his mouth by a colonial
poet:

 I will let loose the dogs of Hell,
Ten thousand Indians who shall yell,
And foam, and tear, and grin, and roar
And drench their moccasins in gore:. . .
I swear, by St. George and St. Paul,
I will exterminate you all.

Such seed, falling on soil prepared by the hate of war, brought
forth its deadly fruit. The Americans believed that there was no
brutality from which British officers would shrink. Burgoyne had
told his Indian allies that they must not kill except in actual
fighting and that there must be no slaughter of non-combatants
and no scalping of any but the dead. The warning delivered him
into the hands of his enemies for it showed that he half expected
outrage. Members of the British House of Commons were no whit
behind the Americans in attacking him. Burke amused the House by
his satire on Burgoyne's words: "My gentle lions, my humane
bears, my tenderhearted hyenas, go forth! But I exhort you, as
you are Christians and members of civilized society, to take care
not to hurt any man, woman, or child." Burke's great speech
lasted for three and a half hours and Sir George Savile called it
"the greatest triumph of eloquence within memory." British
officers disliked their dirty, greasy, noisy allies and Burgoyne
found his use of savages, with the futile order to be merciful, a
potent factor in his defeat.

A horrifying incident had occurred while he was fighting his way
to the Hudson. As the Americans were preparing to leave Fort
Edward some marauding Indians saw a chance of plunder and
outrage. They burst into a house and carried off two ladies, both
of them British in sympathy--Mrs. McNeil, a cousin of one of
Burgoyne's chief officers, General Fraser, and Miss Jeannie
McCrae, whose betrothed, a Mr. Jones, and whose brother were
serving with Burgoyne. In a short time Mrs. McNeil was handed
over unhurt to Burgoyne's advancing army. Miss McCrae was never
again seen alive by her friends. Her body was found and a Wyandot
chief, known as the Panther, showed her scalp as a trophy.
Burgoyne would have been a poor creature had he not shown anger
at such a crime, even if committed against the enemy. This crime,
however, was committed against his own friends. He pressed the
charge against the chief and was prepared to hang him and only
relaxed when it was urged that the execution would cause all his
Indians to leave him and to commit further outrages. The incident
was appealing in its tragedy and stirred the deep anger of the
population of the surrounding country among whose descendants to
this day the tradition of the abandoned brutality of the British
keeps alive the old hatred.

At Fort Edward Burgoyne now found that he could hardly move. He
was encumbered by an enormous baggage train. His own effects
filled, it is said, thirty wagons and this we can believe when we
find that champagne was served at his table up almost to the day
of final disaster. The population was thoroughly aroused against
him. His own instinct was to remain near the water route to
Canada and make sure of his communications. On the other hand,
honor called him to go forward and not fail Howe, supposed to be
advancing to meet him. For a long time he waited and hesitated.
Meanwhile he was having increasing difficulty in feeding his army
and through sickness and desertion his numbers were declining. By
the 13th of September he had taken a decisive step. He made a
bridge of boats and moved his whole force across the river to
Saratoga, now Schuylerville. This crossing of the river would
result inevitably in cutting off his communications with Lake
George and Ticonderoga. After such a step he could not go back
and he was moving forward into a dark unknown. The American camp
was at Stillwater, twelve miles farther down the river. Burgoyne
sent messenger after messenger to get past the American lines and
bring back news of Howe. Not one of these unfortunate spies
returned. Most of them were caught and ignominiously hanged. One
thing, however, Burgoyne could do. He could hazard a fight and on
this he decided as the autumn was closing in.

Burgoyne had no time to lose, once his force was on the west bank
of the Hudson. General Lincoln cut off his communications with
Canada and was soon laying siege to Ticonderoga. The American
army facing Burgoyne was now commanded by General Gates. This
Englishman, the godson of Horace Walpole, had gained by
successful intrigue powerful support in Congress. That body was
always paying too much heed to local claims and jealousies and on
the 2d of August it removed Schuyler of New York because he was
disliked by the soldiers from New England and gave the command to
Gates. Washington was far away maneuvering to meet Howe and he
was never able to watch closely the campaign in the north. Gates,
indeed, considered himself independent of Washington and reported
not to the Commander-in-Chief but direct to Congress. On the 19th
of September Burgoyne attacked Gates in a strong entrenched
position on Bemis Heights, at Stillwater. There was a long and
bitter fight, but by evening Burgoyne had not carried the main
position and had lost more than five hundred men whom he could
ill spare from his scanty numbers.

Burgoyne's condition was now growing desperate. American forces
barred retreat to Canada. He must go back and meet both frontal
and flank attacks, or go forward, or surrender. To go forward now
had most promise, for at last Howe had instructed Clinton, left
in command at New York, to move, and Clinton was making rapid
progress up the Hudson. On the 7th of October Burgoyne attacked
again at Stillwater. This time he was decisively defeated, a
result due to the amazing energy in attack of Benedict Arnold,
who had been stripped of his command by an intrigue. Gates would
not even speak to him and his lingering in the American camp was
unwelcome. Yet as a volunteer Arnold charged the British line
madly and broke it. Burgoyne's best general, Fraser, was killed
in the fight. Burgoyne retired to Saratoga and there at last
faced the prospects of getting back to Fort Edward and to Canada.
It may be that he could have cut his way through, but this is
doubtful. Without risk of destruction he could not move in any
direction. His enemies now outnumbered him nearly four to one.
His camp was swept by the American guns and his men were under
arms night and day. American sharpshooters stationed themselves
at daybreak in trees about the British camp and any one who
appeared in the open risked his life. If a cap was held up in
view instantly two or three balls would pass through it. His
horses were killed by rifle shots. Burgoyne had little food for
his men and none for his horses. His Indians had long since gone
off in dudgeon. Many of his Canadian French slipped off homeward
and so did the Loyalists. The German troops were naturally
dispirited. A British officer tells of the deadly homesickness of
these poor men. They would gather in groups of two dozen or so
and mourn that they would never again see their native land. They
died, a score at a time, of no other disease than sickness for
their homes. They could have no pride in trying to save a lost
cause. Burgoyne was surrounded and, on the 17th of October, he
was obliged to surrender.

Gates proposed to Burgoyne hard terms--surrender with no honors
of war. The British were to lay down their arms in their
encampments and to march out without weapons of any kind.
Burgoyne declared that, rather than accept such terms, he would
fight still and take no quarter. A shadow was falling on the path
of Gates. The term of service of some of his men had expired. The
New Englanders were determined to stay and see the end of
Burgoyne but a good many of the New York troops went off.
Sickness, too, was increasing. Above all General Clinton was
advancing up the Hudson. British ships could come up freely as
far as Albany and in a few days Clinton might make a formidable
advance. Gates, a timid man, was in a hurry. He therefore agreed
that the British should march from their camp with the honors of
war, that the troops should be taken to New England, and from
there to England. They must not serve again in North America
during the war but there was nothing in the terms to prevent
their serving in Europe and relieving British regiments for
service in America. Gates had the courtesy to keep his army where
it could not see the laying down of arms by Burgoyne's force.
About five thousand men, of whom sixteen hundred were Germans and
only three thousand five hundred fit for duty, surrendered to
sixteen thousand Americans. Burgoyne gave offense to German
officers by saying in his report that he might have held out
longer had all his troops been British. This is probably true but
the British met with only a just Nemesis for using soldiers who
had no call of duty to serve.

The army set out on its long march of two hundred miles to
Boston. The late autumn weather was cold, the army was badly
clothed and fed, and the discomfort of the weary route was
increased by the bitter antagonism of the inhabitants. They
respected the regular British soldier but at the Germans they
shouted insults and the Loyalists they despised as traitors. The
camp at the journey's end was on the ground at Cambridge where
two years earlier Washington had trained his first army. Every
day Burgoyne expected to embark. There was delay and, at last, he
knew the reason. Congress repudiated the terms granted by Gates.
A tangled dispute followed. Washington probably had no sympathy
with the quibbling of Congress. But he had no desire to see this
army return to Europe and release there an army to serve in
America. Burgoyne's force was never sent to England. For nearly a
year it lay at Boston. Then it was marched to Virginia. The men
suffered great hardships and the numbers fell by desertion and
escape. When peace came in 1783 there was no army to take back to
England; Burgoyne's soldiers had been merged into the American
people. It may well be, indeed, that descendants of his beaten
men have played an important part in building up the United
States. The irony of history is unconquerable.



CHAPTER VII. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES AT VALLEY FORGE

Washington had met defeat in every considerable battle at which
he was personally present. His first appearance in military
history, in the Ohio campaign against the French, twenty-two
years before the Revolution, was marked by a defeat, the
surrender of Fort Necessity. Again in the next year, when he
fought to relieve the disaster to Braddock's army, defeat was his
portion. Defeat had pursued him in the battles of the Revolution
--before New York, at the Brandywine, at Germantown. The campaign
against Canada, which he himself planned, had failed. He had lost
New York and Philadelphia. But, like William III of England, who
in his long struggle with France hardly won a battle and yet
forced Louis XIV to accept his terms of peace, Washington, by
suddenness in reprisal, by skill in resource when his plans
seemed to have been shattered, grew on the hard rock of defeat
the flower of victory.

There was never a time when Washington was not trusted by men of
real military insight or by the masses of the people. But a
general who does not win victories in the field is open to
attack. By the winter of 1777 when Washington, with his army
reduced and needy, was at Valley Forge keeping watch on Howe in
Philadelphia, John Adams and others were talking of the sin of
idolatry in the worship of Washington, of its flavor of the
accursed spirit of monarchy, and of the punishment which "the God
of Heaven and Earth" must inflict for such perversity. Adams was
all against a Fabian policy and wanted to settle issues forever
by a short and strenuous war. The idol, it was being whispered,
proved after all to have feet of clay. One general, and only one,
had to his credit a really great victory--Gates, to whom Burgoyne
had surrendered at Saratoga, and there was a movement to replace
Washington by this laureled victor.

General Conway, an Irish soldier of fortune, was one of the most
troublesome in this plot. He had served in the campaign about
Philadelphia but had been blocked in his extravagant demands for
promotion; so he turned for redress to Gates, the star in the
north. A malignant campaign followed in detraction of Washington.
He had, it was said, worn out his men by useless marches; with an
army three times as numerous as that of Howe, he had gained no
victory; there was high fighting quality in the American army if
properly led, but Washington despised the militia; a Gates or a
Lee or a Conway would save the cause as Washington could not; and
so on. "Heaven has determined to save your country or a weak
general and bad counsellors would have ruined it"; so wrote
Conway to Gates and Gates allowed the letter to be seen. The
words were reported to Washington, who at once, in high dudgeon,
called Conway to account. An explosion followed. Gates both
denied that he had received a letter with the passage in
question, and, at the same time, charged that there had been
tampering with his private correspondence. He could not have it
both ways. Conway was merely impudent in reply to Washington, but
Gates laid the whole matter before Congress. Washington wrote to
Gates, in reply to his denials, ironical references to "rich
treasures of knowledge and experience" "guarded with penurious
reserve" by Conway from his leaders but revealed to Gates. There
was no irony in Washington's reference to malignant detraction
and mean intrigue. At the same time he said to Gates: "My temper
leads me to peace and harmony with all men," and he deplored the
internal strife which injured the great cause. Conway soon left
America. Gates lived to command another American army and to end
his career by a crowning disaster.

Washington had now been for more than two years in the chief
command and knew his problems. It was a British tradition that
standing armies were a menace to liberty, and the tradition had
gained strength in crossing the sea. Washington would have wished
a national army recruited by Congress alone and bound to serve
for the duration of the war. There was much talk at the time of a
"new model army" similar in type to the wonderful creation of
Oliver Cromwell. The Thirteen Colonies became, however, thirteen
nations. Each reserved the right to raise its own levies in its
own way. To induce men to enlist Congress was twice handicapped.
First, it had no power of taxation and could only ask the States
to provide what it needed. The second handicap was even greater.
When Congress offered bounties to those who enlisted in the
Continental army, some of the States offered higher bounties for
their own levies of militia, and one authority was bidding
against the other. This encouraged short-term enlistments. If a
man could re-enlist and again secure a bounty, he would gain more
than if he enlisted at once for the duration of the war.

An army is an intricate mechanism needing the same variety of
agencies that is required for the well-being of a community. The
chief aim is, of course, to defeat the enemy, and to do this an
army must be prepared to move rapidly. Means of transport, so
necessary in peace, are even more urgently needed in war. Thus
Washington always needed military engineers to construct roads
and bridges. Before the Revolution the greater part of such
services had been provided in America by the regular British
army, now the enemy. British officers declared that the American
army was without engineers who knew the science of war, and
certainly the forts on which they spent their skill in the North,
those on the lower Hudson, and at Ticonderoga, at the head of
Lake George, fell easily before the assailant. Good maps were
needed, and in this Washington was badly served, though the
defect was often corrected by his intimate knowledge of the
country. Another service ill-equipped was what we should now call
the Red Cross. Epidemics, and especially smallpox, wrought havoc
in the army. Then, as now, shattered nerves were sometimes the
result of the strain of military life. "The wind of a ball," what
we should now call shellshock, sometimes killed men whose bodies
appeared to be uninjured. To our more advanced knowledge the
medical science of the time seems crude. The physicians of New
England, today perhaps the most expert body of medical men in the
world, were even then highly skillful. But the surgeons and
nurses were too few. This was true of both sides in the conflict.
Prisoners in hospitals often suffered terribly and each side
brought charges of ill-treatment against the other. The
prison-ships in the harbor of New York, where American prisoners
were confined, became a scandal, and much bitter invective
against British brutality is found in the literature of the
period. The British leaders, no less than Washington himself,
were humane men, and ignorance and inadequate equipment will
explain most of the hardships, though an occasional officer on
either side was undoubtedly callous in respect to the sufferings
of the enemy.

Food and clothing, the first vital necessities of an army, were
often deplorably scarce. In a land of farmers there was food
enough. Its lack in the army was chiefly due to bad transport.
Clothing was another matter. One of the things insisted upon in a
well-trained army is a decent regard for appearance, and in the
eyes of the French and the British officers the American army
usually seemed rather unkempt. The formalities of dress, the
uniformity of pipe-clay and powdered hair, of polished steel and
brass, can of course be overdone. The British army had too much
of it, but to Washington's force the danger was of having too
little. It was not easy to induce farmers and frontiersmen who at
home began the day without the use of water, razor, or brush, to
appear on parade clean, with hair powdered, faces shaved, and
clothes neat. In the long summer days the men were told to shave
before going to bed that they might prepare the more quickly for
parade in the morning, and to fill their canteens over night if
an early march was imminent. Some of the regiments had uniforms
which gave them a sufficiently smart appearance. The cocked hat,
the loose hunting shirt with its fringed border, the breeches of
brown leather or duck, the brown gaiters or leggings, the
powdered hair, were familiar marks of the soldier of the
Revolution.

During a great part of the war, however, in spite of supplies
brought from both lance and the West Indies, Washington found it
difficult to secure for his men even decent clothing of any kind,
whether of military cut or not. More than a year after he took
command, in the fighting about New York, a great part of his army
had no more semblance of uniform than hunting shirts on a common
pattern. In the following December, he wrote of many men as
either shivering in garments fit only for summer wear or as
entirely naked. There was a time in the later campaign in the
South when hundreds of American soldiers marched stark naked,
except for breech cloths. One of the most pathetic hardships of
the soldier's life was due to the lack of boots. More than one of
Washington's armies could be tracked by the bloody footprints of
his barefooted men. Near the end of the war Benedict Arnold, who
knew whereof he spoke, described the American army as "illy clad,
badly fed, and worse paid," pay being then two or three years
overdue. On the other hand, there is evidence that life in the
army was not without its compensations. Enforced dwelling in the
open air saved men from diseases such as consumption and the
movement from camp to camp gave a broader outlook to the farmer's
sons. The army could usually make a brave parade. On ceremonial
occasions the long hair of the men would be tied back and made
white with powder, even though their uniforms were little more
than rags.

The men carried weapons some of which, in, at any rate, the early
days of the war, were made by hand at the village smithy. A man
might take to the war a weapon forged by himself. The American
soldier had this advantage over the British soldier, that he
used, if not generally, at least in some cases, not the
smooth-bore musket but the grooved rifle by which the ball was
made to rotate in its flight. The fire from this rifle was
extremely accurate. At first weapons were few and ammunition was
scanty, but in time there were importations from France and also
supplies from American gun factories. The standard length of the
barrel was three and a half feet, a portentous size compared with
that of the modern weapon. The loading was from the muzzle, a
process so slow that one of the favorite tactics of the time was
to await the fire of the enemy and then charge quickly and
bayonet him before he could reload. The old method of firing off
the musket by means of slow matches kept alight during action was
now obsolete; the latest device was the flintlock. But there was
always a measure of doubt whether the weapon would go off. Partly
on this account Benjamin Franklin, the wisest man of his time,
declared for the use of the pike of an earlier age rather than
the bayonet and for bows and arrows instead of firearms. A
soldier, he said, could shoot four arrows to one bullet. An arrow
wound was more disabling than a bullet wound; and arrows did not
becloud the vision with smoke. The bullet remained, however, the
chief means of destruction, and the fire of Washington's soldiers
usually excelled that of the British. These, in their turn, were
superior in the use of the bayonet.

