'YAILE-^OTWEIRSinnr- • iLniBis^mr • Gift of Prof, Charles H. Smith 1910 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION JOHN FISKE IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY S6e BliViraiDe TPnsti, «TamTirio8e Copyright, 1891, By JOHN FISKE. All rights reserved. 7%e Riverside Press, Cambridge., Mass.t U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co, CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. " THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. PAGE The four periods of the Revolutionary war . . . 1-4 Consequences of Saratoga ; consternation in England 4, 5 Views of the different parties ..... 6 Lord North's political somersault .... 7 Strange scene in the House of Commons ... 8 Treaty between France and the United States (Febru ary 6, 1778) 9, 10 Great Britain declares war against France (March 13) 11 Demand for Lord Chatham for prime minister . 12, 13 The king's rage ^ 13, 14 What Chatham would have tried to do . . . .15 Death of Chatham 16, 17 His prodigious greatness 17-22 Lord North remains in power ..... 22 His commissioners in America fail to accomplish any thing 23 Germaine's new plan for conducting the war . . 24 CHAPTER IX. VALLEY FORGE. Distress in America ....... 25 Lack of organization 26, 27 Vexatious meddling of Congress with the army . . 28 Sufferings at Valley Forge 29 Promoting officers for non-military reasons . . .30 IV CONTENTS. Absurd talk of John Adams ..... 31 Gates is puffed up with success . . . . .32 And shows symptoms of insubordination ... 33 The Conway cabal ...... 34-36 Attempts to injure Washington .... 36, 37 Conway's letter to Gates . . . . . .38 Gates's letter to Washington ..... 39 Washington's reply ....... 40 Gates tries, unsuccessfully, to save himself by lying . 41 But is successful, as usual, in keeping from under fire . 42 The forged letters ....... 43 Scheme for invading Canada . . . ... 43 The dinner at York, and Lafayette's toast . . 44 Absurdity of the scheme ...... 45 Downfall of the cabal ...... 46 Decline of the Continental Congress . . . .47 Increasing influence of Washington .... 48 CHAPTER X. MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. Baron Friedrich von Steuben 50, 51 He arrives in America and visits Congress at York . 52 His work in training the army at Valley Forge . 53, 54 His manual of tactics ....... 55 Sir William Howe resigns his command ... 56 The Mischianza ........ 57 The British evacuate Philadelphia (June 18, 1778) . 58 Arnold takes command there 58 Charles Lee is exchanged, and returns to his command in the American army ...... 59 Washington pursues the British .... 60 His plan of attack 61 Battle of Monmouth (June 28) 62-65 Lee's shameful retreat 62, 63 Washington retrieves the situation .... 64 It was a drawn battle 65 Washington's letter to Lee 66 67 68 . 69 70 . 71 72 73 74 . 75 76 76 77 77 . 78 79 79 80 CONTENTS. Trial and sentence of Lee .... Lee's character and schemes .... Lee's expulsion from the army ; his death . The situation at New York .... The French fleet unable to enter the harbour General Prescott at Newport .... Attempt to capture the British garrison at Newport Sullivan seizes Butt's Hill .... Naval battle prevented by storm . Estaing goes to Boston to refit his ships ' . Yeomanry go home in disgust Battle of Butt's Hill (August 29) The enterprise abandoned .... Unpopularity of the French alliance . Stagnation of the war in the northern states . . 81 CHAPTER XI. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, missionary and war- chief 82-85 The Tories of western New York . . .85, 86 The valley of Wyoming and its settlers from Connecti cut 87 Massacre at Wyoming (July 3, 1778) . . .88, 89 Massacre at Cherry Valley (November 10) . . .90 Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois . . . 90, 91 Battle of Newtown (August 29, 1779) .... 91 Devastation of the Iroquois country .... 92 Reign of terror in the Mohawk valley . . . .93 The wilderness beyond the Alleghanies . . .94, 95 Rivalry between Pennsylvania and Virginia for the pos session of Fort Pitt ....... 96 Lord Dunmore's war (1774) 97 Logan and Cresap ...... 98-100 Battle of Point Pleasant (October 10, 1774) and its con sequences ... . . . . . • • 100 Settlement of Kentucky 101 VI CONTENTS. And of eastern Tennessee 102 Defeat of the Cherokees on the Watauga, and its conse quences ......... 103 George Rogers Clark 103, 104 His conquest of the northwestern territory (1778) . 105 Capture of Vincennes (February 23, 1779) . . 106 Settlement of middle Tennessee 107 Importance of Clark's conquest . . . 108, 109 Tryon's raids upon the coast of Connecticut . . . 110 Sir Henry Clinton captures the fortress at Stony Point (May 31, 1779) Ill Wayne recaptures Stony Point by storm (July 16) . 112 Evacuation of Stony Point ...... 113 Henry Lee's exploit at Paulus Hook (August 18) 114, 115 CHAPTER XII. WAR ON THE OCEAN. Importance of the control of the water .... 116 Feeble action of Congress 117, 118 American and British cruisers ..... 119 Lambert Wickes and Gustavus Conyngham . . 120 John Paul Jones ........ 120 Franklin's supervision of maritime affairs . . . 121 Jones's squadron 122, 123 His cruise on the British coast .... 123, 124 He meets a British fleet off Flamborough Head . . 124 Terrific fight between the Serapis and the Bon Homme Richard (September 23, 1779) .... 125-128 Effect of Jones's victory ...... 129 Why Denmark and Russia were interested in it . . 130 Relations of Spain and France to England . 131, 132 Intrigues of Spain 132, 133 Treaty between Spain and France (April, 1779) . 134 French and Spanish fleets attempt an invasion of Eng land (August, 1779) 135, 136 Sir George Rodney . . . ... . . 137 Rights of neutrals upon the sea .... 138 CONTENTS. vn The Consolato del Mare 139 England's conduct in the eighteenth century . . 140 Prussian doctrine that free ships make free goods . 141 Influence of the French philosophers .... 142 Great Britain wishes to secure an alliance with Russia . 143 Importance of Minorca 144 France adopts the Prussian doctrine . . . 145, 146 The affair of Fielding and Bylandt .... 147 Spanish cruisers capture Russian vessels . . . 148 Catherine's proclamation (March 8, 1780) . . 149 The Armed Neutrality 149, 150 Vast importance of the principles laid down by Cather ine 151, 152 Relations between Great Britain and Holland . 152-154 Holland joins the Armed Neutrality .... 155 Capture of Henry Laurens and his papers . . . 155 Great Britain declares war against Holland (December 20, 1780) 156, 157 Catherine decides not to interfere .... 157, 158 Capture of St. Eustatius (February 3, 1781) . . 159 Shameful proceedings ....... 160 Ignominious results of the politics of George III. 161, 162 CHAPTER XIII. A YEAR OF DISASTERS. State of affairs in Georgia and South Carolina . Georgia overrun by the British . Arrival of General Lincoln (December, 1778) Partisan warfare ; barbarous reprisals The Americans routed at Briar Creek (March 3. Vandalism of General Prevost . Plan for arming negroes .... Indignation in South Carolina . Action of the council End of the campaign .... Attempt to recapture Savannah Clinton and Cornwallis go to Georgia 1779) 164, 165 . 166 . 167 . 168 169 . 170 . 170 . 171 . 172 . 173 . 174 175, 176 Vlll CONTENTS. The British advance upon Charleston . Surrender of Charleston (May 12, 1780) South Carolina overrun by the British . Clinton returns to New York An injudicious proclamation . Disorders in South Carolina The strategic points .... Partisan commanders Francis Marion ..... Thomas Sumter ..... First appearance of Andrew Jackson in history Advance of Kalb Gates appointed to the chief command in the South Choice of roads to Camden .... Gates chooses the wrong road He loses the moment for striking And weakens his army on the eve of battle . And is surprised by Cornwallis . Battle of Camden (August 16, 1780) ; total and minious defeat of Gates His campaign was a series of blunders . • . Partisan operations ...... Weariness and depression of the people Evils wrought by the paper currency " Not worth a Continental " . Taxes paid in the form of specific supplies Difficulty of keeping the army together The French alliance Lafayette's visit to France (February, 1779) Arrival of part of the French auxiliary force Count Rochambeau (July, 1780) The remainder is detained in France by a British fleet General despondency ....... 205 177 178179180 180 181182 182183184 185 185186 187 . 188 . 189 . 190 . 191 igno- 191-193 . 194 . 195 . 196 . 197 198. 199 200 201202203204 under CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER XIV. BENEDICT ARNOLD. Arnold put in command of Philadelphia (June, 1778) . 206 He gets into difficulties with the government of Penn sylvania 207 Miss Margaret Shippen 208 Views of the moderate Tories .... 208, 209 Arnold's drift toward Toryism ..... 209 He makes up his mind to leave the army . . . 210 Charges are brought against him (January, 1779) . . 211 He is acquitted by a committee of Congress (March) 211 The case is referred to a court-martial (April) . . 212 First correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton . . . 213 The court-martial acquits Arnold of all serious charges, but directs Washington to reprimand him for two very trivial ones (January 26, 1780) .... 214 Arnold thirsts for revenge upon Congress . . . 215 Significance of West Point 216 Arnold put in command of West Point (July, 1780) . 216 Secret interview between Arnold and Andre" (Septem ber 22) 217,218 The plot for surrendering West Point .... 219 Andre" takes compromising documents . . . 220 And is persuaded to return to New York by land . 221 The roads infested by robbers 221 Arrest of Andre" (September 23) 222 Colonel Jameson's perplexity 223 Washington returns from Hartford sooner than ex pected 224 Flight of Arnold (September 25) . . . . 225, 226 Discovery of the treasonable plot .... 227 Andre" taken to Tappan (September 28) 228 Andrews trial and sentence (September 29) . . 229 Clinton's arguments and protests 230 Captain Ogden's message 231 Execution of Andre" (October 2) .... 231 Lord Stanhope's unconscious impudence . . . 232 X CONTENTS. There is no reason in the world why Andre's life should have been spared ....••• •*«** Captain Battersby's story 234 Arnold's terrible downfall 235 Anecdotes 236 Arnold's family 237 His remorse and death (June 14, 1801) . . . 238 Reflections 238,239 Mutiny of Pennsylvania troops (January 1, 1781) 240, 241 Fate of Clinton's emissaries 242 Further mutiny suppressed .... 242, 243 CHAPTER XV. YORKTOWN. Cornwallis invades North Carolina (September, 1780) . 244 Ferguson's expedition 245 Rising of the backwoodsmen 246 Battle of King's Mountain (October 7, 1780) . . 247 Effect of the blow 248 Reinforcements from the North ; arrival of Daniel Morgan 249 Greene appointed to the chief command at the South 250, 251 Greene's daring strategy; he threatens Cornwallis on both flanks 252 Cornwallis retorts by sending Tarleton against Morgan 253 Morgan's position at the Cowpens .... 254 Battle of the Cowpens (January 17, 1781) ; nearly the whole British force captured on the field . . 254, 255 Brilliant movements of Morgan and Greene ; they lead Cornwallis a chase across North Carolina . . 256, 257 Further manceuvres ....... 258 Battle of Guilford (March 15) ... . 258, 259 Retreat of Cornwallis 260 He abandons the Carolinas and marches into Virginia . 261 Greene's master-stroke ; he returns to South Carolina (April 6-18) 262 CONTENTS. xi And, by taking Fort Watson, cuts Lord Rawdon's com munications (April 23) 263 Rawdon defeats Greene at Hobkirk's Hill (April 25) ; but is none the less obliged to give up Camden in order to save his army (May 10) .... 264 All the inland posts taken from the British (May- June) 265 Rawdon goes to England, leaving Stuart in command . 265 Greene marches against Stuart (August 22) . . 266 Battle of Eutaw Springs (September 8) . . . 267 Greene's superb generalship .... 267, 268 Lord Cornwallis arrives at Petersburg (May 20) . . 269 His campaign against Lafayette . . . 270, 271 Cornwallis retreats to the coast, and occupies York- town 272 Elements of the final catastrophe ; arrival of the French fleet 273,274 News from Grasse and Lafayette ..... 275 Subtle and audacious scheme of Washington . . 276 He transfers his army to Virginia (August 19-Septem- berl8) 277,278 Movements of the fleets 279 Cornwallis surrounded at Yorktown .... 280 Clinton's attempt at a counter-stroke ; Arnold's proceed ings at New London (September 6) . . 281, 282 Surrender of Cornwallis ...... 283 Importance of the aid rendered by the French fleet and army .......... 284 Effect of the news in England .... 285, 286 Difficult position of Great Britain .... 287 Rodney's victory over Grasse (April 12, 1782) . 288 Resignation of Lord North (March 20, 1782) . , 289 Defeat of tt^ political schemes of George III. . . 290 Index * 291 xii CONTENTS. MAPS. Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778, from the first edition of Irving' s Life of Washington .... 62 Battle of Camden, August 16, 1780, from a sketch by the author 192 Battle of the Cowpens, January 17, 1781, ditto . . 254 Greene and Cornwallis in the Carolinas, January- April, 1781, ditto 258 Cornwallis and Lafayette in Virginia, May-August, 1781, ditto 272 Washington's march upon Yorktown, August 19-Sep- tember 26, 1781, ditto 278 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. CHAPTER VIII. THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. The history of the Revolutionary War may be divided into four well-marked periods. The first period begins in 1761 with the resistance of James Otis to the general search-warrants, and it may be regarded as ending in June, 1774, wben the acts for changing the government of Massachusetts were intended to take effect. This period of con stitutional discussion culminated in the defiance of Great Britain by the people of Boston when they threw the tea into the harbour; and the acts of April, 1774, by which Parliament replied to the challenge, were virtually a declaration of war against the American colonies, though yet another year elapsed before the first bloodshed at Lexing ton. The second period opens with June, 1774, when Massachusetts began to nullify the acts of Parlia ment, and it closes with the Declaration of Inde pendence. During this period warfare was car ried on only for the purpose of obtaining a redress of grievances, and without any design of bringing 2 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. about a political separation of the English people in America from the English people in Britain. The theatre of war was mainly confined to New England and Canada; and while the Americans failed in the attempt to conquer Canada, their de fensive warfare was crowned with success. The fighting of this period began with the victory of Lexington ; it ended with the victory of Fort Moultrie. New England, except the island of Newport, was finally freed from the presence of the British, and no further attack was made upon the southern states for more than two years. The essential feature of the third period, com prising the years 1776 and 1777, was the struggle for the state of New York and the great natural strategic line of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Independence having been declared, the United States and Great Britain were now fighting each other single-handed, like two separate and foreign powers. It was the object of Great Britain to conquer the United States, and accordingly she struck at the commercial and military .centre of the confederation. If she could have thoroughly conquered the state of New York and secured the line of the Hudson, she would have broken the con federation in two, and might perhaps have pro ceeded to overcome its different parts in detail. Hence in this period of the war everything centres about New York, such an outlying expedition as that of Howe against Philadelphia having no deci sive military value except in its bearings upon the issue of the great central conflict. The strategy of the Americans was mainly defensive, though with THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 3 regard to certain operations they assumed the of fensive with brilliant success. The period began with the disasters of Long Island and Fort Wash ington ; it ended with the triumph of Saratoga. As the net result of the two years' work, the Brit ish had taken and held the cities of New York and Philadelphia and the town of Newport. The fortress of Ticonderoga, which they had likewise taken, they abandoned after the overthrow of Bur- goyne ; and in like manner they retired from the highlands of the Hudson, which the Americans now proceeded to occupy with a stronger force than before. In short, while the British had lost an army, they had conquered nothing but the ground on which they were actually encamped. Their at tempt to break through the centre of the Amer ican position had ended in a total defeat, and it now began to seem clear to discerning minds that there was small chance of their being able to con quer the United States. The fourth period, upon which we are now en tering, begins with the immediate consequences of the victory of Saratoga, and extends to the treaty of 1783, whereby Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United Spates. The military history of this period ends with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in October, 1781, just four years after the surrender of Burgoyne. Ex cept as regards the ultimate triumph of the Amer ican arms, the history of these four years presents striking contrasts to the history of the two yea*s we have just passed in review. The struggle is no longer confined to the arms of Great Britain 4 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. and the United States, but it extends in some measure over the whole civilized world, though it is only France, with its army and more especially its navy, that comes into direct relation with the final result in America. Moreover, instead of a well-aimed and concentrated blow at the centre of the American position, the last period of the war consisted partly of a straggling and disorderly se ries of movements, designed simply to harass the Americans and wear out their patience, and partly of an attempt to conquer the southern states and detach them from the Union. There is, accord ingly, less dramatic unity in this last stage of the war than in the period which ended at Saratoga, and it is less susceptible of close and consecutive treatment ; but, on the other hand, in richness of incidents and in variety of human interest it is in no wise inferior to the earlier periods. The first consequence of Saratoga was the retreat of the British government from every one of the positions for the sake of which it had begun the war. The news of Burgoyne's surrender reached England just before Parliament adjourned for Christmas, and Lord North immediately gave no tice that as soon as the holidays were over he should bring in measures for conciliating the Americans. The general feeling in England was consternation one of amazement and consternation. ngian . jn faese days, when we are accustomed to contemplate military phenomena of enormous magnitude, when we have lately carried on a war in which more than two million men were under THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 5 arms, and more than two million dollars were expended every day, we must not forget how dif ferent was the historic background upon which events were projected a century ago. Those were not the days of submarine telegraphs and Cunard steamships, and in trying to carry on warfare across three thousand miles of ocean the problem before George III. was far more arduous than that which the great Frederick had solved, when, acting on interior lines and supported by British gold, he overcame the combined assaults of France and Austria and Russia. The loss which Great Britain had now suffered could not easily be made good. At the same time it was generally believed, both in England and on the continent of Europe, that the loss of the American colonies would entail the ruin of the British Empire. Only a few wise political economists, "literary men," like Adam Smith and Josiah Tucker, were far-seeing enough to escape this prodigious fallacy; even Chatham was misled by it. It was not understood that English America and English Britain were bound together by commercial and social ties so strong that no question of political union or severance could permanently affect them. It was not fore seen that within a century the dealings of Great Britain with the independent United States would far exceed her dealings with the rest of the world. On the contrary, it was believed that if political independence were conceded to the Americans, the whole stream of transatlantic commerce would somehow be diverted to other parts of Europe, that the British naval power would forthwith decay, and 6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. that England would sink from her imperial posi tion into such a mere insular nation as that over which Henry VIII. had ruled. So greatly did men overrate political conditions ; so far were they from appreciating those economic conditions which are so much more deep-seated and essential. Under these circumstances, the only people in England who were willing to concede the inde pendence of the United States were the Rocking ham Whigs, and these were now in a Views of the . . _ _, different par- small minority. Lord Rockingham and ties. ... . his friends, with Burke as their leader, had always condemned the harsh and stupid pol icy of the government toward America, and they were now ready to concede independence because they were convinced that conciliation was no longer practicable. Lord Chatham, on the other hand, with his section of the Whig party, while even more emphatically condemning the policy of the government, still clung to the hope of conciliation, and could not bear to think of the disruption of the empire. But with the Tory party, which had all along supported the government, the war was still popular, and no calamity seemed so great as the loss of the American colonies. Most of the country squires believed in crushing out rebellion, ho matter where it occurred or for what reason, and this view was almost unanimously taken by the clergy. In the House of Lords none were so bloodthirsty as the bishops, and country parsons preached from all the texts of the Old Testament which refer to smiting Jehovah's enemies hip and thigh. The trading classes in the large towns, THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 7 and the few manufacturers who had come upon the scene, were so afraid of losing the American market that they were ready to vote men and money without stint. The town of Manchester even raised and equipped two regiments at its own expense. Thus while the great majority of the British nation believed that America must be re tained at whatever cost, a majority of this majority believed that it must be conquered before it could be conciliated or reasoned with ; and this was the opinion which had thus far found favour with Lord North and controlled the policy of the govern ment. We may imagine, then, the unspeakable amaze ment of the House of Commons, on the 17th of February, 1778, when Lord North arose Lord Noi.th,a in his place and moved that every one gjjjjjjj?1 som" of the points for which Samuel Adams and his friends had zealously contended, from the passage of the Stamp Act to the breaking out of war, should at once be conceded forever and with out further parley. By the bill which he now proceeded to read, the famous Tea Act and the act for changing the constitution of Massachusetts were unconditionally repealed. It was further more declared that Parliament would renounce for ever the right of raising a revenue in America; and it was provided that commissioners should be sent over to treat with Congress, armed with full powers for negotiating a peace. Pending the ne gotiations the commissioners might proclaim a truce, and might suspend the operation of any act of Parliament relating to America which had been 8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. passed since 1763. They might also proclaim complete amnesty for all political offences. So complete a political somersault has seldom been turned by an English minister, and the speech in which Lord North defended himself was worthy of the occasion. Instead of resigning when he saw that his policy had proved a failure, as an English minister would naturally do, he sud denly shifted his ground, and adopted the policy which the opposition had urged in vain against him three years before, and which, if then adopted, would unquestionably have prevented bloodshed. Not only did he thus shift his ground, but he de clared that this policy of conciliation was really the one which he had favoured from the beginning. There was more truth in this than appeared at the moment, for in more than one instance Lord North had, with culpable weakness, carried out the king's policy in defiance of his own convictions. It was in vain, however, that he sought to clear himself of responsibility for the Tea Act, the oppressive edicts of 1774, and the recent events in America generally. The House received his bill Strange scene ° , . in the House and his speech in profound silence. of Commons. # * < t * Disgust and dejection filled every bo som, yet no one could very well help voting for the measures. The Tories, already chagrined by the bitter news from Saratoga, were enraged at being thus required to abandon all the ground for which they had been fighting, yet no way seemed open for them but to follow their leader. The Whigs were vexed at seeing the wind taken out of their sails, but they could not in honour oppose a policy THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 9 which they had always earnestly supported. All sat for some moments in grim, melancholy silence, till Charles Fox, arising, sarcastically began his speech by congratulating his Whig friends on hav ing gained such a powerful and unexpected ally in the prime minister. Taunts and innuendoes flew back and forth across the House. From the Tory side came sullen cries that the country was be trayed, while from among the Whigs the premier was asked if he supposed himself armed with the spear of Achilles, which could heal the wounds that itself had made. It was very pointedly hinted that the proposed measures would not be likely to pro duce much effect upon the Americans unless ac companied by Lord North's resignation, since, com ing from him, they would come as from a tainted spring. But in spite of all this ill-feeling the bill was passed, and the same reasons which had op erated here carried it also through the House of Lords. On the 11th of March it received the royal signature, and three commissioners were immedi ately appointed to convey information of this ac tion to Congress, and make arrangements for a treaty of peace. The conciliatory policy of Lord North had come at least two years too late. The American leaders were now unwilling to consider the question of reunion with the mother-country upon any terms ; and even before the extraordinary scene Treat be in Parliament which we have just wit- ^etheFrance nessed, a treaty had been made with ^'eg^8' France, by which the Americans sol emnly agreed, in consideration of armed support 10 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. to be furnished by that power, never to entertain proposals of peace from Great Britain until their independence should be acknowledged, and never to conclude a treaty of peace except with the con currence of their new ally. The French govern ment had secretly assisted the Americans as early as the summer of 1776 by occasional loans of money, and by receiving American privateers in French ports. The longer Great Britain and her colonies could be kept weakening each other by warfare, the greater the hope that France might at some time be enabled to step in and regain her lost maritime empire. But it was no part of French policy to take an active share in the struggle until the proper moment should come for reaping some decisive material advantage. At the beginning of the year 1778 that moment seemed to have arrived. The capture of Bur- goyne and the masterly strategy which Washing ton had shown, in spite of his ill-success on the field, had furnished convincing proof that the American alliance was worth having. At the same time, the announcement that Lord North was about to bring in conciliatory measures indi cated that the British government was weakening in its purpose. Should such measures succeed in conciliating the Americans and in bringing about a firm reunion with the mother - country, the schemes of France would be irretrievably ruined. Now, therefore, was the golden opportunity, and France was not slow to seize it. On the 6th of February the treaty with the United States was signed at Paris. By a special article it was stipu- THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 11 lated that Spain might enter into the alliance at her earliest convenience. Just now, too,. Frederick the Great publicly opened the port of Dantzic to American cruisers and prohibited Hessian soldiers from passing through his dominions to the sea board, while he wrote to Franklin at Paris that he should probably soon follow the king of France in recognizing the independence of the United States. Rumours of all these things kept coming to England while m the conciliatory measures were passing through Parliament, and on the 13th of March, two days after those ain declares , , , l j.i j.' £ war against measures had become law, the action of France, March 13 France was formally communicated to the British government, and war was instantly de clared. The situation of England seemed desperate. With one army lost in America, with the recruit ing ground in Germany barred against her, with a debt piling up at the rate of a million dollars a week, and with a very inadequate force of troops at home in case of sudden invasion, she was now called upon to contend with the whole maritime power of France, to which that of Spain was cer tain soon to be added, and to crown all, the gov ernment had just written its' own condemnation by confessing before the world that its policy toward America, which had been the cause of all this mis chief, was impracticable as well as unrighteous. At this terrible moment the eyes of all England were turned upon one great man, old now and wasted by disease, but the fire of whose genius still burned bright and clear. The government 12 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. must be changed, and in the Earl of Chatham The Eari of *he country had still a leader whose Chatham. verv name was synonymous with vic tory. Not thus had matters gone in the glori ous days of Quiberon and Minden and Quebec, when his skilful hand was at the helm, and every heart in England and America beat high with the consciousness of worthy ends achieved by well- directed valour. To whom but Chatham should appeal be made to repair the drooping fortunes of the empire ? It was in his hands alone that a conciliatory policy could have any chance of suc cess. From the first he had been the consistent advocate of the constitutional rights of the Ameri cans ; and throughout America he was the object of veneration no less hearty and enthusiastic than that which was accorded to Washington himself. Overtures that would be laughed at as coming from North would at least find respectful hearing if urged by Chatham. On the other hand, should the day for conciliation have irrevocably passed by, the magic of his name was