Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. VI (of 8)

NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL

HISTORY OF AMERICA.

THE REVOLUTION IMPENDING.

BY MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN,

Librarian Boston Public Library.

THE American Revolution was no unrelated event, but formed a part of the history of the British race on both continents, and was not without influence on the history of mankind. As an event in British history, it wrought with other forces in effecting that change in the Constitution of the mother country which transferred the prerogatives of the crown to the Parliament, and led to the more beneficent interpretation of its provisions in the light of natural rights. As an event in American history, it marks the period, recognized by the great powers of Europe, when a people, essentially free by birth and by the circumstances of their situation, became entitled, because justified by valor and endurance, to take their place among independent nations. Finally, as an event common to the history of both nations, it stands midway between the Great Rebellion and the Revolution of 1688, on the one hand, and the Reform Bill of 1832 and the extension of suffrage in 1884, on the other, and belongs to a race which had adopted the principles of the Reformation and of the Petition of Right.

The American Revolution was not a quarrel between two peoples,—the British people and the American people,—but, like all those events which mark the progress of the British race, it was a strife between two parties, the conservatives in both countries as one party, and the liberals in both countries as the other party; and some of its fiercest battles were fought in the British Parliament. Nor did it proceed in one country alone, but in both countries at the same time, with nearly equal step, and was essentially the same in each, so that at the close of the French War, if all the people of Great Britain had been transported to America and put in control of American affairs, and all the people of America had been transported to Great Britain and put in control of British affairs, the American Revolution and the contemporaneous British Revolution—for there was a contemporaneous British Revolution—might have gone on just the same, and with the same final results. But the British Revolution was to regain liberty; the American Revolution was to preserve liberty. Both peoples had a common history in the events which led to the Great Rebellion; but in the reaction which followed the Restoration, that part of the British race which awaited the conflict in the old home passed again under the power of the prerogative, and, after the accession of William III., came under the domination of the great Whig families. The British Revolution, therefore, was to recover what had been lost. But those who emigrated to the colonies left behind them institutions which were monarchical, in church and state, and set up institutions which were democratic. And it was to preserve, not to acquire, these democratic institutions that the liberal party carried the country through a long and costly war.[1]

The American Revolution, in its earlier stages at least, was not a contest between opposing governments or nationalities, but between two different political and economic systems, to each of which able and honest men then adhered, and now adhere. The motives and conduct of each party, therefore, ought to be stated with exact impartiality. It was not only inevitable, but wise, and on the whole wisely conducted in accordance with the traditions and methods of political action to which our British race had been accustomed. It was also honestly and fairly opposed by those who neither accepted revolutionary principles, nor recognized the validity of the reasons assigned for their application to the existing state of affairs.

Readers of American history from the Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, to the Revolution find frequent reference to the King's Prerogatives, Navigation Laws, Acts of Trade, and in later years to Writs of Assistance, as subjects of complaint between Great Britain and her colonies; and as these were among the immediate causes of the war, they require explanation. When the Earl of Hillsborough (April 22, 1768) required the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, through Governor Bernard (June 21st), in his majesty's name, to rescind the resolution which had given birth to their Circular Letter of February 11, 1768, the order was a claim of right by the king to control the legislative action of that province; and the refusal of the House was regarded by the prerogative party both in Great Britain and in the colonies as in derogation of the king's constitutional power.

What was the foundation of this alleged authority of the king over the colonies? By the public law of all civilized nations in the fifteenth century, the property in unoccupied lands belonged to the crown of the country by which they were discovered;[2] and if, as was generally the case, these lands were inhabited by savages, still the fee was in the crown, subject only to such use as might be made of them by wandering tribes. Such is the law to-day. This title to the English colonies was not in the people of England nor in the state, but in the crown, and descended with it. The crown alone could sell or give away these lands. The crown could make laws for the inhabitants, and repeal them; could appoint their rulers, and remove them. Parliament could do neither. The political relations of the colonists were to the crown, not to the government of England; nor were they in any respect subject to parliamentary legislation.[3] They were not citizens within the realm, nor, except in a qualified sense, of the empire, but subjects of the crown, having only such rights as it granted to them in their charters; and even these charters the crown claimed, and exercised the right to amend or revoke. James I. amended that of Virginia in 1624, and Charles II. revoked that of Massachusetts in 1684. They were regarded merely as charters of incorporated land companies, and, as such, subject to revocation by the king who granted them; and when these companies had developed into municipal governments, they were considered as still subject to alteration or repeal by the sovereign power,[4] although in both cases rights of property were saved to the owners. Strange as this doctrine may seem, it is now substantial law in England and in America.

To all these rights, privileges, and disabilities the emigrants agreed when they purchased lands from the crown; and the rights and duties, whether of the crown or of its subjects, descended to their respective successors. With such rights, though not in all cases with such views in respect to them, the colonists came to America; and such rights, and no more, their children possessed, under the British Constitution, at the time of the American Revolution, in the days of George III.

These claims of the crown every colony resisted as incompatible with its essential rights, and yet they were legal and constitutional prerogatives, admitted by the greatest judges of England, and most necessarily have been admitted in the colonies not only by Hutchinson and Oliver, but by James Otis and John Adams, had they sat as judges. It was on this legal and constitutional ground that the prerogative party stood both in England and in America.

But in England from the time of James I., and in America from the coming of Winthrop, there had been an anti-prerogative party; and as the prerogative party in England and the prerogative party in America were one and the same, so the anti-prerogative party in England and the anti-prerogative party in the colonies were one and the same, having similar views, and, though separated by a thousand leagues, working to the same end. On this question came the first political contest of the Revolution; that of parliamentary supremacy came later. The strength of one side was in legal and constitutional principles, as they were then interpreted by judicial tribunals; that of the other lay in the changes which were taking place in the British Constitution,—in short, in revolution. The revolutionary party succeeded in both countries: in America, by war; in England, by more silent influences which have greatly modified, if not destroyed, the prerogative.

Although the prerogative was a cardinal right in the British Constitution, and freely exercised by popular sovereigns like Elizabeth, it began to be questioned under James I., and resisted under Charles I., who lost his life in its defence, as James II. lost his crown.[5] But the progress of this revolution was not steady, nor did it always hold what it had gained. There came periods of reaction, one of which was in the early days of George III. He was strenuous in maintaining his prerogative, and, by the support of the "King's Friends", probably held it with a firmer hand than any of his predecessors since Elizabeth. The contest about the prerogatives encountered this difficulty: that successful resistance in a particular instance settled no principle, but left all other cases untouched.[6] The extension of the navigation acts to the colonies by Parliament, though assented to by King Charles II., was in derogation of his prerogatives; and so in the time of William III. (1696) was the attempt to transfer certain colonial affairs from the Privy Council, which represented the king, to a proposed Council of Commerce, which would have been the creature of Parliament. In consistency with these proceedings, the king's power over the colonies ought to have been transferred to Parliament; and instead of remaining the king's colonies, they ought to have become a part of the empire, and his authority over them no greater than that over the territory within the four seas. But it was otherwise. The colonists remained the king's subjects. He appointed their governors; he frequently set aside their laws, and over them he exercised his royal prerogatives. One capital point, however, had been gained by the revolutionary party on both sides of the water. Successful invasions of the prerogative had at length created what was called the "spirit of the constitution."[7] The loyalists, however, seemed to be firmly entrenched in their constitutional position, nor did the anti-prerogative party avoid a dilemma: how to escape out of the hands of the king without falling into the hands of Parliament. If, as some claimed when they resisted the royal prerogative, they were British subjects, entitled to the same rights and privileges as native-born subjects within the realm, why then should they, more than other subjects, be free from the burdens imposed by the imperial policy? But when, in pursuance of that policy, Parliament undertook to tax the colonies, then they were forced by the logic of the situation to claim that, though subjects of "the best of kings", they owed no more allegiance to Parliament than the Scotch did before the union.[8]

Probably no one more heartily detested the claims of the prerogative than Franklin; and yet the phase which the controversy had assumed compelled him to take high prerogative ground. Such was his position with regard to the Stamp Act, as is seen in the note below.[9] Andros himself could have asked for nothing better, in 1686; and when Franklin was asked what the king could do, should the colonies refuse just requisitions, he had no other answer than this,—that they would not refuse!

Such is the doctrine of the prerogative which gave rise to constant conflicts between the king and the colonists, from 1660 to 1774, and in every colony was among the political causes which led to the Revolution. But it was an English question as well as an American question,—a party question in both countries, and it was finally settled with the same result in each, though by different means. We must look further for the real controversy between the English people and the American people.

Another cause of the Revolution, but one which, in no strict sense, concerned the political relations between the people of Great Britain and the American colonists, was the attempt of the British merchants to monopolize the trade of the colonies, not for the benefit of the British people, but for their own. This also was a party question, on one side of which were arrayed the adherents of the Mercantile or Protective System, and on the other those of the Economic or Free Trade System. The mercantile class endeavored to subordinate colonial interests to the protective system by navigation laws and acts of trade; and the resistance of the colonists to these acts was a claim for free trade which finally involved them in a war with the mother country.

What were those navigation laws and acts of trade which called forth the invective of James Otis when he argued the Writs of Assistance, and revived in the bosom of the octogenarian John Adams the hearty curse he bestowed upon them in his youth; and on what foundation did they rest?[10]

Nations acquire new territories, and maintain and defend them, to promote their own interests, and not the interests of those who inhabit them; still less the interests of other nationalities. This has been the case in all ages and under all forms of government, to which our own age and nation form no exception. By the right of discovery the British crown became possessed of the territory included in the thirteen American colonies, settled mainly by British subjects. Lands were granted to individuals, or companies, with the expectation that they would build up prosperous communities, to contribute by their products and trade to the wealth of the mother country. On these purely selfish considerations she protected them; and when their trade was grown to be considerable and their markets valuable, the British merchants took measures to secure both, instead of sharing them with other nations, or allowing them to follow the interests of the colonists. Such was the policy of Great Britain at the dictation of the mercantile class; and in the maintenance of that policy, in sixty years between 1714 and 1774, she paid out of her Exchequer the enormous sum of £34,697,142 sterling, a sum greater than the estimated value of the whole real and personal property in the colonies.[11]

Between 1660 and 1770 Parliament enacted various laws whose enforcement produced irritation from the beginning, and had no inconsiderable influence in promoting the final rupture. These acts may be classed as,—First, navigation laws, designed to secure the naval and maritime supremacy of Great Britain throughout the world; these were aimed at the Dutch. Second, acts of trade, procured by the mercantile class, to monopolize the trade of the British colonies. Like the corn-laws of a later generation, these formed part of the protective system, and were dictated by class interest. Third, acts for the protection of British manufactures by preventing their growth in the colonies, where their best market was found. Fourth, acts designed to secure the strict execution of the preceding acts by establishing colonial admiralty courts, custom-houses, and boards of customs. Fifth, acts which imposed and regulated duties and port charges in commercial towns. In no sense were these acts for revenue, British or colonial. They brought nothing into the British Exchequer, but drew large sums from it.[12] They were passed solely in the interest of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, whose protection had much to do with bringing on the Revolution, but whose clamors happily prevented efficient measures for its suppression. These demonstrations, which gained them great credit in the colonies, grew out of their fear of losing not only the £4,000,000 due by their colonial debtors, but also their future trade.

Before the Grenville Act of 1764 no measures had been taken to relieve the Exchequer from demands on account of the colonies. The people and the government had suffered the mercantile and manufacturing classes to dictate their colonial policy. Not that the prosperity of these classes did not contribute to the general prosperity of the realm; for, on the contrary, it had made Great Britain the most affluent and powerful country on the globe. But this system did not promote the welfare of all classes alike; and when the time came, as it did after the frightful expenditure in the French War, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was compelled to ask for ready money to pay the interest on the debt and to meet current expenses, neither the merchants nor the manufacturers, who had grown rich by the war, offered on that account to pay larger taxes, but they were quite willing that the British farmer should do so, or that a revenue should be sought from the American colonies.

Some account of these famous laws is essential at this point. There were three statutes embraced under the general term Navigation Laws and Acts of Trade, in which are to be found the principles of the Mercantile System. They were passed in 1660, 1663, and 1672, during the reign of Charles II., and may be found in the Statutes at Large,[13] with the following titles respectively: "An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation", "An Act for the Encouragement of Trade", and "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Securing the Plantation Trade."[14]

The navigation laws will be more readily understood if we attend solely to their effect on the American colonies, and disregard unimportant exceptions and limitations. By the act of 1660, none but English or colonial ships could carry goods to or bring them from the colonies. This excluded all foreigners, and especially the Dutch, who at that time were the principal carriers for Europe. The result was that the colonists lost the advantage of their competition. Far more serious was the provision which restricted them from carrying sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and all other dyeing wood, the product of any English colony, to any part of the world, except Great Britain, or some other English colony. This affected the English sugar islands of the West Indies and the Southern colonies, which were obliged to send their products to the overstocked English or colonial markets, more than it affected New England, whose great staples, lumber, fish, oil, ashes, and furs, were free to find their best market, provided only they were sent in English or colonial vessels.

British merchants not satisfied with this monopoly procured a more stringent act in 1663, which provided that no commodity, the growth, product, or manufacture of Europe, should be imported into the colonies, except in English-built ships, sailing from English ports. By this act England became the sole market in which the colonists could purchase the products or manufactures of Europe, nor could they send their own ships for them, unless English-built or bought before October 1, 1662. They were obliged to buy in English markets and import in English vessels.[15] This discouraged ship-building for the European trade in a country full of timber, and compelled the payment of charges and profits to English factors dealing in Continental goods for the American market.

By these two acts British merchants had undertaken to monopolize, with certain exceptions, the carrying trade of the colonies and their markets for the sale and the purchase of goods. But avarice was not satisfied. There had grown up a trade, especially profitable to New England, with the Southern colonies which were without shipping. By the act of 1660, foreign and intercolonial trade in certain articles was permitted, with the expectation that it would be limited to necessary local supply. But Boston merchants, shipping to that port tobacco and some other colonial products in excess of the local demand, sent the surplus to Continental Europe, without payment of British or colonial duties, and thus undersold the British trader, who had paid heavy import duties. To suppress this profitable irregularity, it was enacted in 1672 that the enumerated products shipped to other colonies should be first transported to England, and thence to the purchasing colony. The colonial merchants had the option, however, of bringing tobacco, for instance, from Virginia direct to Massachusetts, first paying an export duty equivalent to the English import duty.[16]

These enactments subjected colonial interests to those of British ship-owners and merchants; and as they had been thus duly protected, the manufacturers in turn claimed similar protection by statutes which should prevent the colonists from setting up competing manufactories.[17] How could there have been any difference of opinion among the colonists respecting such statutes? A general answer is, that the colonial system, which regarded the colonies as feeders for the navigation, trade, and manufactures of the parent state, was the accepted doctrine of European statesmen. Pitt was its stanchest advocate, and Burke its rational friend. Adam Smith, who assaulted it in 1776,[18] did not succeed in overthrowing it. Twenty-five years later, Henry Brougham controverted Smith's views.[19] It is not strange, therefore, that it found advocates among the colonists themselves. It was also far from being a one-sided question.

James Otis's arguments on the Writs of Assistance and John Adams's letters to William Tudor, by dwelling on the injurious features of these acts, and passing over all compensating considerations, give an erroneous notion of them. The idea that they originated in a hostile disposition of the British people or merchants towards the colonists is not entitled to a moment's consideration. They formed a commercial policy, not a political policy. The more numerous, wealthy, and prosperous the colonists became, the more useful they were to the British merchants, so long as they could monopolize the trade. That was their object; and where the freedom of colonial trade would not interfere with British trade, it was left free. For example, the most profitable trade of New England was with the French and Spanish West India Islands and the Spanish Main. The short distance favored small vessels and small capitals. The exchange of lumber, grain, cattle, and fish for sugar and molasses, with an occasional voyage to the coast of Africa for slaves, during that traffic,[20] yielded rich returns. This trade was free; and so was that of Asia and Africa, and some ports of Europe, except for certain enumerated articles. It was not only permitted, but with respect to some commodities was encouraged by bounties. Between 1714 and 1774, the colonists, chiefly those of New England, received £1,609,345 sterling on their commodities exported to Great Britain;[21] and through a system of drawbacks, by which the duties on goods imported into England were repaid on their exportation to America, the colonists often bought Continental goods cheaper than could the subjects within the realm. These favors no more indicated good will than the restrictions indicated hostility. Both rested on purely commercial considerations. There were other compensations. The naval supremacy of Great Britain, due chiefly to the navigation laws, protected colonial commerce in whatever seas it was pushed; and the stimulus of monopoly withdrew British capital from other less lucrative enterprises, and directed it to the colonies, where it was freely used by planters in developing lands which otherwise would have been uncultivated for lack of capital.[22] And although certain colonial produce was obliged to find its only European market in England, it had the monopoly of that market.

If it was a hardship to the tobacco growers of Maryland and Virginia to be compelled to send that product to England, they had this advantage, that no Englishman could use any other. He was forbidden by penal statutes to grow his own supply even in his own garden. As to those laws which restrained manufactures in the colonies, it was the opinion of Henry Brougham,[23] who cites Franklin as an authority, that they merely prohibited the colonist from making articles which could have been more cheaply purchased.[24] He could import a hat from England for less than it cost to make one, and he did so. But the best ground for nominal submission to the navigation laws and acts of trade was found in their easy evasion, and the fact that they never were, and never could have been, rigidly enforced. From the first, all attempts to enforce them led to dissatisfaction. Randolph's revenue seizures in the time of Charles II. and James II. had no small influence in overthrowing Andros's government in the revolution of 1689, and so had Charles Paxton's in bringing on the American Revolution.

Before the new policy of enforcing these laws was entered upon, the colonies enjoyed British naval protection; they possessed the monopoly of the British market; they drew bounties from the British Exchequer; they purchased European goods more cheaply than the British people could do; and, stating the facts somewhat broadly, they manufactured whatever they found to be for their advantage, and sent their ships wherever they pleased, notwithstanding the navigation laws and acts of trade. The result was that the colonies, especially barren and frozen New England, engrossed most profitable commerce which England had attempted to monopolize, and increased in wealth beyond all colonial precedent.[25] But these halcyon days were destined to pass under clouds. British merchants had seen from the beginning the amassing of fortunes in the colonies by illicit trade, and the falling off of their own. They had striven to enforce the laws, and Parliament had lent its assistance,—but in vain. Under the first charter of Massachusetts, the collector of customs was the governor, whose annual election depended upon the good will of those who were evading the navigation laws; under the second charter, the governor was appointed by the king, and sworn to enforce those laws. But colonial juries generally checkmated the king's representative. Then followed admiralty courts without juries, which produced indignant protests. The new system was irritating rather than efficient on a long line of coast filled with bays, creeks, and ports not patrolled by revenue cutters. The British merchant was foiled, and anger was the result. The attempt to monopolize the commerce of the colonies was a failure; and so long as the navigation laws were a dead letter the advantages of the situation were with the colonists. They were content.

But the time came at the close of the French War when the mercantile system was subordinated to a revenue system, and the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, made more stringent by some new ones, became the policy of the government. Its instruments were admiralty courts with enlarged jurisdiction, commissioners of customs, writs of assistance, and an adequate naval force. When that time came, the Revolution was not far off![26]

In 1755, Shirley, then governor of Massachusetts, had persuaded the General Court to attempt by a stamp act to meet the expenses of the French War. This produced an irritation like that which followed in 1765 the act of the British ministry;[27] and to Shirley, as much as to any other man, perhaps, was due the suggestion of those parliamentary measures which led to the Revolution. Long residence in Boston and his profession as a lawyer had made him familiar with the evasions of the navigation laws; and his larger duties as commander-in-chief, in which he found much difficulty in bringing the colonial assemblies into concerted and efficient action, doubtless suggested measures which were adopted by the British ministry. However this may have been, the enforcement of the navigation laws was taken in hand for the first time by the government, and no longer left to depend upon private interests. This unwonted activity was shown as early as 1754. Its most formidable weapon was the Writ of Assistance.

More than four years before the passage of the Stamp Act, James Otis had resisted the granting of these writs before the Superior Court of Massachusetts. John Adams, then a student of law, took notes of Otis's argument, and fifty-six years later wrote: "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."[28] This was no mere rhetorical phrase.[29] The influence of this controversy in producing the Revolution is not wholly due to the fiery eloquence of Otis, whose words, said John Adams, "breathed into the nation the breath of life", nor to the range of his argument, which called in question the mercantile and political systems of Great Britain, but to their effect upon the commercial interest—then the leading one—of New England; for if the latent powers of these writs were set free, and used by the revenue officers, the commerce of Boston, Salem, and Newport would have been effectually crippled. Authorized in England, they were extended to the colonies by an act of William III.[30] The officers of customs, however, instead of applying to the courts for them, relied upon the implied powers of their commissions, and forcibly entered warehouses for contraband goods. The people grew uneasy, and some stood upon their rights against the officers, whose activity was stimulated by documents like that given in the note below.[31]

Governor Shirley issued these writs, though the power to do so was solely in the court.[32] But they would have held a less important place in the history of the Revolution had it not been for the concurrence of several circumstances. All writs become invalid on the demise of the crown and six months thereafter. George II. died October 25, 1760, and the news reached Boston December 27th. The government had already resolved upon a more vigorous enforcement of the revenue laws. The king had instructed Bernard, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, to "be aiding and assisting to the collectors and other officers of our admiralty and customs in putting in execution" the acts of trade. Pitt also directed the colonial governors to prevent trade with the enemy and a commerce which was "in open contempt of the authority of the mother country, as well as to the most manifest prejudice of the manufactures and trade of Great Britain."[33] Seizures of uncustomed goods were frequent. The third part of the forfeiture of molasses which belonged to the province amounted before 1761 to nearly five hundred pounds in money. Bernard arrived in August, 1760. Chief Justice Sewall, who had expressed doubts as to the legality of writs of assistance, died September 11th; and Hutchinson, his successor, took his seat January 27, 1761. As the outstanding writs had become invalid, their renewal became necessary. But when Charles Paxton, the surveyor at Boston, appeared for that purpose in the Superior Court, February term, 1761, he was confronted by a petition signed by sixty inhabitants of the province, chiefly merchants of Boston, who desired to be heard in opposition, in person and by their counsel, James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher. Otis, Advocate-General for the crown, had resigned his office to avoid supporting the writ.[34] Gridley, the Attorney-General, appeared in his stead. No complete report of the arguments has been preserved.[35] Gridley, who treated the question as purely one of law, to be determined by statutes and precedents, said of Otis's argument, that "quoting history is not speaking like a lawyer;" and as to the arbitrary nature of the writ which allowed the entry of private houses in search of uncustomed goods, he reminded him that by a province law a collector of taxes, without execution, judgment, or trial, could arrest and throw a delinquent taxpayer into prison. "What! shall my property be wrested from me? Shall my liberty be destroyed by a collector for a debt unadjudged, without the common indulgence and lenity of the law? So it is established; and the necessity of having public taxes effectually and speedily collected is of infinitely greater moment to the whole than the liberty of any individual."