Powder and lead were hard to get. The inventive spirit of America
was busy with plans to procure saltpeter and other ingredients
for making powder, but it remained scarce. Since there was no
standard firearm, each soldier required bullets specially suited
to his weapon. The men melted lead and cast it in their own
bullet-molds. It is an instance of the minor ironies of war that
the great equestrian statue of George III, which had been erected
in New York in days more peaceful, was melted into bullets for
killing that monarch's soldiers. Another necessity was paper for
cartridges and wads. The cartridge of that day was a paper
envelope containing the charge of ball and powder. This served
also as a wad, after being emptied of its contents, and was
pushed home with a ramrod. A store of German Bibles in
Pennsylvania fell into the hands of the soldiers at a moment when
paper was a crying need, and the pages of these Bibles were used
for wads.

The artillery of the time seems feeble compared with the monster
weapons of death which we know in our own age. Yet it was an
important factor in the war. It is probable that before the war
not a single cannon had been made in the colonies. From the
outset Washington was hampered for lack of artillery. Neutrals,
especially the Dutch in the West Indies, sold guns to the
Americans, and France was a chief source of supply during long
periods when the British lost the command of the sea. There was
always difficulty about equipping cavalry, especially in the
North. The Virginian was at home on horseback, and in the farther
South bands of cavalry did service during the later years of the
war, but many of the fighting riders of today might tomorrow be
guiding their horses peacefully behind the plough.

The pay of the soldiers remained to Washington a baffling
problem. When the war ended their pay was still heavily in
arrears. The States were timid about imposing taxation and few if
any paid promptly the levies made upon them. Congress bridged the
chasm in finance by issuing paper money which so declined in
value that, as Washington said grimly, it required a wagon-load
of money to pay for a wagon-load of supplies. The soldier
received his pay in this money at its face value, and there is
little wonder that the "continental dollar" is still in the
United States a symbol of worthlessness. At times the lack of pay
caused mutiny which would have been dangerous but for
Washington's firm and tactful management in the time of crisis.
There was in him both the kindly feeling of the humane man and
the rigor of the army leader. He sent men to death without
flinching, but he was at one with his men in their sufferings,
and no problem gave him greater anxiety than that of pay,
affecting, as it did, the health and spirits of men who, while
unpaid, had no means of softening the daily tale of hardship.

Desertion was always hard to combat. With the homesickness which
led sometimes to desertion Washington must have had a secret
sympathy, for his letters show that he always longed for that
pleasant home in Virginia which he did not allow himself to
revisit until nearly the end of the war. The land of a farmer on
service often remained untilled, and there are pathetic cases of
families in bitter need because the breadwinner was in the army.
In frontier settlements his absence sometimes meant the massacre
of his family by the savages. There is little wonder that
desertion was common, so common that after a reverse the men went
away by hundreds. As they usually carried with them their rifles
and other equipment, desertion involved a double loss. On one
occasion some soldiers undertook for themselves the punishment of
deserters. Men of the First Pennsylvania Regiment who had
recaptured three deserters, beheaded one of them and returned to
their camp with the head carried on a pole. More than once it
happened that condemned men were paraded before the troops for
execution with the graves dug and the coffins lying ready. The
death sentence would be read, and then, as the firing party took
aim, a reprieve would be announced. The reprieve in such
circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned
endure the real agony of death.

Religion offered its consolations in the army and Washington gave
much thought to the service of the chaplains. He told his army
that fine as it was to be a patriot it was finer still to be a
Christian. It is an odd fact that, though he attended the
Anglican Communion service before and after the war, he did not
partake of the Communion during the war. What was in his mind we
do not know. He was disposed, as he said himself, to let men find
"that road to Heaven which to them shall seem the most direct,"
and he was without Puritan fervor, but he had deep religious
feeling. During the troubled days at Valley Forge a neighbor came
upon him alone in the bush on his knees praying aloud, and stole
away unobserved. He would not allow in the army a favorite
Puritan custom of burning the Pope in effigy, and the prohibition
was not easily enforced among men, thousands of whom bore
scriptural names from ancestors who thought the Pope anti-Christ.


Washington's winter quarters at Valley Forge were only twenty
miles from Philadelphia, among hills easily defended. It is
matter for wonder that Howe, with an army well equipped, did not
make some attempt to destroy the army of Washington which passed
the winter so near and in acute distress. The Pennsylvania
Loyalists, with dark days soon to come, were bitter at Howe's
inactivity, full of tragic meaning for themselves. He said that
he could achieve nothing permanent by attack. It may be so; but
it is a sound principle in warfare to destroy the enemy when this
is possible. There was a time when in Washington's whole force
not more than two thousand men were in a condition to fight.
Congress was responsible for the needs of the army but was now,
in sordid inefficiency, cooped up in the little town of York,
eighty miles west of Valley Forge, to which it had fled. There
was as yet no real federal union. The seat of authority was in
the State Governments, and we need not wonder that, with the
passing of the first burst of devotion which united the colonies
in a common cause, Congress declined rapidly in public esteem.
"What a lot of damned scoundrels we had in that second Congress"
said, at a later date, Gouverneur Morris of Philadelphia to John
Jay of New York, and Jay answered gravely, "Yes, we had." The
body, so despised in the retrospect, had no real executive
government, no organized departments. Already before Independence
was proclaimed there had been talk of a permanent union, but the
members of Congress had shown no sense of urgency, and it was not
until November 15, 1777, when the British were in Philadelphia
and Congress was in exile at York, that Articles of Confederation
were adopted. By the following midsummer many of the States had
ratified these articles, but Maryland, the last to assent, did
not accept the new union until 1781, so that Congress continued
to act for the States without constitutional sanction during the
greater part of the war.

The ineptitude of Congress is explained when we recall that it
was a revolutionary body which indeed controlled foreign affairs
and the issues of war and peace, coined money, and put forth
paper money but had no general powers. Each State had but one
vote, and thus a small and sparsely settled State counted for as
much as populous Massachusetts or Virginia. The Congress must
deal with each State only as a unit; it could not coerce a State;
and it had no authority to tax or to coerce individuals. The
utmost it could do was to appeal to good feeling, and when a
State felt that it had a grievance such an appeal was likely to
meet with a flaming retort.

Washington maintained towards Congress an attitude of deference
and courtesy which it did not always deserve. The ablest men in
the individual States held aloof from Congress. They felt that
they had more dignity and power if they sat in their own
legislatures. The assembly which in the first days had as members
men of the type of Washington and Franklin sank into a gathering
of second-rate men who were divided into fierce factions. They
debated interminably and did little. Each member usually felt
that he must champion the interests of his own State against the
hostility of others. It was not easy to create a sense of
national life. The union was only a league of friendship. States
which for a century or more had barely acknowledged their
dependence upon Great Britain, were chary about coming under the
control of a new centralizing authority at Philadelphia. The new
States were sovereign and some of them went so far as to send
envoys of their own to negotiate with foreign powers in Europe.
When it was urged that Congress should have the power to raise
taxes in the States, there were patriots who asked sternly what
the war was about if it was not to vindicate the principle that
the people of a State alone should have power of taxation over
themselves. Of New England all the other States were jealous and
they particularly disliked that proud and censorious city which
already was accused of believing that God had made Boston for
Himself and all the rest of the world for Boston. The religion of
New England did not suit the Anglicans of Virginia or the Roman
Catholics of Maryland, and there was resentful suspicion of
Puritan intolerance. John Adams said quite openly that there were
no religious teachers in Philadelphia to compare with those of
Boston and naturally other colonies drew away from the severe and
rather acrid righteousness of which he was a type.


Inefficiency meanwhile brought terrible suffering at Valley
Forge, and the horrors of that winter remain still vivid in the
memory of the American people. The army marched to Valley Forge
on December 17, 1777, and in midwinter everything from houses to
entrenchments had still to be created. At once there was busy
activity in cutting down trees for the log huts. They were built
nearly square, sixteen feet by fourteen, in rows, with the door
opening on improvised streets. Since boards were scarce, and it
was difficult to make roofs rainproof, Washington tried to
stimulate ingenuity by offering a reward of one hundred dollars
for an improved method of roofing. The fireplaces of wood were
protected with thick clay. Firewood was abundant, but, with
little food for oxen and horses, men had to turn themselves into
draught animals to bring in supplies.

Sometimes the army was for a week without meat. Many horses died
for lack of forage or of proper care, a waste which especially
disturbed Washington, a lover of horses. When quantities of
clothing were ready for use, they were not delivered at Valley
Forge owing to lack of transport. Washington expressed his
contempt for officers who resigned their commissions in face of
these distresses. No one, he said, ever heard him say a word
about resignation. There were many desertions but, on the whole,
he marveled at the patience of his men and that they did not
mutiny. With a certain grim humor they chanted phrases about "no
pay, no clothes, no provisions, no rum," and sang an ode
glorifying war and Washington. Hundreds of them marched barefoot,
their blood staining the snow or the frozen ground while, at the
same time, stores of shoes and clothing were lying unused
somewhere on the roads to the camp.

Sickness raged in the army. Few men at Valley Forge, wrote
Washington, had more than a sheet, many only part of a sheet, and
some nothing at all. Hospital stores were lacking. For want of
straw and blankets the sick lay perishing on the frozen ground.
When Washington had been at Valley Forge for less than a week, he
had to report nearly three thousand men unfit for duty because of
their nakedness in the bitter winter. Then, as always, what we
now call the "profiteer" was holding up supplies for higher
prices. To the British at Philadelphia, because they paid in
gold, things were furnished which were denied to Washington at
Valley Forge, and he announced that he would hang any one who
took provisions to Philadelphia. To keep his men alive Washington
had sometimes to take food by force from the inhabitants and then
there was an outcry that this was robbery. With many sick, his
horses so disabled that he could not move his artillery, and his
defenses very slight, he could have made only a weak fight had
Howe attacked him. Yet the legislature of Pennsylvania told him
that, instead of lying quiet in winter quarters, he ought to be
carrying on an active campaign. In most wars irresponsible men
sitting by comfortable firesides are sure they knew best how the
thing should be done.

The bleak hillside at Valley Forge was something more than a
prison. Washington's staff was known as his family and his
relations with them were cordial and even affectionate. The young
officers faced their hardships cheerily and gave meager dinners
to which no one might go if he was so well off as to have
trousers without holes. They talked and sang and jested about
their privations. By this time many of the bad officers, of whom
Washington complained earlier, had been weeded out and he was
served by a body of devoted men. There was much good comradeship.
Partnership in suffering tends to draw men together. In the
company which gathered about Washington, two men, mere youths at
the time, have a world-wide fame. The young Alexander Hamilton,
barely twenty-one years of age, and widely known already for his
political writings, had the rank of lieutenant colonel gained for
his services in the fighting about New York. He was now
Washington's confidential secretary, a position in which he soon
grew restless. His ambition was to be one of the great military
leaders of the Revolution. Before the end of the war he had gone
back to fighting and he distinguished himself in the last battle
of the war at Yorktown. The other youthful figure was the Marquis
de La Fayette. It is not without significance that a noble square
bears his name in the capital named after Washington. The two men
loved each other. The young French aristocrat, with both a great
name and great possessions, was fired in 1776, when only
nineteen, with zeal for the American cause. "With the welfare of
America," he wrote to his wife, "is closely linked the welfare of
mankind." Idealists in France believed that America was leading
in the remaking of the world. When it was known that La Fayette
intended to go to fight in America, the King of France forbade
it, since France had as yet no quarrel with England. The youth,
however, chartered a ship, landed in South Carolina, hurried to
Philadelphia, and was a major general in the American army when
he was twenty years of age.

La Fayette rendered no serious military service to the American
cause. He arrived in time to fight in the battle of the
Brandywine. Washington praised him for his bravery and military
ardor and wrote to Congress that he was sensible, discreet, and
able to speak English freely. It was with an eye to the influence
in France of the name of the young noble that Congress advanced
him so rapidly. La Fayette was sincere and generous in spirit. He
had, however, little military capacity. Later when he might have
directed the course of the French Revolution he was found wanting
in force of character. The great Mirabeau tried to work with him
for the good of France, but was repelled by La Fayette's jealous
vanity, a vanity so greedy of praise that Jefferson called it a
"canine appetite for popularity and fame." La Fayette once said
that he had never bad a thought with which he could reproach
himself, and he boasted that he has mastered three kings--the
King of England in the American Revolution, the King of France,
and King Mob of Paris during the upheaval in France. He was
useful as a diplomatist rather than as a soldier. Later, in an
hour of deep need, Washington sent La Fayette to France to ask
for aid. He was influential at the French court and came back
with abundant promises, which were in part fulfilled.

Washington himself and Oliver Cromwell are perhaps the only two
civilian generals in history who stand in the first rank as
military leaders. It is doubtful indeed whether it is not rather
character than military skill which gives Washington his place.
Only one other general of the Revolution attained to first rank
even in secondary fame. Nathanael Greene was of Quaker stock from
Rhode Island. He was a natural student and when trouble with the
mother country was impending in 1774 he spent the leisure which
he could spare from his forges in the study of military history
and in organizing the local militia. Because of his zeal for
military service he was expelled from the Society of Friends. In
1775 when war broke out he was promptly on hand with a contingent
from Rhode Island. In little more than a year and after a very
slender military experience he was in command of the army on Long
Island. On the Hudson defeat not victory was his lot. He had,
however, as much stern resolve as Washington. He shared
Washington's success in the attack on Trenton, and his defeats at
the Brandywine and at Germantown. Now he was at Valley Forge, and
when, on March 2, 1778, he became quartermaster general, the
outlook for food and supplies steadily improved. Later, in the
South, he rendered brilliant service which made possible the
final American victory at Yorktown.

Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller, had, like Greene, only slight
training for military command. It shows the dearth of officers to
fight the highly disciplined British army that Knox, at the age
of twenty-five, and fresh from commercial life, was placed in
charge of the meager artillery which Washington had before
Boston. It was Knox, who, with heart-breaking labor, took to the
American front the guns captured at Ticonderoga. Throughout the
war he did excellent service with the artillery, and Washington
placed a high value upon his services. He valued too those of
Daniel Morgan, an old fighter in the Indian wars, who left his
farm in Virginia when war broke out, and marched his company of
riflemen to join the army before Boston. He served with Arnold at
the siege of Quebec, and was there taken prisoner. He was
exchanged and had his due revenge when he took part in the
capture of Burgoyne's army. He was now at Valley Forge. Later he
had a command under Greene in the South and there, as we shall
see, he won the great success of the Battle of Cowpens in
January, 1781.

It was the peculiar misfortune of Washington that the three men,
Arnold, Lee, and Gates, who ought to have rendered him the
greatest service, proved unfaithful. Benedict Arnold, next to
Washington himself, was probably the most brilliant and
resourceful soldier of the Revolution. Washington so trusted him
that, when the dark days at Valley Forge were over, he placed him
in command of the recaptured federal capital. Today the name of
Arnold would rank high in the memory of a grateful country had he
not fallen into the bottomless pit of treason. The same is in
some measure true of Charles Lee, who was freed by the British in
an exchange of prisoners and joined Washington at Valley Forge
late in the spring of 1778. Lee was so clever with his pen as to
be one of the reputed authors of the Letters of Junius. He had
served as a British officer in the conquest of Canada, and later
as major general in the army of Poland. He had a jealous and
venomous temper and could never conceal the contempt of the
professional soldier for civilian generals. He, too, fell into
the abyss of treason. Horatio Gates, also a regular soldier, had
served under Braddock and was thus at that early period a comrade
of Washington. Intriguer he was, but not a traitor. It was
incompetence and perhaps cowardice which brought his final ruin.

Europe had thousands of unemployed officers some of whom had had
experience in the Seven Years' War and many turned eagerly to
America for employment. There were some good soldiers among these
fighting adventurers. Kosciuszko, later famous as a Polish
patriot, rose by his merits to the rank of brigadier general in
the American army; De Kalb, son of a German peasant, though not a
baron, as he called himself, proved worthy of the rank of a major
general. There was, however, a flood of volunteers of another
type. French officers fleeing from their creditors and sometimes
under false names and titles, made their way to America as best
they could and came to Washington with pretentious claims.
Germans and Poles there were, too, and also exiles from that
unhappy island which remains still the most vexing problem of
British politics. Some of them wrote their own testimonials;
some, too, were spies. On the first day, Washington wrote, they
talked only of serving freely a noble cause, but within a week
were demanding promotion and advance of money. Sometimes they
took a high tone with members of Congress who had not courage to
snub what Washington called impudence and vain boasting. "I am
haunted and teased to death by the importunity of some and
dissatisfaction of others" wrote Washington of these people.