of itself sufficient to create a panic in France, while in England it would kindle that popular enthusiasm which is of itself the best guarantee of success. In Germany, too, the remembrance of the priceless services he had rendered could not but dispel the hostile feel ing with which Frederick had regarded England since the accession of George III. Moved by such thoughts as these, statesmen of all parties, begin ning with Lord North himself, implored the king to form a new ministry under Chatham. Lord Mans field, his bitterest enemy, for once declared that THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 13 without Chatham at the helm the ship of state must founder, and his words were echoed by Bute and the young George Grenville. At the oppo site extreme of politics, the Duke of Richmond, who had long since made up his mind that the colonies must be allowed to go, declared, never theless, that if it were to be Chatham who should see fit to make another attempt to retain them, he would aid him in every possible way. The press teemed with expressions of the popular faith in Chatham, and every one impatiently wondered that the king should lose a day in calling to the head of affairs the only man who could save the country. But all this unanimity of public opinion went for nothing with the selfish and obdurate king. All the old reasons for keeping Chatham out of office had now vanished, so far as the American question was concerned ; for by consenting to North's conciliatory measures the king had vir tually come over to Chatham's position, and as regarded the separation of the colonies from the mother - country, Chatham was no less unwilling than the king to admit the necessity of The king,8 such a step. Indeed, the policy upon rage' which the king had now been obliged to enter ab solutely demanded Chatham as its exponent instead of North. Everybody saw this, and no doubt the king saw it himself, but it had no weight with him in the presence of personal considerations. He hated Chatham with all the ferocity of hatred that a mean and rancorous spirit can feel toward one that is generous and noble; and he well knew 14 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. besides that, with that statesman at the head of affairs, his own share in the government would be reduced to nullity. To see the government admin istered in accordance with the policy of a responsi ble minister, and in disregard of his own irrespon sible whims, was a humiliation to which he was not yet ready to submit. For eight years now, by coax ing and bullying the frivolous North, he had con trived to keep the reins in his own hands ; and having so long tasted the sweets of power, he was resolved in future to have none but milksops for his ministers. In face of these personal considera tions the welfare of the nation was of little account to him.1 He flew into a rage. No power in heaven or earth, he said, should ever make him stoop to treat with " Lord Chatham and his crew ; " he re fused to be " shackled by those desperate men " and " made a slave for the remainder of his days." Rather than yield to the wishes of his people at this solemn crisis, he would submit to lose his crown. Better thus, he added, than to wear it in bondage and disgrace. In spite of the royal wrath, however, the popular demand for a change of government was too strong to be resisted. But for Lord Chatham's sudden death, a few weeks later, he would doubtless have been called upon to fill the position which North was so anxious to relinquish. The king would have had to swallow his resentment, as he was af- 1 "This episode appears to me the most criminal in the whole reign of George III., and in my own judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led Charles I. to the scaffold." (Leeky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv. p. 83.) THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 15 terwards obliged to do in 1782. Had Chatham now become prime minister, it was his WhatChat. design to follow up the repeal of all ob- ^we^to noxious legislation concerning America d°- by withdrawing every British soldier from our soil, and attacking France with might and main, as in the Seven Years' War, on the ocean and through Germany, where the invincible Ferdinand of Brunswick was again to lead the armies of Great Britain. In America such a policy could hardly have failed to strengthen not only the loyalists and waverers, but also the patriots of conciliatory mould, such as Dickinson and Robert Morris. Nor was the moment an inopportune one. Many Amer icans, who were earnest in withstanding the legisla tive encroachments of Parliament, had formerly been alienated from the popular cause by what they deemed the needlessly radical step of the Dec laration of Independence. Many others were now alienated by the French alliance. In New Eng land, the chief stronghold of the revolutionary party, many people were disgusted at an alliance with the Catholic and despotic power which in days gone by had so often let loose the Indian hell-hounds upon their frontier. The treaty with France was indeed a marriage of convenience rather than of affection. The American leaders, even while arranging it, dreaded the revulsion of feeling that might ensue in the country at large ; and their dread was the legitimate hope of Chat ham. To return to the state of things which had existed previous to 1765 would no doubt be impos sible. Independence of some sort must be con- 16 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. ceded, and in this Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond were unquestionably right. But Chatham was in no wise foolish in hoping that some sort of federal bond might be established which should maintain Americans and British in perpetual alliance, and, while granting full legisla tive autonomy to the colonies singly or combined, should prevent the people of either country from ever forgetting that the Americans were English. There was at least a chance that this noble policy might succeed, and until the trial should have been made he would not willingly consent to a step that seemed certain to wreck the empire his genius had won for England. But death now stepped in to simplify the situation in the old ruthless way. The Duke of Richmond, anxious to bring mat ters to an issue, gave notice that on the 7th of April he should move that the royal fleets and armies should be instantly withdrawn from Amer ica, and peace be made on whatever terms Con gress might see fit to accept. Such at least was the practical purport of the motion. For such an Death of chat- unconditional surrender Chatham was "'""' not yet ready, and on the appointed day he got up from his sick-bed and came into the House of Lords to argue against the motion. Wrapped in flannel bandages and leaning upon crutches, his dark eyes in their brilliancy enhan cing the pallor of his careworn face, as he entered the House, supported on the one side by his son- in-law, Lord Mahon, and on the other by that younger son who was so soon to add fresh glory to the name of William Pitt, the peers all started to THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 17 their feet, and remained standing until he had taken his place. In broken sentences, with strange flashes of the eloquence which had once held cap tive ear and heart, he protested against the hasty adoption of a measure which simply prostrated the dignity of England before its ancient enemy, the House of Bourbon. The Duke of Richmond's an swer, reverently and delicately worded, urged that while the magic of Chatham's name could work anything short of miracles, yet only a miracle could now relieve them from the dire necessity of abandoning America. The earl rose to reply, but his overwrought frame gave way, and he sank in a swoon upon the floor. All business was at once adjourned. The peers, with eager sympathy, came crowding up to offer assistance, and the uncon scious statesman was carried in the arms of his friends to a house near by, whence in a few days he was removed to his home at Hayes. There, after lingering between life and death for several weeks, on the 11th of May, and in the seventieth year of his age, Lord Chatham breathed his last. The man thus struck down, like a soldier at his post, was one whom Americans no less than Eng lishmen have delighted to honour. The personal fascination which he exerted in his lifetime is some thing we can no longer know ; but as the field of modern history expands till it covers the globe, we find ourselves better able than his contemporaries to comprehend the part which he played His pro(3jgiOU8 at one of the most critical moments of ereatneBS- the career of mankind. For simple magnitude, the preponderance of the English race in the world 18 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. has come now to be the most striking fact in humau history ; and when we consider all that is implied in this growing preponderance of an in dustrial civilization over other civilizations of rela tively archaic and militant type, we find reason to believe that among historic events it is the most teeming with mighty consequences to be witnessed by a distant future. With no other historic per sonage are the beginnings of this supremacy of the English race so closely associated as with the elder William Pitt. It was he who planned the victories which gave England the dominion of the sea, and which, rescuing India from the anarchy of centu ries, prepared it to become the seat of a new civil ization, at once the apt pupil and the suggestive teacher of modern Europe. It was he who, by driving the French from America, cleared the way for the peaceful overflow of our industrial civiliza tion through the valley of the Mississippi ; saving us from the political dangers which chronic war fare might otherwise have entailed, and insuring us the ultimate control of the fairest part of this continent. To his valiant and skilful lieutenants by sea and land, to such great men as Hawke, and Clive, and Wolfe, belong the credit of executing the details ; it was the genius of Pitt that conceived and superintended the prodigious scheme as a con nected whole. Alone among the Englishmen of his time, Pitt looked with prophetic gaze into the mysterious future of colonial history, and saw the meaning of the creation of a new and greater Eu rope in the outlying regions of the earth; and through his triumphs it was decided that this new THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 19 and greater Europe should become for the most part a new and greater England, — a world of self- government, and of freedom of thought and speech. While his political vision thus embraced the utter most parts of the globe, his action in the centre of Europe helped to bring about results the impor tance of which we are now beginning to appreciate. From the wreck of all Germany in that horrible war of religion which filled one third of the seven teenth century, a new Protestant power had slowly emerged and grown apace, till in Pitt's time — for various reasons, dynastic, personal, and political — it had drawn down upon itself the vengeance of all the reactionary countries of Europe. Had the coal ition succeeded, the only considerable Protestant power on the continent would have been destroyed, and the anarchy which had followed the Thirty Years' War might have been renewed. The stupid George II., who could see in Prussia nothing but a rival of Hanover, was already preparing to join the alliance against Frederick, when Pitt overruled him, and threw the weight of England into the other side of the scale. The same act which thus averted the destruction of Prussia secured to Eng land a most efficient ally in her struggle with France. Of this wise policy we now see the fruits in that renovated German Empire which has come to be the strongest power on the continent of Eu rope, which is daily establishing fresh bonds of sympathy with the people of the United States, and whose political interests are daily growing more and more visibly identical with those of Great Britain. As in days to come the solidarity of the 20 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Teutonic race in its three great nationalities — America, England, and Germany — becomes more and more clearly manifest, the more will the stu dent of history be impressed with the wonderful fact that the founding of modern Germany, the maritime supremacy of England, and the winning of the Mississippi valley for English - speaking America were but the different phases of one his toric event, coherent parts of the one vast concep tion which marks its author as the grandest of modern statesmen. As the lapse of time carries us far enough from the eighteenth century to study it in its true proportions, the figure of Chatham in the annals of the Teutonic race will appear no less great and commanding than the figure of Charle magne a thousand years before. But Chatham is interesting to Americans not only as the eloquent defender in our revolutionary struggle, not only as standing in the forefront of that vast future in which we are to play so im portant a part, but also as the first British states man whose political thinking was of a truly American type. Pitt was above all things the man of the people, and it has been well said that his title of the " Great Commoner " marks in it self a political revolution. When the king and the Old Whig lords sought to withstand him in the cabinet, he could say with truth, " It is the people who have sent me here." He was the first to discover the fact that the development of trade and manufactures, due chiefly to the colonial ex pansion of England, had brought into existence an important class of society, for which neither the THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 21 To'ry nor the Old Whig schemes of government had made provision. He was the first to see the absurdity of such towns as Leeds and Manchester going without representation, and he began in 1745 the agitation for parliamentary reform which was first successful in 1832. In the celebrated case of Wilkes, while openly expressing his detes tation of the man, he successfully defended the rights of constituencies against the tyranny of the House of Commons. Against the fierce opposi tion of Lord Mansfield, he maintained inviolate the liberty of every Englishman to publish his opinions. He overthrew the abuse of arbitrary imprisonment by general warrants. He ended the chronic troubles of Scotland by taking the Highlanders into his confidence and raising regi ments from them for the regular army. In this intense devotion to liberty and to the rights of man, Pitt was actuated as much by his earnest, sympathetic nature as by the clearness and breadth of his intelligence. In his austere purity of character, as in his intensity of conviction, he was an enigma to sceptical and frivolous people in his own time. Cromwell or Milton would have under stood him much better than did Horace Wal- pole, to whom his haughty mien and soaring lan guage seemed like theatrical affectation. But this grandiose bearing was nothing but the natural expression of that elevation of soul which, lighted by a rich poetic imagination and fired by the glow of passion beneath, made his eloquence the most impressive that has ever been heard in England. He was soaring in outward demeanour 22 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. only as his mind habitually dwelt with strong emo tion upon great thoughts and noble deeds. He was the incarnation of all that is lofty and aspir ing in human nature, and his sublime figure, raised above the grave in the northern transept of West minster Abbey, with its eager outstretched arm, still seems to be urging on his countrymen in the path of duty and of glory. By the death of Chatham the obstacles which had beset the king were suddenly removed. On the morning after the pathetic scene in the House of Lords, he wrote with ill-concealed glee to North, " May not the political exit of Lord Chat ham incline you to continue at the head of my affairs?" North was very unwilling to remain, but it was difficult to find any one who could form a government in his place. Among Lord North ° x „T, . r, & remains in the JNew Whigs, now that Chatham power. was gone, Lord Shelburne was the most prominent ; but he was a man who, in spite of great talents, never succeeded in winning the confidence either of the politicians or of the people. He was a warm friend to the American cause, but no one supposed him equal to the diffi cult task which Chatham would have undertaken, of pacifying the American people. The Old Whigs, under Lord Rockingham, had committed themselves to the full independence of the United States, and for this the people of England were not yet prepared. Under the circumstances, there seemed to be nothing for Lord North to do but remain in office. The king was delighted, THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 23 and his party appeared to have gained strength from the indignation aroused by the alliance of the Americans with France. It was strengthened still more by the positive refusal of Congress to treat with the commissioners sent over by Lord North. The commissioners arrived in America in June, and remained until October, without effecting anything. Congress refused „. ° . J ° p His commis- to entertain any propositions whatever goners in . . America fail from Great Britain until the indepen- to accomplish r/ anything. dence of the United States should first be acknowledged. Copies of Lord North's conciliatory bills were published by order of Con gress, and scattered broadcast over the country. They were everywhere greeted with derision ; at one town in Rhode Island they were publicly burned under a gallows which had been erected for the occasion. After fruitlessly trying all the devices of flattery and intrigue, the commissioners lost their temper ; and just before sailing for Eng land they issued a farewell manifesto, in which they threatened the American people with exem plary punishment for their contumacy. The con duct of the war, they said, was now to be changed ; these obstinate rebels were to be made to suffer the extremes of distress, and no mercy was to be shown them. Congress instantly published this document, and it was received with somewhat more derision than the conciliatory bills had been. Un der the circumstances of that day, the threat could have but one meaning. It meant arson along the coasts at the hands of the. British fleet, and mur der on the frontiers at the liands of Indian auxil- 24 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. iaries. The commissioners sought to justify their manifesto before Parliament, and one of them vehemently declared that if all hell could be let loose against these rebels, he should approve of the measure. "The proclamation," said he, "cer tainly does mean a war of desolation : it can mean nothing else." Lord Rockingham denounced the policy of the manifesto, and few were found in Parliament willing to suppport it openly. This barbarous policy, however, was neither more nor less than that which Lord George Germaine had deliberately made up his mind to pursue for the remainder of the war. Giving up the problem of conquering the Americans by systematic warfare, he thought it worth while to do as much damage and inflict as much suffering as possible, in the hope that by and by the spirit of the people might be broken and their patience worn out. No policy could be more repugnant to the amiable soul of Lord North, but his false position obliged him passively to sanction much that he did not like. Besides this plan for tiring out the people, it was designed to conduct a systematic expedition against Virginia and the Carolinas, in order to detach these states from the rest of the confederacy. Should it be found necessary, after all, to acknow ledge the independence of the United States, it seemed worth while at least to cut down their territory as much as possible, and save to the British Crown these rich countries of rice, and indigo, and tobacco. Such was the plan now pro posed by Germaine and adopted by the ministry of which he was a member. CHAPTER IX. VALLEY FORGE. Lord George Germaine's scheme for tiring out the Americans could not seem altogether hope less. Though from a military point of view the honours of the war thus far remained with them, yet the losses and suffering had been very great. The disturbance of trade was felt even more severely in America than in England, and it was further exacerbated by the evils of a depreciated currency. The country had entered into the war heavily handicapped by the voluntary stoppage of importation which had prevailed for Distress in several years. The war had cut off America- New England from the Newfoundland fisheries and the trade with the West Indies, and the coast ing trade had been nearly annihilated by British cruisers. The problem of managing the expenses of a great war was something quite new to the Americans, and the consequent waste and extrav agance were complicated and enhanced by the curse of paper money. Congress, as a mere advi sory body, could only recommend to the various states the measures of taxation which were deemed necessary for the support of the army. It had no authority to raise taxes in any state, nor had it any power to constrain the government of a state 26 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. to raise taxes. The states were accordingly all delinquent, and there was no resource left for Con gress but to issue its promissory notes. Congress already owed more than forty million dollars, and during the first half of the year 1778 the issues of paper money amounted to twenty-three millions. The depreciation had already become alarming, and the most zealous law-making was of course powerless to stop it. Until toward the close of the Revolutionary War, indeed, the United States had no regularly organ ized government. At the time of the Declaration of Independence a committee had been appointed by Congress to prepare articles of confederation, to be submitted to the states for their approval. These articles were ready by the summer of 1778, but it was not until the spring of 1781 that all the states had signed them. While the thirteen dis tinct sovereignties in the United States were visi- Lackofor- ble in clear outline, the central govern- gamzation. menf; was something very shadowy and ill-defined. Under these circumstances, the mili tary efficiency of the people was reduced to a min imum. The country never put forth more than a small fraction of its available strength. Every thing suffered from the want of organization. In spite of the popular ardour, which never seems to have been deficient when opportunities came for testing it, there was almost as much difficulty in keeping up the numbers of the army by enlistment as in providing equipment, sustenance, and pay for the soldiers when once enlisted. The army of 80,000 men, which Congress had devised in the VALLEY FORGE. 27 preceding year, had never existed except on paper. The action of Congress had not, indeed, been bar ren of results, but it had fallen far short of the end proposed. During the campaigns of 1777 the army of Washington had never exceeded 11,000 men ; while of the 20,000 or more who witnessed the surrender of Burgoyne, at least half were local militia, assembled merely to meet the exigencies of the moment. The whole country, indeed, cher ished such a horror of armies that it was unjust even to the necessary instrument by which its in dependence was to be won ; and it sympathized with Congress in the niggardly policy which, by discouraging pensions, endangered the future of brave and skilful officers who were devoting the best years of their lives to the public service. Washington's earnest efforts to secure for retired officers the promise of half pay for life succeeded only in obtaining it for the term of seven years. The excessive dread of a standing army made it difficult to procure long enlistments, and the fre quent changes in the militia, besides being ruinous to discipline, entailed a sad waste of equipments and an interruption of agriculture which added much to the burdens of the people. Besides these evils, for which no one in particu lar was to blame, since they resulted so directly from the general state of the country, the army suffered under other drawbacks, which were im mediately traceable to the incapacity of Congress. Just as afterwards, in the War of Secession, the soldiers had often to pay the penalty for the sins of the politicians. A single specimen of the ill-timed 28 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. meddling of Congress may serve as an example. At one of the most critical moments meddling of of the year 1777, Congress made a Congress. J . . . complete change in the commissariat, which had hitherto been efficiently managed by a single officer, Colonel Joseph Trumbull. Two commissary-generals were now appointed, one of whom was to superintend the purchase and the other the issue of supplies ; and the subordinate officers of the department were to be accountable, not to their superiors, but directly to Congress. This was done in spite of the earnest opposition of Washington, and the immediate result was just what he expected. Colonel Trumbull, who had been retained as commissary-general for purchases, being unable to do his work properly without con trolling his subordinate officers, soon resigned his place. The department was filled up with men selected without reference to fitness, and straight way fell into hopeless confusion, whereby the movements of the armies were grievously crippled for the rest of the season. On the 22d of De cember Washington was actually prevented from executing a most promising movement against General Howe, because two brigades had become mutinous for want of food. For three days they had gone without bread, and for two days with out meat. The quartermaster's department was in no better condition. The dreadful sufferings of sufferings at Washington's army at Valley Forge Valley Forge. j^ ^j^ forfh && ^ ^ ^ ^ miration of historians ; but the point of the story is lost unless we realize that this misery resulted VALLEY FORGE. 29 from gross mismanagement rather than from the poverty of the country. As the poor soldiers marched on the 17th of December to their winter quarters, their route could be traced on the snow by the blood that oozed from bare, frost - bitten feet ; yet at the same moment, says Gordon, "hogsheads of shoes, stockings, and clothing were lying at different places on the roads and in the woods, perishing for want of teams, or of money to pay the teamsters." On the 23d, Washington informed Congress that he had in camp 2,898 men "unfit for duty, because they are barefoot, and otherwise naked." For want of blankets, many were fain " to sit up all night by fires, instead of taking comfortable rest in a natural and common way." Cold and hunger daily added many to the sick-list ; and in the crowded hospitals, which were for the most part mere log-huts or frail wigwams woven of twisted boughs, men sometimes died for want of straw to put between themselves and the frozen ground on which they lay. In the deficiency of oxen and draft-horses, gallant men volunteered to serve as beasts of burden, and, yoking them selves to wagons, dragged into camp such meagre supplies as they could obtain for their sick and ex hausted comrades. So great was the distress that there were times when, in case of an attack by the enemy, scarcely two thousand men could have been got under arms. When one thinks of these sad consequences wrought by a negligent quartermas ter and a deranged commissariat, one is strongly reminded of the remark once made by the eccen tric Charles Lee, when with caustic alliteration 30 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. he described Congress as " a stable of stupid cat tle that stumbled at every step." The mischief did not end, however, with the de moralization of the departments that were charged with supplying the army. In the appointment and promotion of general officers, Congress often Promoting of- acted upon principles which, if consis- martlryrrea°" tently carried out, would have ruined son3- the efficiency of any army that ever existed. For absurdly irrelevant political reasons, brave and well-tried officers were passed by, and juniors, comparatively little known, were promoted over their heads. The case of Benedict Arnold was the most conspicuous and flagrant example of this. After his good name had been destroyed by his treason, it became customary for historians to cite the restiveness of Arnold under such treat ment as one more proof of his innate wickedness. But Arnold was not the only officer who was sen sitive about his rank. In June, 1777, it was ru moured about Washington's camp that a French man named Ducoudray was about to be appointed to the chief command of the artillery, with the rank of major-general. Congress was continually beset with applications from vagrant foreign offi cers in quest of adventure ; and such appointments as this were sometimes made, no doubt, in that provincial spirit which it has taken Americans so long to outgrow, and which sees all things Euro pean in rose-colour. As soon as the report con cerning Ducoudray reached the camp, Generals Greene, Sullivan, and Knox each wrote a letter to Congress, proffering their resignations in case the VALLEY FORGE. 31 report were true ; and the three letters were dated on the same day. Congress was very angry at this, and the three generals were abused without stint. The affair, however, was more serious than Con gress had supposed, and the contemplated appoint ment of Ducoudray was not made. The language of John Adams with reference to matters of this sort was more pungent than wise, and it gave clear expression to the principles upon which Absurd talk Congress too often acted. This " deli- of Joim • <• i 1 • • Adams. cate point of honour he stigmatized as "one of the most putrid corruptions of absolute monarchy." He would be glad to see Congress elect all the general officers annually ; and if some great men should be obliged to go home in conse- qence of this, he did not believe the country would be ruined ! The jealousy with which the several states insisted upon " a share of the general offi cers" in proportion to their respective quotas of troops, he characterized as a just and sound policy. It was upon this principle, he confessed, that many promotions had been made ; - and if the generals were so unreasonable as not to like it, they must " abide the consequences of their discontent." Such expressions of feeling, in which John Adams found many sympathizers, bear curious testimony to the intense distrust with which our poor little army was regarded on account of the monarch ical tendencies supposed to be necessarily inherent in a military organization. This policy, which seemed so " sound " to John Adams, was simply an attempt to apply to the regimen of the army a set of principles fit only for the organization 32 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. of political assemblies; and if it had been con sistently adopted, it is probable that Lord George Germaine's scheme of tiring the Americans out would have succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. But the most dangerous ground upon which Congress ventured during the whole course of the war was connected with the dark intrigues of those officers who wished to have Washington removed from the chief command that Gates might be put in his place. We have seen how successful Gates had been in supplanting Schuyler on the np with sue- eve of victory. Without having been under fire or directing any important operation, Gates had carried off the laurels of the northern campaign. From many persons, no doubt, he got credit even for what had happened before he joined the army, on the 19th of August. His appointment dated from the 2d, before either the victory of Stark or the discomfiture of St. Leger ; and it was easy for people to put dates to gether uncritically, and say that before the 2d of August Burgoyne had continued to advance into the country, and nothing could check him until after Gates had been appointed to command. The very air rang with the praises of Gates, and his weak head was not unnaturally turned with so much applause. In his dispatches announcing the surrender of Burgoyne, he not only forgot to men tion the names of Arnold and Morgan, who had won for him the decisive victory, but he even seemed to forget that he was serving under a com mander-in-chief, for he sent his dispatches directly VALLEY FORGE. 