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Washington and his Comrades in Arms..........................................................................................................1

George M. Wrong....................................................................................................................................1

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

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 fortyfourth 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

Across the Charles River north from Boston, on a peninsula, lay the village of Charlestown, and rising behind

it was Breed's Hill, about seventyfour 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

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 twentyfour 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 twentyfive hundred men, and, at about two in the afternoon, this force was landed at

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

The slaughter was terrible. British officers hardened in war declared long afterward that they had never seen

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 reformed 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 CommanderinChief. 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

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

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

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

Washington, born in 1732, had been trained in selfreliance, for he had been fatherless from childhood. At

the age of sixteen he was working at the profession, largely selftaught, of a surveyor of land. At the age of

twentyseven 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 twentyfive 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

selfdiscipline. 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 selfrestraint, 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

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 pleasureseeking 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

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

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

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 halfbrother. 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

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

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 minutemen, 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

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

parklike 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 campkettles 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

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 highflown 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,

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 selfseeking, 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

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.

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 selfseeking. 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 courtmartial and dismissed from the service for intimate association with the wagonmaker of the

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

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

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 rockbound 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.

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 eightythree men, arrived in friendly guise. The

fort was held by only fortyeight 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

About Canada Washington was illinformed. 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

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

"lowminded 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wellmeaning 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

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

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

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

George III was illfitted 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 illeducated.

As if nature had not sufficiently handicapped George for a high part, fate placed him on the throne at the

immature age of twentytwo. 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

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 placehunters. 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 narrowminded 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 thirtyfive 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 manofwar 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

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

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 deepseated. A wise king could do much, but

while George III survivedand his reign lasted sixty yearsthere 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

warsthose against the colonies and revolutionary Francebefore 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

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 thingsthe 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

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

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 evilminded 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

sinisterthat 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

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

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

subcommittee 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 lawswhich 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

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 illtimed Declaration and the reunion of

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

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 twentyfive casualties against an American loss of

thirtyseven. 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 wellinformed 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

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 highhearted men fighting for rights which they held dear.

Lord Howe went so far as to address a letter to "George Washington Esq. 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 " 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 twentyfive thousand welltrained soldiers,

and he could, in addition, draw men from the fleet, which would give him in all double the force of

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

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 twentyseventh the Americans,

who fought well against overwhelming odds, had lost nearly two thousand men in casualties and prisoners,

six field pieces, and twentysix 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

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

On the night of the 29th of August there was clear moonlight, with fog towards daybreak. A British army of

twentyfive 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

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 menofwar 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 Thirtyfourth 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 sixtyseven guns. By accident, or, it is said,

by design of the Americans themselves, New York soon took fire and onethird 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

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

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

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 hardriding party of British

cavalry, and carried off a prisoner, obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and slippers. Not always does

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

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

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

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

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

twentyninth 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

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 heavensent leader. Now both

America and Europe learned to recognize his skill. He had won a reputation, though not yet had he saved a

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 eightynine thousand men, of whom fiftyseven 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

Washington called his success in the attack at Trenton a lucky stroke. It was luck which had farreaching

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

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 illtreated,

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 Philadelphiaa 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

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

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 twentynine

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

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

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,

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

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 seventythree casualties and lost besides four hundred

prisoners. The British loss was five hundred and thirtyseven casualties and fourteen prisoners. The attack

had failed, but news soon came which made the reverse unimportant. Burgoyne and his whole army had

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, brokenbacked pigs

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

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 onehalf 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 thirtyfive 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 twentytwo 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.

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

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 twentyfive 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

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

Burgoyne did his best. Early in August he had to make a venturesome stroke to get sorely needed food. Some

twentyfive 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

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

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

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 wellnigh 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

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 thirtyseven 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

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 noncombatants 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

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 sympathyMrs. 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

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 CommanderinChief 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

Gates proposed to Burgoyne hard termssurrender 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

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.