One foreign officer rendered incalculable service to the American
cause. It was not only on the British side that Germans served in
the American Revolution. The Baron yon Steuben was, like La
Fayette, a man of rank in his own country, and his personal
service to the Revolution was much greater than that of La
Fayette. Steuben had served on the staff of Frederick the Great
and was distinguished for his wit and his polished manners. There
was in him nothing of the needy adventurer. The sale of Hessian
and other troops to the British by greedy German princes was met
in some circles in Germany by a keen desire to aid the cause of
the young republic. Steuben, who held a lucrative post, became
convinced, while on a visit to Paris, that he could render
service in training the Americans. With quick sympathy and
showing no reserve in his generous spirit he abandoned his
country, as it proved forever, took ship for the United States,
and arrived in November, 1777. Washington welcomed him at Valley
Forge in the following March. He was made Inspector General and
at once took in hand the organization of the army. He prepared
"Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the
United States" later, in 1779, issued as a book. Under this
German influence British methods were discarded. The word of
command became short and sharp. The British practice of leaving
recruits to be trained by sergeants, often ignorant, coarse, and
brutal, was discarded, and officers themselves did this work. The
last letter which Washington wrote before he resigned his command
at the end of the war was to thank Steuben for his invaluable
aid. Charles Lee did not believe that American recruits could be
quickly trained so as to be able to face the disciplined British
battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong to Lee's own
entire undoing at Monmouth when fighting began in 1778.


The British army in America furnished sharp contrasts to that of
Washington. If the British jeered at the fighting quality of
citizens, these retorted that the British soldier was a mere
slave. There were two great stains upon the British system, the
press-gang and flogging. Press-gangs might seize men abroad in
the streets of a town and, unless they could prove that they were
gentlemen in rank, they could be sent in the fleet to serve in
the remotest corners of the earth. In both navy and army flogging
outraged the dignity of manhood. The liability to this brutal and
degrading punishment kept all but the dregs of the populace from
enlisting in the British army. It helped to fix the deep gulf
between officers and men. Forty years later Napoleon Bonaparte,
despot though he might be, was struck by this separation. He
himself went freely among his men, warmed himself at their fire,
and talked to them familiarly about their work, and he thought
that the British officer was too aloof in his demeanor. In the
British army serving in America there were many officers of
aristocratic birth and long training in military science. When
they found that American officers were frequently drawn from a
class of society which in England would never aspire to a
commission, and were largely self-taught, not unnaturally they
jeered at an army so constituted. Another fact excited British
disdain. The Americans were technically rebels against their
lawful ruler, and rebels in arms have no rights as belligerents.
When the war ended more than a thousand American prisoners were
still held in England on the capital charge of treason. Nothing
stirred Washington's anger more deeply than the remark sometimes
made by British officers that the prisoners they took were
receiving undeserved mercy when they were not hanged.

There was much debate at Valley Forge as to the prospect for the
future. When we look at available numbers during the war we
appreciate the view of a British officer that in spite of
Washington's failures and of British victories the war was
serious, "an ugly job, a damned affair indeed." The population of
the colonies--some 2,500,000--was about one-third that of the
United Kingdom; and for the British the war was remote from the
base of supply. In those days, considering the means of
transport, America was as far from England as at the present day
is Australia. Sometimes the voyage across the sea occupied two
and even three months, and, with the relatively small ships of
the time, it required a vast array of transports to carry an army
of twenty or thirty thousand men. In the spring of 1776 Great
Britain had found it impossible to raise at home an army of even
twenty thousand men for service in America, and she was forced to
rely in large part upon mercenary soldiers. This was nothing new.
Her island people did not like service abroad and this
unwillingness was intensified in regard to war in remote America.
Moreover Whig leaders in England discouraged enlistment. They
were bitterly hostile to the war which they regarded as an attack
not less on their own liberties than on those of America. It
would be too much to ascribe to the ignorant British common
soldier of the time any deep conviction as to the merits or
demerits of the cause for which he fought. There is no evidence
that, once in the army, he was less ready to attack the Americans
than any other foe. Certainly the Americans did not think he was
half-hearted.

The British soldier fought indeed with more resolute
determination than did the hired auxiliary at his side. These
German troops played a notable part in the war. The despotic
princes of the lesser German states were accustomed to sell the
services of their troops. Despotic Russia, too, was a likely
field for such enterprise. When, however, it was proposed to the
Empress Catherine II that she should furnish twenty thousand men
for service in America she retorted with the sage advice that it
was England's true interest to settle the quarrel in America
without war. Germany was left as the recruiting field. British
efforts to enlist Germans as volunteers in her own army were
promptly checked by the German rulers and it was necessary
literally to buy the troops from their princes. One-fourth of the
able-bodied men of Hesse-Cassel were shipped to America. They
received four times the rate of pay at home and their ruler
received in addition some half million dollars a year. The men
suffered terribly and some died of sickness for the homes to
which thousands of them never returned. German generals, such as
Knyphausen and Riedesel, gave the British sincere and effective
service. The Hessians were, however, of doubtful benefit to the
British. It angered the Americans that hired troops should be
used against them, an anger not lessened by the contempt which
the Hessians showed for the colonial officers as plebeians.

The two sides were much alike in their qualities and were
skillful in propaganda. In Britain lurid tales were told of the
colonists scalping the wounded at Lexington and using poisoned
bullets at Bunker Hill. In America every prisoner in British
hands was said to be treated brutally and every man slain in the
fighting to have been murdered. The use of foreign troops was a
fruitful theme. The report ran through the colonies that the
Hessians were huge ogre-like monsters, with double rows of teeth
round each jaw, who had come at the call of the British tyrant to
slay women and children. In truth many of the Hessians became
good Americans. In spite of the loyalty of their officers they
were readily induced to desert. The wit of Benjamin Franklin was
enlisted to compose telling appeals, translated into simple
German, which promised grants of land to those who should abandon
an unrighteous cause. The Hessian trooper who opened a packet of
tobacco might find in the wrapper appeals both to his virtue and
to his cupidity. It was easy for him to resist them when the
British were winning victories and he was dreaming of a return to
the Fatherland with a comfortable accumulation of pay, but it was
different when reverses overtook British arms. Then many hundreds
slipped away; and today their blood flows in the veins of
thousands of prosperous American farmers.



CHAPTER VIII. THE ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE AND ITS RESULTS

Washington badly needed aid from Europe, but there every
important government was monarchical and it was not easy for a
young republic, the child of revolution, to secure an ally.
France tingled with joy at American victories and sorrowed at
American reverses, but motives were mingled and perhaps hatred of
England was stronger than love for liberty in America. The young
La Fayette had a pure zeal, but he would not have fought for the
liberty of colonists in Mexico as he did for those in Virginia;
and the difference was that service in Mexico would not hurt the
enemy of France so recently triumphant. He hated England and said
so quite openly. The thought of humiliating and destroying that
"insolent nation" was always to him an inspiration. Vergennes,
the French Foreign Minister, though he lacked genius, was a man
of boundless zeal and energy. He was at work at four o'clock in
the morning and he spent his long days in toil for his country.
He believed that England was the tyrant of the seas, "the monster
against whom we should be always prepared," a greedy, perfidious
neighbor, the natural enemy of France.

From the first days of the trouble in regard to the Stamp Act
Vergennes had rejoiced that England's own children were turning
against her. He had French military officers in England spying on
her defenses. When war broke out he showed no nice regard for the
rules of neutrality and helped the colonies in every way
possible. It was a French writer who led in these activities.
Beaumarchais is known to the world chiefly as the creator of the
character of Figaro, which has become the type of the bold,
clever, witty, and intriguing rascal, but he played a real part
in the American Revolution. We need not inquire too closely into
his motives. There was hatred of the English, that "audacious,
unbridled, shameless people," and there was, too, the zeal for
liberal ideas which made Queen Marie Antoinette herself take a
pretty interest in the "dear republicans" overseas who were at
the same time fighting the national enemy. Beaumarchais secured
from the government money with which he purchased supplies to be
sent to America. He had a great warehouse in Paris, and, under
the rather fantastic Spanish name of Roderigue Hortalez & Co., he
sent vast quantities of munitions and clothing to America.
Cannon, not from private firms but from the government arsenals,
were sent across the sea. When Vergennes showed scruples about
this violation of neutrality, the answer of Beaumarchais was that
governments were not bound by rules of morality applicable to
private persons. Vergennes learned well the lesson and, while
protesting to the British ambassador in Paris that France was
blameless, he permitted outrageous breaches of the laws of
neutrality.

Secret help was one thing, open alliance another. Early in 1776
Silas Deane, a member from Connecticut of the Continental
Congress, was named as envoy to France to secure French aid. The
day was to come when Deane should believe the struggle against
Britain hopeless and counsel submission, but now he showed a
furious zeal. He knew hardly a word of French, but this did not
keep him from making his elaborate programme well understood.
Himself a trader, he promised France vast profits from the
monopoly of the trade of America when independence should be
secure. He gave other promises not more easy of fulfillment. To
Frenchmen zealous for the ideals of liberty and seeking military
careers in America he promised freely commissions as colonels and
even generals and was the chief cause of that deluge of European
officers which proved to Washington so annoying. It was through
Deane's activities that La Fayette became a volunteer. Through
him came too the proposal to send to America the Comte de Broglie
who should be greater than colonel or general--a generalissimo, a
dictator. He was to brush aside Washington, to take command of
the American armies, and by his prestige and skill to secure
France as an ally and win victory in the field. For such services
Broglie asked only despotic power while he served and for life a
great pension which would, he declared, not be one-hundredth part
of his real value. That Deane should have considered a scheme so
fantastic reveals the measure of his capacity, and by the end of
1776 Benjamin Franklin was sent to Paris to bring his tried skill
to bear upon the problem of the alliance. With Deane and Franklin
as a third member of the commission was associated Arthur Lee who
had vainly sought aid at the courts of Spain and Prussia. France
was, however, coy. The end of 1776 saw the colonial cause at a
very low ebb, with Washington driven from New York and about to
be driven from Philadelphia. Defeat is not a good argument for an
alliance. France was willing to send arms to America and willing
to let American privateers use freely her ports. The ship which
carried Franklin to France soon busied herself as a privateer and
reaped for her crew a great harvest of prize money. In a single
week of June, 1777, this ship captured a score of British
merchantmen, of which more than two thousand were taken by
Americans during the war. France allowed the American privateers
to come and go as they liked, and gave England smooth words, but
no redress. There is little wonder that England threatened to
hang captured American sailors as pirates.

It was the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga which brought decision
to France. That was the victory which Vergennes had demanded
before he would take open action. One British army had
surrendered. Another was in an untenable position in
Philadelphia. It was known that the British fleet had declined.
With the best of it in America, France was the more likely to win
successes in Europe. The Bourbon king of France could, too, draw
into the war the Bourbon king of Spain, and Spain had good ships.
The defects of France and Spain on the sea were not in ships but
in men. The invasion of England was not improbable and then less
than a score of years might give France both avenging justice for
her recent humiliation and safety for her future. Britain should
lose America, she should lose India, she should pay in a hundred
ways for her past triumphs, for the arrogance of Pitt, who had
declared that he would so reduce France that she should never
again rise. The future should belong not to Britain but to
France. Thus it was that fervent patriotism argued after the
defeat of Burgoyne. Frederick the Great told his ambassador at
Paris to urge upon France that she had now a chance to strike
England which might never again come. France need not, he said,
fear his enmity, for he was as likely to help England as the
devil to help a Christian. Whatever doubts Vergennes may have
entertained about an open alliance with America were now swept
away. The treaty of friendship with America was signed on
February 6, 1778. On the 13th of March the French ambassador in
London told the British Government, with studied insolence of
tone, that the United States were by their own declaration
independent. Only a few weeks earlier the British ministry had
said that there was no prospect of any foreign intervention to
help the Americans and now in the most galling manner France told
George III the one thing to which he would not listen, that a
great part of his sovereignty was gone. Each country withdrew its
ambassador and war quickly followed.

France had not tried to make a hard bargain with the Americans.
She demanded nothing for herself and agreed not even to ask for
the restoration of Canada. She required only that America should
never restore the King's sovereignty in order to secure peace.
Certain sections of opinion in America were suspicious of France.
Was she not the old enemy who had so long harassed the frontiers
of New England and New York? If George III was a despot what of
Louis XVI, who had not even an elected Parliament to restrain
him? Washington himself was distrustful of France and months
after the alliance had been concluded he uttered the warning that
hatred of England must not lead to over-confidence in France. "No
nation," he said, "is to be trusted farther than it is bound by
its interests." France, he thought, must desire to recover
Canada, so recently lost. He did not wish to see a great military
power on the northern frontier of the United States. This would
be to confirm the jeer of the Loyalists that the alliance was a
case of the wooden horse in Troy; the old enemy would come back
in the guise of a friend and would then prove to be master and
bring the colonies under a servitude compared with which the
British supremacy would seem indeed mild.

The intervention of France brought a cruel embarrassment to the
Whig patriot in England. He could rejoice and mourn with American
patriots because he believed that their cause was his own. It was
as much the interest of Norfolk as of Massachusetts that the new
despotism of a king, who ruled through a corrupt Parliament,
should be destroyed. It was, however, another matter when France
took a share in the fight. France fought less for freedom than
for revenge, and the Englishman who, like Coke of Norfolk, could
daily toast Washington as the greatest of men could not link that
name with Louis XVI or with his minister Vergennes. The currents
of the past are too swift and intricate to be measured exactly by
the observer who stands on the shore of the present, but it is
arguable that the Whigs might soon have brought about peace in
England had it not been for the intervention of France. No
serious person any longer thought that taxation could be enforced
upon America or that the colonies should be anything but free in
regulating their own affairs. George III himself said that he who
declared the taxing of America to be worth what it cost was "more
fit for Bedlam than a seat in the Senate." The one concession
Britain was not yet prepared to make was Independence. But Burke
and many other Whigs were ready now for this, though Chatham
still believed it would be the ruin of the British Empire.

Chatham, however, was all for conciliation, and it is not hard to
imagine a group of wise men chosen from both sides, men British
in blood and outlook, sitting round a table and reaching an
agreement to result in a real independence for America and a real
unity with Great Britain. A century and a quarter later a bitter
war with an alien race in South Africa was followed by a result
even more astounding. The surrender of Burgoyne had made the
Prime Minister, Lord North, weary of his position. He had never
been in sympathy with the King's policy and since the bad news
had come in December he had pondered some radical step which
should end the war. On February 17, 1778, before the treaty of
friendship between the United States and France had been made
public, North startled the House of Commons by introducing a bill
repealing the tax on tea, renouncing forever the right to tax
America, and nullifying those changes in the constitution of
Massachusetts which had so rankled in the minds of its people. A
commission with full powers to negotiate peace would proceed at
once to America and it might suspend at its discretion, and thus
really repeal, any act touching America passed since 1763.

North had taken a sharp turn. The Whig clothes had been stolen by
a Tory Prime Minister and if he wished to stay in office the
Whigs had not the votes to turn him out. His supporters would
accept almost anything in order to dish the Whigs. They swallowed
now the bill, and it became law, but at the same time came, too,
the war with France. It united the Tories; it divided the Whigs.
All England was deeply stirred. Nearly every important town
offered to raise volunteer forces at its own expense. The
Government soon had fifteen thousand men recruited at private
cost. Help was offered so freely that the Whig, John Wilkes,
actually introduced into Parliament a bill to prohibit gifts of
money to the Crown since this voluntary taxation gave the Crown
money without the consent of Parliament. The British patriot,
gentle as he might be towards America, fumed against France. This
was no longer only a domestic struggle between parties, but a war
with an age-long foreign enemy. The populace resented what they
called the insolence and the treachery of France and the French
ambassador was pelted at Canterbury as he drove to the seacoast
on his recall. In a large sense the French alliance was not an
unmixed blessing for America, since it confused the counsels of
her best friends in England.

In spite of this it is probably true that from this time the mass
of the English people were against further attempts to coerce
America. A change of ministry was urgently demanded. There was
one leader to whom the nation looked in this grave crisis. The
genius of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, had won the last war
against France and he had promoted the repeal of the Stamp Act.
In America his name was held in reverence so high that New York
and Charleston had erected statues in his honor. When the defeat
of Burgoyne so shook the ministry that North was anxious to
retire, Chatham, but for two obstacles, could probably have
formed a ministry. One obstacle was his age; as the event proved,
he was near his end. It was, however, not this which kept him
from office, but the resolve of George III. The King simply said
that he would not have Chatham. In office Chatham would certainly
rule and the King intended himself to rule. If Chatham would come
in a subordinate position, well; but Chatham should not lead. The
King declared that as long as even ten men stood by him he would
hold out and he would lose his crown rather than call to office
that clamorous Opposition which had attacked his American policy.
"I will never consent," he said firmly, "to removing the members
of the present Cabinet from my service." He asked North: "Are you
resolved at the hour of danger to desert me?" North remained in
office. Chatham soon died and, during four years still, George
III was master of England. Throughout the long history of that
nation there is no crisis in which one man took a heavier and
more disastrous responsibility.


News came to Valley Forge of the alliance with France and there
were great rejoicings. We are told that, to celebrate the
occasion, Washington dined in public. We are not given the bill
of fare in that scene of famine; but by the springtime tension in
regard to supplies had been relieved and we may hope that Valley
Forge really feasted in honor of the great event. The same news
brought gloom to the British in Philadelphia, for it had the
stern meaning that the effort and loss involved in the capture of
that city were in vain. Washington held most of the surrounding
country so that supplies must come chiefly by sea. With a French
fleet and a French army on the way to America, the British
realized that they must concentrate their defenses. Thus the
cheers at Valley Forge were really the sign that the British must
go.