33 to Congress, leaving Washington to learn of the event through hearsay. Thirteen days after the surrender, Washington wrote to Gates, congratu lating him upon his success. " At the same time," said the letter, " I cannot but regret that a matter of such magnitude, and so interesting to our gen eral operations, should have reached me by report only, or through the channels of letters not bear ing that authenticity which the importance of it required, and which it would have received by a line over your signature stating the simple fact." But, worse than this, Gates kept his victorious army idle at Saratoga after the whole line of the Hudson was cleared of the enemy, and would not send reinforcements to Washington. Congress so far upheld him in this as to order that Washington should not detach more than 2,500 men from the northern army without consulting Gates and Gov ernor Clinton. It was only with difficulty that Washington, by sending Colonel Hamilton with a special message, succeeded in getting andehowa back Morgan with his riflemen. When JKoXJ.1 reinforcements finally did arrive, it was tl0n- too late. Had they come more promptly, Howe would probably have been unable to take the forts on the Delaware, without control of which he could not have stayed in Philadelphia. But the blame for the loss of the forts was by many people thrown upon Washington, whose recent defeats at Brandy- wine and Germantown were now commonly con trasted. with the victories at the North. The moment seemed propitious for Gates to try his peculiar strategy once more, and displace 34 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Washington as he had already displaced Schuyler. Assistants were not wanting for this dirty work. Among the foreign adventurers then with the army was one Thomas Conway, an Irishman, who had been for a long time in the French service, and, coming over to America, had taken part in the Pennsylvania campaign. Washington had opposed Conway's claim for undue promotion, and the lat ter at once threw himself with such energy into the faction then forming against the commander-in- The Conway chief that it soon came to be known as cabai. the "Conway Cabal." The other prin cipal members of the cabal were Thomas Mifflin, the quartermaster-general, and James Lovell, & del egate from Massachusetts, who had been Schuy ler's bitterest enemy in Congress. It was at ' one time reported that Samuel Adams was in sympathy with the cabal, and the charge has Jjpen repeated by many historians, but it seems to' have originated in a malicious story set on foot by some of the friends of John Hancock. At the beginning of the war, Hancock, whose overweening vanity often marred his usefulness, had hoped to be made com mander-in-chief, and he never forgave Samuel Adams for preferring Washington for that posi tion. In the autumn of 1777, Hancock resigned his position as president of Congress, and was suc ceeded by Henry Laurens, of South Carolina. On the day when Hancock took leave of Congress, a motion was made to present him with the thanks of that body in acknowledgment of his admirable discharge of his duty ; but the New England dele gates, who had not been altogether satisfied with VALLEY FORGE. 35 him, defeated the motion on general grounds, and established the principle that it was injudicious to pass such complimentary votes in the case of any president. This action threw Hancock into a rage, which was chiefly directed against Samuel Adams as the most prominent member of the delegation ; and after his return to Boston it soon became evi dent that he had resolved to break with his old friend and patron. Artful stories, designed to in jure Adams, were in many instances traced to per sons who were in close relation with Hancock. After the fall of the cabal, no more deadly stab could be dealt to the reputation of any man than to insinuate that he had given it aid or sympathy ; and there is good ground for believing that such reports concerning Adams were industriously cir culated by unscrupulous partisans of the angry Hancock. The story was revived at a later date by the friends of Hamilton, on the occasion of the schism between Hamilton and John Adams, but it has not been well sustained. The most plausi ble falsehoods, however, are those which are based upon misconstrued facts ; and it is certain that Samuel Adams had not only favoured the appoint ment of Gates in the North, but he had sometimes spoken with impatience of the so-called Fabian policy of Washington. In this he was like many other ardent patriots whose military knowledge was far from commensurate with their zeal. His cousin, John Adams, was even more outspoken. He declared himself "sick of Fabian systems." " My toast," he said, " is a short and violent war ; " and he complained of the reverent affection which 36 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. the people felt for Washington as an " idolatry " dangerous to American liberty. It was by work ing upon such impatient moods as these, in which high-minded men like the Adamses sometimes in dulged, that unscrupulous men like Gates hoped to attain their ends. The first-fruits of the cabal in Congress were seen in the reorganization of the Board of War in November, 1777. Mifflin was chosen a member of the board, and Gates was made its president, with permission to serve in the field should occasion re quire it. Gates was thus, in a certain sense, placed over Washington's head ; and soon afterward Con way was made inspector-general of the army, with the rank of major-general. In view of Washing ton's well-known opinions, the appointments of Mifflin and Conway might be regarded as an open declaration of hostility on the part of Congress. Some weeks before, in regard to the ru- Attempta to r^ injure Wash- mour that Conway was to be promoted, Washington had written, " It will be impossible for me to be of any further service, if such insuperable difficulties are thrown in my way." Such language might easily be understood as a conditional threat of resignation, and Con way's appointment was probably urged by the con spirators with the express intention of forcing Washington to resign. Should this affront prove ineffectual, they hoped, by dint of anonymous let ters and base innuendoes, to make the commander's place too hot for him. It was asserted that Wash ington's army had all through the year outnum bered Howe's more than three to one. The distress VALLEY FORGE. 37 of the soldiers was laid at his door ; the sole result, if not the sole object, of his many marches, accord ing to James Lovell, was to wear out their shoes and stockings. An anonymous letter to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, dated from York, where Congress was sitting, observed : " We have wisdom, virtue, and strength enough to save us, if they could be called into action. The north ern army has shown us what Americans are capa ble of doing with a general at their head. The spirit of the southern army is no way inferior to the spirit of the northern. A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway would in a few weeks render them an irre sistible body of men. Some of the contents of this letter ought to be made public, in order to awaken, enlighten, and alarm our country." Henry sent this letter to Washington, who instantly recognized the well-known handwriting of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Another anonymous letter, sent to President Lau rens, was still more emphatic : " It is a very great reproach to America to say there is only one gen eral in it. The great success to the northward was owing to a change of commanders ; and the south ern army would have been alike successful if a similar change had taken place. The people of America have been guilty of idolatry by making a man their God, and the God of heaven and earth will convince them by woful experience that he is only a man ; for no good can be expected from our army until Baal and his worshippers are banished from camp." This mischievous letter was ad dressed to Congress, but, instead of laying it before that body, the high-minded Laurens sent it directly 38 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. to Washington. But the commander-in-chief was forewarned, and neither treacherous missives like these, nor the direct affronts of Congress, were al lowed to disturb his equanimity. Just before leav ing Saratoga, Gates received from Conway a letter Conway's let- containing an allusion to Washington so ter to Gates. i • , i 1 .-i terse and pointed as to be easily remem bered and quoted, and Gates showed this letter to his young confidant and aid-de-camp, Wilkinson. A few days afterward, when Wilkinson had reached York with the dispatches relating to Bur- goyne's surrender, he fell in with a member of Lord Stirling's staff, and under the genial stimulus of Monongahela whiskey repeated the malicious sentence. Thus it came to Stirling's ears, and he straightway communicated it to Washington by letter, saying that he should always deem it his duty to expose such wicked duplicity. Thus armed, Washington simply sent to Conway the following brief note : — " Sir, — A letter which I received last night contained the following paragraph: 'In a letter from General Conway to General Gates, he says, Heaven has determined to save your country, or a weak General and bad counsellors would have ruined it.'' I am, sir, your humble servant, George Washington." Conway knew not what sort of answer to make to this startling note. When Mifflin heard of it, he wrote at once to Gates, telling him that an ex tract from one of Conway's letters had fallen into Washington's hands, and advising him to take better care of his papers in future. All the plot- VALLEY FORGE. 39 ters were seriously alarmed ; for their scheme was one which would not bear the light for a moment, and Washington's curt letter left them quite in the dark as to the extent of his knowledge. " There is scarcely a man living," protested Gates, " who takes greater care of his papers than I do. I never fail to lock them up, and keep the key in my pocket." One thing was clear : there must be no delay in ascertaining how much Washington knew and where he got his knowledge. After four anxious days it occurred to Gates that it must have been Washington's aid-de-camp, Hamilton, who had stealthily gained access to his papers during his short visit to the northern camp. Filled with this idea, Gates chuckled as he thought he saw a way of diverting attention from the sub ject matter of the letters to the mode in which Washington had got possession of their contents. He sat down and wrote to the comman- Gates's letter der-in-chief , saying he had learned that to washmg- some of Conway's confidential letters to himself had come into his excellency's hands: such letters must have been copied by stealth, and he hoped his excellency would assist him in un earthing the wretch who prowled about and did such wicked things, for obviously it was unsafe to have such creatures in the camp ; they might dis close precious secrets to the enemy. And so im portant did the matter seem that he sent a dupli cate of the present letter to Congress, in order that every imaginable means might be adopted for detecting the culprit without a moment's delay. The purpose of this elaborate artifice was to create 40 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. in Congress, which as yet knew nothing of the matter, an impression unfavourable to Washington, by making it appear that he encouraged his aids- de-camp in prying into the portfolios of other gen erals. For, thought Gates, it is as clear as day that Hamilton was the man ; nobody else could have done it. But Gates's silly glee was short-lived. Washing ton discerned at a glance the treacherous purpose of the letter, and foiled it by the simple expedi- washington's ent of telling the plain truth. "Your reply' letter," he replied, " came to my hand a few days ago, and, to my great surprise, informed me that a copy of it had been sent to Congress, for what reason I find myself unable to account ; but as some end was doubtless intended to be answered by it, I am laid under the disagreeable necessity of returning my answer through the same channel, lest any member of that honourable body should harbour an unfavourable suspicion of my having practised some indirect means to come at the con tents of the confidential letters between you and General Conway." After this ominous prelude, Washington went on to relate how Wilkinson had babbled over his cups, and a certain sentence from one of Conway's letters had thereupon been trans mitted to him by Lord Stirling. He had commu nicated this discovery to Conway, to let that officer know that his intriguing disposition was observed and watched. He had mentioned this to no one else but Lafayette, for he thought it indiscreet to let scandals arise in the army, and thereby " afford a gleam of hope to the enemy." He had not VALLEY FORGE. 41 known that Conway was in correspondence with Gates, and had even supposed that Wilkinson's information was given with Gates's sanction, and with friendly intent to forearm him against a se cret enemy. " But in this," he disdainfully adds, " as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken." So the schemer had overreached himself. It was not Washington's aid-de-camp who had pried, but it was Gates's own aid who had blabbed. But for Gates's treacherous letter Washington would not even have suspected him ; and, to crown all, he had only himself to thank for rashly blazoning before Congress a matter so little to his credit, and which Washington, in his generous discretion, would forever have kept secret. Amid this dis comfiture, however, a single ray of hope could be discerned. It appeared that Washington had known nothing beyond the one sentence which had come to him as quoted in conversation by Wilkinson. A downright falsehood - i i i «» ¦ Gates tries, might now clear up the whole affair, nnsuccess- -i ttt.i-i • i p ^^¦y-i to save and make Wilkinson the scapegoat for himself by all the others. Gates accordingly wrote again to Washington, denying his intimacy with Conway, declaring that he had never received but a single letter from him, and solemnly protest ing that this letter contained no such paragraph as that of which Washington had been informed. The information received through Wilkinson he denounced as a villainous slander. But these lies were too transparent to deceive any one, for in his first letter Gates had implicitly admitted the exist- 42 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. ence of several letters between himself and Con way, and his manifest perturbation of spirit had shown that these letters contained remarks that he would not for the world have had Washington see. A cold and contemptuous reply from Washington made all this clear, and put Gates in a very un comfortable position, from which there was no re treat. When the matter came to the ears of Wilkinson, who had just been appointed secretary of the Board of War, and was on his way to Congress, his youthful blood boiled at once. He wrote bom bastic letters to everybody, and challenged Gates to deadly combat. A meeting was arranged for sunrise, behind the Episcopal church at York, with pistols. At the appointed hour, when all had arrived on the ground, the old general requested, through his second, an interview with his young antagonist, walked up a back street with him, burst into tears, called him his dear but is success- fui, as usual, boy, and denied that he had ever made in keeping . . from under any injurious remarks about him. Wilkinson's wrath was thus assuaged for a moment, only to blaze forth presently with fresh violence, when he made inquiries of Wash ington, and was allowed to read the very letter in which his general had slandered him. He in stantly wrote a letter to Congress, accusing Gates of treachery and falsehood, and resigned his posi tion on the Board of War. These revelations strengthened Washington in proportion as they showed the malice and dupli city of his enemies. About this time a pamphlet VALLEY FORGE. 43 was published in London, and republished in New York, containing letters which purported to have been written by Washington to members of his family, and to have been found in the possession of a mulatto servant taken prisoner at Fort Lee. The letters, if genuine, would have proved their author to be a traitor to the American „. , . The forged cause ; but they were so bunglingly con- letters- cocted that every one knew them to be a forgery, and their only effect was to strengthen Washing ton still more, while throwing further discredit upon the cabal, with which many persons were inclined to connect them. The army and the people were now becoming incensed at the plotters, and the press began to ridicule them, while the reputation of Gates suf fered greatly in Congress as the indications of his real character were brought to light. All that was needed to complete the discomfiture of the cabal was a military fiasco, and this was soon forthcoming. In order to detach invading Can- Lafayette from Washington, a winter expedition against Canada was devised by the Board of War. Lafayette, a mere boy, scarcely twenty years old, was invited to take the com mand, with Conway for his chief lieutenant. It was said that the French population of Canada would be sure to welcome the high-born French man as their deliverer from the British yoke ; and it was further thought that the veteran Irish schemer might persuade his young commander to join the cabal, and bring to it such support as might be gained from the French alliance, then 44 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. about to be completed. Congress was persuaded to authorize the expedition, and Washington was not consulted in the matter. But Lafayette knew his own mind better than was supposed. He would not accept the command until he had obtained Washington's consent, and then he made it an indispensable condition that Baron de Kalb, who outranked Conway, should accompany the expedition. These preliminaries having been arranged, the young general went to The dinner at York for his instructions. There he Tork' found Gates, surrounded by schemers and sycophants, seated at a very different kind of dinner from that to which Lafayette had lately been used at Valley Forge. Hilarious with wine, the company welcomed the new guest with accla mations. He was duly flattered and toasted, and a glorious campaign was predicted. Gates assured him that on reaching Albany he would find 3,000 regulars ready to march, while powerful assistance was to be expected from the valiant Stark with his redoubtable Green Mountain Boys. The mar quis listened with placid composure till his papers were brought him, and he felt it to be time to go. Then rising as if for a speech, while all eyes were turned upon him and breathless silence filled the room, he reminded the company that there was one toast which, in the generous excitement of the occasion, they had forgotten to drink, and he begged leave to propose the health of the com- Lafayette's mander-in-chief of the armies of the United States. The deep silence became still deeper. None dared refused the toast, " but VALLEY FORGE. 45 some merely raised their glasses to their lips, while others cautiously put them down untasted." With the politest of bows and a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulder, the new commander of the northern army left the room, and mounted his horse to start for his headquarters at Albany. When he got there, he found neither troops, supplies, nor equipments in readiness. Of the army to which Burgoyne had surrendered, the mili tia had long since gone home, while most of the regulars had been withdrawn to Valley Forge or the highlands of the Hudson. Instead of 3,000 regulars which Gates had promised, barely 1,200 could be found, and these were in no wise clothed or equipped for a winter march through Absurdity of the wilderness. Between carousing and the soheme- backbiting, the new Board of War had no time left to attend to its duties. Not an inch of the country but was known to Schuyler, Lincoln, and Arnold, and they assured Lafayette that an inva sion of Canada, under the circumstances, would be worthy of Don Quixote. In view of the French alliance, moreover, the conquest of Canada had even ceased to seem desirable to the Americans ; for when peace should be concluded the French might insist upon retaining it, in compensation for their services. The men of New England greatly preferred Great Britain to France as a neighbour, and accordingly Stark, with his formidable Green Mountain Boys, felt no interest whatever in the enterprise, and not a dozen volunteers could be got together for love or money. The fiasco was so complete, and the scheme it- 46 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. self so emphatically condemned by public opinion, that Congress awoke from its infatuation. Lafay ette and Kalb were glad to return to Valley Forge. Conway, who stayed behind, became indignant with Congress over some fancied slight, and sent a conditional threat of resignation, which, to his unspeakable amazement, was accepted uncondi- Downfaii of tionally. In vain he urged that he had the cabal. noj. meant exactly what he said, having lost the nice use of English during his long stay in France. His entreaties and objurgations fell upon deaf ears. In Congress the day of the cabal was over. Mifflin and Gates were removed from the Board of War. The latter was sent to take charge of the forts on the Hudson, and cautioned against forgetting that he was to report to the commander-in-chief. The cabal and its deeds hav ing become the subject of common gossip, such friends as it had mustered now began stoutly to deny their connection with it. Conway himself was dangerously wounded a few months afterward in a duel with General Cadwallader, and, believ ing himself to be on his death-bed, he wrote a very humble letter to Washington, expressing his sin cere grief for having ever done or said anything with intent to injure so great and good a man. His wound proved not to be mortal, but on his recovery, finding himself generally despised and shunned, he returned to France, and American history knew him no more. Had Lord George Germaine been privy to the secrets of the Conway cabal, his hope of wearing out the American cause would have been sensibly VALLEY FORGE. 47 strengthened. There was really more danger in such intrigues than in an exhausted treasury, a half-starved army, and defeat on the field. The people felt it to be so, and continental the events of the winter left a stain upon the reputation of the Continental Congress from which it never fully recovered. Congress had al ready lost the high personal consideration to which it was entitled at the outset. Such men as Frank lin, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Jay, and Rut ledge were now serving in other capacities. The legislatures of the several states afforded a more promising career for able men than the Continen tal Congress, which had neither courts nor magis trates, nor any recognized position of sovereignty. The meetings of Congress were often attended by no more than ten or twelve members. Curious symptoms were visible which seemed to show that the sentiment of union between the states was weaker than it had been two years before. In stead of the phrase " people of the United States," one begins, in 1778, to hear of "inhabitants of these Confederated States." In the absence of any central sovereignty which could serve as the symbol of union, it began to be feared that the new nation might after all be conquered through its lack of political cohesion. Such fears came to cloud the rejoicings over the victory of Saratoga, as, at the end of 1777, the Continental Congress began visibly to lose its place in public esteem, and sink, step by step, into the utter degradation and impotence which was to overwhelm it before another ten years should have expired. 48 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. As the defeat of the Conway cabal marked the beginning of the decline of Congress, it marked at the same time the rise of Washington to a higher place in the hearts of the people than Increasing L a -n influence of he had ever held before. As the silly Washington. t , m ** intrigues against him recoiled upon their authors, men began to realize that it was far more upon his consummate sagacity and unselfish patriotism than upon anything that Congress could do that the country rested its hopes of success in the great enterprise which it had undertaken. As the nullity of Congress made it ever more apparent that the country as a whole was without a govern ment, Washington stood forth more and more con spicuously as the living symbol of the union of the states. In him and his work were centred the common hopes and the common interests of all the American people. There was no need of clothing him with extraordinary powers. During the last years of the war he came, through sheer weight of personal character, to wield an influence like that which Perikles had wielded over the Athenians. He was all-powerful because he was " first in the hearts of his countrymen." Few men, since his tory began, had ever occupied so lofty a position ; none ever made a more disinterested use of power. His arduous labours taught him to appreciate, bet ter than any one else, the weakness entailed upon the country by the want of a stable central govern ment. But when the war was over, and the politi cal problem came into the foreground, instead of using this knowledge to make himself personally indispensable to the country, he bent all the weight VALLEY FORGE. 49 of his character and experience toward securing the adoption of such a federal constitution as should make anything like a dictatorship forever unnecessary and impossible. CHAPTER X. MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. During the dreary winter at Valley Forge, Washington busied himself in improving the or ganization of his army. The fall of the Conway cabal removed many obstacles. Greene was per suaded, somewhat against his wishes, to serve as quartermaster-general, and forthwith the duties of that important office were discharged with zeal and promptness. Conway's resignation opened the way for a most auspicious change in the inspec torship of the army. Of all the foreign officers who served under Washington during the War for Independence, the Baron von Steu- Baron Fried- . . . rich von steu- ben was in many respects the most im portant. Member of a noble family which for five centuries had been distinguished in the local annals of Magdeburg, Steuben was one of the best educated and most experienced soldiers of Germany. His grandfather, an able theologian, was well known as the author of a critical treatise on the New Testament. His uncle, an eminent mathematician, had been the inventor of a new system of fortification. His father had seen half a century of honourable service in the corps of en gineers. He had himself held the rank of first lieutenant at the beginning of the Seven Years' MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 51 War, and after excellent service in the battles of Prague, Rossbach, and Kunersdorf he was raised to a position on the staff of Frederick the Great. At the end of the war, when the thrifty king re duced his army, and Bliicher with other officers afterward famous left the service, Steuben retired to private life, with the honorary rank of General of the Circle of Swabia. For more than ten years he was grand marshal to the Prince of Hohenzol- lern-Hechingen. Then he went travelling about Europe, until in the spring of 1777 he arrived in Paris, and became acquainted with Franklin and Beaumarchais. The American alliance was already secretly con templated by the French ministry, and the astute Vergennes, knowing that the chief defect of our armies lay in their want of organization and disci pline, saw in the scientific German soldier an effi cient instrument for remedying the evil. After much hesitation Steuben was persuaded to under take the task. That his arrival upon the scene might excite no heart-burning among the Ameri can officers, the honorary rank which he held in Germany was translated by Vergennes into the rank of lieutenant-general, which the Americans would at once recognize as more eminent than any position existing in their own army except that of the commander-in-chief. Knowing no English, Steuben took with him as secretary and interpreter the youthful Pierre Duponceau, afterward famous as arrives in a lawyer, and still more famous as a philologist. One day, on shipboard, this gay young 52 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Frenchman laid a wager that he would kiss the first Yankee girl he should meet on landing. So as they came ashore at Portsmouth on a frosty December day, he gravely stepped up to a pretty New Hampshire maiden who was passing by, and told her that before leaving his native land to fight for American freedom he had taken a vow to ask, in earnest of victory, a kiss from the first lady he should meet. The prayer of chivalry found favour in the eyes of the fair Puritan, and the token of success was granted. At Boston John Hancock furnished the party with sleighs, drivers, and saddle-horses for the in land journey of more than four hundred miles to York. During this cheerful journey, which it took three weeks to perform, Steuben's heart was warmed toward his new country by the reminis cences of the Seven Years' War which he fre quently encountered. The name of Frederick was deservedly popular in America, and his familiar features decorated the sign-board of many a way side inn, while on the coffee-room walls hung quaint prints with doggerel verses commemorat- . . „ ing Rossbach and Leuthen along with and visrtB ° ° York™8'" Louisburg and Quebec. On arriving at York, the German general was re ceived by Congress with distinguished honours ; and this time the confidence given to a trained European soldier turned out to be well deserved. Throughout the war Steuben proved no less faith ful than capable. He came to feel a genuine love for his adopted country, and after the war was over, retiring to the romantic woodland near Oris- MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 53 kany, where so many families of German lineage were already settled, and where the state of New York presented him with a farm of sixteen thou sand acres in acknowledgment of his services, he lived the quiet life of a country gentleman until his death in 1794. A little village some twelve miles north of the