Otis's argument is well known. Carried to its logical results, it was a plea for commercial and political independence of the colonies, and was fully vindicated by the result of the conflict it precipitated. But as a legal argument it is less conclusive.[36]

The majority of the court, however, were with Otis; and had judgment been given at the time, the decision would have been in his favor. But Hutchinson counselled delay until the practice in England could be learned; and as it appeared that such writs were issued, of course, from the Exchequer, on the 18th of November, the court, after re-argument, pronounced them to be legal. Thenceforth they were freely used. Otis's argument, without doubt, secured his election to the General Court in May, in which his influence was second to that of no other in bringing on the struggle which ended in independence. Nor was its effect limited to Massachusetts. It reached the remotest colonies, and, as John Adams said, led to "the revolution in the principles, views, opinions, and feelings of the American people."[37]

Revolution, however, had been long impending. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748, which put an end to the long war between England and France, opened with the declaration that "Europe sees the day which the Divine Providence had pointed out for the reëstablishment of its repose. A general peace succeeds to a long and bloody war." But neither the peace, nor the treaty by which it was secured, was satisfactory to one of the belligerents; for England had failed to secure the commercial advantages for which the war had been undertaken, and the terms of the treaty, requiring her to give hostages for the restoration of Cape Breton to France, excited the indignation of the British people. Nor were other causes for the renewal of the war wanting. The aggressive policy of France in respect to the English possessions in Acadia and along the Ohio and the Mississippi, notwithstanding the treaty, soon produced its legitimate results. The Seven Years' War followed. In Asia and in the West Indies, the maritime powers measured their strength by sea. At the same time in North America, England and her colonies on the one side, and France on the other, contended for the empire of the continent. Led by Clive, Wolfe, Amherst, and Rodney, and inspired by the genius of Pitt, the forces of England everywhere prevailed, and she took the first place among the nations.

On the 10th of February, 1763, at Paris, was signed the treaty that recognized the extinction of the French empire in North America. This treaty marks an epoch in the history of America, as well as in that of England and of France. To the latter it was a period of humiliation, not only in the loss of colonies upon which, for nearly a century, she had expended vast sums without any adequate return, but also in the frustration of her purpose of gaining sole possession of the continent.

By England it was regarded as the close of a contest to maintain her power on the same continent, and make it subservient to her commercial and manufacturing interests, which had lasted for nearly a hundred years. Yet there was a well-founded apprehension, expressed at the time, that her colonies, relieved from the fear of French aggressions, would throw off the authority of the mother country.[38] What was the fear of the mother country, on the other hand, was the hope and expectation, more or less remote, of the colonies. For the experience gained in the French wars was of great value to them in the revolutionary struggle. Officers had become familiar with the direction of large bodies of troops, and with the means of their transport and supply; and soldiers had learned that efficiency depended upon discipline. Provincial assemblies also had been taught to look for safety in strategic operations remote from their own territory. But at no time before the assembling of the congress of 1754 had the colonies been called to consider such a union of all as would give unity to military operations, and secure the semblance, at least, of a general government. The union proposed at that time would have involved some loss of independence, without securing any efficient means of enforcing the recommendations of the congress, and so the colonies hesitated, and finally laid it aside. But there can be no doubt that the consideration given to it by the several colonies led them more readily to come together for concerted action in the congress of 1765.

The year 1763 is usually regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution, because in that year the English ministry determined to raise a revenue from the colonies. This led to a contest, which, like most civil wars, was long and embittered. It engendered feelings which have not yet passed away,—feelings which interfere with a calm and dispassionate review of the motives of the parties concerned, and of the circumstances which attended their controversy. It was a war between Britons and the descendants of Britons, who, with a common ancestry, laws, and manners, retained their essential race characteristics in spite of the lapse of time or the change of place: everywhere and always lovers of liberty, but in power haughty, insolent, and aggressive on the weak, and in subjection turbulent and impatient of restraint; proud of ancestry, partial to old customs and precedents, but quick to resist laws which impede the course of equity, and never permitting forms to prevent the accomplishment of substantial justice. Such was the parent and such was the child: and in the light of these facts we are to read the history of the Revolution. It exhibited the race in no new light, nor did the contest involve any new principle. Its sentiments were expressed in the old idiomatic language,—petition, remonstrance, riot, war.

For more than a hundred years the colonies had been regarded as appendages to the crown rather than as an integral part of the empire; and when Parliament, at the instigation of the mercantile classes and in derogation of royal prerogative, began at the close of the seventeenth century to assume control over them, and, a few years later, to vote large sums from the imperial treasury for their protection, and, in some cases, for the support of their civil governments, that body looked for reimbursement to the profits which would inure to British merchants from the monopoly of colonial trade and navigation, and flow indirectly into the national Exchequer. But with the close of the French War a new policy seemed to become necessary. The debt had swelled to frightful proportions. The British people were groaning under the weight of the annual interest and their current expenses. Every source of revenue seemed to be drained, and the ministry turned their eyes for relief to the colonies; not, indeed, for relief from the present debt, but from the necessity of adding to it the whole expense of defending the colonies. This was the fatal mistake which precipitated the Revolution. On this subject, however, there seems to be some misapprehension. The popular idea was, and still is, that the colonists were to be taxed to pay the interest on the national debt and the current expenses of the government, and that all moneys raised in the colonies were to pass into the British Exchequer (thus draining them of their specie), there to remain subject to the king's warrant. Such, however, was not the scheme of the ministry. Not a farthing was to leave America. All sums collected were to be deposited in the colonial treasuries, and only certificates thereof were to be sent to the Exchequer. These were to be kept apart from the general funds, and, after defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of the civil government within all or any of the colonies, they were to be subject to parliamentary appropriation for their defence, protection, and security, and for no other purpose.[39]

The alleged necessity was this: The government had broken the French power in Canada, and shaken its hold upon the lakes and great rivers of the West. This achievement, so glorious to the empire, and therefore to the colonies as parts of it, and more immediately for their benefit, had added one hundred and forty millions to the national debt, under which the subjects within the realm were staggering. While some colonies had been tardy or negligent in furnishing their quotas of men and money for the war, yet it was acknowledged that as a whole they had borne their fair proportion of the expense, and that some had exceeded their share. So far all was clear. Although Canada had been conquered mainly for the colonies, still the conquest added to the security and glory of the empire, and the accounts for past expenditures were squared. But what of the future? As these possessions had been acquired, a stable government was needed for them, both for the safety of the colonies and for the honor of England. They were still inhabited by Indians under French influence, and they might become dangerous unless controlled by military power. Choiseul, the great French minister, informed by the reports of his secret agent, foresaw the complications likely to arise in the government of the colonies, and was not without hope of retrieving by diplomacy the losses which had occurred from war. Forts and garrisons were necessary. Although the Northern colonies were comparatively secure, the Carolinas and Georgia were menaced by powerful and hostile tribes. The government must regard the colonies as a unit, of which all parts were entitled to imperial protection. To this view of the case there could be no sound objection. Twenty thousand troops,—Pitt thought more would be needed,—besides civil officers to regulate such affairs as did not fall within colonial jurisdictions, were to be sent to the colonies. At whose expense ought these military and civil forces to be maintained? The British farmer objected to pay for the protection of his untaxed colonial competitor in the British market. If the colonies were to continue to be governed in the interest of the mercantile classes, upon them might reasonably fall the expense of their protection. But the acquisition of vast territories required a new policy, and it was deemed equitable that they should be defended at the expense of the empire of which the colonies were a part. They had claimed and received imperial protection, and they ought to bear a proportional part of the cost, which might be collected under the imperial authority with the same certainty and promptness as were taxes on other subjects of the king. This was the ministerial view of the matter as I gather it from the debates in Parliament.

This claim of the ministry was met by the liberal party on both sides of the water in two ways. It was asserted that the late war, and in fact all the wars which affected the colonies, had been waged in the interest of commerce and for the aggrandizement of the realm of which they were no part, and that the newly acquired territories were of doubtful advantage to colonies as yet sparsely populated. But if these considerations were not conclusive, still the colonists ought not to be taxed, because the imperial government by monopolizing their trade received far more than the colonial share of the expense attending their defence. The liberals also asserted that there was no disposition on the part of the colonists to seek exemption from a reasonable share of these imperial expenses; but as in the past they had voluntarily contributed their part, and in some cases even more, so they would in the future; and that in the future, as in the past, these contributions ought to be voluntary, and the frequency and amount to be determined by the provincial assemblies. Moreover, as the colonists neither had, nor could have, any equitable or efficient representation in the imperial Parliament, they could not consent to have their property taken from them by representatives not chosen by themselves.

The ministry and their adherents replied that the foregoing arguments, even if sound, were such as no party charged with the administration of affairs, and obliged to raise a certain amount of money from a people clamorous for relief from present taxes, could accept; that no reliance could be placed on voluntary contributions; that the necessities of government required that money should be raised by some system which would act with regularity and certainty, and reach the unwilling as well as the willing; that even in the last war, when the existence of the English colonies was threatened by a foe moving with celerity by reason of its unity, the movements of English troops had been delayed by the backwardness of the colonies in furnishing their quotas; and now that the pressure of the French power was removed from New England, that section would leave the Middle and Southern colonies to their own resources, especially when it was remembered how remiss those colonies had been in assisting the north and east when attacked.[40] It was also answered that so far from the monopoly of the colonial trade being a set-off to the expenses incurred by the mother country in defending the colonies, the fact was notorious that by the evasion of the navigation laws and acts of trade the colonists had escaped the restrictions intended by those laws, and at the same time had received bounties and drawbacks from the British Exchequer which enabled them to undersell the British merchants in the markets of Europe.

Here was a deadlock. The arguments on both sides seemed conclusive. No practical solution of the difficulty was proposed at the time, nor has been since. Both parties were firm in their convictions. Neither could yield without the surrender of essential rights. A conflict was unavoidable unless one party would relinquish the authority claimed by the imperial government; unavoidable unless the colonies, essentially free by growth, development, and distance, would yield to pretensions incompatible with their rights as British subjects. The new policy contemplated after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 was carried into effect after the treaty of Paris in 1763. But nothing could have been more unfortunate than the time at which Great Britain inaugurated this policy, and no ministers than those by whom it was to be carried out. On essential political questions which divided the colonists and the mother country Great Britain herself was in the midst of a revolution. The new policy which was inaugurated fell into the hands of those opposed to it. Whig ministers were charged with the execution of an illiberal and reactionary scheme. Consequently, the administration of American affairs was weak and vacillating. The result was inevitable. Had Pitt, with his large views and great administrative abilities, been at the head of affairs for ten years after the peace, the Revolution might have been postponed. On the other hand, had the mercantile system during the same period been administered with the unity of purpose and thoroughness of measures which characterized Carleton's administration in Canada, and had it been enforced by the military genius of Clive, the rebellion might have been temporarily suppressed.

In the journals and statutes of the provincial assemblies we find from the beginning a similarity of causes leading to the final rupture. There are the same quarrels about the royal prerogative; the same repugnance to the navigation laws and acts of trade; the same unwillingness to make permanent provision for the support of the royal governors and judges, and the same restiveness under interference with their internal affairs; but owing either to differences in their original constitutions or of interests, commercial and agricultural, or because of varied nationality and religion, or by reason of all these causes combined, discontent was less general in the Southern than in the Northern colonies. Of the Northern colonies, in Massachusetts we find the causes which brought on the war operative and continuous from the beginning. Party strife between friends and opponents of prerogative existed in other colonies, but in Massachusetts the conflict broke out with special virulence between the adherents of Otis and those of Hutchinson. It was also intensified by the pecuniary interests of a large part of the inhabitants of Boston, which were affected by the enforcement of the navigation laws through the aid of writs of assistance. It was for this enforcement that Hutchinson was held responsible when the mob sacked his house, and were ready to do violence to his person.

The province had received from the British Exchequer more than £60,000 sterling for the war expenses of 1759, and nearly £43,000 for those of 1761. Money was plentiful, and more was expected from the same source. There was a lull in the angry storm of local politics when news of the preliminaries of peace reached Boston in January, 1763. With this came assurances that Parliament would reimburse the colonies for expenses incurred, beyond their proportion, in the last year of the war; and the two Houses of the General Court agreed upon an address expressing gratitude to the king for protection against the French power, and full of loyalty and duty. But quiet was not of long continuance. The close of the war dried up several sources of profitable trade or adventure,[41]—some legal, such as furnishing supplies to the king's forces, and some illicit. Then came orders from the Board of Trade to enforce the navigation laws, heretofore chiefly evaded, but now to be enforced with the aid of writs of assistance. At the same time plans were entertained by the cabinet for making changes in the constitutions of the colonies; and what was hardly less opportune, the English bishops incessantly pressed upon the ministry the adoption of archbishop Secker's scheme of introducing an episcopal hierarchy into America, which would have carried with it some of the worst features of the prerogative.[42] The history of the period from the treaty of 1763 to the meeting of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774 is a narrative of an attempt by the British ministry to enforce certain measures upon unwilling colonists, and of the resistance of the colonists to those measures. Who were the ministers, what were their measures, and how did the colonists resist them?

Pitt had carried the country through a long and glorious war; but he was not satisfied with the results. The cost had been heavy, and as a guaranty against future expense he meditated the substantial annihilation of the French power. He knew that France and Spain had entered into the Family Compact with a view to a war with England. War with Spain was only a question of time, and he would have anticipated its declaration by seizing the immense treasure belonging to that power, then on the sea. This would have replenished the British Exchequer, and perhaps have deferred a resort to American taxation. Pitt urged this measure at a cabinet meeting, September 18, 1761. His advice was not followed, and he resigned October 5. But war was declared against Spain, January 1, 1762, and carried on with brilliant results, though the golden opportunity of securing the Spanish treasure was lost. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau, November 3, 1763.

This virtually ended Pitt's connection with the ministry and with the conduct of American affairs as a leader; for although he was again at the head of the ministry from August 2, 1766, to October, 1768, his direction was merely nominal. It was during his administration that the Townshend Acts were passed, and the Mutiny Act extended to the colonies,—facts which show divided counsels and the lack of uniform purpose. Pitt seldom appeared in the ministry except to oppose his own government. Whenever his great powers were most needed by sore-pressed colleagues to devise some practicable policy for replenishing the Exchequer, or for governing the colonies, he was in the country wrestling with the gout. This was a serious loss to the mother country, but it hastened the independence of America.

The terms of peace with France were settled by Bute and Bedford, against the views of Pitt; but on April 16, 1763, Bute retired from the ministry, before the new policy for the government of the colonies had been fully developed. He was succeeded by George Grenville, who continued at the head of the government until July, 1765. Grenville was able, well informed, and thoroughly honest. His knowledge of financial matters was extensive and accurate, and, as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the preceding administration, he had become familiar with the difficulties of providing for the expenses of government. No question could have been more perplexing at this time. A certain amount of revenue was required to meet the interest on the public debt, and to defray current expenses. Economic theories of commercial policy would not serve as an item in the budget. The minister needed the money, and the Stamp Act was framed and passed. He also encountered other difficulties when public sentiment had become inflamed by the question of General Warrants. His relations to the king were unfriendly. Pitt threw his influence into the scale of the opposition, and Grenville's administration was a failure.

The Rockingham ministry began July 13, 1765, and ended August 2, 1766. The colonists themselves could hardly have chosen one more to their mind. It was weak and vacillating. It repealed the Stamp Act, and passed the Declaratory Bill. To Dowdswell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Massachusetts House voted their thanks. Then came the Chatham-Grafton ministry, which was in power until December 31, 1769. This was nominally Pitt's ministry; but his elevation to the peerage impaired his influence with the people, and after nine months he retired from public affairs by reason of ill health. Men of such opposite views and character as Shelburne, Hillsborough, Charles Townshend, and Lord North were of this ministry.

Lord North was premier from February 10, 1770, to September 6, 1780. Long after he wished to retire he continued to hold power at the personal solicitation, and even by the command, of the king. He was able, faithful, and patriotic; but his heart was not in the work of subduing the colonies, nor could he pilot the ship of state through dangerous seas.

Such were the ministers at one of the most critical periods in English history. No first-class man is to be found among them save Pitt, and his real attitude was that of opposition. He raised the storm, but when his hand ought to have been on the helm he was prostrate in the cabin.

Nor were the governors of Massachusetts, during a period when affairs needed a firm hand, although worthy gentlemen, altogether such as a far-seeing ministry would have chosen to carry out the new policy. Shirley was the only governor of Massachusetts who possessed the favor of the people; and yet he believed in the king's prerogative, and valued himself highly as its representative. He endeavored to suppress illicit trade and to enforce the navigation laws; and from his conferences with Franklin, it is certain that he contemplated some radical changes in the constitutions of the colonies.[43] But he got more money from the people for public uses than any previous governor, and even persuaded them to pass a provincial stamp act.[44] The secret of Shirley's influence may have been that he was less eager to secure his own salary than some of his predecessors had shown themselves to be, and that he had displayed unequalled activity in conducting the French war, which engaged the attention of the people. Pownall, who succeeded Shirley, belonged to the popular party. He gave no particular attention to the navigation laws, and was on the opposite side from Hutchinson, who was lieutenant-governor during the latter part of his term, which closed in 1760.

After Pownall came Bernard, and with him the beginning of the Revolution. Bernard was not without ability, accomplishments, and good intentions; but he was a Tory. More firmly even than Shirley, he believed in the royal prerogatives, and in some modification of the provincial charters to bring their action into harmony with the imperial system. During his administration, and in some cases at his suggestion, the ministry entered upon that series of measures which lost the colonies to Great Britain: the enforcement of the navigation laws; the use of writs of assistance; Grenville's revenue acts in 1764; the Stamp Act of 1765; the Townshend duties of 1767; and the arrival of military forces in 1768.

The purposes contemplated by these successive administrations were not unreasonable, nor were the measures by which they sought to accomplish them unwise in themselves. The general policy was the same as that afterwards pursued by the colonies when they had become a great empire,—homogeneity, equal contributions to expenses, a preference for their own shipping, and protection to their own industries.

The difficulty arose from a misconception of the relations of the colonies to the mother country. They were not a part of the realm, and could neither equally share its privileges nor justly bear its burdens. The attempt to bring them within imperial legislation failed, and could only fail. They were colonies; and the chief benefit the parent state could legitimately derive from them was the trade which would flow naturally to Great Britain by reason of the political connection, and would increase with the prosperity of the colonies.

Early in 1763 the Bute ministry, of which George Grenville and Charles Townshend were members, entered upon the new policy. To enforce the navigation laws, armed cutters cruised about the British coast and along the American shores; their officers, for the first time, and much to their disgust, being required to act as revenue officers. To give unity to their efforts, an admiral was stationed on the coast. To adjudicate upon seizures of contraband goods, and other offences against the revenue, a vice-admiralty court, with enlarged jurisdiction, and sitting without juries, was set up.[45] Royal governors, hitherto chiefly occupied with domestic administration, were now obliged to watch the commerce of an empire. It was seen long before this time that the successful administration of the new system would require some modification of the provincial charters; but the difficulties were so serious that the matter was deferred.

Such was the new order of things. The student who reflects upon the complete and radical change effected or threatened by these new measures, so much at variance with the habits and customary rights of the colonists, breaking up without notice not only illicit but legitimate trade, and sweeping away their commercial prosperity, is no longer at loss to account for the outburst of wrath which followed the Stamp Act, a year later.[46] To avert these hostile proceedings, the colonists memorialized the king and Parliament. They employed resident agents to act in their behalf. They availed themselves of party divisions and animosities in England. They alarmed British merchants by non-importation and self-denying agreements. When these measures seemed likely to prove ineffectual, they aroused public sentiment through the press, by public gatherings and legislative resolutions, by committees of correspondence between towns and colonies, and finally by continental congresses. They did not scruple to avail themselves of popular violence, nor, in the last extremity, of armed resistance to British authority.

So far as trade and commerce were concerned, it was a struggle between British and colonial merchants. The colonial merchants desired freedom of commerce; the British merchant desired its monopoly. But this does not state the case precisely; for the colonial merchants were desirous of retaining what they possessed rather than of acquiring something new. By the navigation laws the British merchant had a legal monopoly of certain specified trades; but by evading these laws, the colonial merchants had gained a large part of this trade for themselves. One party, standing on legal rights, wished to recover this lost trade; the other party, basing their claim on natural equity and long enjoyment, wished to retain it. This was an old question, a hundred years old; but it had acquired new interest since the government, with the aid of writs of assistance, had undertaken to enforce the navigation laws and acts of trade. Such was the first issue between the parties. The second was this, and it was new: As has been said, Great Britain had never undertaken to raise a revenue from the colonies, though she had often contemplated doing so, and especially during the French war just closed. At the close of the war it was estimated that £300,000 would be required to man the forts about to be vacated by the French, and to maintain twenty regiments to hold the Indians in check, who were still under French influence and might become dangerous, as happened in Pontiac's time; and to give efficiency to civil administration by granting to governors, judges, and some other officers fixed and regular salaries, instead of having them depend on irregular and fluctuating grants of colonial assemblies. One third of these expenses—£100,000—the ministry proposed to raise by laying duties on importations, reserving a direct tax by stamps for fuller consideration.

The colonists met this proposition by denying both the necessity and the right of raising a revenue,—at first distinguishing between external and internal taxes, and finally objecting to all taxes raised by a Parliament in which they neither were nor practically could be represented. These issues were complicated with several others of long standing, but which may be left out of the account here.

The popular idea has been that the Revolution began with the Stamp Act. But it seems strange that prosperous colonists, in whose behalf the British people had expended £60,000,000 sterling, should refuse to pay £100,000, one third of the sum deemed necessary for their future defence, and that months before they were called upon to raise the first penny they should fall into a paroxysm of rage, from one end of the continent to the other, and commit disgraceful acts of violence upon property and against persons of the most estimable character.