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, twentytwo 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,

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 victoryGates, to whom Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga,

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

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 shortterm enlistments. If a man could reenlist 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 wellbeing 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 illequipped 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 illtreatment against

the other. The prisonships 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

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 welltrained 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 pipeclay 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

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

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 smoothbore

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

bulletmolds. 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

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 wagonload of money to pay for a wagonload 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

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 antiChrist.

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

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 secondrate 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

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

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

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 worldwide fame. The

young Alexander Hamilton, barely twentyone 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

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 kingsthe 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

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 twentyfive, and fresh

from commercial life, was placed in charge of the meager artillery which Washington had before Boston. It

was Knox, who, with heartbreaking 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

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

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

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 pressgang and flogging. Pressgangs 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 selftaught, 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

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 coloniessome

2,500,000was about onethird 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

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. Onefourth of the ablebodied men of HesseCassel 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

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 ogrelike 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.

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

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

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 generala 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 onehundredth 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

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

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 overconfidence 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

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

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

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 agelong 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

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

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

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 highflown 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,

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

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

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 Britishperhaps sixteen

thousandand 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

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 fiftynine 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 courtmartial, found guilty, and suspended from

rank for twelve months. Ultimately he was dismissed from the American army, less it appears for his conduct

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 midAtlantic,

storms so severe that his fleet was entirely dispersed and his flagship was alone when it reached Long Island

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 twentytwo

feet of water on the bar and this was not enough for his great ships, one of which carried ninetyone 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

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

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

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 twentyone,

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 sixtysix. Nor had Britain resources in any other quarter upon

which she could readily draw. In the West Indies she had twentyone ships of the line while France had

twentyfive. 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

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 40gun 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

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

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

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

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 selfinterest 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

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

twentyfive 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

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

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 twentytwo 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 fiftyfour. 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. Illfortune pursued him to the end. He served no more in the war

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 officerCornwallis, 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 sixtyfour miles in twentythree hours and a hundred

and five miles in fiftyfour 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 twentyone 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

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

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

Camden, on the Wateree River, lies inland from Charleston about a hundred and twentyfive 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

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 ninetysix, 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 bypaths 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

eightyeight. 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

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

* 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

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 selfappointed 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

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

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

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.

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 fiftyfifth 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: LavalMontmorency, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, SaintSimon. 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. Fortyfive 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

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

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

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

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

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

thirtyfive, was successful in paying court to Miss Shippen, a young lady of twenty, with whom, as

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

courtmartial 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 CommanderinChief. 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

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

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 twentyfifth, 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

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 menofwar,

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 moneyall these were well fitted to depress the worn leader so anxiously

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

Cornwallis had lost onethird 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 wishedstay 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

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 badlytrained men to confront the formidable British

general. Cornwallis said cheerily that "the boy" was certainly now his prey and began the task of catching

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

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,

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 thingsthat 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 seventytwo 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: twentyeight 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

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, brotherinlaw of La Fayette, who tramped on foot the whole seven hundred and fiftysix 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 onehalf were French,

Heartstirring 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 twentyfour enemy ships. The situation was even worse, for the French

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

thirtysix. 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 fleursdelis waved unchallenged on

the American coast. The action of Graves spelled the doom of Cornwallis. The most potent fleet ever

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 twentysix 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

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

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

On the very day of surrender Clinton sailed from New York with a rescuing army. Nine days later fortyfour

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 courtmartial 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 sadhearted 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

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

In Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol. VI (1889), and in Larned (editor), "Literature of

American History", pp. 111152 (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. 422432, and vol. VI, pp. 445471 (190809). 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. 353564 (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).

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);

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", 176883, 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", 177584 (1842), show us a

Loyalist exile in England. Hazelton's "The Declaration of Independence, its History" (1906), is an elaborate

The three campaignsNew York, Philadelphia, and the Hudsonare 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 eyewitnesses. Mereness' (editor) "Travels in the American Colonies", 16901783 (1916)

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.

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

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),

The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" has useful references to authorities for persons prominent in the Revolution