site of old Fort Stanwix still bears his name and marks the position of his es tate. After his interview with Congress, Steuben re paired at once to Valley Forge, where Washing ton was not slow in recognizing his ability; nor was Steuben, on the other hand, at a loss to per ceive, in the ragged and motley army which he passed in review, the existence of soldierly quali ties which needed nothing so much as training. Disregarding the English prejudice which looked upon the drilling of soldiers as work fit only for sergeants, he took musket in hand and showed what was to be done. Alert and untiring, he worked from morning till night in showing the men how to advance, retreat, or change front with out falling into disorder, — how to per- steuben at form, in short, all the rapid and accu- VaUeyForee- rate movements for which the Prussian army had become so famous. It was a revelation to the American troops. Generals, colonels, and cap tains were fired by the contagion of his example and his tremendous enthusiasm, and for several months the camp was converted into a training- school, in which masters and pupils worked with incessant and furious energy. Steuben was struck with the quickness with which the common soldiers 54 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. learned their lessons. He had a harmlessly chol eric temper, which was part of his overflowing vigour, and sometimes, when drilling an awkward squad, he would exhaust his stock of French and German oaths, and shout for his aid to come and curse the blockheads in English. " Viens, mon ami Walker," he would say, — " viens, mon bon ami. Sacre-bleu ! Gott-vertamn de gaucherie of dese badauts. Je ne puis plus ; I can curse dem no more ! " Yet in an incredibly short time, as he afterward wrote, these awkward fellows had acquired a military air, had learned how to carry their arms, and knew how to form into column, deploy, and execute manoeuvres with precision. In May, 1778, after three months of such work, Steuben was appointed inspector - general of the army, with the rank and pay of major-general. The reforms which he introduced were so far- reaching that after a year they were said to have saved more than 800,000 French livres to the United States. No accounts had been kept of arms and accoutrements, and owing to the careless good-nature which allowed every recruit to carry home his musket as a keepsake, there had been a loss of from five to eight thousand muskets an nually. During the first year of Steuben's inspec torship less than twenty muskets were lost. Half of the arms at Valley Forge were found by Steu ben without bayonets. The American soldier had no faith in this weapon, because he did not know how to use it ; when he did not throw it away, he adapted it to culinary purposes, holding on its point the beef which he roasted before his camp- MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 55 fire. Yet in little more than a year after Steu ben's arrival we shall see an American column, without firing a gun, storm the works at Stony Point in one of the most spirited bayonet charges known to history. Besides all this, it was Steuben who first taught the American army to understand the value of an efficient staff. The want of such a staff had been severely felt at the battle of Brandywine ; but be fore the end of the war Washington had become provided with a staff that Frederick need not have despised. While busy with all these laborious re forms, the good baron found time to prepare a new code of discipline and tactics, based on Prussian experience, but adapted to the peculiar steuben's man- conditions of American warfare ; and ual of tactlcs- this excellent manual held its place, long after the death of its author, as the Blue Book of our army. In this adaptation of means to ends, Steuben proved himself to be no martinet, but a thorough military scholar ; he was able not only to teach, but to learn. And in the art of warfare there was one lesson which Europe now learned from Amer ica. In woodland fights with the Indians, it had been found desirable to act in loose columns, which could easily separate to fall behind trees and reu nite at brief notice; and in this way there had been developed a kind of light infantry peculiar to America, and especially adapted for skirmishing. It was light infantry of this sort that, in the hands of Arnold and Morgan, had twice won the day in the Saratoga campaign. Reduced to scientific shape by Steuben, and absorbed, with all the other 56 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. military knowledge of the age, by Napoleon, these light-infantry tactics have come to play a great part on the European battlefields of the nineteenth century. Thus from the terrible winter at Valley Forge, in which the accumulated evils of congressional mismanagement had done their best to destroy the army, it came forth, nevertheless, stronger in organ ization and bolder in spirit than ever before. On the part of the enemy nothing had been done to mo lest it. The position at Valley Forge was a strong one, and Sir William Howe found it easier to loiter in Philadelphia than to play a strategic game against Washington in the depths of an American winter. When Franklin at Paris first heard the news that Howe had taken Philadelphia, knowing well how slight was the military value of the conquest, he observed that it would be more correct to say that Philadelphia had taken General Howe. Sir William . . Howe resigns And so it turned out, in more ways than his command. , . . ^ one ; for his conduct in going there at all was roundly blamed by the opposition in Parlia ment, and not a word was said in his behalf by Lord George Germaine. The campaign of 1777 had been such a bungling piece of work that none of the chief actors, save Burgoyne, was willing frankly to assume his share of responsibility for it. Sir William Howe did not care to disclose the se cret of his peculiar obligations to the traitor Lee ; and it would have ruined Lord George Germaine to have told the story of the dispatch that never was sent. Lord George, who was never noted for generosity, sought to screen himself by throwing MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 57 the blame for everything indiscriminately upon the two generals. Burgoyne, who sat in Parliament, defended himself ably and candidly ; and when Howe heard what was going on, he sent in his res ignation, in order that he too might go home and defend himself. Besides this, he had grown sick of the war, and was more than ever convinced that it must end in failure. On the 18th of May, Philadelphia was the scene of a grand farewell banquet, called the Mischianza, — a strange med ley combining the modern parade with the mediae val tournament, wherein seven silk-clad The Mi80hi. knights of the Blended Rose and seven anza' more of the Burning Mountain did amicably break lances in honour of fourteen blooming damsels dressed in Turkish trousers, while triumphal arches, surmounted by effigies of Fame, displayed inscriptions commemorating in fulsome Latin and French the glories of the departing general. In these curious festivities, savouring more strongly of Bruges in the fifteenth century than of Phila delphia in the eighteenth, it was long after remem bered that the most prominent parts were taken by the ill-starred Major Andre and the beautiful Miss Margaret Shippen, who was soon to become the wife of Benedict Arnold. With such farewell cere monies Sir William Howe set sail for England, and Sir Henry Clinton took his place as comman der-in-chief of the British armies in America. Washington's position at Valley Forge had held the British in check through the winter. They had derived no advantage from the possession of the " rebel capital," for such poor work as Congress 58 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. could do was as well done from York as from Phil- The British adelphia, and the political life of the aMpHa'june' United States was diffused from one end is, 1778. 0£ tae country to the other. The place was worthless as a basis for military operations. It was harder to defend and harder to supply with food than the insular city of New York; and, moreover, a powerful French fleet, under Count d'Estaing, was approaching the American coast. With the control of the Delaware imperilled, Phil adelphia would soon become untenable, and, in ac cordance with instructions received from the minis try, Sir Henry Clinton prepared to evacuate the place and concentrate his forces at New York. His first intention was to go by water ; but finding that he had not transports enough for his whole army, together with the Tory refugees who had put themselves under his protection, he changed his plan. The Tories, to the number of 3,000, with their personal effects, were sent on in the fleet, while the army, encumbered with twelve miles of baggage wagons, began its retreat across New Jer sey. On the morning of the 18th of June, 1778, the rear-guard of the British marched out of Phil adelphia, and before sunset the American advance marched in and took possession of the city. Gen eral Arnold, whose crippled leg did not allow him to take the field, was put in command, and after a fortnight both Congress and the state Arnold tfi Rt;9 commandat government returned. Of the Tories Philadelphia. °who remained behind, twenty-five were indicted, under the laws of Pennsylvania, for the crime of offering aid to the enemy. Two Quakers, MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 59 who had actually conducted a party of British to a midnight attack upon an American outpost, were found guilty of treason and hanged. The other twenty-three were either acquitted or pardoned. Across the river, seventeen Tories, convicted of treason under the laws of New Jersey, all received pardon from the governor. The British retreat from Philadelphia was re garded by the Americans as equivalent to a vic tory, and Washington was anxious to enhance the moral effect of it by a sudden blow which should cripple Sir Henry Clinton's army. In force he was about equal to the enemy, both armies now numbering about 15,000, while in equipment and discipline his men were better off than ever before. Unfortunately, the American army had just re ceived one addition which went far to neutralize these advantages. The mischief-maker Lee had returned. In the preceding summer the British Major-General Prescott had been captured in Rhode Island, and after a tedious negotiation of nine months Lee was exchanged for him. He ar rived at Valley Forge in May, and as Retumof Washington had found a lenient inter- Charles Lee- pretation for his outrageous conduct before his capture, while nothing whatever was known of his treasonable plot with the Howes, he naturally came back unquestioned to his old position as senior major-general of the army. It was a dangerous situation for the Americans to have such high command entrusted to such a villain. When Philadelphia was evacuated, Lee first tried to throw Washington off on a false scent 60 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. by alleging reasons for believing that Clinton did not intend to retreat across New Jersey. Failing in this, he found reasons as plentiful as blackber ries why the British army should not be followed up and harassed on its retreat. Then pursues the when Washington decided that an at tack must be made he grew sulky, and refused to conduct it. Washington was marching more rapidly than Clinton, on a line nearly par allel with him, to the northward, so that by the time the British general reached Allentown he found his adversary getting in front of him upon his line of retreat. Clinton had nothing to gain by fighting, if he could possibly avoid it, and ac cordingly he turned to the right, following the road which ran through Monmouth and Middle- town to Sandy Hook. Washington now detached a force of about 5,000 men to advance swiftly and cut off the enemy's rear, while he designed to come up and support the operation with the rest of his army. To Lee, as second in rank, the com mand of this advanced party properly belonged ; but he declined to take it, on the ground that it was sure to be defeated, and Washington en trusted the movement to the youthful Lafayette, of the soundness of whose judgment he had al ready seen many proofs. But in the course of the night it occurred to Lee, whatever his miserable purpose may have been, that perhaps he might best accomplish it, after all, by taking the field. So he told Washington, next morning, that he had changed his mind, and was anxious to take the command which he had just declined. With MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 61 extraordinary forbearance Washington granted his request, and arranged the affair with such tact as not to wound the feelings of Lafayette, who thus, unfortunately, lost the direction of the move ment. On the night of June 27th the left wing of the British army, 8,000 strong, commanded by Lord Cornwallis, encamped near Monmouth Court House, on the road from Allentown. The right wing, of about equal strength, and composed chiefly of Hessians under Knyphausen, lay just beyond the Court House on the road to Middle- town. In order of march the right wing took the lead, convoying the immense baggage train. The left wing, following in the rear, was the His plan of part exposed to danger, and with it stayed Sir Henry Clinton. The American ad vance under Lee, 6,000 strong, lay about five miles northeast of the British line, and Washington, with the main body, was only three miles behind. Lee's orders from Washington were positive and expli cit. He was to gain the flank of the British left wing and attack it vigorously, while Washington was to come up and complete its discomfiture. Lee's force was ample, in quantity and quality, for the task assigned it, and there was fair ground for hope that the flower of the British army might thus be cut off and captured or destroyed. Since the war began there had hardly been such a golden opportunity. Sunday, the 28th of June, was a clay of fiery heat, the thermometer showing 96° in the shade. Early in the morning Clinton moved cautiously. 62 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Knyphausen made all haste forward on the Mid dletown road, and the left wing followed till it had passed more than a mile beyond BattleofMon- r . / mouth, June Monmouth Court House, when it found 28, 1778. . iii itself outflanked on the north by the American columns. Lee had advanced from Freehold church by the main road, crossing two deep ravines upon causeways; and now, while his left wing was folding about Cornwallis on the north, occupying superior ground, his centre, un der Wayne, was close behind, and his right, under Lafayette, had already passed the Court House, and was .threatening the other end of the British line on the south. Cornwallis instantly changed front to meet the danger on the north, and a de tachment was thrown down the road toward the Court House to check Lafayette. The British position was one of extreme peril, but the behav iour of the American commander now became very extraordinary. When Wayne was beginning his attack, he was ordered by Lee to hold back and simply make a feint, as the main attack was to be made in another quarter. While Wayne was wondering at this, the British troops coming down the road were seen directing their march so as to come between Wayne and Lafayette. It would be easy to check them, but the marquis had no sooner started than Lee ordered him back, mur muring about its being impossible to stand against British soldiers. Lafayette's suspicions were now Lee's shame- aroused, and he sent a dispatch in all m retreat. j^^ to Washington, saying that his presence in the field was sorely needed. The JIT '¦jlf.::J.U !-h--vf Carh's Mouse I a Position occupied by the British the night be fore the battle. b British detachment moving towards Mon mouth. c British batteries. d Captain Oswald's American batteries. e American troops formed near the court-house. BATTLE OF MONMOUTH, June 28, 1778 / First position taken by Gen. Lee in his retreat. g Attack by a party of British in the woods. A Positions taken by General Lee. i British detachment. k Last position of the retreating troops. m Army formed by General Washington after he met General Lee reireating. « British detachment. a American battery. p Principal action. r First position of the British after the action. s Second position. t British passed the night after the battle. 1 Where Washington met Lee retreating. 2 Hedge-row. 3 Meeting-house. MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 63 army was bewildered. Fighting had hardly be gun, but their position was obviously so good that the failure to make prompt use of it suggested some unknown danger. One of the divisions on the left was now ordered back by Lee, and the others, seeing this retrograde movement, and un derstanding it as the prelude to a general retreat, began likewise to fall back. All thus retreated, though without flurry or disorder, to the high ground just east of the second ravine which they had crossed in their advance. All the advantage of their offensive movement was thus thrown away without a struggle, but the position they had now reached was excellent for a defensive fight. To the amazement of everybody, Lee ordered the re treat to be continued across the marshy ravine. As they crowded upon the causeway the ranks began to fall into some disorder. Many sank exhausted from the heat. No one could tell from what they were fleeing, and the exultant ardour with which they had begun to enfold the British line gave place to bitter disappointment, which vented itself in passionate curses. So they hurried on, with increasing disorder, till they approached the brink of the westerly ravine, where their craven commander met Washington riding up, pale with anger, looking like an avenging deity. "What is the meaning of all this?" shouted Washington. His tone was so fierce and his look so threatening that the traitor shook in his stir rups, and could make no answer. When the ques tion was repeated with yet greater fierceness, and further emphasized by a tremendous oath, he flew 64 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. into a rage, and complained at having been sent out to beard the whole British army. " I am very sorry," said Washington, " that you undertook the command, if you did not mean to fight." Lee re plied that he did not think it prudent to bring on a general engagement, which was, however, pre cisely what he had been sent out to do. " What ever your opinions may have been," said Wash ington sharply, " I expected my orders retrieve! the to be obeyed;" and with these words he wheeled about to stop the retreat and form a new front. There was not a moment to lose, for the British were within a mile of them, and their fire began before the line of battle could be formed. To throw a mass of disorderly fugi tives in the face of advancing reinforcements, as Lee had been on the point of doing, was to endan ger the organization of the whole force. It was now that the admirable results of Steuben's teach ing were to be seen. The retreating soldiers im mediately wheeled and formed under fire with as much coolness and precision as they could have shown on parade, and while they stopped the enemy's progress, Washington rode back and brought up the main body of his army. On some heights to the left of the enemy Greene placed a battery which enfiladed their lines, while Wayne attacked them vigorously in front. After a brave resistance, the British were driven back upon the second ravine which Lee had crossed in the morn ing's advance. Washington now sent word to Steuben, who was a couple of miles in the rear, telling him to bring up three brigades and press MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 65 the retreating enemy. Some time before this he had again met Lee and ordered him to the rear, for his suspicion was now thoroughly aroused. As the traitor rode away from the field he met Steu ben advancing, and tried to work one final piece of mischief. He tried to persuade Steuben to halt, alleging that he must have misunderstood Washington's orders ; but the worthy baron was not to be trifled with, and doggedly kept on his way. The British were driven in some confusion across the ravine, and were just making a fresh stand on the high ground east of it when night put an end to the strife. Washington sent out par ties to attack them on both flanks as soon as day should dawn ; but Clinton withdrew in the night, leaving his wounded behind, and by daybreak had joined Knyphausen on the heights of Middletown, whither it was useless to follow him. The British loss in the battle of Monmouth was about 416, and the American loss was 362. On both sides there were many deaths from sunstroke. The battle has usually been claimed as a victory for the Americans ; and so it was in a certain sense, as they drove the enemy from the field. Strategically considered, however, Lord Stanhope is quite right in calling it a drawn battle. The purpose for which Washington undertook it was foiled by the treachery of Lee. Never- n was a drawn theless, in view of the promptness with battle' which Washington turned defeat into victory, and of the greatly increased efficiency which it showed in the soldiers, the moral advantage was doubtless with the Americans. It deepened the impression A 66 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. produced by the recovery of Philadelphia, it si lenced the cavillers against Washington, and its effect upon Clinton's army was disheartening. More than 2,000 of his men, chiefly Hessians, de serted in the course of the following week. During the night after the battle, the behaviour of Lee was the theme of excited discussion among the American officers. By the next day, having recovered his self-possession, he wrote a petulant letter to Washington, demanding an apology for his language on the battlefield. Washington's reply was as follows : — " Sie, — I received your letter, expressed, as I conceive, in terms highly improper. I am not conscious of making use of any very singular ex pressions at the time of meeting you, as you inti- washmgton's mate. What I recollect to have said letter to Lee. wag dictated by duty and warranted by the occasion. As soon as circumstances will per mit, you shall have an opportunity of justifying yourself to the army, to Congress, to America, and to the world in general ; or of convincing them that you were guilty of a breach of orders, and of misbehaviour before the enemy on the 28th instant, in not attacking them as you had been di rected, and in making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat." To this terrible letter Lee sent the following impudent answer : " You cannot afford me greater pleasure than in giving me the opportunity of showing to America the sufficiency of her respec tive servants. I trust that temporary power of office and the tinsel dignity attending it will not V MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 67 be able, by all the mists they can raise, to obfus cate the bright rays of truth." Wash- Trial and sen- ington replied by putting Lee under tenceo£Lee- arrest. A court-martial was at once convened, before which he was charged with disobedience of orders in not attacking the enemy, with misbehav iour on the field in making an unnecessary and shameful retreat, and, lastly, with gross disrespect to the commander-in-chief. After a painstaking trial, which lasted more than a month, he was found guilty on all three charges, and suspended from command in the army for the term of one year. This absurdly inadequate sentence is an exam ple of the extreme and sometimes ill-judged hu manity which has been wont to characterize judi cial proceedings in America. Many a European soldier has been ruthlessly shot for less serious misconduct and on less convincing evidence. A general can be guilty of no blacker crime than knowingly to betray his trust on the field of bat tle. But in Lee's case, the very enormity of his crime went far to screen him from the punishment which it deserved. People are usually slow to be lieve in criminality that goes far beyond the ordi nary wickedness of the society in which they live. If a candidate for Congress is accused of bribery or embezzlement, we unfortunately find it easy to believe the charge ; but if he were to be accused of attempting to poison his rival, we should find it very hard indeed to believe it. In the France of Catherine de' Medici or the Italy of Caesar Borgia, the one accusation would have been as credible as 68 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. the other, but we have gone far toward outgrow ing some of the grosser forms of crime. In Amer ican history, as in modern English history, in stances of downright treason have been very rare ; and in proportion as we are impressed with their ineffable wickedness are we slow to admit the pos sibility of their occurrence. In ancient Greece and in mediaeval Italy there were many Benedict Arnolds; in the United States a single plot for surrendering a stronghold to the enemy has con signed its author to a solitary immortality of in famy. But unless the proof of Arnold's treason had been absolutely irrefragable, many persons would have refused to believe it. In like manner, people were slow to believe that Lee could have been so deliberately wicked as to plan the defeat of the army in which he held so high a command, and some historians have preferred to regard his conduct as wholly unintelligible, rather than adopt the only clue by which it can be explained. He might have been bewildered, he might have been afraid, he might have been crazy, it was suggested ; and to the latter hypothesis his well-known eccen tricity gave some countenance. It was well for the court-martial to give him the benefit of the doubt, but in any case it should have been obvious that he had proved himself permanently unfit for a command. Historians for a long time imitated the clem ency of the court-martial by speaking of the " way wardness " of General Lee. Nearly eighty years elapsed before the discovery of that document which obliges us to put the worst interpretation MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 69 upon his acts, while it enables us clearly to under stand the motives which prompted them. Lee was nothing but a selfish adventurer. He ii p • 1 ¦ i ••! p i«i kee's charac- had no faith in the principles for which terand the Americans were fighting, or indeed in any principles. He came here to advance his own fortunes, and hoped to be made commander- in-chief. Disappointed in this, he began at once to look with hatred and envy upon Washington, and sought to thwart his purposes, while at the same time he intrigued with the enemy. He be came infatuated with the idea of playing some such part in the American Revolution as Monk had played in the Restoration of Charles II. This explains his conduct in the autumn of 1776, when he refused to march to the support of Washing ton. Should Washington be defeated and cap tured, then Lee, as next in command and at the head of a separate army, might negotiate for peace. His conduct as prisoner in New York, first in soliciting an interview with Congress, then in giving aid and counsel to the enemy, is all to be explained in the same way. And his behaviour in the Monmouth campaign was part and parcel of the same crooked policy. Lord North's commis sioners had just arrived from England to offer terms to the Americans, but in the exultation over Saratoga and the French alliance, now increased by the recovery of Philadelphia, there was little hope of their effecting anything. The spirits of these Yankees, thought Lee, must not be suffered to rise too high, else they will never listen to rea son. So he wished to build a bridge of gold for 70 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Clinton to retreat by ; and when he found it im possible to prevent an attack, his second thoughts led him to take command, in order to keep the game in his own hands. Should Washington now incur defeat by adopting a course which Lee had emphat ically condemned as impracticable, the impatient prejudices upon which the cabal had played might be revived. The downfall of Washington would perhaps be easy to compass ; and the schemer would thus not only enjoy the humiliation of the man whom he so bitterly hated, but he might fairly hope to succeed him in the chief command, and thus have an opportunity of bringing the war to a " glorious " end through a negotiation with Lord North's commissioners. Such thoughts as these were, in all probability, at the bottom of Lee's extraordinary behaviour at Monmouth. They were the impracticable schemes of a vain, egotis tical dreamer. That Washington and Chatham, had that great statesman been still alive, might have brought the war to an honourable close through open and frank negotiation was perhaps not impossible. That such a man as Lee, by pal tering with agents of Lord North, should effect anything but mischief and confusion was incon ceivable. But selfishness is always incompatible with sound judgment, and Lee's wild schemes were quite in keeping with his character. The method he adopted for carrying them out was equally so. It would have been impossible for a man of strong military instincts to have relaxed his clutch upon an enemy in the field, as Lee did at the battle of Monmouth. If Arnold had been MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 71 there that day, with his head never so full of trea son, an irresistible impulse would doubtless have led him to attack the enemy tooth and nail, and the treason would have waited till the morrow. As usually happens in such cases, the selfish schemer overreached himself. Washington won a victory, after all ; the treachery was detected, and the traitor disgraced. Maddened by the destruc tion of his air-castles, Lee now began writing scur rilous articles in the newspapers. He could not hear Washington's name mentioned without losing his temper, and his venomous tongue at length got him into a duel with Colonel Laurens, one of Washington's aids and son of the president of Congress. He came out of the affair with nothing worse than a wound in the side ; but when, a little later, he wrote an angry letter to Con- r , ~ •* Lee s expul- s;ress, he was summarily expelled from sion from the ° 7 . army. the army. " Ah, I see," he said, aim ing a Parthian shot at Washington, " if you wish to become a great general in America, you must learn to grow tobacco ; " and so he retired to a plantation which he had in the Shenandoah val ley. He lived to behold the triumph of the cause which he had done so much to injure, and in Octo ber, 1782, he died in a mean public-house in Phila delphia, friendless and alone. His last wish was that he might not be buried in consecrated ground, or within a mile of any church or meeting-house, because he had kept so much bad company in this world that he did not choose to continue it in the next. But in this he was not allowed to have his way. He was buried 72 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. in the cemetery of Christ Church in Philadelphia, and many worthy citizens came to the funeral. When Washington, after the battle of Mon mouth, saw that it was useless further to molest Clinton's retreat, he marched straight for the Hud son river, and on the 20th of July he encamped at White Plains, while his adversary took refuge in New York. The opposing armies occupied the same ground as in the autumn of 1776 ; but the The situation Americans were now the aggressive atNewTork. party_ Howe's object in 