This view, however, overlooks several facts. If we disregard the chronic quarrels in all the colonies, growing out of the exercise of the royal prerogatives, Virginia and Massachusetts especially had been aroused on the abstract questions concerning the relations of the colonies to Great Britain, and in them the earliest demonstrations of hostility to the Stamp Act were manifested. In the famous "Parsons Case" argued by Patrick Henry in December, 1763, in words which rang through Virginia because they affected every man in that colony, he drew the prerogative into question, not only in regard to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Anglican hierarchy, but also on the right of the king to negative the "Two-penny Act" of the colonial assembly. In Massachusetts, James Otis, in 1761, arguing the writs of assistance, assumed the natural rights of the colonists to absolute independence. But the promulgation of none of these theories of abstract rights accounts for the general outbreak in 1765. Its most potent influence was the enforcement of the navigation acts in the great commercial centres, and the ruin threatening New England through the breaking up of her trade with the French West Indies and the Spanish Main[47] by the modification of the Sugar Act in 1764. The staples of New England were fish, cattle, and lumber. The better quality of fish found a market in Europe, but this trade was subject to competition. For the poorer quality the chief market was in the French West Indies, where by the French law it could be exchanged only for molasses. This was shipped to New England, and used not only in its raw state, but distilled into rum, which, besides supplying home consumption, was to some extent exported to Africa in exchange for slaves. This trade and commerce with the Spanish Main was the chief source of the wealth of New England. But in 1733, to protect the sugar industry of the English West India islands, a duty amounting to prohibition was laid on all sugar and molasses imported into the American colonies from the French islands. So long as this act was not enforced, it did little harm; but if enforced, it would not only ruin the trade in rum and lumber, but injure the fisheries also, for the English islands were limited in population and had no liking for poor fish. The French, besides being more numerous, were less particular as to their diet; but if they could not sell molasses, they would not buy fish. It was proposed to modify and enforce this act. Minot[48] says: "The business of the fishery, which, it was alleged, would be broken up by the act, was at this time estimated in Massachusetts at £164,000 sterling per annum; the vessels employed in it, which would be nearly useless, at £100,000; the provisions used in it, the casks for packing fish, and other articles, at £22,700 and upwards; to all which there was to be added the loss of the advantage of sending lumber, horses, provisions, and other commodities to the foreign plantations as cargoes, the vessels employed to carry fish to Spain and Portugal, the dismissing of 5000 seamen from their employment, the effects of the annihilation of the fishery upon the trade of the province and of the mother country in general, and its accumulative evils by increasing the rival fisheries of France. This was forcibly urged as it respected the means of remittances to England for goods imported into the province, which had been made in specie to the amount of £150,000 sterling, beside £90,000 in the treasurer's bills for the reimbursement money, within the last eighteen months. The sources for obtaining this money were through foreign countries by the means of the fishery, and would be cut off with the trade to their plantations." This was what the enforcement of the molasses act meant. Neither the duties laid in 1764 nor the collection of the taxes anticipated from the Stamp Act of 1765 would have produced a tithe of the evil that would have followed. John Adams,[49] confirming the statement of Minot, says: "The strongest apprehensions arose from the publication of the orders for the strict execution of the molasses act, which is said to have caused a greater alarm in the country than the taking of Fort William Henry did in the year 1757."[50] Rumors of the intention of the ministry had been rife for some time, and in January, 1764, the Massachusetts Assembly wrote to their agent in London that the officers of the customs, in pursuance of orders from the Lords of the Treasury, had lately given public notice that the act, in all its parts, would be carried into execution, and that the consequences would be ruinous to the trade of the province, hurtful to all the colonies, and greatly prejudicial to the mother country.[51]

Besides the rumors of the modification of the Sugar Act came others respecting new duties, and a Stamp Act. In its alarm, the General Court determined to send Hutchinson to London as special agent, to prevent, if possible, the intended legislation. He was in favor of allowing the colonies the freest trade, but acknowledged the supremacy of Parliament.[52] No man knew the colonies better, or was better able to present their just claims, than Hutchinson. He had much at stake in the colony in which he was born, and to which he had rendered many and honorable services. No man loved her better, or was more worthy of honor from her. He was chosen by both Houses; but Governor Bernard suggested doubts as to the expediency of his going to England without the special leave of the king; and subsequently the project was laid aside in consequence of some rising suspicions as to his political sentiments.[53]

Ruin threatened New England. A Stamp Act was not needed to set her aflame; and the other colonies soon had reasons of their own for joining her in the general opposition. All parties were agreed as to the danger, but they differed as to the remedy.

The reports which reached America in the winter of 1764, respecting the intentions of the ministry to raise a revenue from the colonies, were verified in the following spring. The substance of Grenville's resolutions (with the exception of that respecting stamps, which was laid aside for the present) became a law April 6, 1764. Bancroft has summarized this act as "a bill modifying and perpetuating the act of 1733, with some changes to the disadvantage of the colonies; an extension of the navigation acts, making England the storehouse of Asiatic as well as of European supplies; a diminution of drawbacks on foreign articles exported to America; imposts in America, especially on wines; a revenue duty instead of a prohibitory duty on foreign molasses; an increased duty on sugar; various regulations to restrain English manufactures, as well as to enforce more diligently acts of trade; a prohibition of all trade between America and St. Pierre and Miquelon."[54]

Organized opposition to the ministerial measures began in Boston, and perhaps, at that time, could have begun nowhere else. For not only were the interests of that town, in the fisheries, trade, and navigation, the most considerable in the colonies, but there, as nowhere else in the same degree, for more than a century, had been operative causes of dissatisfaction connected with the navigation acts, the exercise of the royal prerogatives, and ecclesiastical affairs; and in no other section had Otis's declaration of the general principles of liberty found such ready acceptance.

The Grenville Act of April, 1764, was to take effect September 30. News of its passage had scarcely arrived in Boston before the citizens in town meeting, May 24, voted instructions[55] to their representatives in the General Court, which had been presented by Samuel Adams. They were directed to endeavor to prevent proceedings designed to curtail their trade, and to impose new taxes,—"for if their trade might be taxed, why not their lands?"—and to obtain from the General Assembly all needed advice and instruction, so that their agent in London might effectually "demonstrate for them all those rights and privileges which justly belonged to them either by charter or birth." Since the other colonies were equally interested, their representatives were also to endeavor to obtain coöperation in that direction.

Thus at the very outset the patriots sought counsel and union with the sister colonies. These instructions were scattered far and wide. The General Court came in on the 30th. June 1, letters from the London agent were referred to a committee of which Otis was one. On the 8th, The Rights of the British Colonies was read,[56] and again on the 12th, when it was referred to the committee of which Otis was a member.[57] On the 13th a letter to Mauduit, their agent, was reported, which must have made his ears tingle,[58] for it was a scathing rebuke for neglect and inefficiency in not preventing the injurious legislation, and for making unwarranted concessions in behalf of the colony.[59] Otis went over the whole question of colonial rights and grievances, but by implication he admitted that representation in Parliament would prove satisfactory.[60] The same committee was directed to correspond with the other governments, requesting coöperation in their endeavors to effect the repeal of the Sugar Act and to prevent the Stamp Act. The letter of the committee, drawn by Otis, together with his Rights of the Colonies, was sent to the agent in London, to make the best use of them in his power. As this action taken by the House of Representatives, which did not seek the concurrence of the Council as usual, was not regarded as judicious by the moderate party, the governor was induced to call the General Court together on the 12th of October. In the mean time the temper of the merchants had become soured by revenue seizures to the amount of £3,000.[61]

The General Court (November 3), in answer to the governor's speech, elaborately discussed the act of Parliament, and the same day agreed upon a petition to the House of Commons, setting forth the injurious nature of the new measures and of the navigation laws, as well as deprecating their enforcement. This was accompanied by a letter to their agent, showing historically the services and expenses of the colony in various wars, and their willingness to share in the defence of the empire.[62] These papers—the petition and the letter—were drawn up by Hutchinson; but though able, candid, and convincing, their tone did not satisfy the more ardent patriots, especially when they were contrasted with Otis's fiery letter to the agent in June, or when compared with similar documents emanating from some other colonies,—that of New York in particular: for the discontent of the colonies, to which the Boston instructions doubtless contributed, was general, and manifested itself in petitions, remonstrances, and correspondence.[63]

The events of 1764 left no doubt as to the manner in which the people would receive the Stamp Act of 1765; nor, although with grievances of their own, were they unobservant of what was going on in England. "Wilkes and Liberty" was a familiar cry in Boston as well as in London, and the names Whig and Tory became terms of reproach.[64]

Notwithstanding the memorials and petitions of the colonial assemblies, and the remonstrances of their agents in London, George Grenville persevered in his determination to bring in a stamp bill. Since its first suggestion, he had listened patiently to the colony agents and other friends of America; but they proposed nothing better, or so good, if the colonies were to be taxed at all. They admitted that the stamp tax would be inexpensive in its collection, and general in its effect upon different classes of people. Indeed, so little did the agents understand the real feeling in America that they—and Franklin was among them—were quite ready, when the time came, to solicit positions as stamp-distributors for their friends, and Richard Henry Lee even asked a place for himself.[65] February 6, 1765, Grenville introduced his resolutions for a Stamp Act, and put forward his plan in a carefully prepared speech. Colonel Barré's opposition called forth the well-known question of Charles Townshend, and the still more famous rejoinder of the former. Pitt was away and ill. The debate occupied but one session of the Commons, and the ministers were directed to bring in a bill, which was done on the 13th. Numerous petitions against it, presented by colonial agents, were rejected under the rule which allowed no petition against a money bill. The bill passed both Houses, and on March 22 received the royal assent. But in America there was no apathy. If there had been a calm, it presaged the coming storm. The passage of the bill was known in America before the end of May, and from Virginia came the first legislative response. She spoke through the voice of her great orator. Of Patrick Henry's six resolutions, though supported by a powerful speech, only four, however, were carried, May 30, by a small majority, in a House in which the Established Church and the old aristocracy were very powerful.[66]

The General Court of Massachusetts did not meet until May 27, but set to work so promptly that the House, June 6, under the lead of James Otis, who had recovered from a fit of vacillation, voted that it was highly expedient that there should be a meeting, as soon as might be, of committees from the several colonial assemblies, "to consult together on the present circumstances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which they are and must be reduced by operation of the late acts of Parliament for levying duties and taxes on the colonies." It was agreed to send them a circular letter to that effect, recommending a congress, in the city of New York, the first Tuesday of October. This measure, which led to the Stamp Act Congress, was pushed through with an unanimous vote of the House (June 6), though probably not with the equally concordant opinion of the members; and the circular, which was dated June 8, was immediately dispatched.[67] James Otis, Oliver Partridge, and Timothy Ruggles—the last two having little heart in the matter—were chosen delegates. The response to the Massachusetts circular was neither unanimous, nor, from some of the assemblies, enthusiastic.[68] At this stage of the Revolution, in high offices and in provincial assemblies were friends of the royal government able to make their influence felt in opposition to popular measures. Nine of the colonies, however, were represented in the congress, and from others came expressions of good-will. In the mean time public sentiment was rapidly shaping itself into violent opposition to the act. In Boston the Sons of Liberty were on the alert. When the name of Andrew Oliver appeared among the stamp-distributors he was hanged in effigy from the Liberty Tree on the night of the 13th of August; and the next night the frame of a building going up on his land, and supposed to be intended as a stamp-office, was broken in pieces and used to consume the effigy before his own door.[69] On the 26th of the same month the records of the hated Vice-Admiralty Court were burned by the mob, the house of the comptroller of the customs sacked, and that of Chief Justice Hutchinson forcibly entered and left in ruins. His plate and money were carried off, and his books and valuable manuscripts were thrown into the streets. Nor did he or his family escape without difficulty. The militia were not called out to maintain order, for many of the privates were in the mob. Men of standing secretly connived at proceedings which they afterwards insincerely condemned. Though these violent outbreaks came earlier and were carried to greater excess in Massachusetts than in any other province, similar demonstrations followed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.[70]

When the Stamp Act Congress met in New York, October 7, 1765, that city was the headquarters of the British forces in America, under the command of General Gage. Lieutenant-Governor Colden, then filling the executive chair, was in favor of the act, and resolved to execute it; but the Sons of Liberty expressed different sentiments. The Congress contained men some of whom became celebrated. Timothy Ruggles was chosen speaker, but Otis was the leading spirit. In full accord with him were the Livingstons of New York, Dickinson of Pennsylvania, McKean and Rodney of Delaware, Tilghman of Maryland, and Rutledge and the elder Lynch of South Carolina. New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia failed to send delegates, but not for lack of interest in the cause. The Congress prepared a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, An Address to the King, a Memorial to the House of Lords, and a Petition to the House of Commons, and adjourned on October 25th. For a clear, accurate, and calm statement of the position of the colonies these papers were never surpassed; nor, until the appearance of the Declaration of Independence, was any advance made from the ground taken in them.[71]

It is not to be inferred from the results of their proceedings that there were no differences of opinion among the delegates. Several of them afterwards took sides with the king; and there was doubtless diversity of sentiment on the Stamp Act, as well as in Parliament, which reassembled January 14, 1766, under a different ministry from that which had carried the measure less than a year before. For in a few months after the passage of the act, George III., chiefly on personal grounds, had changed his legal advisers. After negotiations with Pitt had failed, a new ministry, with the Marquis of Rockingham as chief, and the Duke of Grafton and General Conway as Secretaries of State, was installed, July 13, 1765. It was a Whig ministry. With it, though not of it, was associated Edmund Burke, private secretary of Rockingham, and not long after, through his influence, a member of the House of Commons. This change of the ministry was regarded with favor by the colonists, and doubtless encouraged their resistance to the Stamp Act. The action of the colonists produced a great effect on the new ministry, and alarmed the British merchants trading with America. Their trade had been threatened by non-importation agreements made to take effect January 1, 1766, and their debts were imperilled by the determination of the colonists to withhold the amount of them as pledges for good conduct. The general confusion likely to arise in the administration of justice, and the transactions of the custom-house, from want of stamps, brought the ministry to their wits' end. Parliament assembled December 17th. But notwithstanding an effort by Grenville to bring on a general consideration of American affairs, the subject was postponed until after the holidays.

In the mean time some embarrassment was anticipated from the want of stamps, November 1,[72] when the act was to go into operation. Governor Bernard (September 25) had called the attention of the House of Representatives to the courts, which guarded the property and persons of the inhabitants, and to the custom-houses, upon which depended legal trade and navigation. The House, in its answer, October 23, had not shared his excellency's apprehensions, but was not then quite ready to say, as it said three months later (January 17, 1766), "The courts of justice must be open,—open immediately,—and the law, the great rule of right in every county of the province, executed."[73] But this attitude had not been taken without intermediate steps. In December the town of Boston presented a petition to the governor and council for the reopening of the courts, which was supported by John Adams, who then first publicly identified himself with the patriot cause, of which he became one of the most efficient advocates. After some delay and inconvenience, the courts and custom-houses throughout the colonies, early in the spring, took the risk of proceeding without stamped papers, trusting to find their justification in necessity.

Parliament reassembled January 14, 1766. The king's speech opened with a reference to "affairs in America, and Mr. Secretary Conway laid before the House of Commons important letters and papers on the same subject." On the 17th a petition of the merchants of London trading with North America against the Stamp Act was presented. Then (January 28) followed the examination of Franklin, in relation to the Stamp Act, before the House, in committee.[74] With this mass of information before them, American affairs received an exhaustive discussion. The Stamp Act was repealed, and the royal assent was given March 18th. The debates on the Declaratory Act were no less full. It was a memorable session,—memorable for the first speech of Burke; for those great speeches of Pitt which placed him at the head of modern orators, for Grenville's masterly defence of his colonial policy, and for Franklin's examination. It was also memorable for the constitutional discussions of Mansfield and Camden in the House of Lords. If the reader finds it difficult to resist Mansfield's judicial interpretation of the British Constitution adverse to the American claim, he recognizes in the great principles then enunciated the force which popularized that Constitution and marked a forward movement of the British race.

The Declaratory Act—that the king, with the advice of Parliament, had full power to make laws binding America in all cases whatsoever—was passed. This gave Pitt some trouble, considering his emphatic declaration in that regard; but the liberal party in the colonies soon met it with the counter-affirmation that Parliament possessed no authority whatever in America except by consent of the provincial assemblies. If the colonists had not forced the British government from its position, they had advanced from their own. The repeal, however, caused great rejoicing on both sides of the Atlantic. British merchants expected no further trouble from non-importation agreements, and hoped that the colonists would now pay their debts,—amounting to £4,000,000. But there were misgivings on both sides. The ardent patriots were outspoken in condemning the Declaratory Act, which Franklin had thought would give no trouble. But the act of 1764, laying duties, remained; and the enforcement of the navigation laws—their real grievance—lost none of its vigor. Governor Bernard was under instructions to enforce the laws against illicit trade; and in addition to these official obligations, his share in the forfeitures of condemned goods laid his motives open to suspicion. Nothing could have been more unfortunate for his administration. It was also alleged that merchants were encouraged in schemes to defraud the revenue; and that when their ships and cargoes were compromised, they were seized and condemned. At a time when conciliatory measures were needed to reassure the colonists, the harshest were followed. Nevertheless, the repeal weakened the prerogative party on both sides of the water, and encouraged the liberal party by a knowledge of its power.

Governor Bernard opened the General Court, May 29, 1766, with congratulations on the repeal of the Stamp Act. If he had stopped there he would have acted wisely; but he alluded to the "fury of the people" in their treatment of Hutchinson, and to some personal matters, which called forth a reply from the House couched in terms showing no abatement of animosity. This was increased on the receipt of another message from the governor (June 3), enclosing the Act of Repeal and the Declaratory Act, and at the same time informing them that he had been directed by Secretary Conway to recommend "that full and ample compensation be made to the late sufferers by the madness of the people", agreeably to the votes of the House of Commons. He also complained of their exclusion of the principal crown officers from the Council by non-election.[75] The General Court promptly availed themselves of this last topic for reply, instead of committing themselves on the matter of compensation. They did not fail, however, to vote a politic address of thanks to the king for assenting to the repeal of the Stamp Act, and to offer their grateful acknowledgments to Pitt and those members of the two Houses who had advocated it.[76] But the subject of compensation could not be passed by. The governor urged prompt compliance with the recommendation of Conway. The House, however, professing the greatest abhorrence of the madness and barbarity of the rioters, and promising their endeavors "to bring the perpetrators of so horrid a fact to exemplary justice, and, if it be in their power, to a pecuniary restitution of all damages", regarded compensation by the province as not an act of justice, but rather of generosity, and wished to consult their constituents. Therefore they referred the matter to the next session.[77]

In December the two Houses passed a bill granting compensation to those who had suffered losses in the Stamp Act riots, but, on the suggestion of Joseph Hawley, accompanied it with a general pardon, indemnity and oblivion to the offenders. Why they should have been so solicitous for the safety of those who had committed crimes, condemned in June in the severest terms, does not appear; and this invasion of the royal prerogative of pardon did not fail to attract the attention of the Parliament.[78]

In the late contest with Parliament the colonists had gained a victory, but it was neither final nor precisely on the right ground. As a matter of practical politics, they were ready to accept Pitt's distinction between commercial regulations and internal taxes. They took the repeal of the Stamp Act with thanks, but not as a finality. They participated in the lively demonstrations of joy which followed that event on both sides of the Atlantic; but thoughtful observers on both sides perceived that one of the most powerful agencies in effecting the repeal was the mercantile class, which had no intention of relinquishing its grasp upon colonial commerce. Nor was the popular feeling without guidance. It was the good fortune of the colonists, all through the long contest, to have statesmen like John Adams, Jay, and Dickinson, who could supplement the passionate appeals of Otis and some of his associates with the calm reasons of political philosophy. None rendered more valuable services in this respect than John Adams. In a series of papers which appeared in the Boston Gazette in the summer and fall of 1765,—when the minds of the people were inflamed by the Stamp Act,—and were afterwards republished in London as A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, he combated the ecclesiastical and feudal principles which lay at the bottom of the monarchical and Anglican system.

The substantial grievance of the commercial colonies was not the Stamp Act, which had not taken a farthing from their pockets. It was the enforcement of trade regulations, which impaired the value of the fisheries and dried up a principal source of revenue. A renewal of the contest, and for the first time on its true grounds, was not long postponed. The Rockingham ministry gave way, and Pitt, gazetted Earl of Chatham July 30, 1766, took the helm of state August 2d, and was the nominal head of the government until October, 1768. Among those associated with him were the Duke of Grafton, Charles Townshend, Conway, and the Earl of Shelburne. It was Pitt's misfortune—and his country's—during these stormy times, that when he was most needed he was disabled by sickness. Historians have speculated as to the probable pacification of America had Pitt—not Chatham—guided affairs.[79] Pitt's was a great name in America as well as in Europe. By his genius the French power in America had been destroyed. This the colonists knew. He had been generous in reimbursing their expenses in the late war. This, and his efforts in effecting the repeal of the Stamp Act, they remembered with gratitude. Whatever man could do in restoring things to their old order Pitt could have done. He might even have relinquished something of his claims for parliamentary supremacy in respect to trade and general legislation; but it is doubtful whether, even at that early period, he could have eradicated the ideas of independence which had taken possession of the colonists, or have arrested the movement which resulted in the independence of America and the overthrow of the royal prerogative in England.

The Massachusetts Assembly was in no amiable frame of mind. When there was no cause for quarrel, they made one. Bernard had probably been advised to preserve a prudent silence respecting political affairs. At the opening of the session, January 28, 1767, in a message of less than ten printed lines, he recommended "the support of the authority of the government, the maintenance of the honor of the province, and the promotion of the welfare of the people", as the chief objects for their consultation. This called forth a captious reply, and a complaint because Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, who had not been reëlected to the Council, appeared in the council-chamber at the opening of the session, at the request of the governor and as matter of courtesy. The House found in his presence, if voluntary, "a new and additional instance of ambition and lust of power."

In the spring of 1767, Parliament had occasion to inquire into some colonial legislation. In April, 1765, the Mutiny Act had been extended to the colonies. This was intended in part to provide for military offences not within the jurisdiction of civil courts, and in part to require the colonies in America, as in England in like cases, to provide for quartering the king's troops. The New York Assembly made only partial provision. When Sir Henry Moore, the governor, communicated to them the letter of Earl Shelburne, to the effect that the king expected obedience to the act, the Assembly resolved not to comply, and called in question the authority of Parliament. Parliament then took the matter in hand, and suspended their legislative authority until compliance.[80] This action brought them to terms. It made considerable stir throughout the colonies, and was regarded as a serious invasion of their rights.

The arrival of several companies of royal artillery at Boston, in the fall of 1766, and the quartering of them at the expense of the province, by order of the governor and council, gave the General Court occasion, at their session in January, 1767, to express their opinion about unauthorized expenditures of the public money, and to enquire if more troops were expected.[81] The governor explained the quartering of the troops, and said he had no expectation, except from common rumor, of the arrival of additional forces. But his statement failed to allay apprehensions of a design on the part of the ministry to support their measures by military power. Added to other causes of alarm in 1767 was a report that Anglican bishops were about to be supported in the colonies, at the expense and under the patronage of the British government.

In 1767 strife was renewed on what are known as the Townshend Acts. Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Chatham-Grafton ministry. He had reluctantly voted for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and still held to his opinions that the colonists should pay some share of the civil and military expenses arising from their defence and government; and if, to secure promptness and uniformity of action, some modification of their charters should be found necessary, then that ought to follow. In conformity with these views, he had given some pledges in respect to deriving a revenue from America, and, during Chatham's retirement, had brought forward his scheme of taxation in certain resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means, April 16, 1767,[82] the substance of which was enacted June 29th, to go into effect November 20th. There were two acts known as the Townshend Acts: the first[83] providing for the more effectual execution of the laws of trade, and for the appointment of commissioners for that purpose; and the second[84] granting duties on glass, paper, colors, and tea, and legalizing writs of assistance. The revenue thus raised was to be applied to "defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of the civil government in such provinces where it should be found necessary; and towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions." Before the act went into operation Charles Townshend died (September 4, 1767), and Chatham's powers continued to be enfeebled by disease. It was the misfortune of Great Britain that both these able men should have been withdrawn from the public service during this critical period, and that the policy of each had to be represented by inferior men. Chatham's conciliatory methods had no fair trial; and Townshend's coercive measures were pressed neither with unity of purpose nor vigor of execution.