Sir William Howe, having taken Philadelphia, was determined not
to be the one who should give it up. Feeling was bitter in
England over the ghastly failure of Burgoyne, and he had gone
home on parole to defend himself from his seat in the House of
Commons. There Howe had a seat and he, too, had need to be on
hand. Lord George Germain had censured him for his course and, to
shield himself; was clearly resolved to make scapegoats of
others. So, on May 18, 1778, at Philadelphia there was a farewell
to Howe, which took the form of a Mischianza, something
approaching the medieval tournament. Knights broke lances in
honor of fair ladies, there were arches and flowers and fancy
costumes, and high-flown Latin and French, all in praise of the
departing Howe. Obviously the garrison of Philadelphia had much
time on its hands and could count upon, at least, some cheers
from a friendly population. It is remembered still, with
moralizings on the turns in human fortune, that Major Andre and
Miss Margaret Shippen were the leaders in that gay scene, the
one, in the days to come, to be hanged by Washington as a spy,
because entrapped in the treason of Benedict Arnold, who became
the husband of the other.

On May 24, 1778, Sir Henry Clinton took over from Howe the
command of the British army in America and confronted a difficult
problem. If d'Estaing, the French admiral, should sail straight
for the Delaware he might destroy the fleet of little more than
half his strength which lay there, and might quickly starve
Philadelphia into surrender. The British must unite their forces
to meet the peril from France, and New York, as an island, was
the best point for a defense, chiefly naval. A move to New York
was therefore urgent. It was by sea that the British had come to
Philadelphia, but it was not easy to go away by sea. There was
not room in the transports for the army and its encumbrances.
Moreover, to embark the whole force, a march of forty miles to
New Castle, on the lower Delaware, would be necessary and the
retreating army was sure to be harassed on its way by Washington.
It would besides hardly be safe to take the army by sea for the
French fleet might be strong enough to capture the flotilla.

There was nothing for it but, at whatever risk, to abandon
Philadelphia and march the army across New Jersey. It would be
possible to take by sea the stores and the three thousand
Loyalists from Philadelphia, some of whom would probably be
hanged if they should be taken. Lord Howe, the naval commander,
did his part in a masterly manner. On the 18th of June the
British army marched out of Philadelphia and before the day was
over it was across the Delaware on the New Jersey side. That same
day Washington's army, free from its long exile at Valley Forge,
occupied the capital. Clinton set out on his long march by land
and Howe worked his laden ships down the difficult river to its
mouth and, after delay by winds, put to sea on the 28th of June.
By a stroke of good fortune he sailed the two hundred miles to
New York in two days and missed the great fleet of d'Estaing,
carrying an army of four thousand men. On the 8th of July
d'Estaing anchored at the mouth of the Delaware. Had not his
passage been unusually delayed and Howe's unusually quick, as
Washington noted, the British fleet and the transports in the
Delaware would probably have been taken and Clinton and his army
would have shared the fate of Burgoyne.

As it was, though Howe's fleet was clear away, Clinton's army had
a bad time in the march across New Jersey. Its baggage train was
no less than twelve miles long and, winding along roads leading
sometimes through forests, was peculiarly vulnerable to flank
attack. In this type of warfare Washington excelled. He had
fought over this country and he knew it well. The tragedy of
Valley Forge was past. His army was now well trained and well
supplied. He had about the same number of men as the
British--perhaps sixteen thousand--and he was not encumbered by a
long baggage train. Thus it happened that Washington was across
the Delaware almost as soon as the British. He marched parallel
with them on a line some five miles to the north and was able to
forge towards the head of their column. He could attack their
flank almost when he liked. Clinton marched with great
difficulty. He found bridges down. Not only was Washington behind
him and on his flank but General Gates was in front marching from
the north to attack him when he should try to cross the Raritan
River. The long British column turned southeastward toward Sandy
Hook, so as to lessen the menace from Gates. Between the half of
the army in the van and the other half in the rear was the
baggage train.

The crisis came on Sunday the 28th of June, a day of sweltering
heat. By this time General Charles Lee, Washington's second in
command, was in a good position to attack the British rear guard
from the north, while Washington, marching three miles behind
Lee, was to come up in the hope of overwhelming it from the rear.
Clinton's position was difficult but he was saved by Lee's
ineptitude. He had positive instructions to attack with his five
thousand men and hold the British engaged until Washington should
come up in overwhelming force. The young La Fayette was with Lee.
He knew what Washington had ordered, but Lee said to him: "You
don't know the British soldiers; we cannot stand against them."
Lee's conduct looks like deliberate treachery. Instead of
attacking the British he allowed them to attack him. La Fayette
managed to send a message to Washington in the rear; Washington
dashed to the front and, as he came up, met soldiers flying from
before the British. He rode straight to Lee, called him in
flaming anger a "damned poltroon," and himself at once took
command. There was a sharp fight near Monmouth Court House. The
British were driven back and only the coming of night ended the
struggle. Washington was preparing to renew it in the morning,
but Clinton had marched away in the darkness. He reached the
coast on the 30th of June, having lost on the way fifty-nine men
from sunstroke, over three hundred in battle, and a great many
more by desertion. The deserters were chiefly Germans, enticed by
skillful offers of land. Washington called for a reckoning from
Lee. He was placed under arrest, tried by court-martial, found
guilty, and suspended from rank for twelve months. Ultimately he
was dismissed from the American army, less it appears for his
conduct at Monmouth than for his impudent demeanor toward
Congress afterwards.

These events on land were quickly followed by stirring events on
the sea. The delays of the British Admiralty of this time seem
almost incredible. Two hundred ships waited at Spithead for three
months for convoy to the West Indies, while all the time the
people of the West Indies, cut off from their usual sources of
supply in America, were in distress for food. Seven weeks passed
after d'Estaing had sailed for America, before the Admiralty knew
that he was really gone and sent Admiral Byron, with fourteen
ships, to the aid of Lord Howe. When d'Estaing was already before
New York Byron was still battling with storms in mid-Atlantic,
storms so severe that his fleet was entirely dispersed and his
flagship was alone when it reached Long Island on the 18th of
August.

Meanwhile the French had a great chance. On the 11th of July
their fleet, much stronger than the British, arrived from the
Delaware, and anchored off Sandy Hook. Admiral Howe knew his
danger. He asked for volunteers from the merchant ships and the
sailors offered themselves almost to a man. If d'Estaing could
beat Howe's inferior fleet, the transports at New York would be
at his mercy and the British army, with no other source of
supply, must surrender. Washington was near, to give help on
land. The end of the war seemed not far away. But it did not
come. The French admirals were often taken from an army command,
and d'Estaing was not a sailor but a soldier. He feared the skill
of Howe, a really great sailor, whose seven available ships were
drawn up in line at Sandy Hook so that their guns bore on ships
coming in across the bar. D'Estaing hovered outside. Pilots from
New York told him that at high tide there were only twenty-two
feet of water on the bar and this was not enough for his great
ships, one of which carried ninety-one guns. On the 22d of July
there was the highest of tides with, in reality, thirty feet of
water on the bar, and a wind from the northeast which would have
brought d'Estaing's ships easily through the channel into the
harbor. The British expected the hottest naval fight in their
history. At three in the afternoon d'Estaing moved but it was to
sail away out of sight.

Opportunity, though once spurned, seemed yet to knock again. The
one other point held by the British was Newport, Rhode Island.
Here General Pigot had five thousand men and only perilous
communications by sea with New York. Washington, keenly desirous
to capture this army, sent General Greene to aid General Sullivan
in command at Providence, and d'Estaing arrived off Newport to
give aid. Greene had fifteen hundred fine soldiers, Sullivan had
nine thousand New England militia, and d'Estaing four thousand
French regulars. A force of fourteen thousand five hundred men
threatened five thousand British. But on the 9th of August Howe
suddenly appeared near Newport with his smaller fleet. D'Estaing
put to sea to fight him, and a great naval battle was imminent,
when a terrific storm blew up and separated and almost shattered
both fleets. D'Estaing then, in spite of American protests,
insisted on taking the French ships to Boston to refit and with
them the French soldiers. Sullivan publicly denounced the French
admiral as having basely deserted him and his own disgusted
yeomanry left in hundreds for their farms to gather in the
harvest. In September, with d'Estaing safely away, Clinton sailed
into Newport with five thousand men. Washington's campaign
against Rhode Island had failed completely.

The summer of 1778 thus turned out badly for Washington. Help
from France which had aroused such joyous hopes in America had
achieved little and the allies were hurling reproaches at each
other. French and American soldiers had riotous fights in Boston
and a French officer was killed. The British, meanwhile, were
landing at small ports on the coast, which had been the haunts of
privateers, and were not only burning shipping and stores but
were devastating the country with Loyalist regiments recruited in
America. The French told the Americans that they were expecting
too much from the alliance, and the cautious Washington expressed
fear that help from outside would relax effort at home. Both were
right. By the autumn the British had been reinforced and the
French fleet had gone to the West Indies. Truly the mountain in
labor of the French alliance seemed to have brought forth only a
ridiculous mouse. None the less was it to prove, in the end, the
decisive factor in the struggle.


The alliance with France altered the whole character of the war,
which ceased now to be merely a war in North America. France soon
gained an ally in Europe. Bourbon Spain had no thought of helping
the colonies in rebellion against their king, and she viewed
their ambitions to extend westward with jealous concern, since
she desired for herself both sides of the Mississippi. Spain,
however, had a grievance against Britain, for Britain would not
yield Gibraltar, that rocky fragment of Spain commanding the
entrance to the Mediterranean which Britain had wrested from her
as she had wrested also Minorca and Florida. So, in April, 1779,
Spain joined France in war on Great Britain. France agreed not
only to furnish an army for the invasion of England but never to
make peace until Britain had handed back Gibraltar. The allies
planned to seize and hold the Isle of Wight. England has often
been threatened and yet has been so long free from the tramp of
hostile armies that we are tempted to dismiss lightly such
dangers. But in the summer of 1779 the danger was real. Of
warships carrying fifty guns or more France and Spain together
had one hundred and twenty-one, while Britain had seventy. The
British Channel fleet for the defense of home coasts numbered
forty ships of the line while France and Spain together had
sixty-six. Nor had Britain resources in any other quarter upon
which she could readily draw. In the West Indies she had
twenty-one ships of the line while France had twenty-five. The
British could not find comfort in any supposed superiority in the
structure of their ships. Then and later, as Nelson admitted when
he was fighting Spain, the Spanish ships were better built than
the British.

Lurking in the background to haunt British thought was the
growing American navy. John Paul was a Scots sailor, who had been
a slave trader and subsequently master of a West India
merchantman, and on going to America had assumed the name of
Jones. He was a man of boundless ambition, vanity, and vigor, and
when he commanded American privateers he became a terror to the
maritime people from whom he sprang. In the summer of 1779 when
Jones, with a squadron of four ships, was haunting the British
coasts, every harbor was nervous. At Plymouth a boom blocked the
entrance, but other places had not even this defense. Sir Walter
Scott has described how, on September 17, 1779, a squadron, under
John Paul Jones, came within gunshot of Leith, the port of
Edinburgh. The whole surrounding country was alarmed, since for
two days the squadron had been in sight beating up the Firth of
Forth. A sudden squall, which drove Jones back, probably saved
Edinburgh from being plundered. A few days later Jones was
burning ships in the Humber and, on the 23d of September, he met
off Flamborough Head and, after a desperate fight, captured two
British armed ships: the Serapis, a 40-gun vessel newly
commissioned, and the Countess of Scarborough, carrying 20 guns,
both of which were convoying a fleet. The fame of his exploit
rang through Europe. Jones was a regularly commissioned officer
in the navy of the United States, but neutral powers, such as
Holland, had not yet recognized the republic and to them there
was no American navy. The British regarded him as a traitor and
pirate and might possibly have hanged him had he fallen into
their hands.

Terrible days indeed were these for distracted England. In India,
France, baulked twenty years earlier, was working for her entire
overthrow, and in North Africa, Spain was using the Moors to the
same end. As time passed the storm grew more violent. Before the
year 1780 ended Holland had joined England's enemies. Moreover,
the northern states of Europe, angry at British interference on
the sea with their trade, and especially at her seizure of ships
trying to enter blockaded ports, took strong measures. On March
8, 1780, Russia issued a proclamation declaring that neutral
ships must be allowed to come and go on the sea as they liked.
They might be searched by a nation at war for arms and ammunition
but for nothing else. It would moreover be illegal to declare a
blockade of a port and punish neutrals for violating it, unless
their ships were actually caught in an attempt to enter the port.
Denmark and Sweden joined Russia in what was known as the Armed
Neutrality and promised that they would retaliate upon any nation
which did not respect the conditions laid down.

In domestic affairs Great Britain was divided. The Whigs and
Tories were carrying on a warfare shameless beyond even the
bitter partisan strife of later days. In Parliament the Whigs
cheered at military defeats which might serve to discredit the
Tory Government. The navy was torn by faction. When, in 1778, the
Whig Admiral Keppel fought an indecisive naval battle off Ushant
and was afterwards accused by one of his officers, Sir Hugh
Palliser, of not pressing the enemy hard enough, party passion
was invoked. The Whigs were for Keppel, the Tories for Palliser,
and the London mob was Whig. When Keppel was acquitted there were
riotous demonstrations; the house of Palliser was wrecked, and he
himself barely escaped with his life. Whig naval officers
declared that they had no chance of fair treatment at the hands
of a Tory Admiralty, and Lord Howe, among others, now refused to
serve. For a time British supremacy on the sea disappeared and it
was only regained in April, 1782, when the Tory Admiral Rodney
won a great victory in the West Indies against the French.

A spirit of violence was abroad in England. The disabilities of
the Roman Catholics were a gross scandal. They might not vote or
hold public office. Yet when, in 1780, Parliament passed a bill
removing some of their burdens dreadful riots broke out in
London. A fanatic, Lord George Gordon, led a mob to Westminster
and, as Dr. Johnson expressed it, "insulted" both Houses of
Parliament. The cowed ministry did nothing to check the
disturbance. The mob burned Newgate jail, released the prisoners
from this and other prisons, and made a deliberate attempt to
destroy London by fire. Order was restored under the personal
direction of the King, who, with all his faults, was no coward.
At the same time the Irish Parliament, under Protestant lead, was
making a Declaration of Independence which, in 1782, England was
obliged to admit by formal act of Parliament. For the time being,
though the two monarchies had the same king, Ireland, in name at
least, was free of England.


Washington's enemy thus had embarrassments enough. Yet these very
years, 1779 and 1780, were the years in which he came nearest to
despair. The strain of a great movement is not in the early days
of enthusiasm, but in the slow years when idealism is tempered by
the strife of opinion and self-interest which brings delay and
disillusion. As the war went on recruiting became steadily more
difficult. The alliance with France actually worked to discourage
it since it was felt that the cause was safe in the hands of this
powerful ally. Whatever Great Britain's difficulties about
finance they were light compared with Washington's. In time the
"continental dollar" was worth only two cents. Yet soldiers long
had to take this money at its face value for their pay, with the
result that the pay for three months would scarcely buy a pair of
boots. There is little wonder that more than once Washington had
to face formidable mutiny among his troops. The only ones on whom
he could rely were the regulars enlisted by Congress and
carefully trained. The worth of the militia, he said, "depends
entirely on the prospects of the day; if favorable, they throng
to you; if not, they will not move." They played a chief part in
the prosperous campaign of 1777, when Burgoyne was beaten. In the
next year, before Newport, they wholly failed General Sullivan
and deserted shamelessly to their homes.

By 1779 the fighting had shifted to the South. Washington
personally remained in the North to guard the Hudson and to watch
the British in New York. He sent La Fayette to France in January,
1779, there to urge not merely naval but military aid on a great
scale. La Fayette came back after an absence of a little over a
year and in the end France promised eight thousand men who should
be under Washington's control as completely as if they were
American soldiers. The older nation accepted the principle that
the officers in the younger nation which she was helping should
rank in their grade before her own. It was a magnanimity
reciprocated nearly a century and a half later when a great
American army in Europe was placed under the supreme command of a
Marshal of France.



CHAPTER IX. THE WAR IN THE SOUTH

After 1778 there was no more decisive fighting in the North. The
British plan was to hold New York and keep there a threatening
force, but to make the South henceforth the central arena of the
war. Accordingly, in 1779, they evacuated Rhode Island and left
the magnificent harbor of Newport to be the chief base for the
French fleet and army in America. They also drew in their posts
on the Hudson and left Washington free to strengthen West Point
and other defenses by which he was blocking the river. Meanwhile
they were striking staggering blows in the South. On December 29,
1778, a British force landed two miles below Savannah, in
Georgia, lying near the mouth of the important Savannah River,
and by nightfall, after some sharp fighting, took the place with
its stores and shipping. Augusta, the capital of Georgia, lay
about a hundred and twenty-five miles up the river. By the end of
February, 1779, the British not only held Augusta but had
established so strong a line of posts in the interior that
Georgia seemed to be entirely under their control.