1776 was the capture of Washington's army ; Clinton's object in 1778 was limited to keeping possession of New York. There was now a chance for testing the worth of the French alliance. With the aid of a powerful French fleet, it might be possible to capture Clinton's army, and thus end the war at a blow. But this was not to be. The French fleet of twelve ships-of-the-line and six frigates, commanded by the Count d'Estaing, sailed from Toulon on the 13th of April, and after a tedious struggle with head - winds arrived at the mouth of the Delaware on the 8th of July, just too late to intercept Lord Howe's squadron. The fleet contained a land force of 4,000 men, and brought over M. Gerard, the first minister from France to the United States. Finding nothing to do on the Delaware, the count proceeded to Sandy Hook, where he was boarded by Washington's aids, Lau rens and Hamilton, and a council of war was held. As the British fleet in the harbour consisted of only six ships-of-the-line, with several frigates and gun- MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 73 boats, it seemed obvious that it might be destroyed or captured by Estaing's superior force, and then Clinton would be entrapped in the island city. But this plan was defeated by a strange obstacle. Though the harbour of New York is one of the finest in the world, it has, like most harbours sit uated at the mouths of great rivers, a bar at the entrance, which in 1778 was far more troublesome than it is to-day. Since that time the bar has shifted its position and been partially worn away, so that the largest ships can now freely The French enter, except at low tide. But when S^XfE* the American pilots examined Estaing's bour' two largest ships, which carried eighty and ninety guns respectively, they declared it unsafe, even at high tide, for them to venture upon the bar. The enterprise was accordingly abandoned, but in its stead another one was undertaken, which, if suc cessful, might prove hardly less decisive than the capture of New York. After their expulsion from Boston in the first year of the war, the British never regained their foothold upon the mainland of New England. But in December, 1776, the island which gives its name to the state of Rhode Island had been seized by Lord Percy, and the enemy had occupied it ever since. From its commanding position at the entrance to the Sound, it assisted them in threat ening the Connecticut coast; and on the other hand, should occasion require, it might even enable them to threaten Boston with an overland attack. After Lord Percy's departure for England in the spring of 1777, the command devolved upon Major- 74 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. General Richard Prescott, an unmitigated brute. Under his rule no citizen of Newport General Pres- . TT cott at New- was sate in his own house. He not only arrested people and threw them into jail without assigning any reason, but he en couraged his soldiers in plundering houses and of fering gross insults to ladies, as well as in cutting- down shade-trees and wantonly defacing the beau tiful lawns. A great loud-voiced, irascible fellow, swelling with the sense of his own importance, if he chanced to meet with a Quaker who failed to take off his hat, he would seize him by the collar and knock his head against the wall, or strike him over the shoulders with the big gnarled stick which he usually carried. One night in July, as this petty tyrant was sleeping at a country house about five miles from Newport, a party of soldiers rowed over from the mainland in boats, under the guns of three British frigates, and, taking the general out of bed, carried him off in his night gown. He was sent to Washington's headquarters on the Hudson. As he passed through the village of Lebanon, in Connecticut, he stopped to dine at an old inn kept by one Captain Alden. He was politely received, and in the course of the meal Mrs. Alden set upon the table a dish of succotash, whereupon Prescott, not knowing the delicious dish, roared, " What do you mean by offering me this hog's food ? " and threw it all upon the floor. The good woman retreated in tears to the kitchen, and presently her husband, coming in with a stout horsewhip, dealt with the boor as he deserved. When Prescott was exchanged for General Lee, in MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 75 April, 1778, he resumed the command at New port, but was soon superseded by the amiable and accomplished Sir Robert Pigott, under whom the garrison was increased to 6,000 men. New York and Newport were now the only places held by the enemy in the United States, and the capture of either, with its army of occupation, would be an event of prime importance. As soon as the enterprise was suggested, the New England militia began to muster in force, Mas- . Attempt to sachusetts sending a strong contingent capture the i T i tt i /-. i o iv Briti8h so under John Hancock, (jreneral bum- sonatNew- . port. van had been m command at Provi dence since April. Washington now sent him 1,500 picked men of his Continental troops, with Greene, who was born hard by and knew every inch of the island ; with Glover, of amphibious renown ; and Lafayette, who was a kinsman of the Count d'Estaing. The New England yeomanry soon swelled this force to about 9,000, and with the 4,000 French regulars and the fleet, it might well be hoped that General Pigott would quickly be brought to surrender. The expedition failed through the inefficient co operation of the French and the insubordination of the yeomanry. Estaing arrived off the harbour of Newport on the 29th of July, and had a con ference with Sullivan. It was agreed that the Americans should land upon the east side of the island while the French were landing upon the west side, thus intervening between the main gar rison at Newport and a strong detachment which was stationed on Butts Hill, at the northern end 76 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. of the island. By such a movement this detach ment might be isolated and captured, to begin with. But General Pigott, divining the purpose of the allies, withdrew the detachment, and con centrated all his forces in and around the city. At this moment the French troops were landing upon Conanicut island, intending to cross to the Sullivan seizes north of Newport on the morrow, ac- ButtsHiii. cording to the agreement. Sullivan did not wait for them, but seeing the command ing position on Butts Hill evacuated, he rightly pushed across the channel and seized it, while at the same time he informed Estaing of his reasons for doing so. The count, not understanding the situation, was somewhat offended at what he deemed undue haste on the part of Sullivan, but thus far nothing had happened to disturb the ex ecution of their scheme. He had only to con tinue landing his troops and blockade the southern end of the island with his fleet, and Sir Robert Pigott was doomed. But the next day Lord Howe appeared off Point Judith, with thirteen ships-of- the-line, seven frigates, and several small vessels, and Estaing, reembarking the troops he had landed on Conanicut, straightway put out to sea to engage him. For two days the hostile fleets manoeuvred for the weather-gage, and just as they were get ting ready for action there came up a terrific storm, which scattered them far and wide. In stead of trying to destroy one another, ss aval Dai 1 16 prevented by each had to bend all his energies to sav- storm. ° ing himself. So fierce was the storm that it was remembered in local tradition as lately MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 77 as 1850 as " the Great Storm." Windows in the town were incrusted with salt blown up in the ocean spray. Great trees were torn up by the roots, and much shipping was destroyed along the coast. It was not until the 20th of August that Es taing brought in his squadron, somewhat damaged from the storm. He now insisted upon going to Boston to refit, in accordance with general instruc tions received from the ministry before leaving home. It was urged in vain by Greene and La fayette that the vessels could be repaired as easily in Narragansett Bay as in Boston har- i,i /-i Estaing goes bour; that by the voyage around Lape to Boston, to /-.i',. .,.,.. . Vi refit his ships. Cod, in his crippled condition, he would only incur additional risk ; that by staying he would strictly fulfil the spirit of his instructions ; that an army had been brought here, and stores collected, in reliance upon his aid ; that if the ex pedition were to be ruined through his failure to cooperate, it would sully the honour of France and give rise to hard feelings in America ; and finally, that even if he felt constrained, in spite of sound arguments, to go and refit at Boston, there was no earthly reason for his taking the 4,000 French soldiers with him. The count was quite disposed to yield to these sensible remon strances, but on calling a council of war he found himself overruled by his officers. Estaing was not himself a naval officer, but a lieutenant-gen eral in the army, and it has been said that the officers of his fleet, vexed at having a land-lubber put over them, were glad of a chance to thwart him in his plans. However this may have been, it 78 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. was voted that the letter of the royal instructions must be blindly adhered to, and so on the 23d Estaing weighed anchor for Boston, taking the land forces with him, and leaving General Sulli van in the lurch. Great was the exasperation in the American camp. Sullivan's vexation found indiscreet ex pression in a general order, in which he hoped the event would prove America " able to procure that by her own arms which her allies refuse to assist in obtaining." But the insubordination of the volunteers now came in to complicate Yeomanry go „ aaa pi i homeindis- the matter. Some 3,000 of them, de spairing of success and impatient at be ing kept from home in harvest time, marched away in disgust and went about their business, thus re ducing Sullivan's army to the same size as that of the enemy. The investment of Newport, by land had already been completed, but the speedy suc cess of the enterprise depended upon a superiority of force, and in case of British reinforcements ar riving from New York the American situation would become dangerous. Upon these grounds, Sullivan, on the 28th, decided to retreat to the strong position at Butts Hill, and await events. Lafayette mounted his horse and rode the seventy miles to Boston in seven hours, to beg his kins man to return as soon as possible. Estaing de spaired of getting his ships ready for many days, but, catching a spa^rk of the young man's enthusi asm, he offered to bring up his troops by land. Fired with fresh hope, the young marquis spurred back as fast as he had come, but when he arrived MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT- 79 on the scene of action all was over. As soon as Sullivan's retreat was perceived the whole British army gave chase. After the Americans had re tired to their lines on Butts Hill, Sir Robert Pigott tried to carry their position by storm, and there ensued an obstinate fight, in which the Battl ( conditions were in many respects sim- ^'"ojpifag ilar to those of Bunker Hill ; but this time the Americans had powder enough, and the British were totally defeated. This slaughter of their brave men was useless. The next day Sulli van received a dispatch from Washington, with the news that Clinton had started from New York with 5,000 men to reinforce Sir Robert Pigott. Under these circumstances, it was rightly thought best to abandon the island. The services of Gen eral Glover, who had taken Washington's army across the East River after the defeat of Long Island, and across the Delaware before the vic tory of Trenton, were called into requi- . . ini i Theenter- sition, and ail the men and stores were prise aban- f erried safely to the mainland ; Lafay ette arriving from Boston just in time to bring off the pickets and covering-parties. The next day Clinton arrived with his 5,000 men, and the siege of Newport was over. The failure of this enterprise excited much in dignation, and seemed to justify the distrust with which so many people regarded the French al liance. In Boston the ill-feeling found vent in a riot on the wharves between French and American sailors, and throughout New England there was 80 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. loud discontent. It required all Washington's tact to keep peace between the ill-yoked allies. When Congress passed a politic resolution approving the course of the French commander, it met with no cordial assent from the people. When, of the French in November, Estaing took his fleet to the West Indies, for purposes solely French, the feeling was one of lively disgust, which was heightened by an indiscreet proclamation of the count inviting the people of Canada to return to their old allegiance. For the American people regarded the work of Pitt as final, and at no time during the war did their feeling against Great Britain rise to such a point as to make them will ing to see the French restored to their old position on this continent. The sagacious Vergennes un derstood this so well that Estaing's proclamation found little favour in his eyes. But it served none the less to irritate the Americans, and especially the people of New England. So far «s the departure of the fleet for the West Indies was concerned, the American complaints were not wholly reasonable ; for the operations of the French in that quarter helped materially to diminish the force which Great Britain could spare for the war in the United States. On the very day of Estaing's departure, Sir Henry Clinton was obliged to send 5,000 men from New York to take part in the West India campaign. This new pres sure put upon England by the necessity of warding off French attack went on increasing. In 1779 England had 314,000 men under arms in various parts of the world, but she had so many points to MONMOUTH AND NEWPORT. 81 defend that it was difficult for her to maintain a sufficient force in America. In the autumn of that year, Sir Henry Clinton did not regard his posi tion in New York as secure enough to justify him any longer in sparing troops for the occupation of Newport, and the island was accordingly stagnation of evacuated. From this time till the end ^^ the of the war, the only point which the states' British succeeded in holding, north of Virginia, was the city of New York. After the Rhode Is land campaign of 1778, no further operations oc curred at the North between the two principal armies which could properly be said to constitute a campaign. Clinton's resources were too slender for him to do anything but hold New York. Wash ington's resources were too slender for him to do anything but sit and watch Clinton. While the two commanders-in-chief thus held each other at bay, the rapid and violent work of the war was going on in the southern states, conducted by sub ordinate officers. During much of this time Wash ington's army formed a cordon about Manhattan Island, from Danbury in Connecticut to Elizabeth- town in New Jersey, and thus blockaded the en emy. But while there were no decisive military operations in the northern states during this pe riod, many interesting and important events oc curred which demand consideration before we go on to treat of the great southern campaigns which ended the war. CHAPTER XI. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. The barbarous border fighting of the Revolu tionary War was largely due to the fact that pow erful tribes of wild Indians still confronted us on every part of our steadily advancing frontier. They would have tortured and scalped our back woodsmen even if we had had no quarrel with George III., and there could be no lasting peace until they were crushed completely. When the war broke out, their alliance with the British was natural, but the truculent spirit which sought to put that savage alliance to the worst uses was something which it would not be fair to ascribe to the British commanders in general; it must be charged to the account of Lord George Germaine and a few unworthy men who were willing to be his tools. In the summer of 1778 this horrible border war fare became the most conspicuous feature of the struggle, and has afforded themes for poetry and romance, in which the figures of the principal actors are seen in a lurid light. One of these fig- , ures is of such importance as to deserve Joseph Brant, . x missionary especial mention. Joseph Brant, or and war-chief. _, x 3 lhayendanegea, was perhaps the great est Indian of whom we have any knowledge ; cer- WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 83 tainly the history of the red men presents no more many-sided and interesting character. A pure- blooded Mohawk, descended from a line of distin guished chiefs,1 in early boyhood he became a fa vourite with Sir William Johnson, and the laughing black eyes of his handsome sister, Molly Brant, so fascinated the rough baronet that he took her to Johnson Hall as his wife, after the Indian fashion. Sir William believed that Indians could be tamed and taught the arts of civilized life, and he laboured with great energy, and not without some success, in this difficult task. The young Thayendanegea was sent to be educated at the school in Lebanon, Connecticut, which was afterwards transferred to New Hampshire and developed into Dartmouth College. At this school he not only became expert in the use of the English language, in which he learned to write with elegance and force, but he also acquired some inkling of general literature and history. He became a member of the Episco pal Church, and after leaving school he was for some time engaged in missionary work among the Mohawks, and translated the Prayer-Book and parts of the New Testament into his native lan guage. He was a man of earnest and serious char acter, and his devotion to the church endured 1 He has been sometimes described incorrectly as a half-breed, and even as a son of Sir William Johnson. His father was a Mo hawk, of the Wolf clan, and son of one of the five chiefs who visited the court of Queen Anne in 1710. The name is sometimes wrongly written " Brandt." The Indian name is pronounced as if written " Thayendanauga," with accent on penult. Brant was not a sachem. His eminence was personal, not official. See Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 103. 84 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. throughout his life. Some years after the peace of 1783, the first Episcopal church ever built in Upper Canada was erected by Joseph Brant, from funds which he had collected for the purpose while on a visit to England. But with this character of devout missionary and earnest student Thayenda negea combined, in curious contrast, the attributes of an Iroquois war-chief developed to the highest degree of efficiency. There was no accomplish ment prized by Indian braves in which he did not outshine all his fellows. He was early called to take the war-path. In the fierce struggle with Pontiac he fought with great distinction on the English side, and at the beginning of the War of Independence he was one of the most conspicuous of Iroquois war-chiefs. It was the most trying time that had ever come to these haughty lords of the wilderness, and called for all the valour and diplomacy which they could summon. Brant was equal to the occasion, and no chieftain ever fought a losing cause with greater spirit than he. We have seen how at Oriskany he came near turning the scale against us in one of the critical moments of a great campaign. From the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna his name became a name of terror. Equally skilful and zealous, now in planning the silent night march and deadly ambush, now in preaching the gospel of peace, he reminds one of some newly re claimed Frisian or Norman warrior of the Carolin- gian age. But in the eighteenth century the in congruity is more striking than in the tenth, in so far as the traits of the barbarian are more vividly WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 85 projected against the background of a higher civil ization. It is odd to think of Thayendanegea, who could outyell any of his tribe on the battlefield, sitting at table with Burke and Sheridan, and be having with the modest grace of au English gentle man. The tincture of civilization he had acquired, moreover, was by no means superficial. Though engaged in many a murderous attack, his conduct was not marked by the ferocity so characteristic of the Iroquois. Though he sometimes approved the slaying of prisoners on grounds of public pol icy, he was flatly opposed to torture, and never would allow it. He often went out of his way to rescue women and children from the tomahawk, and the instances of his magnanimity toward sup pliant enemies were very numerous. At the beginning of the war the influence of the Johnsons had kept all the Six Nations on the side of the Crown, except the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, who were prevailed upon by New England mis sionaries to maintain an attitude of neutrality. The Indians in general were quite incapable of understanding the issue involved in the contest, but Brant had some comprehension of it, and looked at the matter with Tory eyes. J J The Tones of The loyalists in central New York were western New numerous, but the patriot party was the stronger, and such fierce enmities were aroused in this frontier society that most of the Tories were obliged to abandon their homes and flee to the wilds of western New York and Upper Canada, where they made the beginnings of the first Eng lish settlement in that country. There, under 86 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. their leaders, the Johnsons, with Colonel John Butler and his son Walter, they had their head quarters at Fort Niagara, where they were joined by Brant with his Mohawks. Secure in the pos session of that remote stronghold, they made it the starting-point of their frequent and terrible excur sions against the communities which had cast them forth. These rough frontiersmen, many of them Scotch Highlanders of the old stripe, whose raid ing and reaving propensities had been little changed by their life in an American wilderness, were in every way fit comrades for their dusky allies. Clothed in blankets and moccasins, decked with beads and feathers, and hideous in war-paint, it was not easy to distinguish them from the stalwart barbarians whose fiendish cruelties they often imi tated and sometimes surpassed. Border tradition tells of an Indian who, after murdering a young mother with her three children, as they sat by the evening fireside, was moved to pity by the sight of a little infant sweetly smiling at him from its cra dle ; but his Tory comrade picked up the babe with the point of his bayonet, and, as he held it writhing in mid-air, exclaimed, " Is not this also a d — d rebel ? " There are many tales of like im port, and whether always true or not they seem to show the reputation which these wretched men had won. The Tory leaders took less pains than Thay endanegea to prevent useless slaughter, and some of the atrocities permitted by Walter Butler have never been outdone in the history of savage war fare. During the year 1778 the frontier became the WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 87 scene of misery such as had not been witnessed since the time of Pontiac. Early in July there came a blow at which the whole country stood aghast. The valley of Wyoming, situated in northeastern Pennsylvania, where the Susquehanna makes its way through a huge cleft in the mountains, had become celebrated wyomSg^d for the unrivalled fertility and beauty ^r which, like the fatal gift of some un- necticut- friendly power, served only to make it an occasion of strife. The lovely spot lay within the limits of the charter of Connecticut, granted in 1662, accord ing to which that colony or plantation was to ex tend westward to the Pacific Ocean. It also lay within the limits of the charter of 1681, by which the proprietary colony of Pennsylvania had been founded. About one hundred people from Con necticut had settled in Wyoming in 1762, but within a year this little settlement was wiped out in blood and fire by the Delaware Indians. In 1768 some Pennsylvanians began to settle in the valley, but they were soon ousted by a second de tachment of Yankees, and for three years a min iature war was kept up, with varying fortunes, until at last the Connecticut men, under Zebulon Butler and Lazarus Stewart, were victorious. In 1771 the question was referred to the law-officers of the Crown, and the claim of Connecticut was sustained. Settlers now began to come rapidly, — the forerunners of that great New England migra tion which in these latter days has founded so many thriving states in the West. By the year 1778 the population of the valley exceeded 3,000, 88 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. distributed in several pleasant hamlets, with town- meetings, schools and churches, and all the char acteristics of New England orderliness and thrift. Most of the people were from Connecticut, and were enthusiastic and devoted patriots, but in 1776 a few settlers from the Hudson valley had come in, and, exhibiting Tory sympathies, were soon af ter expelled. Here was an excellent opportunity for the loyalist border ruffians to wreak summary vengeance upon their enemies. Here was a settle ment peculiarly exposed in position, regarded with no friendly eyes by its Pennsylvania neighbours, and, moreover, ill provided with defenders, for it had sent the best part of its trained militia to serve in Washington's army. These circumstances did not escape the keen eye of Colonel John Butler, and in June, 1778, he took the war-path from Niagara, with a com pany of his own rangers, a regiment of Johnson's Greens, and a band of Senecas ; in all about 1,200 men. Reaching the Susquehanna, they glided down the swift stream in bark canoes, landed a little above the doomed settlement, and began their work of murder and pillage. Conster- Massacre at . x mi Wyoming, nation filled the valley. The women July 3, 1778. J and children were huddled in a block house, and Colonel Zebulon Butler, with 300 men, went out to meet the enemy. There seemed to be no choice but to fight, though the odds were so desperate. As the enemy came in sight, late in the afternoon of July 3d, the patriots charged upon them, and for about an hour there was a fierce struggle, till, overwhelmed by weight of WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 89 numbers, the little band of defenders broke and fled. Some made their way to the fort, and a few escaped to the mountains, but nearly all were over taken and slain, save such as were reserved for the horrors of the night. The second anniversary of independence was ushered in with dreadful orgies in the valley of Wyoming. Some of the prisoners were burned at the stake, some were laid upon hot embers and held down with pitchforks till they died, some were hacked with knives. Sixteen poor fellows were arranged in a circle, while an old half-breed hag, known as Queen Esther, and supposed to be a granddaughter of the famous Frontenac, danced slowly around the ring, shriek ing a death-song as she slew them one after the other with her tomahawk. The next day, when the fort surrendered, no mora lives were taken, but the Indians plundered and burned all the houses, while the inhabitants fled to the woods or to the nearest settlements on the Lehigh and Delaware, and the vale of Wyo ming was for a time abandoned. Dreadful suffer ings attended the flight. A hundred women and children perished of fatigue and starvation in try ing to cross the swamp, which has since been known to this day as the " Shades of Death." Several children were born in that fearful spot, only to die there with their unhappy mothers. Such horrors needed no exaggeration in the tell ing, yet from the confused reports of the fugitives, magnified by popular rumour, a tale of wholesale slaughter went abroad which was even worse than the reality, but which careful research has long since completely disproved. 90 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The popular reputation of Brant as an incarnate demon rests largely upon the part which he was for merly supposed to have taken in the devastation of Wyoming. But the " monster Brant," who figures so conspicuously in Campbell's celebrated poem, was not even present on this occasion. Thayen danegea was at that time at Niagara. It was not long, however, before he was concerned cherry Vai- in a bloody affair in which Walter Butler was principal. The village of Cherry Valley, in central New York, was de stroyed on the 10th of November by a party of 700 Tories and Indians. All the houses were burned, and about fifty of the inhabitants mur dered, without regard to age or sex.1 Many other atrocious things were done in the course of this year ; but the affairs of Wyoming and Cherry Valley made a deeper impression than any of the others. Among the victims there were many re fined gentlemen and ladies, well known in the northern states, and this was especially the case of Cherry Valley. Washington made up his mind that exemplary vengeance must be taken, and the source of the evil extinguished as far as possible. An army of suiiivan's ex- 5,000 men was sent out in the summer pedition. of m9) with instructions tQ Jay wagte the country of the hostile Iroquois and capture the nest of Tory miscreants at Fort Niagara. The command of the expedition was offered to 1 It has been shown that on this occasion Thayendanegea did what he could to restrain the ferocity of his savage followers. See Stone's Life of Brant, i. 379-381. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 91 Gates, and when he testily declined it, as requir ing too much hard work from a man of his years, it was given to Sullivan. To prepare such an army for penetrating to a depth of four hundred miles through the forest was no light task; and before they had reached the Iroquois country, Brant had sacked the town of Minisink and anni hilated a force of militia sent to oppose him. Yet the expedition was well timed for the purpose of destroying the growing crops of the enemy. The army advanced in two divisions. The right wing, under General James Clinton, proceeded up the valley of the Mohawk as far as Canajoharie, and then turned to the southwest ; while the left wing, under Sullivan himself, ascended the Susquehanna. On the 22d of August the two columns met at Tioga, and one week later they found the enemy at Newtown, on the site of the present town of Elmira, — 1,500 Tories and Indians, led by Sir John Johnson in person, with both the Butlers and Thayendanegea. In the battle which ensued, the enemy was routed with great slausjh- ..... . i , Battle of New- ter, while the American loss was less town, Aug. 29, ' , 1779. than fifty. No further resistance was made, but the army was annoyed in every possible way, and stragglers were now and then caught and tortured to death. On one occasion, a young lieu tenant, named Boyd, was captured while leading a scouting party, and fell into the hands of one of the Butlers, who threatened to give him up to tor ture unless he should disclose whatever he knew of General Sullivan's plans. On his refusal, he was given into the hands of a Seneca demon, 92 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. named Little Beard ; and after being hacked and plucked to pieces with a refinement of cruelty which the pen refuses to describe, his torments were ended by disembowelling. Such horrors served only to exasperate the American troops, and while they do not seem to have taken life unnecessarily, they certainly car ried out their orders with great zeal and thorough ness. The Iroquois tribes were so far advanced in the agricultural stage of development that they were much more dependent upon their crops than upon the chase for subsistence ; and they had be sides learned some of the arts of civilization from their white neighbours. Their long wigwams were beginning to give place to framed houses, Devastation of ,° ' , . . . . ' the iroquois with chimneys ; their extensive fields country. ^ were planted with corn and beans ; and their orchards yielded apples, pears, and peaches in immense profusion. All this prosperity was now brought to an end. From Tioga the Amer ican army marched through the entire country of the Cayugas and Senecas, laying waste the corn fields, burning the houses, and cutting down all the fruit-trees. More than forty villages, the largest containing 128 houses, were razed to the ground. So terrible a vengeance had not over taken the Long House since the days of Frontenac. The region thus devastated had come to be the most important domain of the Confederacy, which never recovered from the blow thus inflicted. The winter of 1779-80 was one of the coldest ever known in America, — so cold that the harbour of New York was frozen solid enough to bear troops WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 93 and artillery,1 while the British in the city, de prived of the aid of their fleet, spent the winter in daily dread of attack. During this extreme season the houseless Cayugas and Senecas were overtaken by famine and pestilence, and the diminution in their numbers was never afterwards made good. The stronghold at Niagara, however, was not wrested from Thayendanegea. That part of Sul livan's expedition was a failure. From increasing sickness among the soldiers and want of proper food, he deemed it impracticable to take his large force beyond the Genesee river, and accordingly he turned back toward the seaboard, arriving in New Jersey at the end of October, after a total march of more than seven hundred miles. Though so much harrying had been done, the snake was only scotched, after all. Nothing short of the complete annihilation of the sav- . Keign of ter- age enemy would have put a stop to his ror in the mo- . , -r, . , . hawk valley. inroads. Before winter was over dire vengeance fell upon the Oneidas, who were now regarded by their brethren as traitors to the Con federacy; they were utterly crushed by Thayen danegea. For two years more the tomahawk and firebrand were busy in the Mohawk valley. It was a reign of terror. Block-houses were erected in every neighbourhood, into which forty or fifty families could crowd together at the first note of alarm. The farmers ploughed and harvested in companies, keeping their rifles within easy reach, while pickets and scouts peered in every direction 1 Cannon were wheeled on the solid ice from Staten Island to the city. See Stone's Life of Brant, ii. 54. 94 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. for signs of the stealthy foe. In battles with the militia, of which there were several, the enemy, with his greatly weakened force, was now gener ally worsted ; but nothing could exceed the bold ness of his raids. On one or two occasions he came within a few miles of Albany. Once a small party of Tories actually found their way into the city, with intent to assassinate General Schuyler, and came ver}r near succeeding. In no other part of the United States did the war entail so much suffering as on the New York border. During the five years ending with 1781, the population of Tryon county was reduced by two thirds of its amount, and in the remaining third there were more than three hundred widows and two thou sand orphan children. This cruel warfare, so damaging to the New York frontier settlements and so fatal to the Six Nations, was really part of a desultory conflict which raged at intervals from north to south along our whole western border, and resulted in the total overthrow of British authority beyond the The wilder- Alleghanies. The vast region between theSAnegha- these mountains and the Mississippi river — a territory more than twice as large as the German Empire — was at that time an almost unbroken wilderness. A few French towns garrisoned by British troops, as at Natchez, Kas- kaskia, and Cahokia on the Mississippi river, at Vincennes, on the Wabash, and at Detroit, suf ficed to represent the sovereignty of George III., and to exercise a very dubious control over the WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 95 wild tribes that roamed through these primeval solitudes. When the thirteen colonies declared themselves independent of the British Crown, the ownership of this western territory was for the moment left undecided. Portions of it were claimed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, on the strength of their old charters or of their relations with the Indian tribes. Little respect, however, was paid to the quaint terminology of charters framed in an age when almost nothing was known of American geography ; and it was virtually left for circumstances to determine to whom the west ern country should belong. It was now very for tunate for the United States that the policy of Pitt had wrested this all-important territory from the French. For to conquer from the British enemy so remote a region was feasible ; but to have sought to obtain it from a power with which we were forming an alliance would have been dif- cult indeed. The commanding approach to this territory was by the town and fortress of Pittsburgh, the " Gate way of the West," from which, through the Ohio river and its tributary streams, an army might penetrate with comparative ease to any part of the vast Mississippi valley. The possession of this gateway had for some years been a sub- Kivairvbe- ject of dispute between Pennsylvania ^^SSi and Virginia. Though the question was Se^osseSon ultimately settled in favour of Pennsyl- °"ortPitt- vania, yet for the present Virginia, which had the longest arm, kept her hold upon the commanding 96 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. citadel. To Virginia its possession was then a matter of peculiar importance, for her population had already begun to overflow its mountain bar riers, and, pressing down the Ohio valley, had made the beginnings of the state of Kentucky. Virginia and North Carolina, lying farther west ward than any of the other old states, were natu rally the first to send colonies across the Allegha- nies. It was not long before the beginning of the war that Daniel Boone had explored the Kentucky river, and that Virginia surveyors had gone down the Ohio as far as the present site of Louisville. Conflicts ensued with the Indians, so fierce and deadly that this region was long known as the " Dark and Bloody Ground." During this troubled period, the hostile feeling between Pennsylvania and Virginia was nourished by the conflicting interests of the people of those two colonies in respect to the western country and its wild inhabitants. The Virginians entered the country as settlers, with intent to take possession of the soil and keep the Indians at a distance ; but there were many people in Pennsylvania who reaped large profits from trade with the savages, and therefore did not wish to see them dispossessed of their border forests and driven westward. The Virginia frontiersmen were angry with the Penn sylvania traders for selling rifles and powder to the redskins, and buying from them horses stolen from white men. This, they alleged, was practi cally inciting the Indians to deeds of plunder and outrage. In the spring of 1774, there seemed to be serious danger of an outbreak of hostilities at WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 97 Fort Pitt, when the attention of Virginia was all at once absorbed in a brief but hard-fought war, which had a most important bearing upon the issue of the American struggle for independence. This border war of 1774 has sometimes been known as " Cresap's War," but more recently, and with less impropriety, as " Lord Dun- more's War." It was conducted under more's war, 1774 the general direction of the Earl of Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia ; and in the political excitement of the time there were some who believed that he actually contrived to stir up the war out of malice aforethought, in order to hamper the Virginians in their impending struggle with the mother- country. Dunniore's agent, or lieutenant, in western Virginia, Dr. John Connolly, was a violent and unscrupulous man, whose arro gance was as likely to be directed against friendly as against hostile Indians, and it was supposed that he acted under the earl's secret orders with intent to bring on a war. But the charge is ill-supported and quite improbable. According to some writers, the true cause of the war was the slaying of the whole family of the friendly chief Logan, and doubtless this event furnished the occasion for the outbreak of hostilities. It was conspicuous in a series of outrages that had been going on for years, such as are always apt to occur on the frontier be tween advancing civilization and resisting barba rism. John Logan, or TagahjutS, was of Cayuga descent, a chief of the Mingos, a brave and honest man, of fine and stately presence. He had always been kind and hospitable to the English settlers, 98 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. perhaps in accordance with the traditional policy of his Iroquois forefathers, — a tradition which by 1774 had lost much of its strength. In April of that year some Indian depredations occurred on the upper Ohio, which led Dr. Connolly to issue instructions, warning the settlers to be on their guard, as an attack from the Shawnees was to be Logan and apprehended. Captain Michael Cresap cresap. wag a pioneer from Maryland, a brave man and sterling patriot ; but as for the Indians, his feelings toward them were like those of most backwoodsmen. Cresap not unnaturally inter preted the instructions from Dunmore's lieutenant as equivalent to a declaration of war, and he pro ceeded forthwith to slay and scalp some friendly Shawnees. As is apt to be the case with reprisals and other unreasoning forms of popular vengeance, the blow fell in the wrong quarter, and innocent people were made scapegoats for the guilty. Cre sap's party next started off to attack Logan's camp at Yellow Creek ; but presently bethinking them selves of Logan's well-known friendliness toward the whites, as they argued with one another, they repented of their purpose, and turned their steps in another direction. But hard by the Mingo encampment a wretch named Greathouse had set up a whiskey shop, and thither, on the last day of April, repaired Logan's family, nine thirsty bar barians, male and female, old and young. When they had become dead drunk, Greathouse and two or three of his cronies illustrated their peculiar view of the purport of Connolly's instructions by butchering them all in cold blood. The Indians WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 99 of the border needed no stronger provocation for rushing to arms. Within a few days Logan's men had taken a dozen scalps, half of them from young children. Mingos and Shawnees were joined by Wyandots, Delawares, and Senecas, and the dis mal tale of blazing cabins and murdered women was renewed all along the frontier. It was in vain that Lord Dunmore and his lieutenant disclaimed responsibility for the massacre at Yellow Creek. The blame was by all the Indians and many of the whites laid upon Cresap, whose name has been handed down to posterity as that of the arch-villain in this rough border romance. The pathetic speech of the bereaved Logan to Dunmore's envoy, John Gibson, was preserved and immortalized by Jeffer son in his " Notes on Virginia," and has been de claimed by thousands of American school-boys. In his comments Jefferson spoke of Cresap as " a man infamous for the many murders he had committed upon these injured people." Jefferson here simply gave voice to the tradition which had started into full life as early as June, 1774, when Sir William Johnson wrote that " a certain Mr. Cressop had trepanned and murdered forty Indians on the Ohio, . . . and that the unworthy author of this wanton act is fled." The charge made by Jefferson was answered at the time, but continued to live on in tradition, until finally disposed of in 1851 by Brantz Mayer.1 The origin of the misconception is doubtless to be traced to the insignificance of 1 In a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society. See also his Logan and Cresap, Albany, 1867. The story is well told by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, in his admirable book, The Winning 100 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Greathouse. In trying to shield himself, Connolly deposed Cresap from command, but ha was pres ently reinstated by Lord Dunmore. In June of the next year, Captain Cresap marched to Cambridge at the head of 130 Maryland rifle men ; but during the early autumn he was seized with illness, and while making his way homeward Death of died at New York, at the age of thirty- Cresap. three. His grave is still to be seen in Trinity churchyard, near the door of the north transept. The Indian chief with whose name his has so long been associated was some time after wards tomahawked by a brother Indian, in the course of a drunken affray. The war thus ushered in by the Yellow Creek massacre was an event of cardinal importance in the history of our western frontier. It was ended by the decisive battle at Point Pleasant, on the Great Kanawha (October 10, 1774), in which the Indians, under the famous Shawnee chief Corn stalk, were totally defeated by the backwoodsmen under Andrew Lewis. This defeat so cowed the Battle of Indians that they were fain to purchase mdttfcor!^' peace by surrendering all their claims quences. upon the hunting-grounds south of the Ohio. It kept the northwestern tribes compara tively quiet during the first two years of the Revo lutionary War, and thus opened the way for white settlers to rush into Kentucky. The four years of the West, New York, 1889. Though I leave the present chap ter mainly as it was written in 1883, I have, in revising it for publication, derived one or two valuable hints from Mr. Roose velt's work. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 101 following the battle of Point Pleasant saw remark able and portentous changes on the frontier. It was just at the beginning of Lord Dunmore's war that Parliament passed the Quebec Act, of which the practical effect, had it ever been enforced, would have been the extension of Canada south ward to the Ohio river. In contravention of old charters, it would have deprived the American colonies of the great northwestern territory. But the events that followed upon Lord Dunmore's war soon rendered this part of the Quebec Act a nullity. In 1775, Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased from the Cherokees the tract between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers, and at the same time Boonesborough and Harrodsburg were founded by Daniel Boone and James settlement of Harrod. As a party of these bold back- Kentucky ; woodsmen were encamping near the sources of the southern fork of the Licking, they heard the news of the victory which ushered in the War of Inde pendence, and forthwith gave the name of Lex ington to the place of their encampment, on which a thriving city now stands. These new settle ments were not long in organizing themselves into a state, which they called Transylvania. Courts were instituted, laws enacted, and a militia en rolled, and a delegate was sent to the Continental Congress ; but finding that Virginia still claimed their allegiance, they yielded their pretensions to autonomy, and were organized for the present as a county of the mother state. The so-called " county " of Kentucky, comprising the whole of 102 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. the present state of that name, with an area one fourth larger than that of Scotland, was indeed of formidable dimensions for a county. The settlement of Tennessee was going on at and of eastern the same time. The movement of pop- Tennessee. ulati0n for some time had a southwest- ward trend along the great valleys inclosed by the Appalachian ranges, so that frontiersmen from Pennsylvania found their way down the Shenan doah, and thence the stream of Virginian migra tion reached the Watauga, the Holston, and the French Broad, in the midst of the most magnifi cent scenery east of the Rocky Mountains. At the same time there was a westward movement from North Carolina across the Great Smoky range, and the defeat of the Regulators by Gov ernor Tryon at the battle of the Alamance in 1771 no doubt did much to give strength and volume to this movement. The way was prepared in 1770 by James Robertson, who penetrated the wilder ness as far as the banks of the Watauga. Forts were soon erected there and on the Nolichucky. The settlement grew apace, and soon came into conflict with the most warlike and powerful of the southern tribes of Indians. The Cherokees, like the Iroquois at the North, had fought on the Eng lish side in the Seven Years' War, and had ren dered some service, though of small value, at the capture of Fort Duquesne. Early in the Revolu tionary War fierce feuds with the encroaching set tlers led them to take sides with the British, and in company with Tory guerrillas they ravaged the frontier. In 1776, the Watauga settlement was WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 103 attacked, and invasions were made into Georgia and South Carolina. But the blow re coiled upon the Cherokees. Their cherokeeson , i-i , i e the Watauga. country was laid waste by troops from the Carolinas, under Andrew Williamson and Griffith Rutherford; their attack upon the Wa tauga settlement was defeated by James Robert son and John Sevier; and in 1777 they were forced to make treaties renouncing for the most part their claims upon the territory between the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers. Robertson and Sevier were the most commanding and picturesque figures in Tennessee history until Andrew Jackson came upon the scene ; and their military successes, moreover, like those of " Old Hickory," were of the utmost importance to the whole country. This was especially true of their victory at the Watauga ; for had the settlement there been swept away by the savages, Its con8e. it would have uncovered the great iuences- Wilderness Road to Lexington and Harrodsburg, and the Kentucky settlement, thus fatally iso lated, would very likely have had to be abandoned. The Watauga victory thus helped to secure in 1776 the ground won two years before at the Great Kanawha.1 Such were the beginnings of Kentucky and Ten nessee, and such was the progress already made to the west of the mountains, when the next „ „ ' George Kogers and longest step was taken by George Clark- Rogers Clark. During the years 1776 and 1777, 1 This point has been well elucidated by Mr. Roosevelt in his Winning of the West, vol. i. pp. 240, 306. 104 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was busily engaged in preparing a gen eral attack of Indian tribes upon the northwest ern frontier. Such concerted action among these barbarians was difficult to organize, and the moral effect of Lord Dunmore's war doubtless served to postpone it. There were isolated assaults, how ever, upon Boonesborough and Wheeling and in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. While Hamil ton was thus scheming and intriguing, a gallant young Virginian was preparing a most effective counter - stroke. In the late autumn of 1777, George Rogers Clark, then just twenty-five years old, was making his way back from Kentucky along the Wilderness Road, and heard with exul tation the news of Burgoyne's surrender. Clark was a man of bold originality. He had been well educated by that excellent Scotch school-master, Donald Robertson, among whose pupils was James Madison. In 1772, Clark was practising the pro fession of a land surveyor upon the upper Ohio, and he rendered valuable service as a scout in the campaign of the Great Kanawha. For skill in woodcraft, as for indomitable perseverance and courage, he had few equals. He was a man of picturesque and stately presence, like an old Norse viking, tall and massive, with ruddy cheeks, au burn hair, and piercing blue eyes sunk deep under thick yellow brows. When he heard of the " convention " of Sara toga, Clark was meditating a stroke as momentous in the annals of the Mississippi valley as Bur goyne's overthrow in the annals of the Hudson. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 105 He had sent spies through the Illinois country, without giving them any inkling of his purpose, and from what he could gather from their reports he had made up his mind that by a ciark's con- bold and sudden movement the whole Northwestern region could be secured and the British territory' 1778' commander checkmated. On arriving in Virginia, he laid his scheme before Governor Patrick Henry ; and Jefferson, Wythe, and Madison were also taken into his confidence. The plan met with warm approval ; but as secrecy and dispatch were indis pensable, it would not do to consult the legislature, and little could be done beyond authorizing the adventurous young man to raise a force of 350 men and collect material of war at Pittsburgh. People supposed that his object was merely to de fend the Kentucky settlements. Clark had a hard winter's work in enlisting men, but at length in May, 1778, having collected a flotilla of boats and a few pieces of light artillery, he started from Pittsburgh with 180 picked riflemen, and rowed swiftly down the Ohio river a thousand miles to its junction with the Mississippi. The British garrison at Kaskaskia had been removed, to strengthen the posts at Detroit'and Niagara, and the town was an easy prey. Hiding his boats in a creek, Clark marched across the prairie, and seized the place without resistance. The French inhab itants were not ill-disposed toward the change, especially when they heard of the new alliance between the United States and Louis XVI., and Clark showed consummate skill in playing upon their feelings. Cahokia and two other neighbour- 106 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. ing villages were easily persuaded to submit, and the Catholic priest Gibault volunteered to carry Clark's proposals to Vincennes, on the Wabash ; upon receiving the message this important post likewise submitted. As Clark had secured the friendship of the Spanish commandant at St. Louis, he felt secure from molestation for the present, and sent a party home to Virginia with the news of his bloodless conquest. The territory north of the Ohio was thus annexed to Virginia as the " county " of Illinois, and a force of 500 men was raised for its defence. When these proceedings came to the ears of Colonel Hamilton at Detroit, he started out with a little army of about 500 men, regulars, Tories, and Indians, and after a march of seventy days through the primeval forest reached Vincennes, and took possession of it. He spent the winter intriguing with the Indian tribes, and threatened the Spanish governor at St. Louis with dire vengeance if he should lend aid or countenance to the nefarious proceedings of the American rebels. Meanwhile, the crafty Virginian was busily at work. Sending a few boats, with light artillery and provisions, to ascend the Ohio and Wabash, Clark started over- „ t „ land from Kaskaskia with 130 men ; Capture of vincennes, and after an arduous winter march of i) GO. — >>, l i i J. sixteen days across the drowned lands in what is now the state of Illinois, he appeared before Vincennes in time to pick up his boats and cannon. In the evening of February 23d the town sarrendered, and the townspeople willingly assisted in the assault upon the fort. After a brisk can- WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 107 nonade and musket-fire for twenty hours, Hamilton surrendered at discretion, and British authority in this region was forever at an end.1 An expedition descending from Pittsburgh in boats had already captured Natchez and ousted the British from the lower Mississippi. Shortly after, the Cherokees and other Indians whom Hamilton had incited to take the war-path were overwhelmed by Colonel Shelby, and on the upper Ohio and Alleghany the Indian country was so thoroughly devastated by Colonel Brodhead that all along the frontier there reigned a profound peace, instead of the carnival of burning and scalping which the British com mander had contemplated. The stream of immigration now began to flow steadily. Fort Jefferson was established on the Mississippi river to guard the mouth of the Ohio. Another fortress, higher up on the beautiful river which La Salle had discovered and Clark had con quered, became the site of Louisville, so named in honour of our ally, the French king. James Rob ertson again appeared on the scene, and became the foremost pioneer in middle middle Ten- * nessee. Tennessee, as he had already led the colonization of the eastern part of that great state. On a bold bluff on the southern bank of the Cum berland river, Robertson founded a city, which took its name from the gallant General Nash, who fell in the battle of Germantown ; and among the cities of the fair South there is to-day none more thriving than Nashville. Thus by degrees was our 1 Mr. Roosevelt's account of Clark's expedition (vol. ii. pp. 31— 90) is extremely graphic and spirited. 108 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. grasp firmly fastened upon the western country, and year by year grew stronger. In the gallery of our national heroes, George Rogers Clark deserves a conspicuous and honoura ble place. It was due to his boldness and sagacity that when our commissioners at Paris, in 1782, were engaged in their difficult and del- importance of . i c 1 Clark's con- icate work of thwarting our not too quest. friendly French ally, while arranging terms of peace with the British enemy, the fortified posts on the Mississippi and the Wabash were held by American garrisons. Possession is said to be nine points in the law, and while Spain and France were intriguing to keep us out of the Mississippi valley, we were in possession of it. The military enterprise of Clark was crowned by the diplomacy of Jay.1 The four cardinal events in the history of our western frontier during the Revolution are : (1) the defeat of the Shawnees and their allies at Point Pleasant in 1774; (2) the defeat of the Cherokees on the Watauga in 1776 ; (3) Clark's conquest of the Illinois country in 1778-79 ; (4) the detection and thwarting of the French diplo macy in 1782 by Jay. When Washington took command of the Continental army at Cambridge, in 1775, the population and jurisdiction of the thirteen united commonwealths scarcely reached beyond the Alleghanies ; it was due to the series of events here briefly recounted that when he laid down his command at Annapolis, in 1783, the domain of the independent United States was bounded on the west by the Mississippi river. 