Between the passage of Townshend's Acts in the summer of 1767 and their taking effect in November, the colonists had ample time to study and organize opposition, stimulated by the arrival (November 5, 1767) of Burch and Hulton, two of the five commissioners of customs who had been sent over to enforce them. At first the people expressed their resentment, in which, as usual, those of Boston took the lead, by renewing their non-importation agreements. In the mean time efforts had been made to introduce domestic manufactures.[85] These practical measures in Massachusetts were supplemented by one of the ablest discussions of colonial rights which had yet appeared. In the early winter of 1767-8 John Dickinson published in a Philadelphia newspaper a series of essays entitled The Farmer's Letters, which soon attracted notice both in America and England.

Their influence among all classes was widespread and profound.

The year 1768 was one of the most momentous of the Revolutionary period. Hitherto the colonists, in defence of their property, had denied the supremacy of Parliament as based on usurpation; but now, in defence of their privileges, they denied the prerogative of the king, the source of their political existence. This grew out of the Massachusetts Circular Letter. The General Court came together December 30, 1767. John Hancock, James Otis, and Joseph Hawley were prominent members, but though James Otis was still active, Samuel Adams was the master spirit. Never was his practical sagacity more serviceable to the cause; never did his genius for politics shine brighter. His fruitful pen is apparent in the remarkable series of state papers called forth by the Townshend Acts, comprising the letter of the House to their London agent (January 12, 1768), the Petition to the king (January 20), and the Circular Letter to the assemblies of the several colonies (February 11).[86] If the Townshend Acts were to be successfully resisted, union of sentiment and action among all the colonies was essential. This was the object of the circular letter. It was an arraignment of Parliament and the ministry in respect to the revenue acts, and the system by which the British government proposed to make civil officers, including the judges, the instruments for its enforcement; and it solicited an interchange of opinions on these subjects.[87] Governor Bernard watched the proceedings of the House with the deepest interest, nor was he long in doubt as to the nature of the circular letter, for two days after its adoption a copy of it was proffered, in case he desired it.[88] This letter was preceded (besides the documents already mentioned) by letters to the Marquis of Rockingham, General Conway, Lord Camden, and to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. The details of these papers cannot be given here. They present the whole case of the colonies, their rights, their grievances, their remonstrances, and their petitions. They proceeded mainly from the pen of Samuel Adams, who, when he had shaken himself clear from profuse professions of loyalty and disclaimers of "the most distant thoughts of independence", rose to the annunciation of the loftiest principles of statesmanship, in the declaration that "the supreme legislative, in any free country, derives its power from the constitution, by the fundamental rules of which it is bounded and circumscribed;"—"that it is the glory of the British Constitution that it hath its foundation in the law of God and nature;"—"that the necessity of rights and property is the great end of government;"—"that the colonists are natural-born subjects by the spirit of the law of nature and nations;" and "that the laws of God and nature were not made for politicians to alter." Nor does he confine himself to the enunciation of abstract principles, but states the rights of the colonists of Massachusetts on historical grounds, and shows the oppressive and impolitic nature of the acts complained of.[89] Changes were taking place in the Grafton ministry which boded evil to the colonies. Shelburne, the most liberal friend of the Americans, was succeeded by Hillsborough in December, 1767, and Conway by Weymouth, January 20, 1768. While the circular letter was on its way to the colonies and to Westminster (for it was intended also for England), events were occurring at Boston which showed the temper of the people, and had no inconsiderable influence upon the action of the British government. The anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, March 18, 1768, did not pass without popular demonstrations of ill-will to the customs officials, nor did the governor escape abusive language from the mob.[90] For some years these officers had been resisted in making seizures of uncustomed goods, which were frequently rescued from their possession by interested parties, and the determination of the commissioners of customs to break up this practice frequently led to collisions; but no flagrant outbreak occurred until the seizure of John Hancock's sloop "Liberty" (June 10, 1768), laden with a cargo of Madeira wine. The officer in charge, refusing a bribe, was forcibly locked up in the cabin, the greater part of the cargo was removed, and the remainder entered at the custom-house as the whole cargo. This led to seizure of the vessel, said to have been the first made by the commissioners, and for security she was placed under the guns of the "Romney", a man-of-war in the harbor. For this the revenue officers were roughly handled by the mob. Their boat was burned, their houses threatened, and they, with their alarmed families, took refuge on board the "Romney", and finally in the Castle. These proceedings undoubtedly led to the sending additional military forces to Boston in September.[91]

The General Court was in session at the time, but no effectual proceedings were taken against the rioters. Public sympathy was with them in their purposes, if not in their measures. But the inhabitants of Boston, in town meeting on the 14th, in an address to Governor Bernard, probably drawn by Otis,[92] among other matters complained of being invaded by an armed force. With grim humor, the address represents the commissioners, who had fled for safety to the Castle, as having "of their own notion" relinquished the exercise of their commission, and expressed the hope that they would never resume it, and demanded of the governor to give immediate order for the removal of the "Romney" from the harbor. Some weeks later (June 30) the Council passed the customary resolution, setting forth "their utter abhorrence and detestation" of the riotous proceedings, and desiring that the governor, through the attorney-general, would prosecute all guilty persons, that they and "their abettors might be brought to condign punishment."[93]

When the circular letter was laid before the ministry, April 15, 1768, it caused great excitement in parliamentary circles, and led to the gravest mistake which was made by the government during the entire Revolutionary period. Other measures, perhaps without exception, had a show of necessity; nor, as the British Constitution was then interpreted by the highest authority, were they clearly unconstitutional. But when the Earl of Hillsborough, speaking for the king, June 21, 1768, required the Massachusetts House of Representatives to rescind their circular letter on pain of immediate dissolution, there was a violation of the constitutional right of the House to express their opposition to measures deemed injurious to their constituents, and to communicate their sentiments to other colonies whose interests were similarly affected. Equally unwise was Hillsborough's letter to the colonial assemblies, requiring them to disregard the Massachusetts circular. Responses to the circular letter, when they expressed the sentiments of the assemblies rather than those of the royal governors, were in full sympathy with Massachusetts.[94] The representatives, says Bernard, "have been much elated, within these three or four days, by some letters they have received in answer to the circular letter",[95] and Hutchinson thought that "the strength which would be derived from this union confirmed many who would otherwise have been wavering."[96] But when Governor Bernard (June 21, 1768) communicated to the House instructions from the king to rescind the circular letter, and recommended immediate action as of important consequence to the province, no doubt it caused anxiety. Under a similar pressure New York had receded. The House apprehended the gravity of the situation, and took seven or eight days for consideration, and even then desired to consult their constituents. But when Bernard informed them that further delay would be considered as a refusal, they voted, 92 to 17, not to rescind, and "the number 92", Hutchinson says, "was auspicious, and 17 of ill omen, for many months after, not only in Massachusetts Bay, but in most of the colonies on the continent."[97] They doubtless were influenced by Otis, who spoke with great power, and, according to Bernard, unsparingly denounced the ministry and "passed an encomium on Oliver Cromwell."[98] Massachusetts deliberately disobeyed the king's command, and defied his power. Before dissolution, the House agreed (June 30, 1768) upon a message to the governor, arguing the question very fully, and declaring their refusal to rescind; a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough; and a Report and Resolves, in which they repeat the story of their grievances, doings, and rights with great fullness and ability.[99]

The effect of this action, so honorable to the House, was unfavorable upon the ministry. De Berdt, the London agent, in a letter to the House, August 12, 1768, giving the substance of a conversation with the Earl of Hillsborough, says that his lordship informed him that he would have used his influence for the repeal of the Townshend Acts, and believed he could have obtained it; but since the news respecting the non-rescinding of the circular letter, the matter was in doubt. "The crown must be supported, or we sink into a state of anarchy."

In July, 1768, General Gage, then at New York, had been directed by the ministry to remove one or two regiments to Boston; and when the news of the riots of March 18 reached England, on August 14, two additional regiments were ordered from Ireland. When rumors of these orders became rife in Boston, there were indications that the country would be raised to prevent the landing of the troops; but different counsels prevailed. A town meeting was held in Faneuil Hall on the 12th and 13th of September, which agreed to call a meeting of the towns.[100] Ninety-six towns and eight districts were finally represented in the convention which assembled at the time appointed (September 22). Their first act was a petition to the governor setting forth their apprehensions in respect to a standing army. This the governor refused to receive, but he expressed his opinion of the unauthorized meeting they were holding, directed them to separate instantly, and threatened to assert the prerogatives of the crown. After a recital of grievances, with declarations of loyalty and promises of assistance to civil magistrates in suppressing disorders, they adjourned on the 29th. Their proceedings were moderate,—a moderation induced, as some supposed, by the arrival at Nantasket, September 28, from Halifax of a fleet of seven armed vessels, with nearly a thousand troops.[101] If contempt of the royal prerogative, after the refusal to rescind the circular letter, could have been more pointedly expressed, it was by holding a provincial convention without sanction of law. Between these measures and April 19, 1775, no step involving a new principle was taken. The burning of the "Gaspee" in 1772 and the destruction of the tea in 1773 were merely the filling in of a picture firmly sketched in outline.

The refusal of the provincial council and of the town to provide for quartering the royal troops on their arrival was a practical nullification of the Mutiny Act, which served still further to strain the relations between Massachusetts and the British ministry. Parliament came together November 8, 1768. Both Houses were swift to condemn the late proceedings of the General Court of Massachusetts and of the town of Boston. On December 15 these acts were made the basis of eight resolutions, introduced by the Earl of Hillsborough, and an address to the king, moved by the Duke of Bedford, to obtain information respecting the actors in the riotous proceedings since December 10, 1767, with a view, if deemed advisable, of ordering their transportation to England for trial. These were passed by the House of Commons (January 26, 1769), after a debate in which the whole subject of American affairs was discussed.[102] The news of these proceedings at first created some uneasiness in Boston among those implicated; but apprehension subsided when it was learned from their friends in England that the voting of Bedford's Address by the two Houses was merely political;[103] that lenient, not rigorous, measures were intended by the ministry; and that the late act laying duties would be repealed. This intelligence reassured the patriotic party, but correspondingly depressed the tories, who saw no hope in the vacillating policy of the ministry.[104] A policy was much needed. Chatham had resigned in October, 1768, and the Duke of Grafton became the nominal, as he had long been the real, head of the ministry. Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer, had charge of the revenue. The Duke of Grafton favored the total repeal of the Townshend duties, but Lord North favored the retention of that on tea, as a matter of principle; and so it was decided by a majority of one in the Cabinet Council. Parliament rose May 9, and four days later the Earl of Hillsborough reported to the several colonies the resolutions of the government on the circular letter. Lord Hillsborough's letter gave little comfort to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, whose firmness was commended by Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the threat of transportation of the Bostonians to England for trial under a statute of Henry VIII. called forth from the latter colony vigorous resolutions and an address to the king, May 16, 1769.[105] Jefferson has given the history of these resolutions.[106] This action did not meet the approval of Lord Botetourt, the governor of Virginia, and he dissolved the House of Burgesses. This, however, did not prevent the delegates from meeting at the Apollo, in the Raleigh tavern, and, as citizens, entering into a non-importation agreement which bore the names of Henry, Randolph, Jefferson, and Washington, and became an example to all the colonies.[107] During the remainder of the year 1769 the progress of the Revolution was confined chiefly to Massachusetts, and there it assumed the form of an altercation between the House of Representatives and the governor in respect to the presence of the king's forces.[108] Coming in for their annual session near the end of May, the House, unwilling even to organize in the presence of the military, sent a message to the governor, remonstrating against so gross a breach of its privileges, and requesting him to give orders to remove the standing army, the main guard of which was kept with cannon pointed at the very door of the State House.[109] There was no design in this arrangement, but it was very menacing, nevertheless. For nearly two weeks messages kept passing back and forth, to the purport, on the governor's side, that he had no authority to remove the troops, they being under the commander-in-chief; and on the part of the House, that they would do no business while the troops remained. It occurred to the governor that, if he could not remove the troops, he could remove the General Court; and this he did by directing the secretary to adjourn it to Cambridge. The Court did not appreciate this stroke of humor, and proceeded to business only after a protest of necessity. But Bernard's career was drawing to a close. June 28th he informed the House that the king desired him to repair to Great Britain. July 8th the House passed nineteen resolutions,[110] covering the whole ground of dispute with the home government, and arraigning the governor for various political misdemeanors. They petitioned for his recall; and Governor Bernard left the province, accompanied by the reproaches of the House and manifestations of joy by the people. He did not succeed in a position in which all who had preceded him and all who followed him failed. He could not serve well two masters.

When Sir Francis Bernard[111] sailed for England on board the "Rippon", in August, 1769, he left the administration in the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. For several months nothing of importance took place, except misunderstandings growing out of the non-observance of the non-importation agreements (which were renewed March, 1770), and quarrels between the troops and the populace which resulted in the deplorable scenes of March 5, 1770. The circumstances which led to this affair are too well known to need recital in detail. While the town was occupied by British regiments, collisions were constantly occurring. None knew better than the populace the helplessness of the soldiers to resent insult or injury by arms. Even in case of riots, the reading of the Act and the intervention of the civil power were necessary preliminaries to firing upon the crowd. Nothing but confinement of the soldiers to their barracks could have prevented collisions with the populace. The patriot leaders had determined to get rid of the regiments at all cost. The affair at Gray's wharf on Saturday, March 2, led to the more serious affray on Monday, the 5th. On the evening of that day, between seven and eight o'clock, the cry of fire and ringing of bells drew together a large crowd, which was followed by a collision with the troops, and resulted in the death of three persons and wounding of several others, two mortally. The Boston Massacre soon became known throughout the country, and aroused a spirit of resistance hitherto unfelt. Its immediate effect was the withdrawal of the troops from the town to the Castle, on account of the resolute attitude assumed by Samuel Adams. The men who lost their lives in this affray were buried in one grave, to which they were followed by an immense procession, and for some years the anniversary of their death was observed by commemorative ceremonies. All classes in the community joined in execrating the soldiers, and gave no ear to justifying or mitigating circumstances. Inflamed and grossly inaccurate accounts of the transactions were drawn up and scattered through the colonies and sent to Great Britain. But time somewhat allayed the first feeling of animosity; and when the facts became better known, it clearly appeared that the soldiers had fired, without orders, upon the crowd only when it had become necessary in defence of their lives. Captain Preston (October 24) and the soldiers (November 27) engaged in the affray were brought to trial on a charge of murder, and were all acquitted, except two soldiers who were convicted of manslaughter. These were slightly branded, and all of them were liberated. John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., appeared in their defence, and with equal honor the jurors did their duty in accordance with the law and the evidence. The news of the events of March 5 became known in London April 21, through Mr. Robertson. one of the commissioners of the customs.[112]

The Townshend act, though drawn conformably to the colonial distinctions between internal and external taxes, produced the same dissatisfaction as the Stamp Act had done. There was no real difference. If Parliament could lay external taxes, it could lay internal taxes. Non-importation agreements in the several colonies followed in 1769, and so long as they were observed, even without great strictness, were disastrous to British merchants, the value of whose exports to the American colonies between Christmas in 1767 and Christmas in 1769 fell off nearly £700,000 sterling; or, if we take the figures for those colonies where the agreement was most effective, in New England from £419,000 to £207,000, in New York from £482,000 to £74,000.[113] Though the agreement was not observed equally in all the colonies, nor in entire good faith in any,—Massachusetts and Rhode Island, particularly, suffered some discredit in this respect, as compared with New York and Philadelphia,—the general result seriously alarmed British merchants, who petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Townshend act.[114] These petitions were considered in the House of Commons March 5, 1770, and Lord North, in accordance with Earl Hillsborough's circular letter, proposed to take off all the duties laid by the Townshend act of 1767, except that on tea, which he would preserve as a sort of declaratory act, especially since the conduct of the Americans had been such as to prevent an entire compliance with their wishes.[115] Governor Pownall offered as an amendment the entire repeal of the act, and supported his motion in an extremely able and interesting speech.[116]

Pownall's amendment was lost by a vote of 204 to 142. The merchants failed to procure a repeal of the duties, although Alderman Trecothic made one more effort in their behalf, on the 9th of April, "in a very sensible speech."[117]

When the news of the Boston Massacre reached England late in April, 1770, it recalled attention to American affairs, which, after the defeat of Trecothic's motion, seemed to have been laid aside for the remainder of the session. Trecothic called for the papers.[118] While waiting for them, Governor Pownall made a speech on the "powers of government [which] the crown can and ought to grant to the dependencies of the realm; what form and power of government the British subject in those parts ought to be governed by; what powers are granted, both civil and military; and what arrangements, and means taken, for administering and executing these powers."[119] Burke, in the second of eight resolutions, affirmed "that a principal cause of the disorders which have prevailed in North America hath arisen from the ill-judged and inconsistent instructions given, from time to time, by persons in administration, to the governors of some of the provinces of North America."[120] Later, the same resolutions were brought forward in the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond. But Burke was not acting in good faith. A close observer wrote at the time: "It is plain enough that these motions were not made for the sake of the colonies, but merely to serve the purposes of the opposition, to render the ministry, if possible, more odious, so that they may themselves come into the conduct of affairs, while it remains very doubtful whether they would do much better, if at all, than their predecessors."[121] This resulted well for the colonies, and, in the long run, for the progress of liberal ideas in both countries. But to those who wished for the continuance of the British connection, and believed in its practicability, it must have been a matter for profound regret that the liberal leaders, from Chatham to Fox, simply found fault with the acts of the ministry, and proposed nothing instead. The ministry, conciliatory to-day and severe to-morrow, had no fixed policy. American affairs gave way to the exigencies of a general election, just as we have lately seen in this country, great interests jeopardized by the unwillingness of both political parties to treat them on the eve of a presidential election. If, instead of this vacillating and inconsistent policy, both parties had given their attention to devising some rational system of colonial administration, as proposed by Pownall,[122] leaving local affairs to the colonists, but placing imperial affairs under a permanent board, not changeable with every ministry, the colonies and the mother-country might have remained united, perhaps for a generation, longer.

The Townshend duties, except those on tea, were repealed in April; but this did not satisfy the colonists, and dissensions arose among the merchants of the several colonies in regard to the non-importation agreement. Those of New York became dissatisfied with Boston and Newport merchants, who had agreed to import non-dutiable articles, even before the news of the repealing act; and in October, 1770, all sections fell into the same plan, but no teas were to be imported. The Sons of Liberty in New York in vain resisted this arrangement.

In Massachusetts the patriots were seldom without causes of just complaint. Governor Hutchinson, in obedience to instructions of General Gage, had delivered (September 10) the keys of Castle William, in Boston harbor, which belonged to the province, to Colonel Dalrymple, who was the servant of the king; and following royal instructions, had refused to convene the General Court at Boston, instead of Cambridge, or to assent to any bill by which the assessors (in 1771) could tax the officers of the crown.[123] These exercises of the royal prerogative, and the payment of the governor's salary by the crown, involved constitutional questions of higher import, as the British Constitution then stood, than the question of parliamentary supremacy, and were matters of unceasing contention. In 1770, Franklin was chosen London agent of the colony, although not without some objection, in the place of De Berdt, recently deceased (May), and Hutchinson was appointed governor in March, 1771.

In 1772, although it was a year of general quiet, two events happened, which, in different ways, promoted the purposes of the more ardent patriots,—the burning of the "Gaspee" at Providence in June, and the formation of committees of correspondence in November. On the 9th of June, Lieutenant Dudingston, commander of the "Gaspee", who had shown great activity in the revenue service at Rhode Island, in undertaking to intercept the "Providence Packet", Captain Lindsay, ran aground on Namquit Point. While in this position, the "Gaspee" was boarded on the following night by a party of citizens led by John Brown, a respectable merchant. In the mêlée the lieutenant was wounded and the vessel was burned. The affair created a great sensation in England, and it was ordered that those engaged in it should be sent to England for trial. For this purpose the home government appointed colonial commissioners, who sat at Newport from the 4th to the 22 January, 1773, to inquire into the matter.[124] At the end of their deliberations they required Wanton, the governor of Rhode Island, to arrest the offenders, for trial in England. He appealed for directions to the Assembly, as did Stephen Hopkins, the chief-justice of the highest court. That body referred the matter to the discretion of the chief-justice, and he accordingly refused to arrest, or to allow the arrest of, any person for transportation.[125] Nothing came of the order except ill-humor in England and indignation in the colonies, where it was regarded as an invasion of their constitutional right of trial by their peers.

Samuel Adams was always busy on political subjects; nor were subjects wanting. The Earl of Hillsborough had been succeeded in the American department (August 4, 1772) by Lord Dartmouth; but the change in administration made no change in the policy of paying the salaries of the provincial judges by the king, and thus rendering them less dependent on the popular will. This was thought to be in derogation of colonial rights, especially so long as the judges held their seats only during the king's pleasure.

Accordingly, a town meeting assembled in Faneuil Hall, October 28, and adjourned November 2d. Samuel Adams moved "that a committee of correspondence be appointed, to consist of twenty-one persons, to state the rights of the colonies, and of this province in particular, as men, as Christians, and as subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the several towns in this province and to the world, as the sense of this town, with the infringements and violations thereof that have been, or from time to time may be, made; also requesting of each town a free communication of their sentiments on this subject."[126] This was the beginning of an organization (November 22), entered into with hesitation by some of the leading patriots of Boston, which finally secured the public confidence, and became a great power for the concentration of popular sentiment.

It undoubtedly led to the larger measure of intercolonial correspondence instituted by Virginia during the next spring; and not the least of its claims to consideration is the fact that it engaged the attention and secured the services of Joseph Warren as the trusted lieutenant of Samuel Adams.[127]

The American Revolution rests upon grounds so high and clear, and was carried forward by measures so honorably conceived and so persistently adhered to, that all who adopt its principles must regret any circumstance in its history by which the opinion of candid people is divided. Such a division is found in connection with the Hutchinson letters. The story is briefly this:—In the years 1768 and 1769 Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, then officers in Massachusetts, appointed by the crown, and sworn to a faithful discharge of their duties, with several other persons, in a private correspondence with Thomas Whately, an English gentleman, formerly, but not then, connected with the government, communicated facts about colonial affairs the truth of which has never been impugned, and expressed opinions which Tories might honestly entertain. These letters in some unexplained manner found their way—either from the cabinet of the person to whom they were addressed, after his death, or, as is more likely, from the papers of George Grenville, to whom Whately had probably entrusted them for perusal—into the hands of Franklin, the colony agent in London, by whom they were sent in 1773, with an unsigned letter, to the speaker of the Massachusetts House. The injunctions in respect to them were loosely regarded, and they were published by a breach of faith which implicated a large body of men. They were made the basis of a petition by the General Court to the king for the removal of their writers from the offices which they held; but after a hearing before the Privy Council, January 29, 1774, the petition, which the province did not attempt to support by evidence, was dismissed as "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous." Two days later, Dr. Franklin was removed from the office of deputy postmaster-general for the colonies,—a circumstance of great consequence to the American cause, since it irrevocably committed to it one who had been thought its lukewarm promoter.