Then followed a singular chain of events. Ever since hostilities
had begun, in 1775, the revolutionary party had been dominant in
the South. Yet now again in 1779 the British flag floated over
the capital of Georgia. Some rejoiced and some mourned. Men do
not change lightly their political allegiance. Probably Boston
was the most completely revolutionary of American towns. Yet even
in Boston there had been a sad procession of exiles who would not
turn against the King. The South had been more evenly divided.
Now the Loyalists took heart and began to assert themselves.

When the British seemed secure in Georgia bands of Loyalists
marched into the British camp in furious joy that now their day
was come, and gave no gentle advice as to the crushing of
rebellion. Many a patriot farmhouse was now destroyed and the
hapless owner either killed or driven to the mountains to live as
best he could by hunting. Sometimes even the children were shot
down. It so happened that a company of militia captured a large
band of Loyalists marching to Augusta to support the British
cause. Here was the occasion for the republican patriots to
assert their principles. To them these Loyalists were guilty of
treason. Accordingly seventy of the prisoners were tried before a
civil court and five of them were hanged. For this hanging of
prisoners the Loyalists, of course, retaliated in kind. Both the
British and American regular officers tried to restrain these
fierce passions but the spirit of the war in the South was
ruthless. To this day many a tale of horror is repeated and,
since Loyalist opinion was finally destroyed, no one survived to
apportion blame to their enemies. It is probable that each side
matched the other in barbarity.

The British hoped to sweep rapidly through the South, to master
it up to the borders of Virginia, and then to conquer that
breeding ground of revolution. In the spring of 1779 General
Prevost marched from Georgia into South Carolina. On the 12th of
May he was before Charleston demanding surrender. We are
astonished now to read that, in response to Prevost's demand, a
proposal was made that South Carolina should be allowed to remain
neutral and that at the end of the war it should join the
victorious side. This certainly indicates a large body of opinion
which was not irreconcilable with Great Britain and seems to
justify the hope of the British that the beginnings of military
success might rally the mass of the people to their side. For the
moment, however, Charleston did not surrender. The resistance was
so stiff that Prevost had to raise the siege and go back to
Savannah.

Suddenly, early in September, 1779, the French fleet under
d'Estaing appeared before Savannah. It had come from the West
Indies, partly to avoid the dreaded hurricane season of the
autumn in those waters. The British, practically without any
naval defense, were confronted at once by twenty-two French ships
of the line, eleven frigates, and many transports carrying an
army. The great flotilla easily got rid of the few British ships
lying at Savannah. An American army, under General Lincoln,
marched to join d'Estaing. The French landed some three thousand
men, and the combined army numbered about six thousand. A siege
began which, it seemed, could end in only one way. Prevost,
however, with three thousand seven hundred men, nearly half of
them sick, was defiant, and on the 9th of October the combined
French and American armies made a great assault. They met with
disaster. D'Estaing was severely wounded. With losses of some
nine hundred killed and wounded in the bitter fighting the
assailants drew off and soon raised the siege. The British losses
were only fifty-four. In the previous year French and Americans
fighting together had utterly failed. Now they had failed again
and there was bitter recrimination between the defeated allies.
D'Estaing sailed away and soon lost some of his ships in a
violent storm. Ill-fortune pursued him to the end. He served no
more in the war and in the Reign of Terror in Paris, in 1794, he
perished on the scaffold.

At Charleston the American General Lincoln was in command with
about six thousand men. The place, named after King Charles II,
had been a center of British influence before the war. That
critical traveler, Lord Adam Gordon, thought its people clever in
business, courteous, and hospitable. Most of them, he says, made
a visit to England at some time during life and it was the
fashion to send there the children to be educated. Obviously
Charleston was fitted to be a British rallying center in the
South; yet it had remained in American hands since the opening of
the war. In 1776 Sir Henry Clinton, the British Commander, had
woefully failed in his assault on Charleston. Now in December,
1779, he sailed from New York to make a renewed effort. With him
were three of his best officer--Cornwallis, Simcoe, and Tarleton,
the last two skillful leaders of irregulars, recruited in America
and used chiefly for raids. The wintry voyage was rough; one of
the vessels laden with cannon foundered and sank, and all the
horses died. But Clinton reached Charleston and was able to
surround it on the landward side with an army at least ten
thousand strong. Tarleton's irregulars rode through the country.
It is on record that he marched sixty-four miles in twenty-three
hours and a hundred and five miles in fifty-four hours. Such
mobility was irresistible. On the 12th of April, after a ride of
thirty miles, Tarleton surprised, in the night, three regiments
of American cavalry regulars at a place called Biggin's Bridge,
routed them completely and, according to his own account, with
the loss of three men wounded, carried off a hundred prisoners,
four hundred horses, and also stores and ammunition. There is no
doubt that Tarleton's dragoons behaved with great brutality and
it would perhaps have taught a needed lesson if, as was indeed
threatened by a British officer, Major Ferguson, a few of them
had been shot on the spot for these outrages. Tarleton's dashing
attacks isolated Charleston and there was nothing for Lincoln to
do but to surrender. This he did on the 12th of May. Burgoyne
seemed to have been avenged. The most important city in the South
had fallen. "We look on America as at our feet," wrote Horace
Walpole. The British advanced boldly into the interior. On the
29th of May Tarleton attacked an American force under Colonel
Buford, killed over a hundred men, carried off two hundred
prisoners, and had only twenty-one casualties. It is such scenes
that reveal the true character of the war in the South. Above all
it was a war of hard riding, often in the night, of sudden
attack, and terrible bloodshed.

After the fall of Charleston only a few American irregulars were
to be found in South Carolina. It and Georgia seemed safe in
British control. With British successes came the problem of
governing the South. On the royalist theory, the recovered land
had been in a state of rebellion and was now restored to its true
allegiance. Every one who had taken up arms against the King was
guilty of treason with death as the penalty. Clinton had no
intention of applying this hard theory, but he was returning to
New York and he had to establish a government on some legal
basis. During the first years of the war, Loyalists who would not
accept the new order had been punished with great severity. Their
day had now come. Clinton said that "every good man" must be
ready to join in arms the King's troops in order "to reestablish
peace and good government." "Wicked and desperate men" who still
opposed the King should be punished with rigor and have their
property confiscated. He offered pardon for past offenses, except
to those who had taken part in killing Loyalists "under the mock
forms of justice." No one was henceforth to be exempted from the
active duty of supporting the King's authority.

Clinton's proclamation was very disturbing to the large element
in South Carolina which did not desire to fight on either side.
Every one must now be for or against the King, and many were in
their secret hearts resolved to be against him. There followed an
orgy of bloodshed which discredits human nature. The patriots
fled to the mountains rather than yield and, in their turn,
waylaid and murdered straggling Loyalists. Under pressure some
republicans would give outward compliance to royal government,
but they could not be coerced into a real loyalty. It required
only a reverse to the King's forces to make them again actively
hostile. To meet the difficult situation Congress now made a
disastrous blunder. On June 13, 1780, General Gates, the belauded
victor at Saratoga, was given the command in the South.

Camden, on the Wateree River, lies inland from Charleston about a
hundred and twenty-five miles as the crow flies. The British had
occupied it soon after the fall of Charleston, and it was now
held by a small force under Lord Rawdon, one of the ablest of the
British commanders. Gates had superior numbers and could probably
have taken Camden by a rapid movement; but the man had no real
stomach for fighting. He delayed until, on the 14th of August,
Cornwallis arrived at Camden with reinforcements and with the
fixed resolve to attack Gates before Gates attacked him. On the
early morning of the 16th of August, Cornwallis with two thousand
men marching northward between swamps on both flanks, met Gates
with three thousand marching southward, each of them intending to
surprise the other. A fierce struggle followed. Gates was
completely routed with a thousand casualties, a thousand
prisoners, and the loss of nearly the whole of his guns and
transport. The fleeing army was pursued for twenty miles by the
relentless Tarleton. General Kalb, who had done much to organize
the American army, was killed. The enemies of Gates jeered at his
riding away with the fugitives and hardly drawing rein until
after four days he was at Hillsborough, two hundred miles away.
His defense was that he "proceeded with all possible despatch,"
which he certainly did, to the nearest point where he could
reorganize his forces. His career was, however, ended. He was
deprived of his command, and Washington appointed to succeed him
General Nathanael Greene.

In spite of the headlong flight of Gates the disaster at Camden
had only a transient effect. The war developed a number of
irregular leaders on the American side who were never beaten
beyond recovery, no matter what might be the reverses of the day.
The two most famous are Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. Marion,
descended from a family of Huguenot exiles, was slight in frame
and courteous in manner; Sumter, tall, powerful, and rough, was
the vigorous frontiersman in type. Threatened men live long:
Sumter died in 1832, at the age of ninety-six, the last surviving
general of the Revolution. Both men had had prolonged experience
in frontier fighting against the Indians. Tarleton called Marion
the "old swamp fox" because he often escaped through using
by-paths across the great swamps of the country. British
communications were always in danger. A small British force might
find itself in the midst of a host which had suddenly come
together as an army, only to dissolve next day into its elements
of hardy farmers, woodsmen, and mountaineers.

After the victory at Camden Cornwallis advanced into North
Carolina, and sent Major Ferguson, one of his most trusted
officers, with a force of about a thousand men, into the
mountainous country lying westward, chiefly to secure Loyalist
recruits. If attacked in force Ferguson was to retreat and rejoin
his leader. The Battle of King's Mountain is hardly famous in the
annals of the world, and yet, in some ways, it was a decisive
event. Suddenly Ferguson found himself beset by hostile bands,
coming from the north, the south, the east, and the west. When,
in obedience to his orders, he tried to retreat he found the way
blocked, and his messages were intercepted, so that Cornwallis
was not aware of the peril. Ferguson, harassed, outnumbered, at
last took refuge on King's Mountain, a stony ridge on the western
border between the two Carolinas. The north side of the mountain
was a sheer impassable cliff and, since the ridge was only half a
mile long, Ferguson thought that his force could hold it
securely. He was, however, fighting an enemy deadly with the
rifle and accustomed to fire from cover. The sides and top of
King's Mountain were wooded and strewn with boulders. The motley
assailants crept up to the crest while pouring a deadly fire on
any of the defenders who exposed themselves. Ferguson was killed
and in the end his force surrendered, on October 7, 1780, with
four hundred casualties and the loss of more than seven hundred
prisoners. The American casualties were eighty-eight. In reprisal
for earlier acts on the other side, the victors insulted the dead
body of Ferguson and hanged nine of their prisoners on the limb
of a great tulip tree. Then the improvised army scattered.*

* See Chapter IX, "Pioneers of the Old Southwest", by Constance
Lindsay Skinner in "The Chronicles of America."


While the conflict for supremacy in the South was still
uncertain, in the Northwest the Americans made a stroke destined
to have astounding results. Virginia had long coveted lands in
the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was in this
region that Washington had first seen active service, helping to
wrest that land from France. The country was wild. There was
almost no settlement; but over a few forts on the upper
Mississippi and in the regions lying eastward to the Detroit
River there was that flicker of a red flag which meant that the
Northwest was under British rule. George Rogers Clark, like
Washington a Virginian land surveyor, was a strong, reckless,
brave frontiersman. Early in 1778 Virginia gave him a small sum
of money, made him a lieutenant colonel, and authorized him to
raise troops for a western adventure. He had less than two
hundred men when he appeared a little later at Kaskaskia near the
Mississippi in what is now Illinois and captured the small
British garrison, with the friendly consent of the French
settlers about the fort. He did the same thing at Cahokia,
farther up the river. The French scattered through the western
country naturally sided with the Americans, fighting now in
alliance with France. The British sent out a force from Detroit
to try to check the efforts of Clark, but in February, 1779, the
indomitable frontiersman surprised and captured this force at
Vincennes on the Wabash. Thus did Clark's two hundred famished
and ragged men take possession of the Northwest, and, when peace
was made, this vast domain, an empire in extent, fell to the
United States. Clark's exploit is one of the pregnant romances of
history.*

* See Chapters III and IV in "The Old Northwest" by Frederic
Austin Ogg in "The Chronicles of America".


Perhaps the most sorrowful phase of the Revolution was the
internal conflict waged between its friends and its enemies in
America, where neighbor fought against neighbor. During this
pitiless struggle the strength of the Loyalists tended steadily
to decline; and they came at last to be regarded everywhere by
triumphant revolution as a vile people who should bear the
penalties of outcasts. In this attitude towards them Boston had
given a lead which the rest of the country eagerly followed. To
coerce Loyalists local committees sprang up everywhere. It must
be said that the Loyalists gave abundant provocation. They
sneered at rebel officers of humble origin as convicts and
shoeblacks. There should be some fine hanging, they promised, on
the return of the King's men to Boston. Early in the Revolution
British colonial governors, like Lord Dunmore of Virginia,
adopted the policy of reducing the rebels by harrying their
coasts. Sailors would land at night from ships and commit their
ravages in the light of burning houses. Soldiers would dart out
beyond the British lines, burn a village, carry off some Whig
farmers, and escape before opposing forces could rally. Governor
Tryon of New York was specially active in these enterprises and
to this day a special odium attaches to his name.

For these ravages, and often with justice, the Loyalists were
held responsible. The result was a bitterness which fired even
the calm spirit of Benjamin Franklin and led him when the day
came for peace to declare that the plundering and murdering
adherents of King George were the ones who should pay for damage
and not the States which had confiscated Loyalist property. Lists
of Loyalist names were sometimes posted and then the persons
concerned were likely to be the victims of any one disposed to
mischief. Sometimes a suspected Loyalist would find an effigy
hung on a tree before his own door with a hint that next time the
figure might be himself. A musket ball might come whizzing
through his window. Many a Loyalist was stripped, plunged in a
barrel of tar, and then rolled in feathers, taken sometimes from
his own bed.

Punishment for loyalism was not, however, left merely to chance.
Even before the Declaration of Independence, Congress, sitting
itself in a city where loyalism was strong, urged the States to
act sternly in repressing Loyalist opinion. They did not obey
every urging of Congress as eagerly as they responded to this
one. In practically every State Test Acts were passed and no one
was safe who did not carry a certificate that he was free of any
suspicion of loyalty to King George. Magistrates were paid a fee
for these certificates and thus had a golden reason for insisting
that Loyalists should possess them. To secure a certificate the
holder must forswear allegiance to the King and promise support
to the State at war with him. An unguarded word even about the
value in gold of the continental dollar might lead to the adding
of the speaker's name to the list of the proscribed. Legislatures
passed bills denouncing Loyalists. The names in Massachusetts
read like a list of the leading families of New England. The
"Black List" of Pennsylvania contained four hundred and ninety
names of Loyalists charged with treason, and Philadelphia had the
grim experience of seeing two Loyalists led to the scaffold with
ropes around their necks and hanged. Most of the persecuted
Loyalists lost all their property and remained exiles from their
former homes. The self-appointed committees took in hand the task
of disciplining those who did not fly, and the rabble often
pushed matters to brutal extremes. When we remember that
Washington himself regarded Tories as the vilest of mankind and
unfit to live, we can imagine the spirit of mobs, which had
sometimes the further incentive of greed for Loyalist property.
Loyalists had the experience of what we now call boycotting when
they could not buy or sell in the shops and were forced to see
their own shops plundered. Mills would not grind their corn.
Their cattle were maimed and poisoned. They could not secure
payment of debts due to them or, if payment was made, they
received it in the debased continental currency at its face
value. They might not sue in a court of law, nor sell their
property, nor make a will. It was a felony for them to keep arms.
No Loyalist might hold office, or practice law or medicine, or
keep a school.

Some Loyalists were deported to the wilderness in the back
country. Many took refuge within the British lines, especially at
New York. Many Loyalists created homes elsewhere. Some went to
England only to find melancholy disillusion of hope that a
grateful motherland would understand and reward their sacrifices.
Large numbers found their way to Nova Scotia and to Canada, north
of the Great Lakes, and there played a part in laying the
foundation of the Dominion of today. The city of Toronto with a
population of half a million is rooted in the Loyalist traditions
of its Tory founders. Simcoe, the first Governor of Upper Canada,
who made Toronto his capital, was one of the most enterprising of
the officers who served with Cornwallis in the South and
surrendered with him at Yorktown.

The State of New York acquired from the forfeited lands of
Loyalists a sum approaching four million dollars, a great amount
in those days. Other States profited in a similar way. Every
Loyalist whose property was seized had a direct and personal
grievance. He could join the British army and fight against his
oppressors, and this he did: New York furnished about fifteen
thousand men to fight on the British side. Plundered himself, he
could plunder his enemies, and this too he did both by land and
sea. In the autumn of 1778 ships manned chiefly by Loyalist
refugees were terrorizing the coast from Massachusetts to New
Jersey. They plundered Martha's Vineyard, burned some lesser
towns, such as New Bedford, and showed no quarter to small
parties of American troops whom they managed to intercept.

What happened on the coast happened also in the interior. At
Wyoming in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, in July, 1778,
during a raid of Loyalists, aided by Indians, there was a brutal
massacre, the horrors of which long served to inspire hate for
the British. A little later in the same year similar events took
place at Cherry Valley, in central New York. Burning houses, the
dead bodies not only of men but of women and children scalped by
the savage allies of the Loyalists, desolation and ruin in scenes
once peaceful and happy such horrors American patriotism learned
to associate with the Loyalists. These in their turn remembered
the slow martyrdom of their lives as social outcasts, the threats
and plunder which in the end forced them to fly, the hardships,
starvation, and death to their loved ones which were wont to
follow. The conflict is perhaps the most tragic and
irreconcilable in the whole story of the Revolution.