1 See my Critical Period of American History, chap. i. WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 109 Clark's last years were spent in poverty and obscurity at his sister's home, near Louisville, where he died in 1818. It was his younger brother, William Clark, who in company with Meriwether Lewis made the famous expedition to the Columbia river in 1804, thus giving the United States a hold upon Oregon. To return to our story, — Lord George Ger- maine's plan for breaking the spirit of the Amer icans, in so far as it depended upon the barbarous aid which his Indian allies could render, had not thus far proved very successful. Terrible damage had been wrought on the frontier, especially in Pennsylvania and New York, but the net result had been to weaken the Indians and loosen the hold of the British upon the continent, while the American position was on the whole Marauding ex- strengthened. The warfare which the peditions- British themselves conducted in the north after the Newport campaign, degenerated into a series of marauding expeditions unworthy of civilized soldiers. They seem to have learned a bad lesson from their savage allies. While Sir Henry Clin ton's force was beleaguered in New York, he now and then found opportunities for detaching some small force by sea, to burn and plunder defence less villages on the coast, in accordance with Lord George's instructions. During the autumn of 1778 the pretty island of Martha's Vineyard was plundered from end to end, the towns of New Bed ford and Fair Haven, with all the shipping in their harbours, were burned, and similar havoc 110 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. was wrought on the coast of New Jersey. At Old Tappan some American dragoons, asleep in a barn, were captured by Sir Charles Grey's troops, — and thirty-seven of them were bayoneted in cold blood. Fifty-five light infantry belonging to Pulaski's le gion were similarly surprised at night by Captain Ferguson and all but five were massacred. In May, 1779, General Mathews was sent with 2,500 men to Virginia, where he sacked the towns of Portsmouth and Norfolk, with cruelties worthy of a mediaeval freebooter. Every house was burned to the ground, many unarmed citizens were mur dered, and delicate ladies were abandoned to the diabolical passions of a brutal soldiery. In July the enterprising Tryon conducted a raiding expe dition along the coast of Connecticut. At New Haven he burned the ships in the harbour and two or three streets of warehouses, and slew sev eral citizens ; his intention was to burn the whole „_ , town, but the neighbouring: yeomanry Tryon's pro- . _ ° ° J J ceedings,Juiy, quickly s warmed in and drove the Brit ish to their ships. Next day the British landed at Fairfield and utterly destroyed it. Next they burned Green Farms and then Norwalk. After this, just as they were about to proceed against New London, they were suddenly recalled to New York by bad news. In so far as these barbarous raids had any as signable military purpose, it was hoped that they might induce Washington to weaken his force at the Highlands by sending troops into Connecticut to protect private property and chastise the ma rauders. After the destruction of the Highland WAR ON THE FRONTIER. Ill forts in October, 1777, the defence of this most important position had been entrusted to the pow erful fortifications lately erected at West Point. A little lower down the river two small but very strong forts, at Stony Point on the right bank and at Verplanck's Point on the tm-es the for- i /. iii i tt« tress at Stony left, guarded the entrance to the High- Point, May 31, lands. While the fort at Stony Point was building, Sir Henry Clinton came up the river and captured it, and then, with the aid of its bat teries, subdued the opposite citadel also. Stony Point was a rocky promontory washed on three sides by the waters of the Hudson. It was sepa rated from the mainland by a deep morass, over which ran a narrow causeway that was covered at high tide, but might be crossed when the water was low. This natural stronghold was armed with heavy batteries which commanded the morass, with its causeway, and the river ; and the British gar risoned it with six hundred men, and built two additional lines of fortification, rendering it well- nigh impregnable. The acquisition of this spot seemed like the auspicious beginning of a summer campaign for Clinton's army, which had been cooped up in New York ever since the battle of Monmouth. To have kept on and captured West Point would have gone a long way toward retrieving the disas ter of Saratoga, but Washington's force was so well disposed that Clinton did not venture to at tempt so much as this. Such hopes, moreover, as he may have based upon the Connecticut raids proved entirely delusive. Washington's method 112 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. of relieving Connecticut and destroying Clinton's scheme was different from what was expected. Among his generals was one whom the soldiers called " Mad Anthony " for his desperate bravery, but there was much more method than madness about Anthony Wayne. For the union of impet uous valour with a quick eye and a cool head, he was second to none. Twelve hundred light infan try were put at his disposal. Every dog within three miles was slaughtered, that no indiscreet bark might alarm the garrison. Not a gun was loaded, lest some untimely shot betray the ap proaching column. The bayonet was now to be put to more warlike use than the roasting of meat before a camp-fire. At midnight of the 15th of July the Americans crossed the causeway at low tide, and were close upon the outworks before their advance was discovered. The garrison sprang to arms, and a heavy fire was opened from the bat teries, but Wayne's rush was rapid and The storming , . i . of stony Point, sure. In two solid columns the Amer- July 16, 1779. . icans came up the slope so swiftly that the grape - shot made few victims. Shoulder to shoulder, in resistless mass, like the Theban pha lanx of Epaminondas, they pressed over the works, heedless of obstacles, and within a few minutes the garrison surrendered at discretion. In this assault the Americans lost fifteen killed, and eighty-three wounded, and the British sixty-three killed. The rest of the garrison, 553 in number, including the wounded, were made prisoners, and not a man was killed in cold blood, though the shameful scenes in Virginia were fresh in men's memories, and WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 113 the embers of Fairfield and Norwalk still smoul dered. The contemporary British historian Sted man praises Wayne for his humanity, and thinks that he "would have been fully justified in put ting the garrison to the sword ; " but certainly no laws or usages of war that have ever obtained in America would have justified such a barbarous proceeding, and Stedman's remark simply bears unconscious testimony to the higher degree of hu manity which American civilization had reached as compared with the civilization of Europe. The capture of Stony Point served the desired purpose of relieving Connecticut, but the Amer icans held it but three days. Clinton Evacuation of at once drew his forces together and stonyp°int- came up the Hudson, hoping to entice Washing ton into risking a battle for the sake of keep ing his hold upon Stony Point. But Washington knew better than to do so. In case of defeat he would run risk of losing the far more important position at West Point. He was not the man to hazard his main citadel for the sake of an out post. Finding that it would take more men than he could spare to defend Stony Point against a combined attack by land and water he ordered it to be evacuated. The works were all destroyed, and the garrison, with the cannon and stores, with drawn into the Highlands. Sir Henry took pos session of the place and held it for some time, but did not venture to advance against Washington. To give the British general a wholesome sense of his adversary's vigilance, a blow was struck in an unexpected quarter. At Paulus Hook, on the site 114 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. of the present Jersey City, the British had a very strong fort. The "Hook" was a long low neck of land reaching out into the Hudson. exploit at A sandy isthmus, severed by a barely Paulus Hook. .... , , . .,, ., fordable creek, connected it with the mainland. Within the line of the creek, a deep ditch had been dug across the whole isthmus, and this could only be crossed by means of a draw bridge. Within the ditch were two lines of in- trenchments. The place was garrisoned by 500 men, but relying on the strength of their works and their distance from the American lines, the garrison had grown somewhat careless. This fact was made known to Washington by Major Henry Lee, who volunteered to surprise the fort. On the night of the 18th of August, at the head of 300 picked men, Lee crossed the creek which divided Paulus Hook from the mainland. A foraging ex pedition had been sent out in the course of the day, and as the Americans approached they were at first mistaken by the sentinels for the foragers returning. Favoured by this mistake, they sur mounted all the obstacles and got possession of the fort in a twinkling. Alarm guns, quickly an swered by the ships in the river and the forts on the New York side, warned them to retreat as fast as they had come, but not until Lee had secured 159 prisoners, whom he carried off safely to the Highlands, losing of his own men only two killed and three wounded. This exploit, worthy of the good Lord James Douglas, has no military signifi cance save for its example of skill and boldness ; but it deserves mention for the personal interest WAR ON THE FRONTIER. 115 which must ever attach to its author. In the youthful correspondence of Washington mention is made of a " Lowland Beauty " for whom he en tertained an unrequited passion. This lady mar ried a member of the illustrious Virginian family to which Richard Henry Lee belonged. Her son, the hero of Paulus Hook, was always a favourite with Washington, and for his dashing exploits in the later years of the revolutionary war became endeared to the American people as " Light Horse Harry." His noble son, Robert Edward Lee, must be ranked among the foremost generals of modern times. CHAPTER XII. WAR ON THE OCEAN. Until the war of independence the Americans had no navy of their own, such maritime expedi tions as that against Louisburg having been un dertaken with the aid of British ships. When the war broke out, one of the chief advantages pos sessed by the British, in their offensive Importance of . ... i p the control of operations, was their entire control of the water. . , . at i the American waters. JNot only were all the coast towns exposed to their sudden attack, but on the broad deep rivers they were some times able to penetrate to a considerable distance inland, and by means of their ships they could safely transport men and stores from point to point. Their armies always rested upon the fleets as bases of operations, and soon lost their efficiency when severed from these bases. General Howe was not safe in Philadelphia until his brother had gained control of the Delaware river, and Bur goyne's army invited capture as soon as its con nection with the lakes was cut off. From first to last, the events of the war illustrated this depen dence of the army upon the fleet. On the retreat from Lexington, it was only the ships that finally saved Lord Percy's weary troops from capture ; at Yorktown, it was only the momentary loss of WAR ON THE OCEAN. 117 naval superiority that made escape impossible for Cornwallis. For want of a navy, General Wash ington could not hold the island of New York in 1776 ; and for a like reason, in 1778, after the enemy had been reduced to the defensive, he could not prudently undertake its recapture. It was through lack of effective naval aid that the New port expedition failed ; and the atrocities of 1779, in Virginia and Connecticut, bore sad testimony to the defenceless condition of our coasts. Early in the war this crying want was earnestly considered by Congress, and efforts were made to repair it by the construction of a navy and the equipment of private cruisers. But the construc tion of a regular navy, which alone could serve the purpose, was beset with even greater difficulties than those which attended the organization of a permanent army. There was, indeed, no lack of good material, whether for ships or for seamen. New England, in particular, with its great length of seacoast and its extensive fisheries, had always possessed a considerable merchant marine, and nourished a hardy race of seafaring people. How formidable they could become in naval warfare, Great Britain was destined, nearly forty years after ward, to find out, to her astonishment and chagrin. But the absence of a central government was even more seriously felt in naval than in military affairs. The action of Congress was feeble, un- Feebie action inteUigent, and vacillating. The " ma- oiCo^ew- rine committees," " navy boards," and ".boards of admiralty," to which the work of creating a navy was entrusted, were so often changed in their com- 118 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. position and in their functions that it was difficult for any piece of work to be carried out in accord ance with its original design. As there was a total absence of system in the department of ad miralty, so there was utter looseness of discipline in the service. There were the same wranglings about rank as in the army, and the consequences were even more pernicious. It was difficult to enlist good crews, because of the uncertainty aris ing from the general want of system. The risks encountered were excessive, because of the over whelming preponderance of the enemy from the outset. Of thirteen new cruisers laid down in the autumn of 1775, only six ever succeeded in getting out to sea. During the war one ship-of-the-line was built, — the America 74; but she was given to the king of France while yet on the stocks. Between 1775 and 1783, there were twenty small frigates and twenty-one sloops-of-war in the ser vice. Of these, fifteen frigates and ten sloops-of- war were either captured by the enemy, or de stroyed to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands. The armaments of these ships were very light ; the largest of them, the Bon Homme Rich ard, was constructed for a thirty-eight, but her heaviest guns were only twelve-pounders. Yet in spite of this light force, weak discipline, and unsteady management, the little American navy did some very good work in the course of the American and war, and it was efficiently helped by a British cruis- mu]titude of private cruisers, just as the Continental army often got valuable aid from the militia. Before the French alliance WAR ON THE OCEAN. 119 more than six hundred British vessels had fallen prey to the American cruisers, and so venture some were these swift little craft that they even hovered around the coast of England, and merchant vessels going from one British port to another needed the protection of a convoy. During the same period, about nine hundred American vessels were taken by British cruisers ; so that the damag ing power of the American marine seems to have amounted to about two thirds that of such part of the British marine as could be devoted to the injury of American shipping. The damage inflicted upon the Americans was the more serious, for it well- nigh ruined the New England fisheries and the coasting trade. On the other hand, the American cruisers caused marine insurance in England to rise to a far higher point than had ever before been known ; and we learn from a letter of Silas Deane to Robert Morris that, shortly before the alliance between France and the United States, the docks on the Thames were crowded with French vessels loading with British goods that sought the shelter of a neutral flag. In one respect the value of this work of the American cruisers was incalculable. It familiar ized Europe with the sight of the American flag in European waters. It was of great importance that Europe should think of the new republic not as merely the theme of distant rumours, but as a maritime power, able to defend itself within sight of the British coasts ; and in this re- Wicke8 and spect it would be difficult to overrate the conyngham. services rendered by the heroic captains who first 120 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. carried the stars and stripes across the ocean, and bearded the lion in his native lair. Of these gal lant fellows, Lambert Wiekes was the first, and his ship, the Reprisal 16, was the first American war vessel to visit the eastern shores of the Atlantic. After a brilliant cruise in the summer of 1777, she foundered off the banks of Newfoundland, with the loss of all on board. Next came Gustavus Conyngham, with the Surprise and the Revenge, which in the same summer took so many prizes in the North Sea and the British Channel that insur ance rose as high as twenty-five per cent., and in some instances ten per cent, was demanded for the short passage between Dover and Calais. But the fame of both these captains was soon eclipsed by „ , T that of John Paul Jones, a Scotch sailor, Paul Jones. ' who from boyhood had been engaged in the Virginia trade, and in 1773 had gone to Vir ginia to live. When war broke out Jones offered his services to Congress, and in October, 1776, his name appears as eighteenth in the list of captains in the new navy. From the outset he was distin guished for skill and bravery, and in 1778, being then thirty years old, he was sent, with the Ranger 18, to prowl about the British coasts. In this little ship he made a successful cruise in the Irish Channel, burned some of the shipping in the port of Whitehaven, in Cumberland, and in a fierce fight off Carrickfergus captured the British sloop- of-war Drake 20 ; losing only eight men in killed and wounded, while the Drake lost forty-two. With the Drake and several merchant prizes, Jones made his way to Brest, and sent the Ran- WAR ON THE OCEAN. 121 ger home to America, while he remained to take command of a more considerable expedition that was fitting out for the following year. Along with the other duties of Franklin, as minister of the United States at the French court, Franklin's was joined a general superintendence of SSS™ °f maritime affairs. He was a sort of afiairs' agent plenipotentiary of Congress in all matters relating to the navy. He had authority from Con gress to issue letters of marque, and exercised it freely, while imposing restrictions that were char acteristic of his magnanimous spirit. In 1779, he issued instructions to all American cruisers that, in whatsoever part of the sea they might happen to meet the great discoverer Captain Cook, they were to forget the temporary quarrel in which they were fighting, and not merely suffer him to pass unmo lested, but offer him every aid and service in their power ; since it would ill beseem Americans to lift their hands against one who had earned the rever ence and gratitude of all mankind. So in the in structions given to Paul Jones, he ordered him not to burn defenceless towns on the British coast ex cept in case of military necessity, and in such case he was to give notice, so that the women and chil dren, with the sick and aged inhabitants, might be removed betimes. The expedition of which Paul Jones took com mand in the summer of 1779 was designed for a signal "demonstration" upon the coasts of Great Britain. The object of the British raids in Vir ginia and Connecticut was partly to terrify the Americans by a bold and savage assertion of the 122 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. ubiquity of British power. The expedition of Paul Jones was to serve as a sort of counter-irri tant. The confused and indefinite character of the American naval service at that time could not have a better illustration than is to be found in the , details of the little squadron with which Jones's squad- J- ron. ne was called upon to undertake his perilous task. The flagship was an old Indiaman named the Duras, purchased by the French gov ernment and fitted up for the occasion. In com pliment to the author of Poor Richard's maxims, her name was changed to the Bon Homme Rich ard. She was an exceedingly clumsy affair, with swelling bows and a tower-like poop such as char acterized the ships of the seventeenth century. She was now pierced for a thirty-eight-gun frigate. but as there was delay in procuring the eighteen- pounders suited for such a craft, her main deck was armed with twelve-pounders instead. In the gun-room below, Captain Jones had twelve port holes cut, in which he mounted six old eighteens, that could be shifted from side to side as occasion required. Leaving these eighteens out of the ac count, the force of the Bon Homme Richard was about equal to that of a thirty-two-gun frigate. This singular vessel was manned by a crew as non descript as herself, — a motley gang of sailors and marines from nearly every country in Europe, with half a dozen Malays into the bargain. To these a hundred New England men were afterwards added, bringing up the whole number to 380. For this flagship three consorts were supplied, under the direction of the French government. The Pallas, WAR ON THE OCEAN. 123 a merchant vessel pierced for the occasion, was thus transformed into a thirty-two-gun frigate ; the Vengeance and Cerf were of smaller calibre. All these ships were French built. To these Franklin added the Alliance 32, which happened to be in a French port at the time. The Alliance, lately built at Salisbury, in Massachusetts, and named in honour of the treaty between France and the United States, was a swift and beautiful ship, one of the finest in the American navy. Unfortu nately, it was thought desirable to pay a further compliment to our new allies by appointing a French captain to command her, and this step gave rise to so much discontent and insubordination as well- nigh to destroy her efficiency. Nor had Captain Landais done anything to merit such distinction; he was simply an adventurer, seeking notoriety in the American service. The ships in this motley squadron were not pri vateers. The Alliance was a regular member of our navy. The French-built ships were regarded as loaned to the United States, and were to resume their French nationality after the termination of the cruise; but they were all duly commissioned by Franklin, under the powers delegated to him by Congress. For the time being, they Jmes,8 cr?;se were part of the American navy and ™a*e British subject to its regulations. Their com modore, Paul Jones, has often been spoken of as a privateer, sometimes as a pirate, but he was as much a regular captain in our navy as Greene was a regular general in our army. Though, however, there could be no doubt as to the legitimate naval 124 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. character of the expedition, a more ill-assorted or disorderly squadron was perhaps never sent to sea. The summer was spent in cruising about the Brit ish coasts, and many prizes were taken ; but the insubordination of the French commanders was so gross that during a large part of the time the ships were scattered in all directions, and Jones was left to cruise alone. On the 17th of September, hav ing got his fleet together, he entered the Frith of Forth, and came within gunshot of Leith, which he intended to attack and capture. Sir Walter Scott, then a school-boy at Edinburgh, has given, in the introduction to " Waverley," a graphic de scription of the excitement which was felt upon that occasion. But, as Scott says, " a steady and powerful west wind settled the matter by sweeping Paul Jones and his vessels out of the Frith of Forth." Four days later, the Bon Homme Rich ard and the Vengeance entered the river Humber, and destroyed several vessels. On the 23d, the Alliance and Pallas having come up, a British fleet He meets a of forty sail was descried off Flambor- off Fiambor- ough Head. They were merchant ves- ough Head. gejg jj0unc} f or tne Baltic, under convoy of the Serapis 44, Captain Pearson, and the Count ess of Scarborough 20, Captain Piercy. Captain Jones instantly gave chase, ordering his consorts to follow and form in line of battle ; but the Alli ance disobeyed and ran off to some distance, for a time disconcerting the Pallas, which could not understand the discrepancy between the signals and the movements. The British merchant ships crowded all sail to get out of the way, but the WAR ON THE OCEAN. 125 two frigates accepted Jones's challenge, and came up to fight. The Countess of Scarborough was very inferior in size and armament to the Pallas, while on the other hand the Serapis was much more powerful than the Bon Homme Richard. She was a two-decker, mounting twenty eighteen- pounders below, and twenty nine-pounders above, with ten six-pounders on her quarter-deck and fore castle; so that she could throw 300 pounds of metal on a broadside. The Bon Homme Richard, with her six eighteens, could indeed throw 312 pounds on a broadside, but her weight of metal was very badly distributed among light guns. Without her eighteens, she could throw only 204 pounds on a broadside, being thus inferior to her opponent by one third. The Serapis had a crew of 320 well- trained British sailors, and she was a new and fast ship, perfect in all her appointments. The fight began at half past seven o'clock, on a dark, cloudy evening, in very smooth water. The two principal opponents delivered their entire broadsides at the same moment. At this first fire, two of the old eighteens in the American frigate burst, killing a dozen men. After this disaster, no one had confidence enough in such guns to fire them again, so that the Bon Homme Richard was at once reduced to two thirds the force of her antagonist, and in ordinary fight between the . . a i • l Serapis and must soon have been overcome. A brisk the Bon . » . Homme Rich- cannonade was kept up tor an hour, ard, sept. 23, while the two ships manoeuvred for a raking position. The Serapis, being much the bet ter sailer, was passing across her adversary's bows, 126 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. with very little elbow-room, when Jones succeeded in running his vessel into her just aft of her weather beam. For a moment all firing ceased on both ships, and Captain Pearson called out, " Have you struck your colours?" "I have not yet begun to fight," replied Captain Jones. For a moment the ships separated, the Serapis running ahead al most in a line with the Bon Homme Richard. The Serapis now put her helm hard down and was box- hauled, in order to luff up athwart her adversary's bow, and thus regain her raking position ; but the Bon Homme Richard changed her tack, and pres ently, in a dense cloud of smoke, the two ships came together again, the British bowsprit passing over the high old-fashioned poop of the American vessel. This was just what Jones desired, and as he stood there on his quarter-deck he seized a stout rope, and lashed the enemy's jib-boom to his miz- zen-mast. Thus tied fast, the pressure of the light wind brought the ships alongside, the head of the one lying opposite the stern of the other. Grap- pling-hooks were now thrown into the quarter of the Serapis, and with repeated lashings fore and aft the two monsters were held together in deadly embrace. So close did they lie that their yards were interlocked, and some of the guns of the Ser apis became useless for want of room to use the rammers. The advantage of her superior arma ment was thus in some measure lost, while her ad vantage in quickness of movement was entirely neutralized. Still her heavy guns at this short range did frightful execution, and the main deck of the Bon Homme Richard was soon covered with WAR ON THE OCEAN. 127 mangled and dying men, while her timbers were badly shivered and many cannon were knocked from their carriages. Unable to bear this terrible fire, the Americans crowded upon the upper deck in such numbers as easily to defeat the British at tempts to board. Parties of marksmen, climbing into the rigging, cleared the enemy's tops, and shot down every man upon the Serapis who ventured from under cover. Hand-grenades were thrown into her port-holes to slay the gunners ; and pres ently one bold fellow, crawling out to the very end of the Bon Homme Richard's main-yard, just over the main hatchway of the Serapis, dropped one of these mischievous missiles through the hatchway, where it ignited a row of cartridges that were lying upon the main deck. The explosion ran swiftly along the line, as through a pack of gigantic fire crackers. More than twenty men were blown into fragments, their heads, arms, and legs flying in every direction, while forty others were disabled. With the havoc already wrought by the guns, the Serapis had now lost two fifths of her crew, and her fire perceptibly slackened ; so that the Ameri cans were able to go below and work their guns again, pouring into the British port-holes a storm of grape and canister which made an awful car nage. It was now ten o'clock. All this while the Alli ance had kept out of the fight, but the Pallas had attacked the Countess of Scarborough, and after a brisk cannonade compelled her to surrender. The Alliance now came down, and stupidly poured a raking volley along the decks of the two chief com- 128 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. batants, doing impartial damage to friend and foe. Warning shouts went up from the Bon Homme Richard, and her commander called out to Captain Landais to fall upon the farther side of the Sera pis and board her. The Frenchman replied that he would do so, but instead he ran his ship off a couple of miles to leeward, and comfortably awaited the end of the battle. By this time the Serapis was on fire in several places, so that part of her crew had to leave their guns, and bend all their energies to extinguishing the flames. The Ameri can ship was in still worse plight ; she had not only been burning for half an hour, but so many holes had been shot in her hull that she began to sink. She had more than a hundred British pris oners below decks, and these men were now set free and marshalled at the pumps. Few guns were worked on either ship, and the rest of the fight be tween the two exhausted combatants was a mere question of dogged tenacity. At last Captain Jones, with his own hands, directed a couple of guns against the enemy's mainmast, and just as it was threatening to fall she surrendered. The gal lant British commander stood almost alone on the main deck of his ship, in the midst of an awful scene of death ; while of his few men who remained unhurt, most had sunk down, panting and over come with fatigue. No sooner were the ships cut asunder than the tottering mainmast of the Serapis went overboard, carrying with it the mizzen top mast and all the mizzen rigging. The Bon Homme Richard was with difficulty kept afloat till morn ing, and all night long fresh men from her con- WAR ON THE OCEAN. 129 sorts were hard at work fighting the flames, while the wounded were being carried off. At ten o'clock next morning she sank. Thus ended one of the most obstinate and mur derous struggles recorded in naval history. Of the men engaged, more than half were 1 -n i i ii ii i ,. Effectof killed or badly wounded, and few got Jones's-™- off without some scar or bruise to carry as a memento of this dreadful night. From a merely military point of view, this first considera ble fight between British and American frigates had perhaps no great significance. But the moral effect, in Europe, of such a victory within sight of the British coast was prodigious. The King of France made Paul Jones a knight of the order of merit, and from the Empress of Russia he received the ribbon of St. Anne. The King of Denmark settled a pension on him, while throughout Europe his exploit was told and told again in the gazettes, and at the drinking-tables on street corners. On his arrival in Holland, whither he went with his prizes a fortnight after the battle, the British government peremptorily demanded that he should be given up, to be hanged as a pirate. The sym pathies of the Dutch were decidedly with the Americans ; but as they were not quite ready to go to war with England, a tardy notice was given to Jones, after ten weeks, that he had better quit the country. Though chased by a British fleet, he got safely to France in December, and after va rious adventures, lasting through the ensuing year, he reached Philadelphia early in 1781. On in quiry into the extraordinary behaviour of Captain 130 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Landais, some doubt as to his sanity arose, so that he was not shot for disobedience of orders, but simply discharged from the navy. Paul Jones was put in command of the America 74, but the war was so nearly ended that he .did not get to sea again, and Congress presented his ship to the King of France. In 1788, he passed into the Russian service with the rank of rear-admiral. He died in Paris, in 1792, in the forty-fifth year of his age. Here the question naturally arises, Why should the King of Denmark and the Empress of Russia have felt so much interest in the victory of Paul Jones as to confer distinguished honours upon him for winning it? The answer, at which we shall presently arrive, will forcibly disclose to us the extent to which, by the end of the year 1779, the whole civilized world had become involved in the quarrel between England and her revolted colo nies. As at the bridge of Concord the embattled farmers of Massachusetts had once fired a shot heard round the world, so those last guns aimed by Paul Jones against the mainmast of the Serapis aroused an echo of which the reverberations were not to cease until it should be shown that hence forth nobler principles of international law must prevail upon the high seas than had ever yet been acknowledged. We have now to trace the origin and progress of the remarkable complication of affairs which at length, during the year 1780, brought all the other maritime powers of Europe into an attitude of hostility toward Great Britain. WAR ON THE OCEAN. 131 For not until we have duly comprehended this can we understand the world-wide significance of our Revolutionary War, or estimate aright the bear ings of the events which led to that grand twofold consummation, — the recognition of the indepen dence of the United States, and the overthrow of the personal government of George III. in Eng land. Paul Jones was not the only enemy who hovered about the British coast in the summer of 1779. In June of that year, Spain declared war against England, but without recognizing the indepen dence of the United States, or entering Reltttion8 o£ into an alliance with us. From the I^Meand beginning, Count Vergennes had sought Bneland- Spanish aid in his plans for supporting the Amer icans, but anything like cordial cooperation be tween Spain and France in such an undertaking was impossible, for their interests were in many respects directly opposite. So far as mere hatred toward England was concerned, Spain doubtless went even farther than France. Spain had not forgotten that she had once been mistress of the seas, or that it was England which had ousted her from this supremacy in the days of Queen Eliza beth. Of England, as the greatest of Protestant and constitutional powers, as the chief defender of political and religious liberty, priest-ridden and king-ridden Spain was the natural enemy. She had also, like France, the recollection of injuries lately suffered in the Seven Years' War to urge her to a policy of revenge. And to crown all, in the event of a successful war, she might hope to 132 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. regain Jamaica, or the Floridas, or Minorca, or, above all, Gibraltar, that impregnable stronghold, the possession of which by England had for more than sixty years made Spaniards blush for shame. On the other hand, Spain regarded the Americans with a hatred probably not less rancorous than that which she felt toward the British. The mere existence of these English colonies in North Amer ica was a perpetual reminder of the days when the papal edict granting this continent to Spain had been set at naught by heretical cruisers and ex plorers. The obnoxious principles of civil and religious liberty were represented here with even greater emphasis than in England. In Mexico and South America the Spanish crown had still a vast colonial empire ; and it was rightly foreseen that a successful revolt of the English colonies would furnish a dangerous precedent for the Span ish colonies to follow. Spain was, moreover, the chief upholder of the old system of commercial monopoly; and here her interests were directly opposed to those of France, which, since it had been deprived of its colonial empire, saw in the general overthrow of commercial monopoly the surest way of regaining its share in the trade of the world. Under the influence of these conflicting motives, the conduct of Spain was marked for a time by hesitation and double-dealing. Between his vari ous wishes and fears, the Spanish prime minister, intrigues of Florida Blanca, knew not what course sPain- to pursue. When he heard of the alli ance between France and the United States, which WAR ON THE OCEAN. 