Massachusetts, which had led in most of the Revolutionary movements, did not take the lead in establishing committees of correspondence between the colonies. That honor belongs to Virginia; and its chief cause was the action of the commissioners in the "Gaspee" case. March 12, 1773, Dabney Carr, who had been put forward at the suggestion of Jefferson, moved certain resolutions in the Virginia House of Burgesses, which, supported by Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry, were unanimously adopted. Rhode Island followed in adopting similar measures. On May 28th the Massachusetts House responded to Virginia.[128] Hutchinson justly considers this as one of the most important and daring movements of the patriotic Party during the Revolution.[129] It paved the way for the union of the colonies and for the General Congress which was convened at Philadelphia the next year.

To the patriots of Philadelphia belongs the credit of making the first public demonstration against the project of the East India Company for transporting their accumulated stock of tea to America, in a series of resolutions passed October 18, at a meeting held in the State House.[130] News of the intention of the company to do this had reached America in August. Samuel Adams was ready. The towns in the province of Massachusetts were aroused by Joseph Warren's circular letter in behalf of the Committee of Correspondence, September 21, 1773, and the Philadelphia resolutions were adopted in Faneuil Hall. Constant communications were kept up between the importing colonies. Ships loaded with tea were dispatched about the month of August to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, but the tone of the public press in those towns indicated a determination not to allow the sale of the cargoes. The Charleston consignees, on the request of the people, resigned; those at Boston refused. November 28, one of the tea ships arrived in Boston, followed not long after by two more. These were placed under guard by the patriots. The consignees would neither resign nor return the tea, and the time was near at hand when they would be seized for non-payment of duties. Thursday, December 16, a large meeting of the citizens was held at the Old South Church, at which Josiah Quincy, Jr., spoke in words that have become historical. After all efforts to induce Hutchinson to grant a pass for the return of the tea (which he thought would be illegal) had proved futile, a war-whoop was sounded at the door of the Old South, and a large company of men disguised as Indians rushed to Griffin's wharf. Teas to the value of £18,000 were thrown from the vessels into the sea, and the same treatment was bestowed upon another cargo which came some weeks later. This act, although applauded throughout the colonies, was not imitated by them; other means were found to prevent the sale of the teas.[131]

While the news of these events was on its way to England, John Adams signalized his zeal in the patriotic cause and evinced his faith in the provincial constitution by leading in the impeachment of Chief-Justice Oliver for having accepted his salary from the crown instead of the people, in derogation of their fundamental rights.[132]

Governor Hutchinson, finding himself powerless to quell the storm, determined to put himself in closer communication with the ministry by going to England, but was delayed by the death of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, until he was finally superseded by General Gage, who arrived in Boston May 13, 1774. As he was about to leave, he received an address, dated May 30, approving his conduct, and signed by many respectable Tories; but some of them were afterwards obliged by threats of popular violence to make their recantations in the newspapers. June 1, he sailed from Boston, and never saw his native shore again.[133] In the mean time an account of the destruction of the teas had reached England, and produced great indignation, which was shared to some extent by the most ardent friends of the colonists, whose efforts to mitigate and delay the punishment visited upon the offending people of Boston were unavailing. On the 7th of March, the king sent a message communicating the despatches from America; and on the 14th Lord North brought in the Boston Port Bill, which transferred the commerce of Boston, after the 1st of June, to Salem, but gave power to the king, in council, to restore it, upon the return of order and full compensation to the owners for the teas destroyed. Having passed both Houses, this received the king's assent March 31, and took effect June 1. While the measure was pending in the House of Lords, Lord North introduced another bill, which provided for the appointment of councillors by the crown, the appointment and removal by the governor of judges of the superior courts, justices of the peace, and other minor officers, and, with the consent of the council, of sheriffs. The governor's permission was made necessary for the holding of town meetings, except for the choice of officers. It was also provided by another act that offenders and witnesses might be transported for trial to the other colonies, or to England.[134]

These severe measures did not pass without resistance or protest by the liberal party in Parliament. They reached Boston June 2, 1774, were printed in the newspapers on the 3d, and soon found their way into all the colonies, where they excited indignation against the ministry and sympathy for the people of Boston, which was manifested by liberal contributions for relief when afterwards the loss of business had brought distress. If anything more was needed to arouse the anger of New England, it was supplied by the Quebec Bill, less objectionable to that section because it extended the bounds of Canada over regions for which the colonies had contended, than because it perpetuated civil and ecclesiastical institutions hateful to the descendants of Puritans. Hutchinson thought that these severe measures would bring the recalcitrant Bostonians to reason. But he was mistaken. The matter had already passed from the forum of reason, and was reserved for the arbitrament of impending war. Instead of being subdued, the spirit of the people became more resolute.

The Boston Port Bill, designed as a punishment for the destruction of the tea, brought ruin to the commerce of Boston, and distress to all whose subsistence depended upon it; but its political effect was to draw the colonies together, and that was so effectually promoted by the vigorous action of the committee of correspondence that the idea of a continental congress soon became general.

On May 26, 1774, Governor Gage informed the General Court that by the king's command its sessions would be held at Salem from June 1st until further orders. The court was convened at that place, and the patriots, guided by Samuel Adams, were making arrangements for a general congress at Philadelphia, when the governor, getting a hint of their action, sent Flucker, the provincial secretary, with a message to dissolve them. The secretary, however, found the door of the chamber of the Representatives locked; and before it was opened, that body had determined that "a committee should be appointed to meet, as soon as may be, the committees that are or shall be appointed by the several colonies on this continent, to consult together upon the present state of the colonies", and had chosen James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine delegates thereto. Such was the origin in Massachusetts of the first Continental Congress which met at Philadelphia September 5, 1774.[135]

The 17th of June, the day on which delegates to the Continental Congress were chosen, is also notable for "the Port Act" meeting in Faneuil Hall. From the general distress among the laboring classes in Boston the Tories had expected a reaction in favor of the ministry; consequently a counter demonstration by the patriots was deemed advisable. In the absence of Samuel Adams, then at Salem, John Adams was chosen moderator, and from this time he was one of the most conspicuous actors in the American Revolution. Joseph Warren was also present, and active in the cause which, a year later, he consecrated with his blood. The action of the town became widely known from a broadside, which is here reproduced.

After the repeal of the Stamp Act and the modifying of the Townshend act, there remained nothing to threaten seriously the pockets of the colonists. The tea duty had been retained to save the claim of parliamentary supremacy, which was not likely to be asserted in any offensive way. The navigation acts must soon have given way to a more liberal and equitable policy, and everything out of Massachusetts—certainly out of New England—indicated that the people were becoming tired of strife, and were ready for a return to more cordial relations with the mother country. This was what Samuel Adams feared, and determined to prevent. To this end nothing could have been more efficient than his policy in respect to the teas, and nothing more to his mind than the consequent action of Parliament. After this a contention which had been mainly local became general. The essential modification of the Massachusetts charter was a blow which imperilled every colonial government, and made the cause of Massachusetts that of every other colony,—a cause for which other colonies manifested their sympathy not only in relieving the distress occasioned by the closing of the port of Boston, but by uniting in declarations of their common right to maintain the integrity of a system of government which had been forming through many generations.

The Congress of 1774 was the inevitable result of the conduct of the British ministry subsequent to the peace of 1763. This served only to engender discontent in the colonies, and to strengthen the purpose of the patriotic party to hasten a revolution which many regarded as inevitable in time. The parliamentary government of the colonies fell into confusion for want of a well-defined policy and a consistent administration. But instead of such a policy, colonial affairs were regulated by ministers as wide apart in their views as Grenville, Rockingham, Townshend, Grafton, Shelburne, Hillsborough, Lord North, and Earl Dartmouth. Nothing could have kept the colonies as an integral part of the empire except some plan such as Franklin or Pownall might have devised and Shelburne might have administered. But the colonies were remote and but little known, and in the complication of European affairs, and amid the contentions of parties, they received only slight and intermittent attention from the ministry or the Parliament. No statesman save Choiseul seems to have understood the completeness of the change in interests which had been brought about by the extinction of the French power in America, or the necessary advance of the colonies under a new régime to a place among the great powers of the world. The colonists themselves felt, rather than understood, their relations to nationality and to the commerce of the world. This was the time chosen by the British ministry to impose upon them the restrictive mercantile system of Charles II.

It is doubtful, however, whether any policy could have rendered permanent the subjection of the colonies, even such a nominal subjection as that in which they had always been held. In looking for the causes of the Revolution, it is well to discriminate between those which were general in their effects and those which were local. The latter had been more actively operative and of longer existence in Massachusetts, where the Revolution began, than in any other colony. These were interwoven with the civil and ecclesiastical history of her people, which made them peculiarly apprehensive in respect to threatened invasion of rights which they had secured only by expatriation. Although the peculiar experience of Massachusetts did not cause the Revolution, it is doubtful whether, except for that experience, the Revolution would have occurred for some years. Nor was resistance to the Anglican ecclesiastical pretensions, connected as they were with the most odious features of the prerogative, confined to New England, but made itself felt in New York and in Virginia.[136] The general causes were the ever present and ever active strife between parties,—the liberals and the conservatives,—arising from a diversity of political ideas, and intensified by ambition, interest, and personal animosities. But the proximate causes of the Revolution will be found in that change of policy which led the ministry, at the close of a war that had strained the colonies to the utmost, to enforce the navigation laws, to lay taxes, to invoke the prerogative, and finally to overthrow the government of Massachusetts, and thus to threaten the autonomy of the people under the provincial constitutions.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE change in British colonial policy contemplated by the ministry during the progress of the French War, and entered upon between 1763 and 1774, developed those causes of dissatisfaction which had been intermittently operative for more than a century, and finally led to war in 1775. In the preceding chapter I have omitted, or passed lightly over, many incidents of the period which had no particular political significance, and dwelt more at length on the principles and causes which led to the Revolution. I shall pursue the same course in this essay.

The growth and development of the colonies brought forward, in succession, two practical questions. The first was, how far the interests of the colonies, as appendages to the crown, but subject, nevertheless, to an undefined parliamentary authority, could be subordinated to the interests of the trading and manufacturing classes in England. This was purely an economic question, and the answer to it in England assumed the subjection of the colonies and the validity of the mercantile system, neither of which was vigorously contested by the colonists so long as neither was rigidly enforced. But the question changed during the progress, and more especially at the close, of the French War, and then became this: How far could the interests of the colonies be subordinated to the necessities of an imperial revenue and the political policy of an empire? Hence arose the second question: What degree of autonomy could be allowed to the colonies, as integral parts of the empire, entitled to its privileges and subject to its burdens, when both were to be determined consistently with the constitutional prerogatives of the king and the supremacy of Parliament on the one side, and on the other with the natural and acquired rights of the colonies?

Regarded purely as an economic question, it was a matter of indifference to the colonists whether their pockets were depleted by the enforcement of an old policy or by the adoption of a new policy. The Sugar Act of 1733, if enforced, would have produced a parliamentary tax. The Grenville Act of 1764 did no more. But the former was intended as a regulation of trade; the latter to produce a revenue. This difference of intent raised a constitutional question, and it was on this constitutional question, behind which lay the real economic question, that the patriotic party chose to fight the battle. Grenville's Act, as an external tax, produced but little; and the Stamp Act, as an internal tax, not a farthing.

It was, therefore, mainly on the constitutional question—of the right to tax, rather than to throw off intolerable burdens—that people divided into parties. As Webster said, "They went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration."[137] To understand the attitude of the tories on the economic question as well as on the constitutional question, we must consider the state of colonial affairs which led to the Congress of 1754, and the tentative efforts of that body to find consistent and reciprocal relations of the colonies to the imperial government, for union, defence, and revenue. To understand the attitude of the patriots, we must consider the reasons of the ministry for rejecting such a union, and their efforts to force each colony into relations to the crown and Parliament deemed by them consistent and reciprocal, but regarded by the colonists as subversive of their rights as Englishmen, and of their rights acquired by charters, growth, development, and usage, which, as they justly claimed, had become constitutional.

Though the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, at the close of the French War, is regarded by historians as one of the principal causes of the Revolution, I fail to find a satisfactory or entirely accurate account of them, either as the basis of the mercantile system, or, later, of a revenue system. Such a treatment would hardly be practicable in the limits of a general history. These laws have been elaborately discussed by Thomas Mun, Sir Josiah Child, Sir William Patty, Charles Davenant, Joshua Gee, John Ashley, and, not to mention others, Adam Smith and Henry Brougham. But these authors wrote with reference to their influence, as part of the mercantile system, on British interests. How they affected colonial interests is the question which chiefly concerns us.

To answer this question we must know not merely what those laws enacted, but to what state of colonial trade they originally and successively applied. For instance, what, from time to time, by development of agricultural or other industries, between 1640 and 1774, had the colonists to sell, and what, as they increased in wealth, did they wish to purchase; and where, left to the unrestricted course of trade, would they have carried their products, and where purchased their merchandise? In other words, what would they have done and become under free trade?

Then we must know what changes in this normal condition of trade were intended by the navigation laws, and to what extent and with what effect their partial enforcement operated before 1763. With these facts before us, we could estimate with some exactness the valid objections to the new system on the part of the colonists, when enforced by the British navy, commissioners of customs, admiralty courts, and writs of assistance, and what was their influence in bringing on the Revolution.

Having made up the debit account, we should be able to set against it the compensations in naval protection, bounties,[138] drawbacks, British capital, and long credits, in developing colonial agriculture and commerce.[139]

Unfortunately there does not exist any history of the commerce of the American colonies, from the Commonwealth to 1774, as affected by navigation laws, acts of trade, and revenue measures. No one who has read the twenty-nine acts which comprise this legislation will recommend their perusal to another; for, apart from their volume, the construction of these acts is difficult,—difficult even to trained lawyers like John Adams, whose business it was to advise clients in respect to them.[140] Nor have special students, like Bancroft, stated their effect with exact precision, as in respect to the Act of 1663;[141] and notably in respect to the Townshend Act of 1767,[142] where his error amounts to a perversion of its meaning. Palfrey has been more successful, though not entirely free from error.[143] The author of the Development of Constitutional Liberty,[144] a work of uncommon research and ability, reads the act of 1672 as though it prohibited the carrying of fish from Massachusetts to Rhode Island except by the way of England, failing to notice that it was not one of the "enumerated articles", or that even those could pass directly from colony to colony upon payment, at the place of export, of duties equivalent to those laid upon their importation to England. To give a monographic treatment to the subject would require familiarity with the construction of statutes, and exact information not only of the shifting conditions of colonial trade, but of the evasions which called forth supplemental acts, or constructions of existing acts by the Board of Trade.[145]

In Burke's Account of the European Settlements in America[146] much may be found respecting colonial products and commerce, and especially those of New England (in ch. vii.), which leaves little to be desired concerning the sources of her wealth, and the complaints of British merchants of the methods by which it had been acquired. But I have found nowhere else so full and clear an account of the course of trade of Boston at the time of the Revolution, and the effect upon it of the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade in 1770, as in an anonymous pamphlet entitled Observations of the Merchants at Boston in N. E. upon Several Acts of Parliament, 1770.[147]

An essential part of this history is that which relates to the medium of exchange, and to the attempts of Parliament to regulate the issue of paper money as a legal tender in the interests of British merchants.[148]

The history of the navigation laws suggests the similarity of the causes which led to the successive revolutions of 1689 and 1775 in Massachusetts. The violation of these laws was a principal reason for the abrogation of the first charter, in 1684, graphically described by Palfrey,[149] and their enforcement by courts of admiralty, under Dudley, Andros, and Randolph, was one cause of the overthrow of the Andros government in 1689.[150] The resistance to the same and additional enactments, when enforced as revenue measures, led to the alteration of the second charter in 1774, and this again led to revolution by the united colonies.

One of the most efficient instruments in the execution of the navigation laws was the writs of assistance granted by the court in Massachusetts in 1761.[151]

If the student of American history finds difficulty in accepting the common accounts of the constitutional opinions and motives of two fifths of the colonists, among whom were many who must be regarded as intelligent and respectable, his doubts as to the accuracy of these narratives receive some confirmation when he becomes familiar with the history of the Congress of 1754, the circumstances which led to it, and the opinions of some of its representative men. A comparison of their views will show how far they were willing to go in the "abridgment of English liberties", for the sake of union, defence, and government. Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall formed plans for union, and all were at Albany in 1754, and participated in the discussions, though Pownall, not being a member, explained his views outside the congress.[152]

The difference between Pownall, Hutchinson, and Franklin was this: that while all contemplated the union of the empire under one general government as something dictated by the interest of all the parts, Hutchinson limited the power of the President more than Franklin, and Pownall was unwilling to contemplate the transfer of its seat to America; the prospect of which gave Franklin no concern. "The government cannot be long retained without union. Which is best, to have a total separation, or a change of the seat of government?"[153] Speculations as to the results of such a union are now idle, unless for the interest drawn towards them by Professor Seeley's Expansion of England, and Franklin's belief, expressed in 1789, "that if the foregoing plan [that of 1754], or something like it, had been adopted and carried into execution, the subsequent separation of the colonies from the mother country might not so soon have happened, nor the mischiefs suffered on both sides have occurred, perhaps, during another century."[154]

A comparison of the views of such men as Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall, expressed before they were forced into partisan relations to the impending conflict, help us in forming opinions respecting their conduct when affairs, no longer within the control of individuals, were swept onward by an uncontrollable impulse. Neither the colonies[155] nor the ministry approved of the proposed union; and when the new policy of raising a revenue was inaugurated the colonies were without defined integral relations to the mother country, and the government without administrative machinery for their regulation. The result was confusion. The press became heated, and an angry war of pamphlets ensued. At first the controversy was confined to the distinction between internal taxes and commercial regulations, but soon it involved the whole question of parliamentary power. This was elaborately and temperately discussed in the Farmer's Letters, by John Dickinson, but nowhere in America with more fulness (within the period covered by this chapter) than by Governor Hutchinson and the two Houses of the Massachusetts General Court, in messages and answers respectively, in January and February, 1773.[156]

So far as the Revolution grew out of the Massachusetts controversy between the king's representatives and the General Court, its progress may be traced in the Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, 1765 to 1775, and the Answers of the House of Representatives to the same.[157] These authentic documents, with the Journals of the House and the Records of the Town of Boston, may be referred to as showing the temper with which the parties treated each other, and the questions that were of paramount interest. The student will not find it easy to ascertain the facts which should make the history of the period. Contemporaneous accounts were generally drawn up with a partisan disregard of truth, and too much has been written subsequently in the same spirit. For the critical period of 1768, when the troops were sent over on account of the revenue riots, we have Bernard's Letters, which, though representing only one side, were written under a sense of official responsibility to the government. Though much complained of at the time as wanting in candor, their statements were evaded rather than controverted by the Answer of the Major Part of the Council, in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough (April 15, 1769), as well as in The Vindication of the Town of Boston (Oct. 18, 1769), drafted by Samuel Adams. For the entire period covered by this chapter, I find no narrative apparently more just, or opinions more candidly expressed, than in Ramsay's History of the American Revolution. Remote from the scene of the conflict, Ramsay shared the passions of neither party.

The most important events of this period were the passage of the Boston Port Bill, and other related measures. The reasons which led to these acts are set forth at length in The Report from the Committee on the Disturbances in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, April 20, 1774.[158] In this report may be seen the strength of the British case. Franklin's view of the matters referred to in the Report of the Lords may be found in a paper entitled Proceedings in Massachusetts,[159] and the bill itself was discussed in an interesting pamphlet by Josiah Quincy, Jr., Observations on the Act of Parliament.[160]

Franklin's paper was a clever argument in which he treated facts so as to serve his purpose rather than that of historic truth. His use of Oliver's phrase, "to take off the original incendiaries", which was a pleasant ad hominem hit, has been adopted seriously by Bancroft,[161] in a chapter entitled "A Way to Take off the Incendiaries." The concessions which Franklin was willing to make for a settlement of the difficulties, as late as December 4, 1774, may be seen in "Some Special Transactions of Dr. Franklin in London, in Behalf of America", in Ramsay.[162]

EDITORIAL NOTES.