CHAPTER X. FRANCE TO THE RESCUE

During 1778 and 1779 French effort had failed. Now France
resolved to do something decisive. She never sent across the sea
the eight thousand men promised to La Fayette but by the spring
of 1780 about this number were gathered at Brest to find that
transport was inadequate. The leader was a French noble, the
Comte de Rochambeau, an old campaigner, now in his fifty-fifth
year, who had fought against England before in the Seven Years'
War and had then been opposed by Clinton, Cornwallis, and Lord
George Germain. He was a sound and prudent soldier who shares
with La Fayette the chief glory of the French service in America.
Rochambeau had fought at the second battle of Minden, where the
father of La Fayette had fallen, and he had for the ardent young
Frenchman the amiable regard of a father and sometimes rebuked
his impulsiveness in that spirit. He studied the problem in
America with the insight of a trained leader. Before he left
France he made the pregnant comment on the outlook: "Nothing
without naval supremacy." About the same time Washington was
writing to La Fayette that a decisive naval supremacy was a
fundamental need.

A gallant company it was which gathered at Brest. Probably no
other land than France could have sent forth on a crusade for
democratic liberty a band of aristocrats who had little thought
of applying to their own land the principles for which they were
ready to fight in America. Over some of them hung the shadow of
the guillotine; others were to ride the storm of the French
Revolution and to attain fame which should surpass their sanguine
dreams. Rochambeau himself, though he narrowly escaped during the
Reign of Terror, lived to extreme old age and died a Marshal of
France. Berthier, one of his officers, became one of Napoleon's
marshals and died just when Napoleon, whom he had deserted,
returned from Elba. Dumas became another of Napoleon's generals.
He nearly perished in the retreat from Moscow but lived, like
Rochambeau, to extreme old age. One of the gayest of the company
was the Duc de Lauzun, a noted libertine in France but, as far as
the record goes, a man of blameless propriety in America. He died
on the scaffold during the French Revolution. So, too, did his
companion, the Prince de Broglie, in spite of the protest of his
last words that he was faithful to the principles of the
Revolution, some of which he had learned in America. Another
companion was the Swedish Count Fersen, later the devoted friend
of the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette, the driver of the
carriage in which the royal family made the famous flight to
Varennes in 1791, and himself destined to be trampled to death by
a Swedish mob in 1810. Other old and famous names there were:
Laval-Montmorency, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Saint-Simon. It has been
said that the names of the French officers in America read like a
list of medieval heroes in the Chronicles of Froissart.

Only half of the expected ships were ready at Brest and only five
thousand five hundred men could embark. The vessels were, of
course, very crowded. Rochambeau cut down the space allowed for
personal effects. He took no horse for himself and would allow
none to go, but he permitted a few dogs. Forty-five ships set
sail, "a truly imposing sight," said one of those on board. We
have reports of their ennui on the long voyage of seventy days,
of their amusements and their devotions, for twice daily were
prayers read on deck. They sailed into Newport on the 11th of
July and the inhabitants of that still primitive spot illuminated
their houses as best they could. Then the army settled down at
Newport and there it remained for many weary months.
Reinforcements never came, partly through mismanagement in
France, partly through the vigilance of the British fleet, which
was on guard before Brest. The French had been for generations
the deadly enemies of the English Colonies and some of the French
officers noted the reserve with which they were received. The ice
was, however, soon broken. They brought with them gold, and the
New England merchants liked this relief from the debased
continental currency. Some of the New England ladies were
beautiful, and the experienced Lauzun expresses glowing
admiration for a prim Quakeress whose simple dress he thought
more attractive than the elaborate modes of Paris.

The French dazzled the ragged American army by their display of
waving plumes and of uniforms in striking colors. They wondered
at the quantities of tea drunk by their friends and so do we when
we remember the political hatred for tea. They made the blunder
common in Europe of thinking that there were no social
distinctions in America. Washington could have told him a
different story. Intercourse was at first difficult, for few of
the Americans spoke French and fewer still of the French spoke
English. Sometimes the talk was in Latin, pronounced by an
American scholar as not too bad. A French officer writing in
Latin to an American friend announces his intention to learn
English: "Inglicam linguam noscere conabor." He made the effort
and he and his fellow officers learned a quaint English speech.
When Rochambeau and Washington first met they conversed through
La Fayette, as interpreter, but in time the older man did very
well in the language of his American comrade in arms.

For a long time the French army effected nothing. Washington
longed to attack New York and urged the effort, but the wise and
experienced Rochambeau applied his principle, "nothing without
naval supremacy," and insisted that in such an attack a powerful
fleet should act with a powerful army, and, for the moment, the
French had no powerful fleet available. The British were
blockading in Narragansett Bay the French fleet which lay there.
Had the French army moved away from Newport their fleet would
almost certainly have become a prey to the British. For the
moment there was nothing to do but to wait. The French preserved
an admirable discipline. Against their army there are no records
of outrage and plunder such as we have against the German allies
of the British. We must remember, however, that the French were
serving in the country of their friends, with every restraint of
good feeling which this involved. Rochambeau told his men that
they must not be the theft of a bit of wood, or of any
vegetables, or of even a sheaf of straw. He threatened the vice
which he called "sonorous drunkenness," and even lack of
cleanliness, with sharp punishment. The result was that a month
after landing he could say that not a cabbage had been stolen.
Our credulity is strained when we are told that apple trees with
their fruit overhung the tents of his soldiers and remained
untouched. Thousands flocked to see the French camp. The bands
played and Puritan maidens of all grades of society danced with
the young French officers and we are told, whether we believe it
or not, that there was the simple innocence of the Garden of
Eden. The zeal of the French officers and the friendly
disposition of the men never failed. There had been bitter
quarrels in 1778 and 1779 and now the French were careful to be
on their good behavior in America. Rochambeau had been instructed
to place himself under the command of Washington, to whom were
given the honors of a Marshal of France. The French admiral, had,
however, been given no such instructions and Washington had no
authority over the fleet.


Meanwhile events were happening which might have brought a
British triumph. On September 14, 1780, there arrived and
anchored at Sandy Hook, New York, fourteen British ships of the
line under Rodney, the doughtiest of the British admirals afloat.
Washington, with his army headquarters at West Point, on guard to
keep the British from advancing up the Hudson, was looking for
the arrival, not of a British fleet, but of a French fleet, from
the West Indies. For him these were very dark days. The recent
defeat at Camden was a crushing blow. Congress was inept and had
in it men, as the patient General Greene said, "without
principles, honor or modesty." The coming of the British fleet
was a new and overwhelming discouragement, and, on the 18th of
September, Washington left West Point for a long ride to Hartford
in Connecticut, half way between the two headquarters, there to
take counsel with the French general. Rochambeau, it was said,
had been purposely created to understand Washington, but as yet
the two leaders had not met. It is the simple truth that
Washington had to go to the French as a beggar. Rochambeau said
later that Washington was afraid to reveal the extent of his
distress. He had to ask for men and for ships, but he had also to
ask for what a proud man dislikes to ask, for money from the
stranger who had come to help him.

The Hudson had long been the chief object of Washington's anxiety
and now it looked as if the British intended some new movement up
the river, as indeed they did. Clinton had not expected Rodney's
squadron, but it arrived opportunely and, when it sailed up to
New York from Sandy Hook, on the 16th of September, he began at
once to embark his army, taking pains at the same time to send
out reports that he was going to the Chesapeake. Washington
concluded that the opposite was true and that he was likely to be
going northward. At West Point, where the Hudson flows through a
mountainous gap, Washington had strong defenses on both shores of
the river. His batteries commanded its whole width, but shore
batteries were ineffective against moving ships. The embarking of
Clinton's army meant that he planned operations on land. He might
be going to Rhode Island or to Boston but he might also dash up
the Hudson. It was an anxious leader who, with La Fayette and
Alexander Hamilton, rode away from headquarters to Hartford.

The officer in command at West Point was Benedict Arnold. No
general on the American side had a more brilliant record or could
show more scars of battle. We have seen him leading an army
through the wilderness to Quebec, and incurring hardships almost
incredible. Later he is found on Lake Champlain, fighting on both
land and water. When in the next year the Americans succeeded at
Saratoga it was Arnold who bore the brunt of the fighting. At
Quebec and again at Saratoga he was severely wounded. In the
summer of 1778 he was given the command at Philadelphia, after
the British evacuation. It was a troubled time. Arnold was
concerned with confiscations of property for treason and with
disputes about ownership. Impulsive, ambitious, and with a
certain element of coarseness in his nature, he made enemies. He
was involved in bitter strife with both Congress and the State
government of Pennsylvania. After a period of tension and
privation in war, one of slackness and luxury is almost certain
to follow. Philadelphia, which had recently suffered for want of
bare necessities, now relapsed into gay indulgence. Arnold lived
extravagantly. He played a conspicuous part in society and, a
widower of thirty-five, was successful in paying court to Miss
Shippen, a young lady of twenty, with whom, as Washington said,
all the American officers were in love.

Malignancy was rampant and Arnold was pursued with great
bitterness. Joseph Reed, the President of the Executive Council
of Pennsylvania, not only brought charge against him of abusing
his position for his own advantage, but also laid the charges
before each State government. In the end Arnold was tried by
court-martial and after long and inexcusable delay, on January
26, 1780, he was acquitted of everything but the imprudence of
using, in an emergency, public wagons to remove private property,
and of granting irregularly a pass to a ship to enter the port of
Philadelphia. Yet the court ordered that for these trifles Arnold
should receive a public reprimand from the Commander-in-Chief.
Washington gave the reprimand in terms as gentle as possible, and
when, in July, 1780, Arnold asked for the important command at
West Point, Washington readily complied probably with relief that
so important a position should be in such good hands.

The treason of Arnold now came rapidly to a head. The man was
embittered. He had rendered great services and yet had been
persecuted with spiteful persistence. The truth seems to be, too,
that Arnold thought America ripe for reconciliation with Great
Britain. He dreamed that he might be the saviour of his country.
Monk had reconciled the English republic to the restored Stuart
King Charles II; Arnold might reconcile the American republic to
George III for the good of both. That reconciliation he believed
was widely desired in America. He tried to persuade himself that
to change sides in this civil strife was no more culpable then to
turn from one party to another in political life. He forgot,
however, that it is never honorable to betray a trust.

It is almost certain that Arnold received a large sum in money
for his treachery. However this may be, there was treason in his
heart when he asked for and received the command at West Point,
and he intended to use his authority to surrender that vital post
to the British. And now on the 18th of September Washington was
riding northeastward into Connecticut, British troops were on
board ships in New York and all was ready. On the 20th of
September the Vulture, sloop of war, sailed up the Hudson from
New York and anchored at Stony Point, a few miles below West
Point. On board the Vulture was the British officer who was
treating with Arnold and who now came to arrange terms with him,
Major John Andre, Clinton's young adjutant general, a man of
attractive personality. Under cover of night Arnold sent off a
boat to bring Andre ashore to a remote thicket of fir trees,
outside the American lines. There the final plans were made. The
British fleet, carrying an army, was to sail up the river. A
heavy chain had been placed across the river at West Point to bar
the way of hostile ships. Under pretense of repairs a link was to
be taken out and replaced by a rope which would break easily. The
defenses of West Point were to be so arranged that they could not
meet a sudden attack and Arnold was to surrender with his force
of three thousand men. Such a blow following the disasters at
Charleston and Camden might end the strife. Britain was prepared
to yield everything but separation; and America, Arnold said,
could now make an honorable peace.

A chapter of accidents prevented the testing. Had Andre been
rowed ashore by British tars they could have taken him back to
the ship at his command before daylight. As it was the American
boatmen, suspicious perhaps of the meaning of this talk at
midnight between an American officer and a British officer, both
of them in uniform, refused to row Andre back to the ship because
their own return would be dangerous in daylight. Contrary to his
instructions and wishes Andre accompanied Arnold to a house
within the American lines to wait until he could be taken off
under cover of night. Meanwhile, however, an American battery on
shore, angry at the Vulture, lying defiantly within range, opened
fire upon her and she dropped down stream some miles. This was
alarming. Arnold, however, arranged with a man to row Andre down
the river and about midday went back to West Point.

It was uncertain how far the Vulture had gone. The vigilance of
those guarding the river was aroused and Andre's guide insisted
that he should go to the British lines by land. He was carrying
compromising papers and wearing civilian dress when seized by an
American party and held under close arrest. Arnold meanwhile,
ignorant of this delay, was waiting for the expected advance up
the river of the British fleet. He learned of the arrest of Andre
while at breakfast on the morning of the twenty-fifth, waiting to
be joined by Washington, who had just ridden in from Hartford.
Arnold received the startling news with extraordinary composure,
finished the subject under discussion, and then left the table
under pretext of a summons from across the river. Within a few
minutes his barge was moving swiftly to the Vulture eighteen
miles away. Thus Arnold escaped. The unhappy Andre was hanged as
a spy on the 2d of October. He met his fate bravely. Washington,
it is said, shed tears at its stern necessity under military law.
Forty years later the bones of Andre were reburied in Westminster
Abbey, a tribute of pity for a fine officer.

The treason of Arnold is not in itself important, yet Washington
wrote with deep conviction that Providence had directly
intervened to save the American cause. Arnold might be only one
of many. Washington said, indeed, that it was a wonder there were
not more. In a civil war every one of importance is likely to
have ties with both sides, regrets for the friends he has lost,
misgivings in respect to the course he has adopted. In April,
1779, Arnold had begun his treason by expressing discontent at
the alliance with France then working so disastrously. His future
lay before him; he was still under forty; he had just married
into a family of position; he expected that both he and his
descendants would spend their lives in America and he must have
known that contempt would follow them for the conduct which he
planned if it was regarded by public opinion as base. Voices in
Congress, too, had denounced the alliance with France as alliance
with tyranny, political and religious. Members praised the
liberties of England and had declared that the Declaration of
Independence must be revoked and that now it could be done with
honor since the Americans had proved their metal. There was room
for the fear that the morale of the Americans was giving way.

The defection of Arnold might also have military results. He had
bargained to be made a general in the British army and he had
intimate knowledge of the weak points in Washington's position.
He advised the British that if they would do two things, offer
generous terms to soldiers serving in the American army, and
concentrate their effort, they could win the war. With a cynical
knowledge of the weaker side of human nature, he declared that it
was too expensive a business to bring men from England to serve
in America. They could be secured more cheaply in America; it
would be necessary only to pay them better than Washington could
pay his army. As matters stood the Continental troops were to
have half pay for seven years after the close of the war and
grants of land ranging from one hundred acres for a private to
eleven hundred acres for a general. Make better offers than this,
urged Arnold; "Money will go farther than arms in America." If
the British would concentrate on the Hudson where the defenses
were weak they could drive a wedge between North and South. If on
the other hand they preferred to concentrate in the South,
leaving only a garrison in New York, they could overrun Virginia
and Maryland and then the States farther south would give up a
fight in which they were already beaten. Energy and enterprise,
said Arnold, will quickly win the war.

In the autumn of 1780 the British cause did, indeed, seem near
triumph. An election in England in October gave the ministry an
increased majority and with this renewed determination. When
Holland, long a secret enemy, became an open one in December,
1780, Admiral Rodney descended on the Dutch island of St.
Eustatius, in the West Indies, where the Americans were in the
habit of buying great quantities of stores and on the 3d of
February, 1781, captured the place with two hundred merchant
ships, half a dozen men-of-war, and stores to the value of three
million pounds. The capture cut off one chief source of supply to
the United States. By January, 1781, a crisis in respect to money
came to a head. Fierce mutinies broke out because there was no
money to provide food, clothing, or pay for the army and the men
were in a destitute condition. "These people are at the end of
their resources," wrote Rochambeau in March. Arnold's treason,
the halting voices in Congress, the disasters in the South, the
British success in cutting off supplies of stores from St.
Eustatius, the sordid problem of money--all these were well
fitted to depress the worn leader so anxiously watching on the
Hudson. It was the dark hour before the dawn.



CHAPTER XI. YORKTOWN

The critical stroke of the war was near. In the South, after
General Greene superseded Gates in the command, the tide of war
began to turn. Cornwallis now had to fight a better general than
Gates. Greene arrived at Charlotte, North Carolina, in December.
He found an army badly equipped, wretchedly clothed, and
confronted by a greatly superior force. He had, however, some
excellent officers, and he did not scorn, as Gates, with the
stiff military traditions of a regular soldier, had scorned, the
aid of guerrilla leaders like Marion and Sumter. Serving with
Greene was General Daniel Morgan, the enterprising and
resourceful Virginia rifleman, who had fought valorously at
Quebec, at Saratoga, and later in Virginia. Steuben was busy in
Virginia holding the British in check and keeping open the line
of communication with the North. The mobility and diversity of
the American forces puzzled Cornwallis. When he marched from
Camden into North Carolina he hoped to draw Greene into a battle
and to crush him as he had crushed Gates. He sent Tarleton with a
smaller force to strike a deadly blow at Morgan who was
threatening the British garrisons at the points in the interior
farther south. There was no more capable leader than Tarleton; he
had won many victories; but now came his day of defeat. On
January 17, 1781, he met Morgan at the Cowpens, about thirty
miles west from King's Mountain. Morgan, not quite sure of the
discipline of his men, stood with his back to a broad river so
that retreat was impossible. Tarleton had marched nearly all
night over bad roads; but, confident in the superiority of his
weary and hungry veterans, he advanced to the attack at daybreak.
The result was a complete disaster. Tarleton himself barely got
away with two hundred and seventy men and left behind nearly nine
hundred casualties and prisoners.