133 was undertaken against his advice to Vergennes, his wrath knew no bounds. It was a treaty, he said, " worthy of Don Quixote." At first he in trigued with the British government, offering his services as mediator between England and France. Lord Weymouth, the British minister for foreign affairs, refused to enter into any negotiation so long as France should extend aid to "the rebel colonies." To the covert threat of the wily Span iard, that if the war were to continue his royal master would doubtless feel compelled to take part with one side or the other, Lord Weymouth replied that the independence of the United States would prove fatal to the continuance of Spanish control over Mexico and South America ; and he suggested, accordingly, that the true interest of Spain lay in forming an alliance with Great Brit ain. While this secret discussion was going on, Florida Blanca also sounded Vergennes, propos ing that peace should be made on such terms as to allow the British to retain possession, of Rhode Island and New York. This, he thought, would prevent the formation of an American Union, and would sow the seeds of everlasting dissension be tween Great Britain and the American States, whereby the energies of the English race would be frittered away in internecine conflict, leaving room for Spain to expand itself. But Vergennes would not hear of this. France had recognized the independence of the thirteen States, and had explicitly and publicly agreed to carry on the war until that independence should be acknowledged by England ; and from that position she could not 134 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. easily retreat. At the same time Vergennes inti mated that France was in no way bound to pro- Treaty be- te°t *ne American claim to the Ohio and France" valley, and was far from desiring that April, 1779.' the people 0f tne United States should control the whole of North America. Upon this suggestion the Spanish court finally acted. After six months more of diplomatic fencing, a treaty was concluded in April, 1779, between France and Spain, whereby it was agreed that these two pow ers should undertake a concerted invasion of Eng land. For this undertaking, France was to fur nish the land force, while both powers were to raise as great a naval armament as possible. France was to assist Spain in recovering Minorca and the Floridas, and if Newfoundland could be conquered, its fisheries were to be monopolized by the two parties to this treaty. Neither power was to make peace on any terms until England should have surrendered Gibraltar to Spain. This convention brought Spain into the lists against England without bringing her directly into alliance with the United States. She was left free to negotiate with Congress at her own good pleasure, and might ask for the whole Mississippi valley, if she chose, in return for her assistance. Gerard, the French minister at Philadelphia, sought to persuade Congress to give up the fisher ies and relinquish all claim to the territory west of the AUeghanies. There were hot debates on this subject in 1779, and indeed the situation of affairs was sufficiently complicated to call for the exercise of skilful diplomacy. As the treaty between WAR ON THE OCEAN. 135 France and Spain became known in America, it was felt to be in some respects inconsistent with the prior convention between France and the United States. In that convention it had been stip ulated that neither party should make peace with Great Britain without the consent of the other. In the convention between France and Spain it was agreed that neither party should make peace until Great Britain should surrender Gibraltar. But the Americans rightly felt that, should Great Brit ain be found willing to concede their indepen dence, they were in no wise bound to keep up the war for the sole purpose of helping France to con quer Gibraltar for a power which had never owed them any good will, and was at this very moment hoping to cut down their territory. The proposal to exclude America as well as Great Britain from the fisheries excited loud indignation in New Eng land. Meanwhile, the new allies had gone energetically to work. Early in 1779, a French fleet had cap tured the British settlements in Senegambia, and made a vigorous though unsuccessful assault upon the island of Jersey. In June, war was declared by Spain so suddenly that England was French and quite taken by surprise. Florida Blanca aKpt anln- had lied with so grave a face that Lord rand°nAug.,ng" North had not been looking out for such 1779' a step. In August, the allied French and Span ish fleets, numbering more than sixty ships-of-the- line, with a full complement of frigates, entered the English Channel, with intent to repeat the experiment of the Invincible Armada ; while a 136 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. French army lay at Havre, ready to cross at the first opportunity. To oppose this formidable force, Admiral Hardy was able to get together only thirty-eight ships-of-the-line, with the ordinary pro portion of frigates. There was a panic in Eng land, and the militia were called out. But owing to dissensions between the French and Spanish admirals and serious illness in the crews, nothing whatever was accomplished, and the great fleet retired crestfallen from the channel. Everybody blamed everybody else, while an immense sum of money had been spent upon a wretched fiasco. In America, however, the allies were more successful. Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, cap tured Baton Rouge and Mobile, with their British garrisons, and preparations were made for the siege of Pensacola, to complete the conquest of West Florida. In the West Indies, the islands of Grenada and St. Vincent were captured by Estaing. The moment that war was declared by Spain, there was begun that siege of Gibraltar which, for the heroic defence, as well as for its long duration of nearly four years, has had no parallel in the an nals of modern warfare. It was only through maritime expeditions that the two new allies could directly assail England with any hope of success ; but here on the sea her natural superiority was not long in asserting itself. Great efforts were made to increase the strength of the navy, and in December, 1779, the command of the fleet in the West Indies was given to a man who among English sailors ranks with Blake and Hawke, on a plane inferior only to that occupied WAR ON THE OCEAN. 137 by Nelson. The brilliant career of Sir George Rodney began in the Seven Years' War, SirGeorge in the course of which he bombarded Koduey- Havre, thus warding off a projected invasion of England, and moreover captured several islands in the West Indies. It was Pitt who first discerned his genius, and put him into a position in which he could win victories. After the peace of 1763 he became a member of Parliament, but lost all he had in gambling, and fled to France to get rid of his creditors. When war broke out between France and England in 1778, the venerable Mar shal de Biron loaned him enough money to save him from the Marshalsea or the Fleet, and he re turned to England to be appointed to the chief command in the West Indies. A vain and unscru pulous man, as many called him, he was none the less a most skilful and indomitable captain. He was ordered, on his way to the West Indies, to re lieve Gibraltar, which was beginning to suffer the horrors of famine, and never was such a task more brilliantly performed. First, he had the good for tune to fall in with fifteen Spanish ships, loaded with provisions and under the convoy of seven war vessels, and all this fleet he captured. Then, at Cape St. Vincent, on a dark and stormy night, he gave chase to a Spanish fleet of eleven ships-of-the- line and two frigates, and in a sharp fight captured or destroyed all but four of them without losing one of his own ships. He thus reached Gibraltar, and after passing up to the fortress the welcome cargoes of the fifteen merchant prizes went on to the West Indies, where his presence turned the 138 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. scale against the allies. A powerful French fleet under Count de Guichen was cruising in those wa ters ; and it was hoped that this fleet would soon be able to come to New York and cooperate with Washington in an attempt to regain that city. But the arrival of Rodney changed all this, and the Count de Guichen, after being worsted in battle, sailed away for France, while Rodney proceeded to New York, to relieve Sir Henry Clinton and foil the projects of Washington. That very supremacy upon the sea, however, which enabled England to defy the combined fleets of France and Spain served, in its immediate con sequences, only to involve her in fresh difficulties. By the arrogant and indiscriminate Eights of J ..... ..... neutrals upon manner in which she exercised the right the sea. , . f of search, she soon succeeded in uniting against her all the neutral nations of Europe ; and a principle of international law was laid down which in our own time has become fully estab lished, and must in future essentially limit the areas over which wars are likely to extend. This new principle of international law related to the rights of merchant vessels belonging to neutral powers in time of war. In early times it was held that if one country went to war with another, its right to prey upon its enemy's commerce was vir tually unlimited. If it found its enemy's goods carried in a ship belonging to some neutral power, it had a right to seize and confiscate them ; and in days when hostility was the rule and peace the ex ception, when warfare was deemed honourable and commerce ignoble, and when the usages of war WAR ON THE OCEAN. 139 were rough and unscrupulous, the neutral ship it self, which carried the goods, was very likely to be confiscated also. As the neutral power whose ship was seized would be sure to resent such be haviour, it followed that any war between two mar itime powers was likely to spread, until it involved every other power which possessed any merchant shipping or did any business upon the high seas. With a view to confining such evils within as nar row a limit as possible, the maritime code known as the Consolato del Mare, which represented the commercial interests of the Middle Ages, and was generally accepted as of the highest authority in maritime affairs, recognized the right of confiscat ing an enemy's goods found in a neutral ship, but did not recognize the right of confiscating the neu tral ship. In the Middle Ages maritime warfare played a subordinate part ; but after Tne consolato colonies had been planted in America delMare- and the East Indies by the great maritime nations of Western Europe, the demand for fixed rules, whereby the usages of such warfare should be reg ulated, soon came to be of transcendent importance. England and the Netherlands, as powers with whom industrial considerations were of the first conse quence and military considerations only secondary, adhered firmly to the rule of the Consolato del Mare as the most liberal rule then in existence. France and Spain, as preeminently militant pow ers, caring more for the means of annoying an en emy than for the interests of commerce in general, asserted the principle that neutral ships detected in carrying an enemy's goods were themselves law- 140 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. f ul subjects for seizure. France, however, did not hold this doctrine so firmly as Spain. Here, as in so many other respects France showed herself more advanced in civilization than Spain, while less advanced than England and the Netherlands. In 1655, by a treaty between Cromwell and Mazarin, France accepted the English rule ; in 1681, under the retrograde government of Louis XIV., she went back to her ancient practice ; in 1744, she again adopted the English rule, while Spain kept on with her old custom, until sharply called to ac count by Russia in 1780. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the most liberal doctrines respecting maritime warfare had concerned themselves only with the protection of neutral ships. It had never occurred to any body to maintain that the goods of an enemy should be guaranteed against scrutiny and seizure by the mere fact of their being carried on a neu tral ship. That any belligerent could seize its antagonist's property, if found on a neutral ship, was the doctrine laid down alike by Vattel and Bynkershoek, the chief French and Dutch au thorities on maritime law. In acting upon this principle, therefore, at the time of our Revolu tionary War, England acted strictly in accordance with the recognized maritime law of Europe. She was not, as some American writers seem to have supposed, introducing a new principle of aggression, in virtue of her position as chief among maritime powers. In stopping the defenceless merchant vessels of neutral or friendly powers, compelling them to show their bills of lading, searching their WAR ON THE OCEAN. 141 holds if need be, subjecting them to a hateful in quisition and vexatious delays, she did no more than every maritime nation had been in the habit of doing, and even less than Spain claimed the right to do. It was quite natural, too, that Eng land should insist upon retaining this privilege, as something which no great naval power could afford to dispense with ; for obviously, if in time of war your enemy can go on trading with every body but yourself and can even receive timber and provisions from people not concerned in the struggle, your means of crippling him are very materially diminished. Such reasoning seemed conclusive everywhere in Europe until after the middle of the eighteenth century. At that time, however, the unexampled naval preponderance of England began to lead other nations to take a new view of the case. By the maintenance of the old rule, England could damage other nations much more than they could damage her. Other nations, accordingly, began to feel that it would be a good thing if the flag of a neutral ship might be held to protect any mer chandise whatsoever that she might happen to have on board. This modern doctrine, that free ships make free goods, was first suggested by Prussia in 1752. Such a view naturally com mended itself to a nation which had a pruSsian doc- considerable number of merchantmen ships make afloat, without any navy fit to protect reeg00c them ; and it was accordingly likely to find favour in the eyes of such nations as Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and the United States. But, more than 142 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. this, it was a view entirely in accordance with the philosophic tendencies of the age. The great hu manitarian movement, which in our time has borne rich and ample fruit, and which has tended in every practicable way to diminish the occasions for warfare and to restrict its scope, had its first brilliant literary representatives among the clear sighted and enthusiastic French philosophers of the eighteenth century. The liberal tendencies in politics, which hitherto England alone had repre sented practically, were caught up in France, as soon as the dismal and protracted tyranny of Louis XIV. had come to an end, with an eagerness that partook of fanaticism. English political ideas, without being thoroughly comprehended in their practical bearings, were seized and generalized by Montesquieu and Turgot, and a host of lesser writers, until they acquired a width of scope and a genial interest which exercised a prodigious in fluence upon the thought of Continental Europe. Never in any age, perhaps, since the days when Sokrates talked to enchanted crowds upon street corners in Athens, did men of broad philosophic ideas come so closely into contact with Influence of i i i . the French men absorbed m the pursuit of life's philosophers. , x immediate ends as at the time when all Paris rushed to kiss the hand of Voltaire, and when ladies of the court went to sleep with the last brochure of Diderot or Helvetius under their pil lows. The generous " enthusiasm of humanity," which revealed itself in every line of the writings of these great men, played an important part in the political history of the eighteenth century. It WAR ON THE OCEAN. 143 was an age of crowned philosophers and benevolent despots. Joseph of Austria, Frederick of Prussia, and Catherine of Russia, in their several ways, furnished illustrations of this tendency. Cather ine, who wrote letters to Voltaire, and admired Fox above all other English statesmen, set almost as much store by free thought as by free love, and her interest in the amelioration of mankind in gen eral was second only to her particular interest in the humiliation of the Turk. The idea of taking the lead in a general movement for the liberation of maritime commerce was sure to prove congenial to her enlightened mind, and her action would fhave great weight with England, which at that time, isolated from all European sympathy, was especially desirous of an alliance with Russia, and especially anxious to avoid offending her. At the beginning of 1778, Sir James Harris, afterward Earl of Malmesbury, was sent as am bassador to St. Petersburg, with instructions to leave no stone unturned to secure an offensive and defensive alliance between Russia -. t~, t. . . . i nP Great Britain and b-reat Isritian, in order to onset wishes to se- .. . ... . cure an alli- and neutralize the alliance between ancewithRus- France and the United States. Nego tiations to this end were kept up as long as the war lasted, but they proved fruitless. While Catherine coquetted and temporized, the Prussian ambassador had her ear, and his advice was unfa vourable to such an alliance. For the England of Pitt the great Frederick felt sympathy and grati tude ; for the England of George III. he had nothing but hatred, and his counsels went far to 144 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION- steady Catherine, if ever she showed signs of wa vering. The weight of France was of course thrown into the same scale, and for four years the Russian court was the scene of brisk and multifa rious intrigues. Harris said that his very valets were offered bribes by busybodies who wished to get a look at his papers ; and when he went out, leaving his secretary writing, he used to lock him up, not through doubts of his fidelity, but lest.he should thoughtlessly leave the door ajar. From Prince Potemkin, one of Catherine's lovers whose favour Harris courted, he learned that nothing short of the cession of Minorca would induce the empress to enter into the desired alliance. Russia. was already taking advantage of the situation to overrun and annex the Crimea, and the maritime outlook thus acquired made her eager to secure some naval station on the Mediterranean. Mi norca was England's to give. She had won it in the war of the Spanish Succession, and for seventy years it had been one of the brightest jewels in her imperial crown. Together with Gibraltar it had given her that firm grasp upon the Medi terranean which — strengthened in later times by importance the acquisition of Malta, Cyprus, and ' the isthmus of Suez — has gone far to ward making that vast inland sea an English lake. So great a value did England set upon Minorca that when, in the Seven Years' War, it was lost for a moment, through an error of judgment on the part of Admiral Byng, the British people were seized with a bloodthirsty frenzy, and one of the foulest judicial murders known to history was WAR ON THE OCEAN. 145 committed when that gallant commander was shot on his own quarter-deck. Yet even this island, by which England set such store, she was now ready to surrender in exchange for the help of Russia against her revolted colonies and the House of Bourbon. It was not, however, until 1781 that the offer of Minorca was made, and then Cather ine had so far acceded to the general combination against England that she could not but refuse it. That such an offer should ever have been made shows how important an alliance with Russia seemed to England at the moment when France and Spain were leagued against her, and all the neutral powers looked on her with hostile eyes. We can thus the better appreciate the significance of the step which Russia was now to take with reference to the great question of maritime law which was beginning to agitate the civilized world. In the summer of 1778, the French government, with intent to curb the depredations of British cruisers, issued a proclamation adopting the Prus sian doctrine of 1752, that free ships make free goods, and Vergennes took occasion to Franceadopta suggest that Catherine should put her- *££££?*" self at the head of a league of neutral powers for the purpose of protecting neutral com merce all over the world. For the moment no de cided action was taken, but the idea was one of those broad ideas in which the empress delighted. Count Panin, her principal minister, who was strongly in sympathy with the King of Prussia, insisted upon the necessity of protecting the com merce of minor powers against England, which 146 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. since 1763 had become the great naval bully of the world. England was doubtless acting in strict accordance with time-honoured custom, but circum stances had changed, and the law must be changed to meet them. The first great war since 1763 was now showing that England could destroy the com merce of all the rest of the world, without any fear of retaliation except through a universal war. During the summers of 1778 and 1779, Prussian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch ships were continually overhauled by British cruisers, and robbed of car goes which they were carrying to France. Such gross outrages upon private property, however sanctioned by laws of war that had grown up in a barbarous age, awakened general indignation throughout Europe; and from whatever quarter complaints poured in, Vergennes and Frederick took good care that they should be laid before the Empress of Russia, until presently she came to look upon herself as the champion of little states and oppressed tradesmen. The British depredations were, moreover, apt to be characterized by an arrogance which, while it rendered them all the more exasperating, some times transcended the limits of aggression pre scribed by the rude maritime law of that day. Upon Netherland commerce England was espe cially severe, for the Dutch had more merchant shipping than any other people on the Continent, with a weak navy to protect it. England forbade the Dutch to send timber to France, as it would probably be used in building ships of war. On the 30th of December, 1779, seventeen Dutch ves- WAR ON THE OCEAN. 147 sels, laden with tar and hemp, and other materials useful in shipyards, were sailing through the Eng lish Channel, escorted by five ships- ,„ . , J L Affair of of-the-line under Count Bylandt, when ^ie,ldn^and toward nightfall they were overtaken and hailed by a British squadron of sixteen ships-of-the-line under Admiral Fielding. A lively parley ensued. Bylandt swore that his ships should not be searched, and Fielding threatened violence. While this was going on, twelve of the Dutch ships got away under cover of darkness, and reached in safety the French ports to which they were bound. Early in the morning, Bylandt fired upon the boat which was bringing a party of British officers to search the merchantmen that re mained. Upon this, three British ships instantly poured their broadsides into the Dutch flagship, which returned the compliment, and then hauled down its flag, as resistance was useless. Nobody was killed, but Fielding seized the five merchant men, and took them in to Portsmouth. The States-General of the Netherlands complained of the outrage to Lord Stormont, the new foreign secretary, and demanded the restitution of the prizes. The matter was referred to the British court of admiralty, and the singular doctrine was there laid down that the Dutch vessels were vir tually blockade-runners, and as such were lawfully captured ! " Great Britain," said the judge, " by her insular position, blocks naturally all the ports of Spain and France, and she has a right to avail herself of this position as a gift of Providence." But the States-General did not accept this inter- 148 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. pretation of the law and theology of the matter, and they appealed to the Empress of Russia. Just at this moment events occurred which com pelled Catherine to take some decided stand on the question of neutral rights. Through fear of adding her to the list of their enemies, the British minis try had issued the most stringent orders that no Russian vessels should be searched or molested, under any circumstances. The Dutch and Danish Spanish cmis- flags might be insulted at pleasure, but itostanTIs- tnat 0I Russia must be respected ; and 1 so well were these orders obeyed that Catherine had no grounds for complaint against England on this score. Spain, on the other hand, was less cautious. In the winter of 1779-80, her cruisers captured two Russian vessels laden with wheat, in the mistaken belief that their cargoes were destined for Gibraltar. The ships were taken into Cadiz, their cargoes were sold at auction, and their penniless crews were outrageously treated by the people, and came little short of starving. Cath erine was wild with rage, and instantly ordered out fifteen ships-of-the-line and five frigates for the protection of Russian commerce. For a moment war between Spain and Russia seemed imminent. But Panin moved with cautious shrewdness, and consulted the King of Prussia, who persuaded Flor ida Blanca to restore the captured ships, with com pensation to the owners of the cargoes, and an ample apology for the blunder. The empress was satisfied, and Panin assured her that now the time had come for her to act with magnanimity and power, laying down an impartial code for the pro- WAR ON THE OCEAN. 149 tection of maritime commerce, and thus establish ing a claim to the gratitude of mankind through all future ages. On the 8th of March, 1780, Catherine issued a proclamation, setting forth the principles of maritime law which she j. .. ii»i Catherine's was henceforth resolved to defend bv proclamation, J March 8, 1780. force, if necessary. Henceforth neutral ships were to sail unmolested from port to port, even on the coasts of countries at war. They were to be free to carry into such ports any goods or merchandise whatsoever, except arms and ammuni tion, and the right of search was to be tolerated as regarded such contraband articles, and for no other purpose. Hereafter no port was to be considered blockaded unless the enemy's ships of war should be near enough to make it dangerous to enter. These principles were immediately adopted by Spain, France, and the United States, the three powers actually at war with England. At the same time, Denmark and Sweden entered into an arrangement with Russia for the mutual protection of their commerce. It was announced that for every Danish, Swedish, or Russian ship searched or seized by the cruisers of any belligerent power, a strict retaliation would be made by the allied navies of these three countries. This covenant, known as the Armed Neutrality, was The Armed practically a threat aimed at England, Neutrality- and through her unwillingness to alienate Russia it proved a very effective threat. We can now understand the interest shown by Denmark and Russia in the victory of Paul Jones, and we can also appreciate the prodigious moral effect of that 150 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. victory. So overwhelming was England's naval superiority that the capture of a single one of her war ships was a memorable event. To the lesser maritime powers it seemed to bring the United States at once into the front rank of belligerents. The British ministry was too well instructed to be brought under this spell ; but in view of the great hostile combination now formed against it, for the moment it was at its wits' end. "An ambiguous and trimming answer was given," says Sir James Harris ; " we seemed equally afraid to accept or dismiss the new-fangled doctrines. I was in structed secretly to oppose, but avowedly to ac quiesce in them." In England, the wrath and disgust extended to all parties. Shelburne and Camden joined with North and Thurlow in de nouncing Catherine's proclamation as an impudent attempt, on the part of an upstart power, hardly known on the sea till quite lately, to dictate mari time law to the greatest maritime power the world had ever seen. It was contended that the right to search neutral vessels and take an enemy's goods from them was a cardinal principle of international law ; and jurists, of course, found the whole body of precedents on the side of this opinion. But in spite of all protests these " new-fangled doctrines," subversive of all precedent, were almost immedi ately adopted throughout Europe. In December, 1780, the Netherlands joined the Armed Neutral ity, under circumstances presently to be related. In May, 1781, it was joined by Prussia; in Octo ber, 1781, by the Empire ; in July, 1782, by Portu gal ; in September, 1782, by the Turk ; in Febru- WAR ON THE OCEAN. 151 ary, 1783, by the Kingdom of Naples. Though England's maritime strength exceeded that all the members of the league taken together, she could not afford to run the risk of war with all the world at once ; and thus the doctrine that free ships make free goods acquired a firm foothold. In the chaos of the Napoleonic wars, indeed, paper block ades and illegal seizures abounded, and it fared ill with neutral commerce on the high seas. But the principles laid down by Catherine survived that terrible crisis, and at last they were formally adopted by England at the close of the Crimean War, in 1856. This successful assertion of the rights of neu trals was one of the greatest and most beneficent revolutions in the whole history of human warfare. It was the most emphatic declaration that had ever been made of the principle that the in- L A Vast lmpor- terests of peace are paramount and per- tance of the x L * principles laid manent, while those of war are subordi-