The argument of Otis on the Writs of Assistance is the first well-arranged expression of the gathering opposition,[163] and what John Adams called "the heaves and throes of the burning mountain", forerunning the eruption, were shown in James Otis's A vindication of the conduct of the House of Representatives of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay; more particularly, in the last session of the general assembly (Boston, 1762).[164]

John Dickinson and Joseph Galloway were already pitted against each other on the question of maintaining the proprietary government of Pennsylvania, or of seeking a royal one.[165]

Frothingham[166] says the earliest organized action against taxation was when the town of Boston passed instructions to its representatives, May 24, 1764, the original writing of which is among the Samuel Adams MSS. The paper was printed in the newspapers of the day, and shortly afterwards in the famous tract of Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved,[167] in which, however, he failed, with all his fervid and cogent reasoning, to stand in every respect by the advanced position which he had taken in his plea against the Writs of Assistance.[168]

One of the ablest as well as one of the most temperate expressions of the stand taken by the colonies was in Stephen Hopkins's Rights of the Colonies examined; published by Authority (Providence, 1765).[169]

Similar arguments were set forth in behalf of Connecticut by its governor.[170]

Already, in 1764, when Oxenbridge Thacher printed his Sentiments of a British American, he had formulated the arguments against the navigation acts and British taxation, which ten years later, in the Congress of 1774, Jay embodied in his Address to the British People.[171]

John Adams, in later years, when distance clarified the atmosphere, looked upon the conflict which Jonathan Mayhew waged with Apthorpe, and with the abettors of all schemes for imposing episcopacy on the people by act of Parliament, as the repelling of an attack upon the people's right to decide such questions for themselves, and as but a forerunner of the great subsequent question.[172]

The issue on the question of taxation without representation was forced, after many indications of its coming,[173] when the British Parliament passed the Grenville Act in 1764, and in the next year what is known as the Stamp Act, a tax on business papers, increasing their cost at different rates, but sometimes manyfold.[174] The question of the authorship of the bill is one about which there has been some controversy,[175] and, contrary to the general impression, the truth seems to be that the consideration of the bill caused little attention in and out of Parliament, and the debates on it were languid.[176]

In May a knowledge of the passage of the Stamp Act reached Boston,[177] and it was to go into effect Nov. 1st. In June the Massachusetts legislature determined to invite a congress of all the colonies in October. In August it was known that Jared Ingersoll for Connecticut and Andrew Oliver for Boston had agreed to become distributors of the stamps. The mob hanged an effigy of Oliver on the tree afterwards known as Liberty Tree,[178] and other outrages followed. The governor did not dare to leave the castle. Dr. Mayhew delivered a sermon, vigorous and perhaps incendiary, as Hutchinson averred when he traced to it the passions of the mob which destroyed his own house in North Square on the evening of August 26th.[179] The town contented itself with passing a unanimous vote of condemnation the next day.[180] On Sept. 25th Bernard addressed the legislature in a tone that induced them to reply (Oct. 25th), and to fortify their position by resolves (Oct. 29th).[181] Finally, in December, Andrew Oliver,[182] the stamp distributor, was forced to resign, and on the 17th to sign an oath that he would in no way lend countenance to the tax.[183]

The spirit in Boston was but an index of the feelings throughout all the colonies.[184] The histories of the several States and the lives of their revolutionary actors make this clear.[185]

In October, 1765, what is known as the Stamp Act Congress assembled in New York, in the old City Hall.[186] Its proceedings are in print, and its deliberations are followed in the general histories and in the lives of its members.[187]

Franklin had, with considerable opposition, been appointed the London agent of Pennsylvania in 1764, and, being in that city, was accused by James Biddle of promoting the passage of the Stamp Act, but his letters show how he seems only to have yielded when he could not prevail in opposing.[188]

In July, 1765, the Rockingham administration came in, followed by the parliamentary sparring of Grenville and Pitt. In February, 1766, Dr. Franklin was examined before the House of Commons as to the temper of the colonies respecting the Stamp Act. He gave them some good advice,[189] and a full report of the questions and answers is preserved.[190] Parliament having passed the so-called Declaratory Act (March 7th) in vindication of its prerogatives, Pitt and Conway effected the repeal of the Stamp Act (March 18th), and vessels immediately sailed to carry the news to the colonies.[191] The whole question of taxation, thus brought squarely to an issue by the controversy over the Stamp Act, induced frequent rehearsals of argument in debates and pamphlet, and the later historians have summarized the opposing views.[192]

Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, began in 1766 a series of tracts, which he continued for ten years, in which he advanced sentiments respecting the colonies, not very flattering, while at the same time he held to arguments which few at the time admitted the force of, when he advocated the peaceful separation of America from the crown.[193]

The most important presentation of the Tory insistence in defence of the Stamp Act policy came directly—or, at least, through his secretary, Charles Lloyd—from Grenville himself, in his attack on the Rockingham party, in the Conduct of the late Administration examined, with Documents.[194]

The movements for organization to suppress importation, which had begun in 1765, taking shape particularly in Philadelphia in Oct. and Nov.,[195] were brought into definite prominence by the votes of Boston, Oct. 28, 1767,[196] copies of which were circulated in broadside, as shown in the annexed fac-simile.[197] The influence of these had more marked effect in England than had followed any previous manifestations of that kind.[198]

Some other fac-similes are also given indicative of the prevailing coercive measures, which soon became popular. The next year (1768) committees were appointed in New York to consider the expediency of entering into measures to encourage industry and frugality and to employ the poor, and by 1769 the movement looking to independence of the British manufacturers became general through the colonies.[199]

In February, 1768, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, by a circular letter addressed to the other colonies, invited them to consultation.[200] It drew from Hillsborough a circular letter of warning to the continent,[201] and in May Virginia issued a letter inviting a conference.[202] On June 10, 1768, the seizure of the sloop "Liberty" brought further riotous proceedings in its train.[203]

What is known as the "War of the Regulators", or "Regulation", a series of riotous disturbances in North Carolina, 1768-1771, has usually been held to be one of the preliminary uprisings against British oppression. A. W. Waddell, in a paper in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (1871, p. 81), contends that it was nothing but a lawless outburst, and advances evidence to prove that the participants were but a small majority of the people, with no great principle in view; that they were ignorant, never republicans, became Tories, and were opposed by the prominent Whig leaders. He considers that Caruthers and other local historians[204] are responsible for the common misconception arising from their attempt to reflect credit on North Carolina for what is claimed to be an early patriotic fervor.

A contemporary vindication of the movement, and of Herman Husband, the leader, bringing the history of the commotions down to 1769 only, evidently based on material furnished by Husband, was printed in Boston in 1771.[205] Husband himself seems, during the preceding year, to have printed anonymously, giving no place of publication, a narrative of his own, fortified by the letters of Tryon and others, with the remonstrances and counter-statements.[206]

The most conspicuous presentation of the American side in 1768 were the famous Farmer's Letters, as they were usually called, of John Dickinson.[207]

Some of the most important of the documents of the Boston patriots were printed in London under the supervision of Thomas Hollis, long a devoted friend of the colonists.[208]

During 1768 and 1769 we find record of the workings of political sentiments in the colonies in abundant publications.[209]

The most important development in 1769 came from some letters which had been addressed by Governor Bernard and General Gage to the ministry, and to which, in the exercise of his rights as a member of Parliament, Alderman Beckford had obtained access and taken copies, subsequently delivered by him to Bollan, who transmitted them to Boston, where they were at once printed. From these letters the public learned of the urgency which the governor had used with the government to induce it to institute more stringent measures of repression.[210]

The publication of these letters led to the printing of An appeal to the world; or a vindication of the town of Boston, from many false and malicious aspersions contain'd in certain letters and memorials, written by Governor Bernard, General Gage [etc.]. Published by order of the town (Boston, 1769),[211] and induced also a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough.[212]

There are in the Sparks MSS. (no. xx.) copies of annotations which Franklin, then in London, made on the margins and fly-leaves of sundry pamphlets, which just at this time were engaging attention in London, and these comments show how the struggle was regarded by a mind of Franklin's astuteness, amid the influences of the British capital. Sparks printed parts of these annotations in his Familiar letters and miscellaneous pieces by Dr. Franklin, and again in his edition of Franklin, vol. iv.[213] Some letters which passed between Franklin and William Strahan in 1769 are also of great interest.[214]

The Boston Massacre of March, 1770, was the violent culmination of prevailing passions, and was in a measure induced by the sacrifice of life which resulted from the boarding by a press-gang from the "Rose" frigate of a ship belonging to Hooper, of Marblehead,[215] and by the riotous proceedings which, in Jan., 1770, brought about the death of the boy Snider.[216] Soon after the affray of March, the town of Boston published a Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (Boston, Edes and Gill, 1770),[217] which depicted the condition of the people at the time, and gave an appendix of depositions, including one of Jeremy Belknap.[218] Copies were sent to England at once,[219] but the rest of the edition was kept back till after the trial, when "Additional Observations" were appended.[220] The volume, thus completed, was reprinted in New York in 1849, with notes and illustrations by John Daggett, Jr.; and again in Frederick Kidder's History of the Boston Massacre (Albany, 1870), which is the most considerable monograph on the subject.[221]

A stenographic report was made of the trial of Preston, and sent to England, but it has never been published.[222]

The trial of eight of the soldiers took place Nov. 27, 1770, and John Hodgson,[223] the stenographer of the earlier trial, made a Report, The trial of William Wemms, ... published by permission of the Court (Boston, 1770),[224] which gives the evidence and pleas of counsel, and a report of the trial of Edward Manwaring and others, accused of firing on the crowd from the windows of the custom-house. They were acquitted.[225]

The principal statement on the government side was A Fair Account of the late unhappy disturbance at Boston, extracted from the depositions that have been made concerning it by persons of all parties, with an appendix containing affidavits and evidences not mentioned in the narrative that has been published at Boston (London, 1770).[226] This Fair Account contained a deposition of Secretary Andrew Oliver, tending to show that the soldiers were justifiably defending themselves; and making public the doings of the governor's council thereupon. This "breach of a most essential privilege" excited animadversion, and the council censured Oliver.[227] The purport of the English presentations is to show that the soldiers did not fire till duly provoked by assaults, and the more candid American writers, like Ramsay, Abiel Holmes, Hildreth, and others, seem to allow this.[228]

Bancroft (orig. ed., vi. 347) has a long note on the evidence about the provocation and first assault. He gives ten reasons for thinking Preston gave orders to fire, and six reasons for thinking the provocation was not sufficient to justify the firing. The evidence in this form is omitted in the final revision of Bancroft.

The anniversary of the Massacre was observed in Boston till the struggle for Independence was passed, and a series of annual orations commemorates the continued and aroused feelings of the people.[229]

The appendix to the third volume of Hutchinson's History records the sparring of Hutchinson and the legislature during the next six months.[230]

The list of Haven in Thomas (ii. 606) gives the American tracts published in 1770; but the more significant ones of the year appeared in London.[231]

The year 1771 was less eventful. In England, it seemed for a while as if the worst had passed. W. S. Johnson had written at the close of the preceding year (Dec. 29, 1770), "The general American controversy is at present looked upon here as very much at an end."[232] Franklin had been made the agent for Massachusetts;[233] he was still putting tersely to his correspondents the American view of the controversy,[234] and he had a conference with Hillsborough.[235]

Hutchinson in March had succeeded to the governor's chair, with reluctance, as he professed.[236] The American tracts may be gleaned in Haven's list.[237]

The events of 1772 are of more interest. The Boston patriots emphasized their arguments in their instructions to their representatives in May.[238] Later (July 14th) they passed a remonstrance against taxation and sent it to the king.[239]

There are diverse views as to the originator of the committees of correspondence. Gordon's opinion (i. 312) that James Warren was the instigator was adopted by Marshall, but is held by Bancroft (vi. 428) to be erroneous. John Adams gave the first movement to Samuel Adams.[240] One of the first-fruits of the committee, as a provincial measure, was the report drafted by Samuel Adams (Nov. 2, 1772), which was printed as the Rights of the Colonies.[241] The vote passed by Virginia, March 12, 1773, was the immediate cause of intercolonial activity.[242]

The seizure and destruction of the revenue vessel Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, June 10, 1772, is considered by Rhode Island writers as the earliest aggressive conduct of the patriots. John Russell Bartlett,[243] in the R. I. Colonial Records (vol. vii. pp. 57-192), gathers all the documentary evidence, and this was in 1861 published separately as A History of the Destruction of his Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee ... accompanied by the Correspondence connected therewith; the action of the General Assembly of Rhode Island thereon, and the official journal of the ... Commission of Inquiry appointed by King George III.[244]

Early in 1773 the patriots of Boston produced what is called "the most elaborate state paper of the Revolutionary contest in Massachusetts." This is the reply of the House of Representatives to the governor in the contest then waging with him.[245]

The act which included the duty on tea had passed Parliament June 29, 1767, and in March, 1770, it had been repealed, except, in order to maintain the theoretical right of Parliament to tax, the tax on tea had been retained in force. Pownall[246] had exerted his utmost to make the repeal include tea. The test was deferred till it was announced[247] that the East India Company was assisted by government in sending over a surplus of tea which they had. A series of impassioned gatherings in Boston, and demonstrations not so boisterous in the other colonies, led to the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor, and elsewhere resulted in the transshipment of the tea whence it came.[248]

Another significant event of 1773 was the episode of the Hutchinson letters. They had been written (1767-1769), from Boston, to Thomas Whately, and came, after the latter's death (June, 1772), by some unknown means, into Franklin's hands. When Cushing[249] and the patriots printed them,—for the rumor of their existence led the "people abroad" to compel their publication,[250]—Franklin made no complaint, and bore with reserve the defamation which was visited upon him in England, and which is still repeated by later English writers,[251] Franklin finally prepared a statement in vindication, but it was not published till Temple Franklin printed his edition of Franklin's Works.[252] The letters were printed without any indication of Franklin's connection with them; but when a duel grew out of the publication, in which a brother of Whately was wounded by Mr. Temple,[253] who had been accused of purloining the letters, Dr. Franklin, to prevent a further meeting, published a note in the Public Advertiser, acknowledging his agency.[254] Sparks appends a note in his edition,[255] in which he refutes the claim of Dr. Hosack (Biographical Memoir of Dr. Hugh Williamson, 1820) that Williamson had been the medium of transmitting the letters.[256]

Mr. R. C. Winthrop, in discussing the question,[257] introduces a paper of George Bancroft, "Whence came the papers sent by Franklin to Cushing in his letter of Dec. 2, 1772?" Bancroft's conclusion is that Whately sent the letters to Grenville (who died Nov. 13, 1770), and they were found among his papers, and through some agency or consent of Temple passed into Franklin's hand.[258]

The letters, when laid before the Massachusetts Legislature, produced some resolutions (June 25, 1773),[259] followed by a petition to the king,[260] asking that Hutchinson and Oliver might be removed from office. This led to the presence of Franklin before the Privy Council, and the attack on Franklin's character by Wedderburn.[261]

The earliest significant movement in 1774 was the impeachment of Peter Oliver, chief justice, and younger brother of the late lieutenant-governor, for receiving his salary from the crown,—the controversy respecting the governor and other officers being thus made independent of the people, having been one which had been active for two years past.[262]

Gen. Gage had landed in Boston May 17th, to put in force, June 1st, what is known as the Boston Port Bill (approved March 31, 1774), or An Act to discontinue, in such manner, and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town, and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of Massachuset's Bay, in North America.[263]

While Salem and Marblehead were thus made chief ports of entry, the commerce of Boston was suddenly checked, and the town was forced to a dependence for succor upon other towns and other colonies.[264]

The effect of the measures on the other colonies was instant and widespread.[265]

One of the immediate results in Massachusetts because of these oppressive acts was a retaliatory "Solemn League and Covenant" agreed upon in the provincial assembly,—a combination made more or less effectual by the active agency of Boston and Worcester in issuing broadsides against the use of imported British goods.[266]

In July, 1774, close upon his arrival in London, Hutchinson held an interview with the king, and set forth his opinions of the condition of affairs in the colonies.[267]

In August, 1774, Gage received the two acts mentioned in the annexed fac-simile of a handbill.[268]

It is claimed by Dawson[269] that the movements of 1774 in New York Were precipitated by the merchants and their adherents, "aristocratic smugglers", who formally organized themselves in May, 1774; and it was on the 6th of July that Alexander Hamilton made his stirring appeal at "the great meeting in the fields."[270] Further south a similar spirit prevailed.[271]

The question of originating the Congress of 1774 is one upon which there has been some controversy. It seems evident that the first proposal for a congress for general purposes was in a vote of Providence, R. I., May 17, 1774.[272] Cushing of Massachusetts and Dr. Franklin appear to have exchanged views on the subject in 1773.[273] Hancock seems to have suggested a congress in March, 1774.[274] In May the Sons of Liberty in New York formally proposed a Congress.[275] A resolution of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, June 17th, looked towards one, and similar action took place in the House of Burgesses in Virginia.[276]

The Congress opened with a concession of the New England members, when Samuel Adams proposed the Episcopalian Duché for chaplain.[277] John Adams tells how the scheme of the Congress struck him,[278] and we learn from him something of the appearance and bearing of an assembly, where the "Tories were neither few nor feeble", and the political feelings were far from being in unison. "One third Whigs, another Tories, the rest mongrel", he says.[279] Franklin thought that only unanimity and firmness could conduce to any good effect from it.[280]

For the local feeling in Philadelphia and among the members assembled there at the time, see John Adams's diary, Ward's diary,[281] and Christopher Marshall's diary.

The original edition of the Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress held in Philadelphia, Sept. 5, 1774 (Philad., 1774), bore the earliest device of the colonies, twelve hands grasping a column based on Magna Charta, surmounted by a liberty cap with the motto Hanc tuemur.[282]

What we know of the debates, apart from the proceedings, is chiefly derived from some brief notes by John Adams.[283]

The Congress put forth a Declaration of Rights, and a draft of it is preserved in a hand thought to be that of Major Sullivan, of New Hampshire. Wells (Sam. Adams, ii. 234) thinks that Samuel Adams had a hand in it, as it resembles the pamphlet issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence in 1772. The original draft of it, with the final form, is given in the Works of John Adams,[284] who claimed the authorship of article iv.

The petition of Congress to the king was drafted by John Dickinson.[285] It was signed in duplicate, and both copies were successively sent to Franklin, one of which is in the Public Record Office, and the other, retained by Franklin, is among the Franklin MSS. in the library of the Department of State at Washington.[286]

The petition to the king was first printed in London by Becket in Authentic Papers from America, submitted to the dispassionate consideration of the public (London, 1775). This produced a card (Jan. 17, 1775) from Bollan, Franklin, and Arthur Lee, calling the copy of the petition "surreptitious as well as materially and grossly erroneous" (Sparks Catal., p. 84).

It is sometimes said that R. H. Lee, and sometimes that John Jay, wrote the "Address to the People of Great Britain" which the Congress adopted.[287] They also passed a "Memorial to the inhabitants of the colonies."[288]

On the 9th of September the people of Boston and the neighborhood met outside the limits of the town, and passed a paper, drawn up by Joseph Warren, more extreme and less dignified than was demanded, known as the "Suffolk Resolves",[289] and this was transmitted to the Congress, where, when the Resolves were read, as John Adams says, there were tears in the Quaker eyes. Jones[290] says that the loyalists had joined the Congress to help in claiming redress for grievances, but that the approval of these Resolves rendered their continuance with the Congress in its measures impossible. Hutchinson[291] says that when the Resolves were known in England, they were more alarming than anything which had yet been done.[292]

On Sept. 28th Joseph Galloway introduced his plan of adjustment, calling for a grand council to act in conjunction with Parliament in regulating the affairs of the colonies. The scheme was finally rejected by a vote of six colonies to five, after having allured many of the leading men to its support.[293]

The Congress, Oct. 20th, adopted the Articles of Association, pledging in due time the country to non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption, so as to sever completely all commercial relations with England.[294]

In the summer of 1774 the British Parliament had, after some opposition, passed what is known as the "Quebec Bill", restoring the old French law in the civil courts of Quebec, securing rights to the Catholic inhabitants, and extending the limits of that province south of Lake Erie as far as the Ohio.[295]

The debates[296] in Parliament caused much diversity of opinion, and gave rise to a number of pamphlets.[297] The Congress of 1774 sought to counteract this action by an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, which was distributed both in English and French.[298]

Pownall in London told Hutchinson that every step of the Congress was known to the ministry.[299] We know that Dartmouth, probably through Galloway, received accounts of the temper of the delegates,[300] and that Joseph Reed was in communication with Dartmouth at the time.[301]

The revolutionary measures advocated by the Congress were far from receiving general acceptance,[302] and in New York they elicited some sharp and vigorous controversial pamphlets.[303] It was the general opinion at the time that Samuel Seabury was the author of two of the ablest of these tracts, though the claims for their authorship are now divided between Seabury and Isaac Wilkins, while each may have assisted the other in a joint production[304] which rendered at this time the name of a "Westchester Farmer" famous.[305]

Another leading Tory writer at this time was Dr. Myles Cooper, the president of King's College, who was as sharply assailed for his Friendly Address[306] as the "Westchester Farmer" was.

Something of an official character belongs to A true state of the proceedings in the Parliament of Great Britain, and in ... Massachusetts Bay, relative to the giving and granting the money of the people of that province, and of all America, in the House of Commons, in which they are not represented (London, 1774), for Franklin is said to have furnished the material for it, and Arthur Lee to have drafted it.[307]

One of the most significant of the American tracts of 1774 was John Dickinson's Essay on the constitutional power of Great Britain over the colonies in America.[308]

The journals of the provincial congress of Massachusetts (1774-1775) are in the Mass. Archives (vol. cxl.), and have been printed as Journal of each Provincial Congress of Mass. 1774-75, and of the Com. of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston, 1838). The proceedings of the session of Nov. 10, 1774, were circulated in a broadside.

In England we have the debates of Parliament, such correspondence as is preserved, and the records of passing feeling, to help us understand the condition of public opinion.[309]

The Assembly of New York met in January, 1775. Dawson contends that the usual view of the loyal element controlling its action is not sustained by the facts, and that in reality neither patriot nor Tory was satisfied with its action.[310]

The feeling in Virginia is depicted in Giradin's continuation of Burk's Virginia (which was written under the cognizance of Jefferson), in Rives's Madison, and in Wirt's Patrick Henry.[311]

The Congress of 1775 met in Philadelphia, May 10th. Quebec had been invited to send delegates.[312] Lieut.-Gov. Colden kept the majority of the New York Assembly from sending delegates.[313] John Hancock was chosen president, May 24th.[314]

The proceedings are given in the Journals of Congress.[315]

Perhaps the best expression of argumentative force on both sides was reached in the controversy waged by John Adams against Jonathan Sewall, as he always supposed, but in reality against Daniel Leonard, of Taunton, as it has since been made evident.[316]

One of the most powerful pleas for conciliation was made in Richard Price's Observations on the nature of civil liberty ... and the justice and policy of the war with America (London, 1776, in six editions, at least; Boston, 1776, etc.).[317]

For the mutations and progress of opinion in England at this time we may follow Bancroft (orig. ed., vol. viii.) and Smyth (Lectures, nos. 31-33), and the latter compares the expressions of this progress as recorded in Ramsay and the Annual Register.[318]

For the aspects of political leadership in Parliament during 1775-76, and the struggles in debates, see the Parliamentary History and the Amer. Archives,[319] and we may offset among the general histories the Tory sympathies of Adolphus (England, ii. ch. 24) with the liberal tendencies of Massey (Hist. of England), but the lives of the principal leaders bring us a little nearer to the spirits of the hour.[320]

During 1775 Franklin in London was maintaining his correspondence with his American friends,[321] and conferring with Chatham upon plans of conciliation,[322] and discussing the ways of compromise with Lord and Lady Howe.[323]

---

THE CONFLICT PRECIPITATED.

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

The Editor.

"YOU must be firm, resolute, and cautious; but discover no marks of timidity", wrote one from London to James Bowdoin, February 20, 1774.[324] Firm, resolute, cautious, but bold! This was the impelling spirit of the hour. Hutchinson was at the same time writing to Dartmouth that anarchy was likely to increase, till point after point was carried, and every tie of allegiance was severed.[325] Indications were increasing that the conflict of argument and the burst of political passion were before long to give way to the trial of force, and to the inevitable severing of friends which a resort to arms would entail. All this was prefigured on the first of June, 1774, when Hutchinson, bearing with him the addresses of his admirers,[326] left his house on Milton Hill forever, and walked along the road, bidding his neighbors good-bye at their gates; when, as he approached Dorchester Neck, he got into his carriage, which had followed him, and was driven to the point, where he took boat, was conveyed to a frigate, and in a short time was passing out by Boston light, leaving behind the line of ships at their moorings, which, with shotted guns, marked the beginning of the Boston blockade. That severing of friends and that threat of war was at that moment, away off in Virginia, accompanied by the tolling of bells out of sympathy for Boston. The Massachusetts yeomanry had not yet openly seized the musket, but their tribune, Sam. Adams, a few days later, turned the key upon the governor's secretary in Salem, when that officer was sent to dissolve the assembly. It was then that Adams and his associates proceeded to pass votes, with no intention of submitting them to the executive approval,—the beginning of the end, which we have seen Hutchinson but a few months before had anticipated. Between the upper and the nether mill-stone, between the patriots of Massachusetts and the Tories of Parliament, the charter of William and Mary was rapidly crushed. Parliament determined that all power should come from them, and the province leaders determined otherwise. So the distribution of authority provided under the charter ceased. The rival powers in and around Boston could not long abstain from force. Each watched the other, in the hopes of a pretext to be beforehand, without being the aggressor.