Cornwallis had lost one-third of his effective army. There was
nothing for him to do but to take his loss and still to press on
northward in the hope that the more southerly inland posts could
take care of themselves. In the early spring of 1781, when heavy
rains were making the roads difficult and the rivers almost
impassable, Greene was luring Cornwallis northward and Cornwallis
was chasing Greene. At Hillsborough, in the northwest corner of
North Carolina, Cornwallis issued a proclamation saying that the
colony was once more under the authority of the King and inviting
the Loyalists, bullied and oppressed during nearly six years, to
come out openly on the royal side. On the 15th of March Greene
took a stand and offered battle at Guilford Court House. In the
early afternoon, after a march of twelve miles without food,
Cornwallis, with less than two thousand men, attacked Greene's
force of about four thousand. By evening the British held the
field and had captured Greene's guns. But they had lost heavily
and they were two hundred miles from their base. Their friends
were timid, and in fact few, and their numerous enemies were
filled with passionate resolution.

Cornwallis now wrote to urge Clinton to come to his aid. Abandon
New York, he said; bring the whole British force into Virginia
and end the war by one smashing stroke; that would be better than
sticking to salt pork in New York and sending only enough men to
Virginia to steal tobacco. Cornwallis could not remain where he
was, far from the sea. Go back to Camden he would not after a
victory, and thus seem to admit a defeat. So he decided to risk
all and go forward. By hard marching he led his army down the
Cape Fear River to Wilmington on the sea, and there he arrived on
the 9th of April. Greene, however, simply would not do what
Cornwallis wished--stay in the north to be beaten by a second
smashing blow. He did what Cornwallis would not do; he marched
back into the South and disturbed the British dream that now the
country was held securely. It mattered little that, after this,
the British won minor victories. Lord Rawdon, still holding
Camden, defeated Greene on the 25th of April at Hobkirk's Hill.
None the less did Rawdon find his position untenable and he, too,
was forced to march to the sea, which he reached at a point near
Charleston. Augusta, the capital of Georgia, fell to the
Americans on the 5th of June and the operations of the summer
went decisively in their favor. The last battle in the field of
the farther South was fought on the 8th of September at Eutaw
Springs, about fifty miles northwest of Charleston. The British
held their position and thus could claim a victory. But it was
fruitless. They had been forced steadily to withdraw. All the
boasted fabric of royal government in the South had come down
with a crash and the Tories who had supported it were having evil
days.

While these events were happening farther south, Cornwallis
himself, without waiting for word from Clinton in New York, had
adopted his own policy and marched from Wilmington northward into
Virginia. Benedict Arnold was now in Virginia doing what mischief
he could to his former friends. In January he burned the little
town of Richmond, destined in the years to come to be a great
center in another civil war. Some twenty miles south from
Richmond lay in a strong position Petersburg, later also to be
drenched with blood shed in civil strife. Arnold was already at
Petersburg when Cornwallis arrived on the 20th of May. He was now
in high spirits. He did not yet realize the extent of the failure
farther south. Virginia he believed to be half loyalist at heart.
The negroes would, he thought, turn against their masters when
they knew that the British were strong enough to defend them.
Above all he had a finely disciplined army of five thousand men.
Cornwallis was the more confident when he knew by whom he was
opposed. In April Washington had placed La Fayette in charge of
the defense of Virginia, and not only was La Fayette young and
untried in such a command but he had at first only three thousand
badly-trained men to confront the formidable British general.
Cornwallis said cheerily that "the boy" was certainly now his
prey and began the task of catching him.

An exciting chase followed. La Fayette did some good work. It was
impossible, with his inferior force, to fight Cornwallis, but he
could tire him out by drawing him into long marches. When
Cornwallis advanced to attack La Fayette at Richmond, La Fayette
was not there but had slipped away and was able to use rivers and
mountains for his defense. Cornwallis had more than one string to
his bow. The legislature of Virginia was sitting at
Charlottesville, lying in the interior nearly a hundred miles
northwest from Richmond, and Cornwallis conceived the daring plan
of raiding Charlottesville, capturing the Governor of Virginia,
Thomas Jefferson, and, at one stroke, shattering the civil
administration. Tarleton was the man for such an enterprise of
hard riding and bold fighting and he nearly succeeded. Jefferson
indeed escaped by rapid flight but Tarleton took the town, burned
the public records, and captured ammunition and arms. But he
really effected little. La Fayette was still unconquered. His
army was growing and the British were finding that Virginia, like
New England, was definitely against them.

At New York, meanwhile, Clinton was in a dilemma. He was dismayed
at the news of the march of Cornwallis to Virginia. Cornwallis
had been so long practically independent in the South that he
assumed not only the right to shape his own policy but adopted a
certain tartness in his despatches to Clinton, his superior. When
now, in this tone, he urged Clinton to abandon New York and join
him Clinton's answer on the 26th of June was a definite order to
occupy some port in Virginia easily reached from the sea, to make
it secure, and to send to New York reinforcements. The French
army at Newport was beginning to move towards New York and
Clinton had intercepted letters from Washington to La Fayette
revealing a serious design to make an attack with the aid of the
French fleet. Such was the game which fortune was playing with
the British generals. Each desired the other to abandon his own
plans and to come to his aid. They were agreed, however, that
some strong point must be held in Virginia as a naval base, and
on the 2d of August Cornwallis established this base at Yorktown,
at the mouth of the York River, a mile wide where it flows into
Chesapeake Bay. His cannon could command the whole width of the
river and keep in safety ships anchored above the town. Yorktown
lay about half way between New York and Charleston and from here
a fleet could readily carry a military force to any needed point
on the sea. La Fayette with a growing army closed in on Yorktown,
and Cornwallis, almost before he knew it, was besieged with no
hope of rescue except by a fleet.

Then it was that from the sea, the restless and mysterious sea,
came the final decision. Man seems so much the sport of
circumstance that apparent trifles, remote from his
consciousness, appear at times to determine his fate; it is a
commonplace of romance that a pretty face or a stray bullet has
altered the destiny not merely of families but of nations. And
now, in the American Revolution, it was not forts on the Hudson,
nor maneuvers in the South, that were to decide the issue, but
the presence of a few more French warships than the British could
muster at a given spot and time. Washington had urged in January
that France should plan to have at least temporary naval
superiority in American waters, in accordance with Rochambeau's
principle, "Nothing without naval supremacy." Washington wished
to concentrate against New York, but the French were of a
different mind, believing that the great effort should be made in
Chesapeake Bay. There the British could have no defenses like
those at New York, and the French fleet, which was stationed in
the West Indies, could reach more readily than New York a point
in the South.

Early in May Rochambeau knew that a French fleet was coming to
his aid but not yet did he know where the stroke should be made.
It was clear, however, that there was nothing for the French to
do at Newport, and, by the beginning of June, Rochambeau prepared
to set his army in motion. The first step was to join Washington
on the Hudson and at any rate alarm Clinton as to an imminent
attack on New York and hold him to that spot. After nearly a year
of idleness the French soldiers were delighted that now at last
there was to be an active movement. The long march from Newport
to New York began. In glowing June, amid the beauties of nature,
now overcome by intense heat and obliged to march at two o'clock
in the morning, now drenched by heavy rains, the French plodded
on, and joined their American comrades along the Hudson early in
July.

By the 14th of August Washington knew two things--that a great
French fleet under the Comte de Grasse had sailed for the
Chesapeake and that the British army had reached Yorktown. Soon
the two allied armies, both lying on the east side of the Hudson,
moved southward. On the 20th of August the Americans began to
cross the river at King's Ferry, eight miles below Peekskill.
Washington had to leave the greater part of his army before New
York, and his meager force of some two thousand was soon over the
river in spite of torrential rains. By the 24th of August the
French, too, had crossed with some four thousand men and with
their heavy equipment. The British made no move. Clinton was,
however, watching these operations nervously. The united armies
marched down the right bank of the Hudson so rapidly that they
had to leave useful effects behind and some grumbled at the
privation. Clinton thought his enemy might still attack New York
from the New Jersey shore. He knew that near Staten Island
the Americans were building great bakeries as if to feed an army
besieging New York. Suddenly on the 29th of August the armies
turned away from New York southwestward across New Jersey, and
still only the two leaders knew whither they were bound.

American patriotism has liked to dwell on this last great march
of Washington. To him this was familiar country; it was here that
he had harassed Clinton on the march from Philadelphia to New
York three long years before. The French marched on the right at
the rate of about fifteen miles a day. The country was beautiful
and the roads were good. Autumn had come and the air was bracing.
The peaches hung ripe on the trees. The Dutch farmers who, four
years earlier, had been plaintive about the pillage by the
Hessians, now seemed prosperous enough and brought abundance of
provisions to the army. They had just gathered their harvest. The
armies passed through Princeton, with its fine college, numbering
as many as fifty students; then on to Trenton, and across the
Delaware to Philadelphia, which the vanguard reached on the 3d of
September.

There were gala scenes in Philadelphia. Twenty thousand people
witnessed a review of the French army. To one of the French
officers the city seemed "immense" with its seventy-two streets
all "in a straight line." The shops appeared to be equal to those
of Paris and there were pretty women well dressed in the French
fashion. The Quaker city forgot its old suspicion of the French
and their Catholic religion. Luzerne, the French Minister, gave a
great banquet on the evening of the 5th of September. Eighty
guests took their places at table and as they sat down good news
arrived. As yet few knew the destination of the army but now
Luzerne read momentous tidings and the secret was out:
twenty-eight French ships of the line had arrived in Chesapeake
Bay; an army of three thousand men had already disembarked and
was in touch with the army of La Fayette; Washington and
Rochambeau were bound for Yorktown to attack Cornwallis. Great
was the joy; in the streets the soldiers and the people shouted
and sang and humorists, mounted on chairs, delivered in advance
mock funeral orations on Cornwallis.

It was planned that the army should march the fifty miles to
Elkton, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, and there take boat to
Yorktown, two hundred miles to the south at the other end of the
Bay. But there were not ships enough. Washington had asked the
people of influence in the neighborhood to help him to gather
transports but few of them responded. A deadly apathy in regard
to the war seems to have fallen upon many parts of the country.
The Bay now in control of the French fleet was quite safe for
unarmed ships. Half the Americans and some of the French embarked
and the rest continued on foot. There was need of haste, and the
troops marched on to Baltimore and beyond at the rate of twenty
miles a day, over roads often bad and across rivers sometimes
unbridged. At Baltimore some further regiments were taken on
board transports and most of them made the final stages of the
journey by water. Some there were, however, and among them the
Vicomte de Noailles, brother-in-law of La Fayette, who tramped on
foot the whole seven hundred and fifty-six miles from Newport to
Yorktown. Washington himself left the army at Elkton and rode on
with Rochambeau, making about sixty miles a day. Mount Vernon lay
on the way and here Washington paused for two or three days. It
was the first time he had seen it since he set out on May 4,
1775, to attend the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, little
dreaming then of himself as chief leader in a long war. Now he
pressed on to join La Fayette. By the end of the month an army of
sixteen thousand men, of whom about one-half were French, was
besieging Cornwallis with seven thousand men in Yorktown.

Heart-stirring events had happened while the armies were marching
to the South. The Comte de Grasse, with his great fleet, arrived
at the entrance to the Chesapeake on the 30th of August while the
British fleet under Admiral Graves still lay at New York. Grasse,
now the pivot upon which everything turned, was the French
admiral in the West Indies. Taking advantage of a lull in
operations he had slipped away with his whole fleet, to make his
stroke and be back again before his absence had caused great
loss. It was a risky enterprise, but a wise leader takes risks.
He intended to be back in the West Indies before the end of
October.

It was not easy for the British to realize that they could be
outmatched on the sea. Rodney had sent word from the West Indies
that ten ships were the limit of Grasse's numbers and that even
fourteen British ships would be adequate to meet him. A British
fleet, numbering nineteen ships of the line, commanded by Admiral
Graves, left New York on the 31st of August and five days later
stood off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. On the mainland across
the Bay lay Yorktown, the one point now held by the British on
that great stretch of coast. When Graves arrived he had an
unpleasant surprise. The strength of the French had been well
concealed. There to confront him lay twenty-four enemy ships. The
situation was even worse, for the French fleet from Newport was
on its way to join Grasse.

On the afternoon of the 5th of September, the day of the great
rejoicing in Philadelphia, there was a spectacle of surpassing
interest off Cape Henry, at the mouth of the Bay. The two great
fleets joined battle, under sail, and poured their fire into each
other. When night came the British had about three hundred and
fifty casualties and the French about two hundred. There was no
brilliant leadership on either side. One of Graves's largest
ships, the Terrible, was so crippled that he burnt her, and
several others were badly damaged. Admiral Hood, one of Graves's
officers, says that if his leader had turned suddenly and
anchored his ships across the mouth of the Bay, the French
Admiral with his fleet outside would probably have sailed away
and left the British fleet in possession. As it was the two
fleets lay at sea in sight of each other for four days. On the
morning of the tenth the squadron from Newport under Barras
arrived and increased Grasse's ships to thirty-six. Against such
odds Graves could do nothing. He lingered near the mouth of the
Chesapeake for a few days still and then sailed away to New York
to refit. At the most critical hour of the whole war a British
fleet, crippled and spiritless, was hurrying to a protecting port
and the fleurs-de-lis waved unchallenged on the American coast.
The action of Graves spelled the doom of Cornwallis. The most
potent fleet ever gathered in those waters cut him off from
rescue by sea.

Yorktown fronted on the York River with a deep ravine and swamps
at the back of the town. From the land it could on the west side
be approached by a road leading over marshes and easily defended,
and on the east side by solid ground about half a mile wide now
protected by redoubts and entrenchments with an outer and an
inner parallel. Could Cornwallis hold out? At New York, no longer
in any danger, there was still a keen desire to rescue him. By
the end of September he received word from Clinton that
reinforcements had arrived from England and that, with a fleet of
twenty-six ships of the line carrying five thousand troops, he
hoped to sail on the 5th of October to the rescue of Yorktown.
There was delay. Later Clinton wrote that on the basis of
assurances from Admiral Graves he hoped to get away on the
twelfth. A British officer in New York describes the hopes with
which the populace watched these preparations. The fleet,
however, did not sail until the 19th of October. A speaker in
Congress at the time said that the British Admiral should
certainly hang for this delay.

On the 5th of October, for some reason unexplained, Cornwallis
abandoned the outer parallel and withdrew behind the inner one.
This left him in Yorktown a space so narrow that nearly every
part of it could be swept by enemy artillery. By the 11th of
October shells were dropping incessantly from a distance of only
three hundred yards, and before this powerful fire the earthworks
crumbled. On the fourteenth the French and Americans carried by
storm two redoubts on the second parallel. The redoubtable
Tarleton was in Yorktown, and he says that day and night there
was acute danger to any one showing himself and that every gun
was dismounted as soon as seen. He was for evacuating the place
and marching away, whither he hardly knew. Cornwallis still held
Gloucester, on the opposite side of the York River, and he now
planned to cross to that place with his best troops, leaving
behind his sick and wounded. He would try to reach Philadelphia
by the route over which Washington had just ridden. The feat was
not impossible. Washington would have had a stern chase in
following Cornwallis, who might have been able to live off the
country. Clinton could help by attacking Philadelphia, which was
almost defenseless.

As it was, a storm prevented the crossing to Gloucester. The
defenses of Yorktown were weakening and in face of this new
discouragement the British leader made up his mind that the end
was near. Tarleton and other officers condemned Cornwallis
sharply for not persisting in the effort to get away. Cornwallis
was a considerate man. "I thought it would have been wanton and
inhuman," he reported later, "to sacrifice the lives of this
small body of gallant soldiers." He had already written to
Clinton to say that there would be great risk in trying to send a
fleet and army to rescue him. On the 19th of October came the
climax. Cornwallis surrendered with some hundreds of sailors and
about seven thousand soldiers, of whom two thousand were in
hospital. The terms were similar to those which the British had
granted at Charleston to General Lincoln, who was now charged
with carrying out the surrender. Such is the play of human
fortune. At two o'clock in the afternoon the British marched out
between two lines, the French on the one side, the Americans on
the other, the French in full dress uniform, the Americans in
some cases half naked and barefoot. No civilian sightseers were
admitted, and there was a respectful silence in the presence of
this great humiliation to a proud army. The town itself was a
dreadful spectacle with, as a French observer noted, "big holes
made by bombs, cannon balls, splinters, barely covered graves,
arms and legs of blacks and whites scattered here and there, most
of the houses riddled with shot and devoid of window-panes."

On the very day of surrender Clinton sailed from New York with a
rescuing army. Nine days later forty-four British ships were
counted off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The next day there
were none. The great fleet had heard of the surrender and had
turned back to New York. Washington urged Grasse to attack New
York or Charleston but the French Admiral was anxious to take his
fleet back to meet the British menace farther south and he sailed
away with all his great array. The waters of the Chesapeake, the
scene of one of the decisive events in human history, were
deserted by ships of war. Grasse had sailed, however, to meet a
stern fate. He was a fine fighting sailor. His men said of him
that he was on ordinary days six feet in height but on battle
days six feet and six inches. None the less did a few months
bring the British a quick revenge on the sea. On April 12, 1782,
Rodney met Grasse in a terrible naval battle in the West Indies.
Some five thousand in both fleets perished. When night came
Grasse was Rodney's prisoner and Britain had recovered her
supremacy on the sea. On returning to France Grasse was tried by
court-martial and, though acquitted, he remained in disgrace
until he died in 1788, "weary," as he said, "of the burden of
life." The defeated Cornwallis was not blamed in England. His
character commanded wide respect and he lived to play a great
part in public life. He became Governor General of India, and was
Viceroy of Ireland when its restless union with England was
brought about in 1800.


Yorktown settled the issue of the war but did not end it. For
more than a year still hostilities continued and, in parts of the
South, embittered faction led to more bloodshed. In England the
news of Yorktown caused a commotion. When Lord George Germain
received the first despatch he drove with one or two colleagues
to the Prime Minister's house in Downing Street. A friend asked
Lord George how Lord North had taken the news. "As he would have
taken a ball in the breast," he replied; "for he opened his arms,
exclaiming wildly, as he paced up and down the apartment during a
few minutes, 'Oh God! it is all over,' words which he repeated
many times, under emotions of the deepest agitation and
distress." Lord North might well be agitated for the news meant
the collapse of a system. The King was at Kew and word was sent
to him. That Sunday evening Lord George Germain had a small
dinner party and the King's letter in reply was brought to the
table. The guests were curious to know how the King took the
news. "The King writes just as he always does," said Lord George,
"except that I observe he has omitted to mark the hour and the
minute of his writing with his usual precision." It needed a
heavy shock to disturb the routine of George III. The King hoped
no one would think that the bad news "makes the smallest
alteration in those principles of my conduct which have directed
me in past time." Lesser men might change in the face of evils;
George III was resolved to be changeless and never, never, to
yield to the coercion of facts.

Yield, however, he did. The months which followed were months of
political commotion in England. For a time the ministry held its
majority against the fierce attacks of Burke and Fox. The House
of Commons voted that the war must go on. But the heart had gone
out of British effort. Everywhere the people were growing
restless. Even the ministry acknowledged that the war in America
must henceforth be defensive only. In February, 1782, a motion in
the House of Commons for peace was lost by only one vote; and in
March, in spite of the frantic expostulations of the King, Lord
North resigned. The King insisted that at any rate some members
of the new ministry must be named by himself and not, as is the
British constitutional custom, by the Prime Minister. On this,
too, he had to yield; and a Whig ministry, under the Marquis of
Rockingham, took office in March, 1782. Rockingham died on the
1st of July, and it was Lord Shelburne, later the Marquis of
Lansdowne, under whom the war came to an end. The King meanwhile
declared that he would return to Hanover rather than yield the
independence of the colonies. Over and over again he had said
that no one should hold office in his government who would not
pledge himself to keep the Empire entire. But even his obstinacy
was broken. On December 5, 1782, he opened Parliament with a
speech in which the right of the colonies to independence was
acknowledged. "Did I lower my voice when I came to that part of
my speech?" George asked afterwards. He might well speak in a
subdued tone for he had brought the British Empire to the lowest
level in its history.

In America, meanwhile, the glow of victory had given way to
weariness and lassitude. Rochambeau with his army remained in
Virginia. Washington took his forces back to the lines before New
York, sparing what men he could to help Greene in the South.
Again came a long period of watching and waiting. Washington,
knowing the obstinate determination of the British character,
urged Congress to keep up the numbers of the army so as to be
prepared for any emergency. Sir Guy Carleton now commanded the
British at New York and Washington feared that this capable
Irishman might soothe the Americans into a false security. He had
to speak sharply, for the people seemed indifferent to further
effort and Congress was slack and impotent. The outlook for
Washington's allies in the war darkened, when in April, 1782,
Rodney won his crushing victory and carried De Grasse a prisoner
to England. France's ally Spain had been besieging Gibraltar for
three years, but in September, 1782, when the great battering-
ships specially built for the purpose began a furious
bombardment, which was expected to end the siege, the British
defenders destroyed every ship, and after that Gibraltar was
safe. These events naturally stiffened the backs of the British
in negotiating peace. Spain declared that she would never make
peace without the surrender of Gibraltar, and she was ready to
leave the question of American independence undecided or decided
against the colonies if she could only get for herself the terms
which she desired. There was a period when France seemed ready to
make peace on the basis of dividing the Thirteen States, leaving
some of them independent while others should remain under the
British King.

Congress was not willing to leave its affairs at Paris in the
capable hands of Franklin alone. In 1780 it sent John Adams to
Paris, and John Jay and Henry Laurens were also members of the
American Commission. The austere Adams disliked and was jealous
of Franklin, gay in spite of his years, seemingly indolent and
easygoing, always bland and reluctant to say No to any request
from his friends, but ever astute in the interests of his
country. Adams told Vergennes, the French foreign minister, that
the Americans owed nothing to France, that France had entered the
war in her own interests, and that her alliance with America had
greatly strengthened her position in Europe. France, he added,
was really hostile to the colonies, since she was jealously
trying to keep them from becoming rich and powerful. Adams
dropped hints that America might be compelled to make a separate
peace with Britain. When it was proposed that the depreciated
continental paper money, largely held in France for purchases
there, should be redeemed at the rate of one good dollar for
every forty in paper money, Adams declared to the horrified
French creditors of the United States that the proposal was fair
and just. At the same time Congress was drawing on Franklin in
Paris for money to meet its requirements and Franklin was
expected to persuade the French treasury to furnish him with what
he needed and to an amazing degree succeeded in doing so. The
self interest which Washington believed to be the dominant motive
in politics was, it is clear, actively at work. In the end the
American Commissioners negotiated directly with Great Britain,
without asking for the consent of their French allies. On
November 30, 1782, articles of peace between Great Britain and
the United States were signed. They were, however, not to go into
effect until Great Britain and France had agreed upon terms of
peace; and it was not until September 3, 1783, that the definite
treaty was signed. So far as the United States was concerned
Spain was left quite properly to shift for herself.

Thus it was that the war ended. Great Britain had urged
especially the case of the Loyalists, the return to them of their
property and compensation for their losses. She could not achieve
anything. Franklin indeed asked that Americans who had been
ruined by the destruction of their property should be compensated
by Britain, that Canada should be added to the United States, and
that Britain should acknowledge her fault in distressing the
colonies. In the end the American Commissioners agreed to ask the
individual States to meet the desires of the British negotiators,
but both sides understood that the States would do nothing, that
the confiscated property would never be returned, that most of
the exiled Loyalists would remain exiles, and that Britain
herself must compensate them for their losses. This in time she
did on a scale inadequate indeed but expressive of a generous
intention. The United States retained the great Northwest and the
Mississippi became the western frontier, with destiny already
whispering that weak and grasping Spain must soon let go of the
farther West stretching to the Pacific Ocean. When Great Britain
signed peace with France and Spain in January, 1783, Gibraltar
was not returned; Spain had to be content with the return of
Minorca, and Florida which she had been forced to yield to
Britain in 1763. Each side restored its conquests in the West
Indies. France, the chief mainstay of the war during its later
years, gained from it really nothing beyond the weakening of her
ancient enemy. The magnanimity of France, especially towards her
exacting American ally, is one of the fine things in the great
combat. The huge sum of nearly eight hundred million dollars
spent by France in the war was one of the chief factors in the
financial crisis which, six years after the signing of the peace,
brought on the French Revolution and with it the overthrow of the
Bourbon monarchy. Politics bring strange bedfellows and they have
rarely brought stranger ones than the democracy of young America
and the political despotism, linked with idealism, of the ancient
monarchy of France.

The British did not evacuate New York until Carleton had gathered
there the Loyalists who claimed his protection. These unhappy
people made their way to the seaports, often after long and
distressing journeys overland. Charleston was the chief rallying
place in the South and from there many sad-hearted people sailed
away, never to see again their former homes. The British had
captured New York in September, 1776, and it was more than seven
years later, on November 25, 1783, that the last of the British
fleet put to sea. Britain and America had broken forever their
political tie and for many years to come embittered memories kept
up the alienation.

It was fitting that Washington should bid farewell to his army at
New York, the center of his hopes and anxieties during the
greater part of the long struggle. On December 4, 1783, his
officers met at a tavern to bid him farewell. The tears ran down
his cheeks as he parted with these brave and tried men. He shook
their hands in silence and, in a fashion still preserved in
France, kissed each of them. Then they watched him as he was
rowed away in his barge to the New Jersey shore. Congress was now
sitting at Annapolis in Maryland and there on December 23, 1783,
Washington appeared and gave up finally his command. We are told
that the members sat covered to show the sovereignty of the
Union, a quaint touch of the thought of the time. The little town
made a brave show and "the gallery was filled with a beautiful
group of elegant ladies." With solemn sincerity Washington
commended the country to the protection of Almighty God and the
army to the special care of Congress. Passion had already
subsided for the President of Congress in his reply praised the
"magnanimous king and nation" of Great Britain. By the end of the
year Washington was at Mount Vernon, hoping now to be able, as he
said simply, to make and sell a little flour annually and to
repair houses fast going to ruin. He did not foresee the troubled
years and the vexing problems which still lay before him. Nor
could he, in his modest estimate of himself, know that for a
distant posterity his character and his words would have
compelling authority. What Washington's countryman, Motley, said
of William of Orange is true of Washington himself: "As long as
he lived he was the guiding star of a brave nation and when he
died the little children cried in the streets." But this is not
all. To this day in the domestic and foreign affairs of the
United States the words of Washington, the policies which he
favored, have a living and almost binding force. This attitude of
mind is not without its dangers, for nations require to make new
adjustments of policy, and the past is only in part the master of
the present; but it is the tribute of a grateful nation to the
noble character of its chief founder.



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol. VI
(1889), and in Larned (editor), "Literature of American History",
pp. 111-152 (1902), the authorities are critically estimated.
There are excellent classified lists in Van Tyne, "The American
Revolution" (1905), vol. V of Hart (editor), "The American
Nation", and in Avery, "History of the United States", vol. V,
pp. 422-432, and vol. VI, pp. 445-471 (1908-09). The notes in
Channing, "A History of the United States", vol. III (1913), are
useful. Detailed information in regard to places will be found in
Lossing, "The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution", 2 vols.
(1850).

In recent years American writers on the period have chiefly
occupied themselves with special studies, and the general
histories have been few. Tyler's "The Literary History of the
American Revolution, 2 vols. (1897), is a penetrating study of
opinion. Fiske's "The American Revolution", 2 vols. (1891), and
Sydney George Fisher's "The Struggle for American Independence",
2 vols. (1908), are popular works. The short volume of Van Tyne
is based upon extensive research. The attention of English
writers has been drawn in an increasing degree to the Revolution.
Lecky, "A History of England in the Eighteenth Century", chaps.
XIII, XIV, and XV (1903), is impartial. The most elaborate and
readable history is Trevelyan, "The American Revolution", and his
"George the Third" and "Charles Fox" (six volumes in all,
completed in 1914). If Trevelyan leans too much to the American
side the opposite is true of Fortescue, "A History of the British
Army", vol. III (1902), a scientific account of military events
with many maps and plans. Captain Mahan, U. S. N., wrote the
British naval history of the period in Clowes (editor), "The
Royal Navy, a History", vol. III, pp. 353-564 (1898). Of great
value also is Mahan's "Influence of Sea Power on History" (1890)
and "Major Operations of the Navies in the War of Independence"
(1913). He may be supplemented by C. O. Paullin's "Navy of the
American Revolution" (1906) and G. W. Allen's "A Naval History of
the American Revolution", 2 vols. (1913).

CHAPTERS I AND II.

Washington's own writings are necessary to an understanding of
his character. Sparks, "The Life and Writings of George
Washington", 2 vols. (completed 1855), has been superseded by
Ford, "The Writings of George Washington", 14 vols. (completed
1898). The general reader will probably put aside the older
biographies of Washington by Marshall, Irving, and Sparks for
more recent "Lives" such as those by Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot
Lodge, and Paul Leicester Ford. Haworth, "George Washington,
Farmer" (1915) deals with a special side of Washington's
character. The problems of the army are described in Bolton, "The
Private Soldier under Washington" (1902), and in Hatch, "The
Administration of the American Revolutionary Army" (1904). For
military operations Frothingham, "The Siege of Boston"; Justin H.
Smith, "Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony", 2 vols. (1907);
Codman, "Arnold's Expedition to Quebec" (1901); and Lucas,
"History of Canada", 1763-1812 (1909).

CHAPTER III.

For the state of opinion in England, the contemporary "Annual
Register", and the writings and speeches of men of the time like
Burke, Fox, Horace Walpole, and Dr. Samuel Johnson. The King's
attitude is found in Donne, "Correspondence of George III with
Lord North", 1768-83, 2 vols. (1867). Stirling, "Coke of Norfolk
and his Friends", 2 vols. (1908), gives the outlook of a Whig
magnate; Fitzmaurice, "Life of William, Earl of Shelburne", 2
vols. (1912), the Whig policy. Curwen's "Journals and Letters",
1775-84 (1842), show us a Loyalist exile in England. Hazelton's
"The Declaration of Independence, its History" (1906), is an
elaborate study.

CHAPTERS IV, V, AND VI.

The three campaigns--New York, Philadelphia, and the Hudson--are
covered by C. F. Adams, "Studies Military and Diplomatic" (1911),
which makes severe strictures on Washington's strategy; H. P.
Johnston's "Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn," in
the Long Island Historical Society's "Memoirs", and "Battle of
Harlem Heights" (1897); Carrington, "Battles of the American
Revolution" (1904); Stryker, "The Battles of Trenton and
Princeton" (1898); Lucas, "History of Canada" (1909).
Fonblanque's "John Burgoyne" (1876) is a defense of that leader;
while Riedesel's "Letters and Journals Relating to the War of the
American Revolution" (trans. W. L. Stone, 1867) and Anburey's
"Travels through the Interior Parts of America" (1789) are
accounts by eye-witnesses. Mereness' (editor) "Travels in the
American Colonies", 1690-1783 (1916) gives the impressions of
Lord Adam Gordon and others.

CHAPTERS VII AND VIII.

On Washington at Valley Forge, Oliver, "Life of Alexander
Hamilton" (1906); Charlemagne Tower, "The Marquis de La Fayette
in the American Revolution", 2 vols. (1895); Greene, "Life of
Nathanael Greene" (1893); Brooks, "Henry Knox" (1900); Graham,
"Life of General Daniel Morgan" (1856); Kapp, "Life of Steuben"
(1859); Arnold, "Life of Benedict Arnold" (1880). On the army
Bolton and Hatch as cited; Mahan gives a lucid account of naval
effort. Barrow, "Richard, Earl Howe" (1838) is a dull account of
a remarkable man. On the French alliance, Perkins, "France in the
American Revolution" (1911), Corwin, "French Policy and the
American Alliance of 1778" (1916), and Van Tyne on "Influences
which Determined the French Government to Make the Treaty with
America, 1778," in "The American Historical Review", April, 1916.

CHAPTER IX.

Fortescue, as cited, gives excellent plans. Other useful books
are McCrady, "History of South Carolina in the Revolution"
(1901); Draper, "King's Mountain and its Heroes" (1881); Simms,
"Life of Marion" (1844). Ross (editor), "The Cornwallis
Correspondence", 3 vols. (1859), and Tarleton, "History of the
Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North
America" (1787), give the point of view of British leaders. On
the West, Thwaites, "How George Rogers Clark won the Northwest"
(1903); and on the Loyalists Van Tyne, "The Loyalists in the
American Revolution" (1902), Flick, "Loyalism in New York"
(1901), and Stark, "The Loyalists of Massachusetts" (1910).

CHAPTERS X AND XI.

For the exploits of John Paul Jones and of the American navy,
Mrs. De Koven's "The Life and Letters of John Paul Jones", 2
vols. (1913), Don C. Seitz's "Paul Jones", and G. W. Allen's "A
Naval History of the American Revolution", 2 vols. (1913), should
be consulted. Jusserand's "With Americans of Past and Present
Days" (1917) contains a chapter on 'Rochambeau and the French in
America'; Johnston's "The Yorktown Campaign" (1881) is a full
account; Wraxall, "Historical Memoirs of my own Time" (1815,
reprinted 1904), tells of the reception of the news of Yorktown
in England.

The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" has useful references to
authorities for persons prominent in the Revolution and "The
Dictionary of National Biography" for leaders on the British side.





End of Project Gutenberg Washington and his Comrades in Arms, by Wrong