On the first of July, 1774, when Hutchinson, in London, was convincing the king that the ministry's aggressive measure was going to bring the recalcitrant Bostonians to terms, Admiral Graves, in his flag-ship, was entering Boston harbor, and new regiments soon followed in their transports. Presently one could count thirty ships of war at their moorings before the town, and the morning drum-beats summoned to the roll-call strong garrisons at Castle William, in Boston itself, and at Salem, now the capital. It was known that arms were stopped, if any one tried to carry them from Boston; and it soon became evident to Gage that it was best to concentrate his force, for he removed his headquarters from Danvers[327] to Boston, and thither his two regiments followed him. Perhaps he had heard of the enthusiasm of a certain young officer, whom he had seen twenty years before, saving all that was saved, on Braddock's bloody day; and how, surviving for the present crisis, he had just declared, in distant Virginia, that he was ready to raise, subsist, and march a thousand men to Boston. Gage must have known George Washington quite as well as the Bostonians did, who were, it is to be feared, better prepared on their part to look upon Israel Putnam, as he marched into town from Connecticut with a drove of sheep for the hungered populace, as a greater hero than the Virginian colonel.

September came in, and it did not look as if the conflict could be put off longer.[328] On the first of that month Gage sent a detachment to the Powder House beyond Quarry Hill, in the present Somerville, and it brought away ammunition and cannon and took them to the castle.

News of the inroad spread, and on the next day crowds gathered in Cambridge with arms in their hands. They assembled before Lieutenant-Governor Oliver's house[329] and forced him to resign. Joseph Warren, in Boston, heard of the tumult and hastened to the spot. His influence prevailed, and the sun went down without the shedding of blood. It was ominous, however, to Gage, and he set to work rebuilding the old lines across Boston Neck, and constructing barracks. He soon encountered difficulties. Somehow laborers could not be hired, nor provisions be bought. Somehow his freight-barges sunk, his carts of straw got on fire, his wagons were sloughed; and somehow, with all his vigilance, a few young men made up for the loss of the powder-house pieces by stealthily carrying off by night some cannon from Boston,[330] besides some others from an old battery in Charlestown. It was soon found that the men on the Neck lines needed protection, and Admiral Graves tried to send up a sloop of war into the South bay to enfilade the road from Roxbury, if occasion came; but her draught was too much, and so he employed an armed schooner. By November the works were finished. Warren thought them as formidable as Gage could make them, but the old Louisbourg soldiers laughed at them and called them mud walls.

Meanwhile, in October, the military spirit was taking shape throughout the province. On the 5th the legislative assembly, which had met at Salem on Gage's call, though he sought to outlaw them by rescinding (September 28) his precept, had declared his attempted revocation without warrant in law, and had resolved itself into a provincial congress. The body then adjourned to meet in Concord, where, under John Hancock's presidency, they appointed a Committee of Safety to act as the executive of the province, and chose three general officers,—Preble,[331] Ward, and Pomeroy. The militia was organized, and minute-men were everywhere forming into companies. Gordon tells how the country was astir with preparations. Connecticut was not far behind in ordering her militia to be officered, and in directing her towns to double their stock of ammunition, while she voted to issue £15,000 in paper money,—the first of the war.

"An armed truce", wrote Benjamin Church, "is the sole tenure by which the inhabitants of Boston possess life, liberty, and property." Away from Boston, the towns made common cause. "Liberty and Union" was to be read on a flag flying in Taunton. When news of these and similar events reached England, Lord North told Hutchinson that, for aught he could see, it must come to violence, with consequent subjection for the province.[332] When such tidings reached Virginia it found her officers just sheathing their swords after their conflict with the Indians in the mountains, and resolving next to turn their weapons against the oppressors of America. Gage, in Boston, whom Warren really felt to be honest and desirous of an accommodation, was awaking to a juster measure of the task of the ministry, which might, he said, require 20,000 troops to begin with. As he pondered on such views, he might have heard, on the evening of the 9th of November, 1774, the ringing of the bells which greeted the return of Sam. Adams and his colleagues from the Philadelphia congress. Shortly after the middle of the month the British in Boston went into winter quarters.[333] So November passed;—the Committee of Safety had arranged to raise and support an army, and the recommendation of the Continental Congress had been approved.

December came. Boston was not yet burned, as some in London believed it was when Quincy heard them laying wagers in the coffee-houses,[334] and if Sam. Adams was not the first politician in the world, as others told the same ardent young Bostonian, he was sharing conspicuous honors at home, with his distant kinsman, John Adams. The latter, as Novanglus, in his public controversy with the unknown Massachusettensis, was just attracting renewed attention. But that sturdy patriot, while he was arguing in public, was comforting himself in private by reckoning that Massachusetts could put 25,000 men in the field in a week; and New England, he counted, had 200,000 fighting men, "not exact soldiers", he confessed, "but all used to arms."[335] Tidings were coming in which told how this warlike spirit might be tested. Governor Wanton, of Rhode Island, had spirited away from the reach of the British naval officers forty-four cannon, which were at Newport. Paul Revere had gone down to Portsmouth and harangued the Sons of Liberty, till they invaded Fort William and Mary and (December 14, 1774) carried off the powder and cannon.[336] From Maryland, where they had lately been burning a tea-ship,[337] the word was that its convention had ordered the militia to be enrolled. From Pennsylvania it appeared that Thomas Mifflin was conspicuous among the Quakers in advocating the measure of non-intercourse. From South Carolina the news was halting. Could her rice-planters succeed in getting their product excepted from such a plan? They did. Gage had some time before[338] written to Dartmouth that they were as mad in the southern Charlestown as in northern Boston; and when one of their Tory parsons had intimated that clowns should not meddle with politics, they had been as fiery as they could have been in Massachusetts.[339] Gordon, of Jamaica Plain, in appending notes to a sermon which he had just preached on the Provincial Thanksgiving of December 15, 1774, refers to the brave lead of Virginia in the present time, as nine years before she had been foremost in the stamp-act time.[340] Governor Dunmore was reporting to Dartmouth (December, 1774) that every county in Virginia was arming a company of men, to be ready as occasion required.

John Adams, at Philadelphia, read to Patrick Henry from a paper of Joseph Hawley, that the result of the action of the ministry rendered it necessary to fight. "I am of that man's opinion", replied the ardent Virginian.[341] With the new year (1775) that opinion was becoming widespread. Ames' Almanac (1775), published in Boston, was printing, for almost every family in New England to read, "a method for making gunpowder", so that every person "may easily supply himself with a sufficiency of that commodity." Day by day news came to Boston from every direction of the indorsement of Congress, and of the wild-fire speed of the dispersion of the military spirit. Those who remembered the 40,000 men who marched towards Boston at the time of the D'Anville scare, thirty years before, said the enthusiasm then was nothing like the present. Somehow Gage began to feel more confident. He had in January 3,500 men in his Boston garrison, and almost as many more were expected, and he did not hesitate to send (January 23) Captain Balfour and a hundred men, with two cannon, to Marshfield, to protect the two hundred loyalists there, who had signed the articles by which Timothy Ruggles was hoping to band the friends of government together, and the reports which Balfour sent back seemed to satisfy the governor that the measure was effective.[342]

On the first of February, 1775, the second provincial congress assembled at Cambridge, and they soon issued a solemn address to the people, deprecating a rupture, but counselling preparations for it.[343] It was not then known that Gage had won over Dr. Church, and that through this professing patriot the British headquarters in Boston were informed of the doings of congress. Church's defection encouraged the tories, and on the 6th, handbills appeared in Boston, reminding the patriots of the fate of Wat Tyler.[344] A few days later Cambridge was alarmed by the report that troops were coming out of Boston to disperse them; but the day passed without the proof of it. The Committee of Safety were anxious, for they knew that the other colonies and their friends in England were fearful that the conflict would be precipitated without the consent of congress; and the authority of congress was now so dominant that its cognizance of such measures was essential to the continuance of the sympathy with Massachusetts which now existed. No one at this time was more solicitous for this prudent measure than Joseph Hawley, and no one in Massachusetts had a steadier head. On the 18th Peter Oliver wrote from Boston to London: "Great preparations on both sides for an engagement, and the sooner it comes the better."[345] "Every day, every hour widens the breach!" wrote Warren to Arthur Lee, two days later.[346] Already the provincial congress had conferred on the Committee of Safety (February 9) the power to assemble the militia, and John Thomas and William Heath had been added to the general officers. The committee, on the 21st, had voted to buy supplies for 15,000 men, including twenty hogsheads of rum. On the same day Sam. Adams and Warren signed a letter to the friends of liberty in Canada, and secret messengers were already passing that way. Presently, on the 26th, the impending conflict was once more averted.

Colonel David Mason, of Salem, had been commissioned by the Committee of Safety as an engineer, and was now at work in that town mounting some old cannon which had been taken from the French. Gage heard of it, and by his orders a transport appeared at Marblehead, with about 300 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie, who rapidly landed and marched his men to Salem. Their purpose was seasonably divined; the town was aroused, and, in the presence of a mob, the commander thought it safer to turn upon his steps.[347] A British officer, Colonel Smith, with one John Howe, was at about the same time sent out in disguise to scour the country towards Worcester, and pick up news for Gage;[348] and two others, Brown and Bernière, were a few weeks later prowling about Concord.[349] The patriots did not scour for news. It came in like the wind,—now of county meetings, now of drills, now of Colonel Washington's ardor in Virginia, and now of Judge Drayton's charge to the grand jury in Carolina.

Early in March came the anniversary of the Boston massacre. Two days before, Judge Auchmuty, in Boston, wrote to Hutchinson: "I don't see any reason to expect peace and order until the fatal experiment of arms is tried.... Bloodshed and desolation seem inevitable."[350] While this tory was writing thus, the patriots, in a spirit that somewhat belied their professed wish to avoid a conflict, were arranging for a public commemoration of the massacre. It could have been omitted without any detriment to the cause, and to observe it could easily have begotten trouble amid the inflamed passions of both sides. "We may possibly be attacked in our trenches", said Sam. Adams. It little conduced to peace that Joseph Warren was selected to deliver the address, which, as the fifth came on Sunday, was delivered on Monday, the sixth. The concourse of people suggested to Warren to enter the Old South meeting-house, where the crowd was assembled, by a ladder put against a window in the rear of the pulpit. Forty British officers were present, and the moderator offered them front seats, and some of the officers placed themselves on the pulpit stairs. A contemporary story says that it was a set purpose of the officers to break up the meeting,[351] and that one of them took an egg in his pocket, to be thrown at the speaker for a signal. This man tripped as he entered the building, and the egg was broken before its time. Another officer, below the desk, held up some bullets in his open palm as Warren warmed in his eloquence. The speaker quietly dropped his handkerchief on the leaden menace, and went on. So the meeting came to an end, with no outbreak; though there was some hissing and pounding of canes when the vote of thanks was put. As the crowd came out of the meeting-house there was an apprehensive moment,[352] for the Forty-third Regiment chanced to be passing, with beating drums, and for an instant the outcome was uncertain.[353] Gage had suffered the commemoration to pass without recognition, but ten days later his officers made the event the subject of a provoking burlesque, when Dr. Thomas Bolton delivered from the balcony of the British Coffee House in King Street a mock oration in ridicule of Warren, Hancock, and Adams.[354] There was no knowing what purpose this ridicule might mask; and a committee of the patriots, mostly mechanics, were constantly following the progress of events, meeting secretly at the Green Dragon[355] for consultation, and setting watches at Charlestown, Cambridge, and Roxbury, to give warning if there were any signs that the royal troops were preparing to move from the town.

On the 22d March, 1775, the provincial congress assembled again at Concord, and set to work in organizing their army, and in devising an address to the Mohawks, with the purpose of securing them to the patriot side. They also prepared to use the Stockbridge Indians as mediators with their neighbors, who were already tampered with, as was believed or alleged, by emissaries from Canada. It was already known that the people of the New Hampshire Grants were preparing to seize Ticonderoga as soon as the war-cloud should burst.

News sped rapidly by relays of riders. It was not long after Patrick Henry had said in Virginia, "We must fight; an appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left for us",[356] before the words were familiar in Massachusetts, and John Adams, who knew, said that Virginia was planting wheat instead of tobacco. At Providence they were burning tea in the streets, and men went about erasing the advertisements of the obnoxious herb from the shop-windows. Everywhere they were quoting the incendiary speech of John Wilkes, the lord mayor of London, whose retorts upon the ministry were relished as they were read in the public prints. As if to test whether March should pass without bloodshed,[357] Gage on the 30th sent Earl Percy out of town with a brigade, in light marching order, and he went four miles, to Jamaica Plain, and returned. The minute-men gathered in the neighboring towns, but no encounter took place.[358]

So April came, with the rattle of the musket still unheard. On the second day two vessels arrived at Marblehead, bringing tidings that Parliament had pledged its support to the king and his ministers, and that more troops were coming. On the 8th a committee reported to the provincial congress on an armed alliance of the New England colonies, and messengers were sent to the adjacent governments.[359] Connecticut responded with equipping six regiments; New Hampshire organized her forces as a part "of the New England army", and Rhode Island voted to equip fifteen hundred men. In Virginia it looked for a while as if the appeal to arms would not be long delayed, for Dunmore fulminated against their convention; and he even threatened to turn the slaves against their masters, and he did seize the powder at Williamsburg, of which the province had small store at best. Calmer counsels prevailed, and the armed men who had gathered at Fredericksburg dispersed to reassemble at call.

The contest meanwhile had been precipitated in Massachusetts. The rumor had already gone to England that it was close at hand. Hutchinson, in London, on the 10th, when writing to his son in Boston, had said: "Before this reaches you it will be determined;" and while tidings of the actual conflict was on the way, Hutchinson learned in London that Pownall had been prepared by letters from Boston for something startling.[360] The circle of sympathizers with America were in this suspense while Franklin was on the ocean, hither bound, and, if we may believe Strahan, he had left England in a rancorous state of mind, causing men to wonder what he intended on arriving, whether to turn general and fight, or to bolster in other ways the spirits of the rebels.[361] When he arrived the fight had begun.

On the 15th of April the provincial congress had adjourned. On the 16th, Isaiah Thomas spirited his press out of Boston and took it to Worcester, where, in a little more than a fortnight, the Massachusetts Spy reappeared.[362] Families, impressed with the forebodings of the sky, were moving out of town. Samuel Adams and Hancock had been persuaded to retire to Lexington,[363] to be beyond the grasp of Gage, who was shortly expected to order the arrest of the patriots, for which he had had instructions since March 18th.[364] The Boston committee of observation was watchful. It had noticed that on the 14th the "Somerset" frigate had changed her moorings to a position intermediate between Boston and Charlestown, and on the 15th the transports were hauled near the men-of-war. Notice of these signs was sent to Hancock and Adams, and preparations were begun for removing a part of the stores at Concord. When, during the afternoon of the 18th, some of the precious cannon were trundled into Groton, her minute-men gathered for a night march to Concord. During that same day Gage sent out from Boston some officers to patrol the roads towards Concord, and intercept the patriot messengers, and to discover, if possible, the lurking-place of Adams and Hancock. In the evening it was observed in Boston that troops were marching across the Common to the inner bay. William Dawes was at once dispatched to Concord by way of Roxbury, for the patriot watch had not been without information before the troops actually moved. Gordon tells us that they got a warning from a "daughter of liberty unequally yoked in point of politics", and as Gage's wife was a daughter of Peter Kemble, of New Jersey, it has been surmised that the informer may have been one very near to headquarters.[365] Paul Revere immediately caused the preconcerted signal-light to be set in a church-tower at the north end of Boston, and crossing the river in a boat, he mounted a horse on the Charlestown side and started on his famous midnight ride. It was none too soon. At eleven o'clock eight hundred men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, were passing over the back bay in boats to Lechmere Point. Here they landed at half past two in the morning, and the moon at this hour was well up. They marched quietly and rapidly, but not unobserved, and when they approached Lexington Green they found drawn up there a company of minute-men. Smith had become alarmed when, as he was advancing, he found the country aroused in every direction, and sent back for reinforcements. Earl Percy, with the succor, was by some stupidity[366] delayed, and did not get off from Boston till between nine and ten the next morning, and he then took the circuitous route by Roxbury and Cambridge.

The critical moment on Lexington Green had then long passed. Major Pitcairn, who commanded Smith's advance-guard, would not or could not prevent that fatal volley in the early morning light, by which several of the small body of provincials were killed before they broke, while, by a scattering return fire, one or two of the British were wounded.[367] Smith, without being aware that Hancock and Adams were at the moment within sound of his musketry, and just then being conducted farther from his reach, waited while his troops gave three cheers, and then resumed his march, passing on towards Concord. The provincials gathered their dead and wounded, and managed as the British passed on to pick up a few stragglers, the first prisoners of the war.[368]

On the redcoats went as the day broadened.[369] They followed the road much as it runs to-day, though in places steeps and impediments are now avoided by a better grade. Their march went by the spots which the genius of Hawthorne and Emerson have converted into shrines. In the centre of Concord they halted, while the gathering provincials, who had retired before them, watched the smoke of devastation. Smith had detailed two detachments to find and destroy stores. One of these, sent to Colonel Barrett's, beyond the North Bridge, had some success, and while it was absent the provincials, now increased in numbers from the neighboring towns, approached a guard which had been left at the bridge. Here the British fired at the Americans across the stream, and the volley being returned, a few were killed on both sides, before the British guard retreated upon the main body, whither they were soon followed by the other detachment which was out. Smith took two hours to gather wagons for his wounded and make preparations for his retreat, which had now become imperative, for the militia were seen swarming on the hills.[370] When Smith started he threw out a flanking party on his left, which followed a ridge running parallel to his march; but when the sloping of the land compelled the flankers to descend to the level of the road, the British lost the advantage which the ridge gave them, and the minute-men, who now began to strike the British line of march at every angle, waylaid them at cross-roads, and dropped an incessant fire upon them from copse, hill, and stone wall, until the retreating troops, impeded with their wounded, and leaving many of their dying and dead, huddled along the road like sheep beset by dogs. Just on the easterly outskirts of Lexington they met Percy, whose ranks opened and received the fugitives; and Stedman, the British historian who was with Percy, tells us how the weary men hung out their tongues as they cumbered the ground during their halt. It was near two o'clock, and Percy planted his cannon to keep his assailants at bay, while his troops, now about eighteen hundred in number, rested and refreshed themselves. Before this, his baggage train, which had been delayed in crossing the bridge from Brighton to Cambridge so as to fall far behind his hastening column, had been captured, with its guard, by a crowd of old men some distance below, at Menotomy.[371] When Percy limbered his pieces and his troops fell again into column, the hovering militia renewed the assault. As pursuer and pursued crossed West Cambridge plain the action was sharp. Percy did not dare attempt to turn towards the boats which Smith had left at Lechmere Point, and any intention he may have had of halting at Cambridge and fortifying was long vanished. So he pursued the road which led towards Charlestown Neck. Several hundred militiamen, who had come up from Essex County,[372] were nearly in time at Winter Hill to cut the British off in their precipitate retreat, and "God knows", said Washington, when he learned the facts, "it could not have been more so." Percy, however, slipped by, and as darkness was coming on, the fire of the pursuers began to slacken as they approached Bunker Hill. Here, with the royal ships covering their flanks, the British halted, and, facing about, formed a line and prepared to make a stand. General Heath, who during the latter part of the day had been on the ground, drew off his militia, and at the foot of Prospect Hill held the first council of war of the now actual hostilities. Warren, early in the day hastening from Boston across the river, had galloped towards the scene of conflict. When he encountered Percy's column on its way out, he seems to have evaded it and joined General Heath, then taking cross-roads to intercept the pursuing militia. Heath took the command of the provincials soon after Percy resumed his march. From this time Warren, as chairman of the committee in Boston, kept near Heath, for counsel if need be, and Heath says that on the West Cambridge plain a musket-ball struck a pin from Warren's earlock.

No one could tell what would happen next, after this suddenly improvised army had begun to rendezvous that night in Cambridge. As the straggling parties, in bivouac and in what shelter they could find, compared experiences and counted the missing, messengers were hurrying in every direction with the tidings of the war at last begun![373]

On the 20th of April there was much to do beside picking up the dead that may have been left over night along the road from Concord. The Committee of Safety[374] were summoning all the towns to send their armed men to Cambridge.[375] Warren was writing to Gage to beg better facilities for getting the women and children, with family effects, out of Boston.[376] These were busy days for that ardent patriot. The militia were beginning to pour in, and Warren must do the chief work in reducing the mob to order. Congress comes to Watertown, and Warren, in the absence of Hancock, must preside. He bids God-speed to Samuel Adams and John Hancock[377] as they start for the Continental Congress. He hears with a sinking heart of the vessel which arrived at Gloucester on the 26th, bringing the body of Josiah Quincy, so lately warm that, when the tidings reached Cambridge of his death, Warren supposed he had lived to get ashore.[378]

Another day Warren is busy carrying out the behests of the Committee of Safety respecting their scant artillery. At another time he is encouraging wagoners to go into Boston to bring out the friends of the cause and their property; but it was not so easy to get Gage's permission, and as the tories made a plea that these Boston patriots were necessary hostages, obstacles were thrown in the way.[379] There were rumors, too, of an intention of the royal troops once more to raid upon the country. Only two days after the 19th of April, Ipswich was wild with such rumors, and the alarm spread to the New Hampshire line[380] and beyond.[381]

The patriots at Cambridge were not pleased when they found that the Connecticut assembly had sent a committee to bear a letter from Governor Trumbull (April 28) and to confer with Gage.[382] There was a feeling that the time had passed for such things, and Warren wrote (May 2) a letter beseeching the sister colony to stand by Massachusetts, which elicited from Trumbull a response sufficiently assuring.[383]

Already there was a proposition warlike enough from a Connecticut captain who had just led his company to Cambridge, and was now urging the seizure of Ticonderoga and its stores. The proposition was timely. During the previous winter the patriots had learned that the British government was intending to separate the colonies by securing the line of the Hudson.[384] Accordingly the instigator of this counter-movement was ordered, May 3d, to carry it out, and Benedict Arnold makes his first appearance in American history. Meanwhile, however, acting upon hints which Arnold had already dropped before leaving Connecticut, or perhaps anticipating such hints, some gentlemen in that colony, joining with others of Pittsfield, in Massachusetts, had gone to Bennington, where, on the day before Arnold was commissioned, they had been joined by Col. Ethan Allen. Thus the plan which Arnold had at heart was likely to be carried out before he could arrive from Cambridge. A few days later the command of the force which had gathered naturally fell to Allen as having the largest personal following, and this following was loyal enough to their leader to threaten to abandon the enterprise if Arnold, who arrived very soon, should press his rights to the command. By a sort of compromise, Allen and Arnold now shared amicably the leadership. Less than a hundred men had reached the neighborhood of the fort on the morning of May 10, when, in the early dawn, the two leaders, overpowering the sentinels at the sally-port, reached the parade-ground with their men, and forced an immediate surrender from the commandant, still in his night-clothes. Fifty men and nearly two hundred cannon, and many military stores, were thus promptly and easily secured. More than a hundred other pieces were added, when, on the 12th, Colonel Seth Warner,[385] with a coöperating detachment, seized the post at Crown Point, and shortly afterwards Bernard Romans took possession of Fort George.[386]

On the 14th some of Arnold's belated men reached him with a captured schooner, which Arnold immediately put to use in conveying a force by which he surprised the fort at St. John's, on the Sorel, and then returned to Ticonderoga.[387]

Meanwhile the provincials had begun to use the spade in Cambridge, and here and there a breastwork appeared.[388] On the 5th of May the provincial congress pronounced Gage "an unnatural and inveterate enemy",[389] and issued a precept for a new congress to convene.

The military anxiety was increasing. Thomas had but 700 men at Roxbury, which he tried to magnify in the British eyes by marching them in and out of sight, so as to make the same men serve the appearance of many more. On the 8th of May there was an alarm that the royal troops were coming out, and the militia of the near towns were summoned.[390] To put on an air of confidence, a few days later (May 13), Putnam, from Cambridge, marched with 2,200 men into Charlestown and out again, without being molested, though part of the time within range of the enemy's guns. It was the military assertion of the idea, which the day before the Watertown congress had expressed, of governing themselves. "It is astonishing how they have duped the whole continent", wrote Gage to Dartmouth,[391] and perhaps he had not heard even then of the last victory of opinion down in Georgia, where parishes of New England descent were forcing issues with their neighbors.

The Committee of Safety now resolved to remove the live-stock from the islands in Boston Harbor; and Gage, on his part, determined on securing some hay on Grape Island, near Weymouth. These counter-forays led to fighting, and for some weeks the harbor was alive with skirmishing.[392] Meanwhile the Massachusetts congress had urged Connecticut to let Arnold bring some of the cannon captured on Lake Champlain to Cambridge,[393] and the day before the brush occurred at Grape Island they had delivered (May 20) a commission as commander-in-chief of the Massachusetts troops to Artemas Ward. In Boston the remaining loyalists were soon cheered by advices promising large reinforcements, which they now confidently began to expect,[394] and the feeling grew apace among the beleaguerers that a better organization and a closer dependence of the colonies among themselves were necessary to meet the impending dangers. Dr. Langdon, the president of Harvard College, in the election sermon[395] on the day when the new provincial congress met (May 31), had recognized the general obedience which was already paid to the advice of the Continental Congress. There were not a few who remembered how, twenty years before, the young Virginian, Colonel George Washington, had come to Boston, and who recalled the good impression he had made. They had heard lately of the active interest and sympathy with the patriots' cause which he was manifesting among his neighbors in that colony. On the 4th of May, Elbridge Gerry, with the approval of Warren, wrote to the Massachusetts delegates at Philadelphia, that they would "rejoice to see this way the beloved Colonel Washington" as generalissimo.[396] This was the feeling, while the army which lay about Boston was a mere inchoate mass, far from equal to the task which they had undertaken; but brave words did much; brave spirits did more; and John Adams was writing from Philadelphia that one "would burst to see whole companies of armed Quakers in that city, in uniforms, going through the manual."[397] The tories in Boston looked on with mingled fear and confidence. "We are daily threatened", wrote Chief-justice Oliver from Boston (June 10), "with an attack by fire-rafts, whale-boats, and what not."[398]

One of the new British generals now lent his literary skill to his commanding general, for Burgoyne was a playwright and had an easy way of vaporing, which was quite apparent in Gage's proclamation of June 12,[399] to warn the rebellious and infatuated multitudes, and to hold out forgiveness to all but Samuel Adams and John Hancock.[400] The provincial congress, through Warren, prepared a counter-manifesto, but events were rushing too speedily to leave time for its publication. On the very day of issuing his proclamation Gage wrote to Dartmouth that he was intending to attack the rebels, "which every day becomes more necessary."[401]

On the 14th Warren was made the second major-general of the Massachusetts forces, and his active spirit gave encouragement, since the inalertness of Ward was creating much concern. Early in the morning of the 17th Warren left Watertown, and the provincial congress convened without him, but they knew the emergency. A broadside exists of this day, in which they call upon the neighboring militia to hold themselves in readiness. In the anxious hours of this, St. Botolph's day,[402] with all eyes on Boston, the Continental Congress had chosen Washington to be their military chief,[403] and had adopted the forces which were about to show that Boston was not besieged idly. It took time then for Cambridge to know what was happening in Philadelphia; but the assembled legislators at Watertown might well hope for what had really happened, when, as the fateful day wore on, messengers arrived, declaring that the Continental funds were to be used to help supply this beggared army, and that all the aspirations of its provincial congress to set up a civil government of their own had met the approval of the continent.[404]

Now to look at the military situation. Already John Thomas, a physician of Kingston, had been made second in command under Ward; and Richard Gridley, an old Louisbourg artilleryman, had been made chief engineer. As yet the New England colonies were the only ones which had sent their armed men to the scene. The Massachusetts men had taken post mostly at Cambridge, near the college; and here, as the days went on, came also a Connecticut regiment under Israel Putnam, who had left his plough in its furrow. So, as June began, there had assembled on this side of Boston between seven and eight thousand men, eager, but poorly equipped, and with a small supply of powder. On the Roxbury side, fronting the British lines on Boston Neck, there were about four thousand Massachusetts men, under John Thomas, supported by a camp a little farther out, at Jamaica Plain, to which Joseph Spencer had come with another Connecticut regiment, and Nathanael Greene, with a body of Rhode Islanders. Thomas had some field-pieces and a few heavy cannon, and his force constituted the army's right wing. Its left wing was upon the Mystick at Medford, and near Charlestown Neck, and here were the New Hampshire men, and among their officers the old Indian fighter, John Stark, was conspicuous. Three companies of Massachusetts men constituted the extreme left at Chelsea. So, as the summer came on, perhaps about 16,000 men in all were encamped as a fragile army besieging Boston. General Ward exercised by sufferance a superior authority over all, though as yet no colony but New Hampshire had instructed its troops to yield him obedience. As Massachusetts claimed three quarters of the entire force thus drawn together, the assumption of chief command by her first officer was natural enough in a common cause.

The force which this sixteen thousand loosely organized men dared to hold imprisoned in Boston was a well-compacted army of somewhere from five to ten thousand men, for it is difficult amid conflicting reports to determine confidently a fixed number. On the 25th of May Gage had been joined by a reinforcement, accompanied by three other general officers,—Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe.

The council of war at Cambridge was meanwhile directing new works to be constructed, strengthening and stretching their lines of circumvallation. Its opinions were divided on the question of occupying so exposed a position as the most prominent eminence on the peninsula of Charlestown, the defence of which might bring on a general engagement, which their stock of powder could not support. On the 13th of June the American commanders had secretly learned that Gage intended on the 18th to take possession of Dorchester Heights, the present South Boston. There was but one counter-move to make, and that was to seize in anticipation the summit of the ridgy height which began at Charlestown Neck and extended, in varying outline, to the seaward end of the peninsula,—an eminence known as Bunker Hill. On the 16th of June, a council of war, held in the house near Cambridge common, known then as the Hastings and later as the Holmes House,[405] decided, upon the recommendation of the Committee of Safety, to occupy Bunker Hill at once.

That evening about 1,200 men, of whom 200 were from Connecticut under Thomas Knowlton, the whole being under the command of Colonel William Prescott, first listened to a prayer of the president of the college, and then marched, with their intrenching tools, in the darkness, to Charlestown Neck.

Here the purpose was for the first time disclosed to the men. They resumed their march, going up the slope of the hill before them, while Nutting's company and a few Connecticut men were sent along the shore opposite Boston, to patrol it. The highest summit of the hill was the one first reached; but, after a consultation, it was decided to proceed to a lower one, more nearly before Boston. Here Richard Gridley marked out a redoubt, and at midnight the men took their spades and began to throw up the breastworks. Putnam, who seems to have accompanied Prescott, now returned to Cambridge, and while the men worked busily, Prescott sent an additional patrol to the river, and twice went down himself, to be satisfied, as he heard the "All's well" of the watch on the men-of-war moored opposite, that no noise of the intrenching tools had reached the enemy. Soon after the first glimmer of dawn on the 17th, the sailors on the ships discovered the embankments, now about six feet high, when one of the vessels, the "Lively", at once opened fire upon them. This lasted only till Admiral Graves could send orders to cease, but was shortly renewed from the ships and from the batteries on Copp's Hill, in Boston, as soon as the British generals comprehended the situation. Prescott's men meanwhile kept at their work. One man was soon killed by a cannon-ball. The commander and others walked the parapet, encouraging their men, and Willard, one of the councillors who stood by Gage as they surveyed the hill through their glasses, recognized the Pepperell colonel, and told the British general what sort of man he had got to encounter. A promise had been given to Prescott that in the morning a relief and refreshments would be sent from Cambridge; but nothing came to the hungry men, as they still worked. Ward, who heard the firing, yielded to Putnam's persuasion to send reinforcement, only so far as to despatch a part of Stark's regiment, for he feared that Gage would seem to prepare to assault in Charlestown, while his intention might be to attack in Cambridge. Finally, about ten o'clock, Major John Brooks[406] reached headquarters with a request from Prescott for help and food. Richard Devens pressed Ward to comply, and at eleven the rest of the New Hampshire men were ordered to march.

Meanwhile, as the tide rose, some floating batteries were sent up the stream to take the works in flank, and later, to rake the Neck. A few stray shots were returned from a single field-piece in the redoubt, one of whose balls passed over Burgoyne's head, as he tells us, while he was watching at Copp's Hill. Putnam came again from Cambridge, and induced Prescott to send off a large number of his men with the intrenching tools, and under Putnam's direction this detail soon began to use them in throwing up earthworks on the higher summit in the rear,—labor wasted, as it turned out.

As the day wore on, Gage held a council of war, and it was determined not to land troops at the Neck and attack in rear, as Clinton urged, but to assault in front. This decision was long the ground of severe criticism upon Gage, and ruined his military reputation. The ships were put into better positions, and redoubled their fire. By noon the British troops in Boston were marching to the wharves, where they embarked in boats, and, under the command of General Howe, they rowed to Moulton's or Morton's Point, where the landing was quickly made.[407] Howe drew up his men on the rising ground which makes the least of the three heights of the peninsula, and anticipating sharp work, sent back the boats for more men.

Prescott observed all this from the hill, but looked longingly up the peninsula for his own reinforcements. A few wagons came, not with men, but with beer, though nothing adequate even of this. The feeling began to spread among the men on the hill that they had been treacherously left to their fate; but they got encouragement from a few brave souls who came straggling in from Cambridge. Pomeroy, the French war veteran, was one. James Otis, wreck as he was, came.[408] So did Warren, whose presence the men recognized by a cheer, and, major-general as he was, he came to fight under Colonel Prescott. Putnam, too, had again returned, and was seen riding about the field in a restless way, with a word of encouragement here and there, and pointing out to a few reinforcements now arriving where best to go.

Prescott's eye, observing Howe's dispositions, saw he was aiming to advance along the Mystick and take the redoubt in reverse. So Knowlton, with two field-pieces and the Connecticut troops, were sent down the hill towards the Mystick, where they began to make a line of defence of a low stone wall, which was topped by a two-rail fence. Stark and Reed, with the New Hampshire regiments, diminished somewhat by details which Putnam had taken from them to help the work in the trenches on the higher hill, soon came up and ranged their men in a line with Knowlton. There was, however, an interval between this part of the field and the breastwork and redoubt, which offered a chance for the enemy to intervene and break the line. An attempt was made to prepare for such a contingency by grouping the few guns which they had at this point. New troops, in small numbers, continued to come up, and they were placed in position as best they could be to keep the line strong in all parts as it sloped away from the crowning redoubt towards either river.

It was nearing three o'clock when the British boats returned from Boston; and when their troops landed Howe had about 3,000 men in array. He pushed his guns forward and got them in position to play upon the American field-pieces, and soon drove them away, while at the same time some skirmishing took place on the British flanks, whose main body was now advancing in a measured step in two columns: one led by Howe against the rail-fence, the other by Pigot against the redoubt. The assault was become one of infantry only, for the British guns were soon mired in some soft ground, and the balls in reserve had proved of an over-calibre.[409] Pigot's front got near the redoubt before the Americans poured in their fire, which was deadly enough to send the staggered column wildly back. At the same time, along the Mystick Howe's advance was met by the American field-pieces, some of which had been drawn to the rail-fence. Their musketry fire was reserved, as at the redoubt, and when it belched upon the deployed enemy it produced the same effect. So there was a recoil all along the British line. In the respite before they advanced again, Putnam tried to rally some troops in the rear, and to get others across the Neck, which the raking fire of the British vessels was now keeping pretty clear of passers.[410] But there was not time to do much, for Howe was soon again advancing, his artillery helping him more this time; and to add to the terror of the scene, he had sent word to Boston to set Charlestown on fire by shells, and the conflagration had now begun.[411] The smoke did not conceal the British advance,[412] and Prescott and Stark kept their men quiet till the enemy were near enough to make every shot tell. The result was as during the first attack. The royal troops struggled bravely; but all along the line they wavered, and then retreated more precipitately than before.

There was a longer interval before Howe again advanced, and Prescott used it in making such a disposition of his men as would be best in a hand-to-hand fight, for neither adequate reinforcements nor supplies had reached him, and his powder was nearly gone. There was a good deal of confusion and uncertainty in the rear, all along the road to Cambridge. Ward had ordered a plenty of troops forward, but few reached the peninsula at all, or in any shape for service. Putnam did what he could to bring order out of confusion; but his restless and brandishing method, and his eagerness to finish the works on Bunker Hill, were not conducive to such results as a quiet energy best produces. The brave men at the front must still do the work left for them, with such chance assistance as came.

Howe was rallying his men for a third assault. Major Small had landed 400 marines, to make up in part for the losses. Clinton had seen how confused the troops were as he looked across the river with his glass, and had hurried over from Boston to render Howe help as a volunteer aid. The British general determined now to concentrate his attack upon the works on the crown of the hill, making only a demonstration against the rail-fence. He brought his artillery to bear in a way that scoured the breastwork which flanked the redoubt, and then he attacked. His column reserved their fire and relied on the bayonet. They met the American fire bravely, but soon perceived that it slackened; and surmising that the American powder was failing, they took new courage. Those of the defenders who had ammunition mowed down the assailants as they mounted the breastworks, Major Pitcairn among them;[413] but as soon as Prescott saw the defence was hopeless, he ordered a retreat, and friend and foe mingled together as they surged out of the sally-port amid the clouds of dust which the trampling raised, for a scorching sun had baked the new-turned soil. It was now, while the confused mass of beings rocked along down the rear slope of the hill, that Warren fell, shot through the head. No one among the Americans knew certainly that he was dead, as they left him. The British stopped to form and deliver fire, and there was thus time for a gap to open between the pursuers and the pursued. The New Hampshire men and others at the rail-fence, seeing that the redoubt was lost, tenaciously faced the enemy long enough to prevent Prescott's men from being cut off, and then stubbornly fell back. Some fresh troops which had come up endeavored to check the British as they reached the slope which led to the intrenchments that Putnam had been so solicitous about; but the British wave had now acquired an impulse which carried it bravely up the hill; and Putnam, skirring about, was not able to make anybody stand to defend the unfinished works. So down the westerly slope of the higher summit to the Neck the provincials fled, and the British followed. The vessels poured in their fire anew as the huddled runaways crossed the low land, and not till they got beyond the Neck was there any effectual movement by fresh troops to cover the retreat. General Howe fired a few cannon shot after them, as he mustered his forces on the hill. It was now about five o'clock. There was time in the long summer's day to advance upon Cambridge, but Howe rejected Clinton's advice to that end, and began, with other troops which had been sent to him from Boston, to throw up breastworks on the inland crown of Bunker Hill. Thus spading for their defence, the British passed the night, while the Americans lay on their arms on Winter and Prospect hills, or straggled back to Cambridge. There was no disposition on either side to renew the fight.

Prescott did not conceal his indignation at not having been better supported, when he made his report at Ward's headquarters. He knew he had fought well; but neither he nor his contemporaries understood at the time how a physical defeat might be a moral victory. Not knowing this, there was little else than mortification over the result,—indeed, on both sides. A wild daring had brought the battle on, and something like bravado had led the British general into a foolhardy direct assault, while more skilful plans, availing of their ships, might have accomplished more without the heavy loss which they had endured.[414] The British folly was increased by the way in which they allowed the provincials to make the first great fight of the war a political force throughout the continent.

The general opinion seems to be that the Americans had about 1,500 men engaged at one time, and that from three to four thousand at different times took some part in it.[415] The British had probably about the same numbers in all, but were in excess of the Americans at all times while engaged.[416] The conflict with small arms lasted about ninety minutes.

On the morning of the 18th of June (Sunday) the British renewed the cannonading along their lines, as if to cover some movement, but nothing came of it, and each side used the shovel busily on the intrenchments. A shower in the afternoon stopped the firing.

There was a dilemma in New York a few days later. Governor Tryon, who had been in England, was already in the harbor ready to land on his return, and Washington was approaching through Jersey on his way to Boston. It was determined by the city authorities to address and extend courtesies to both. The American general chanced to be ahead, and got the parade and fair words first. Tryon disembarked a few hours later, and received the same tributes.[417]

It was Sunday, June 25, when Washington reached New York. He found the town excited over the recent battle, the news of which he had met a few hours out of Philadelphia.[418]

Among the letters now passing through New York was one upon that battle, addressed to the President of Congress, which Washington took the liberty of opening for his own guidance. After instructing Schuyler, who was to be left in charge of the forces in New York, to keep watch upon Tryon[419] and Guy Johnson,[420] Washington the next day (26th) started for Cambridge. On the 2d of July Washington reached Watertown, and on the 3d, under a tree still standing,[421] he took command of the army, which thus passed, in effect, under Continental control, numbering at the time nearly 15,000 men fit for duty.[422] To brigade this army, rectify the circumvallating lines, watch the constant skirmishes, and assign the new bodies of troops arriving to places in the works, was the labor to which Washington devoted himself at once. On the 9th of July he held his first council of war,[423] and on the 10th he addressed his first letter to Congress, describing the condition of the siege as he had found it.

To guard against surprise, and replenish the magazines, required constant diligence, and the supply of powder never ceased to be a cause of anxiety in the one camp, while the diminishing stock of provisions produced almost as much concern in Boston. The beleaguered British, however, got some relief from the exodus of the Boston people, which the stress of want forced the royal commander to permit.[424] So the summer was made up of anxious moments. The independent husbandmen of New England made but intractable raw recruits, and Washington, who had expected to find discipline equal to that which the social distinctions of the South gave to the masses there, was disappointed, and did not wholly conceal his disgust.[425] He grew, however, to discern that campaigns could produce that discipline as well, if not better, than a life of civil subservience. Recruits came in from the South, and when some of the Northern officers saw the kind of men that Morgan and others brought as riflemen from Virginia, their comment was scarcely less austere. "The army would be as well off without them", said Thomas, who, next to Washington, was the best disciplinarian in the camp. Of the generals, Lee was, however, by much the most conspicuous. There was a glamour about the current rumors of his soldierly experience that obscured what might have been told of his questionable character.[426] His eccentricities were the camp talk, and rather served to magnify his presence, while it proved dangerous to perambulate the lines with him and his crowd of dogs, since the exhibition tempted the enemy to drop their shells in that spot.[427] Early in July a trumpeter approached the American lines bringing a letter from General Burgoyne to General Lee, and the camp straightway proceeded to invest the strange general with political importance. Burgoyne and Lee were old campaigners together, and Lee, before he left Philadelphia, had written a stirring letter to the British general on the bad prospects of the ministerial policy. The letter which now came was a reply, and proposed a conference on Boston Neck, to which Congress advised Lee not to accede, and the momentary ripple subsided.[428]

In August there was some correspondence with Gage respecting the treatment of prisoners, in which Washington appears to the better advantage.[429] The correspondence of the American general during the summer constantly dwells upon the scarcity of powder, though for prudence' sake he veils his expressions as much as he can. His own troops and even Congress had no conception of his want, and while Washington hardly dared fire a salute because of the powder it would take, Richard Henry Lee, from Philadelphia, was urging him to plant batteries at the mouth of Boston harbor, and keep the enemy's vessels from coming in and going out.[430] Governor Cooke, of Rhode Island, who was doing his best to get powder from Bermuda, was compelled to keep the secret too. Apparently Washington did not let his brigade commanders know the whole truth.[431] Under these circumstances Washington had no courage to attack, and Gage, on his part, was content to keep his men from deserting as best he could.

During September the threatening manœuvres of the British cruisers along the Connecticut coast[432] kept Governor Trumbull from sending what powder he had, and there was little hope, when Washington called a council of war on the 11th, that anything would come of it. There had been just then some internal manifestations not very reassuring.[433] A letter which Dr. Benjamin Church had tried to get to the British in Newport harbor had been intercepted, and its cypher interpreted. There was no expressed defection made clear by it, but suspicions were aroused, and Church, being arrested, was summoned before the congress at Watertown, where he made a speech protesting his innocence, but scarcely quieting the suspicions. He was put under control, and removed from the neighborhood of the army.[434]

There was scarce less gratification in the camp at Cambridge in getting rid of their doubtful associate than was experienced in Boston in getting a release from their sluggish general. The ministry had saved that soldier's pride as much as they could in desiring to have him nearer at hand for counsel;[435] and the sympathetic loyalists whom he had befriended paid him their compliments in an address. Gage finally, on October 10, issued his last order, turning over the command to Howe.[436]

In the middle of October, the burning of Falmouth, the modern Portland, in Maine, seemed to make it clear that the war was to be conducted ruthlessly on the British part. Captain Mowatt, with a small fleet, had entered the harbor and set the town on fire, and to those who communicated with him it was said that he announced his doings to be but the beginning of a course of such outrages. When the news reached Washington, he dispatched Sullivan to Portsmouth, with orders to resist as far as he could any similar demonstration there.[437] What a modern British historian[438] has called a "wanton and cruel deed" seems to have been but the hasty misjudgment of an inferior officer, without orders to warrant the act, and the ministry promptly disowned the responsibility.[439] During October, also, a committee of Congress,[440] visiting Washington's camp, could see for themselves the troubles of their heroic commander. They had not yet heard in Philadelphia the roar of hostile guns,—a sensation they might now experience. They could share Washington's perplexities as the new enlistments halted upon the expiration of the old,[441] and perhaps join in some of his kindly merriment when Phillis Wheatley, the negress, addressed his Excellency in no very bad verses.[442]

Perhaps they may have had the grim satisfaction of riding to distant parts of the lines in Thomas Hutchinson's coach, kept now for the general's use, if we may believe the refugee himself.[444]

A little later, Josiah Quincy, who from his house at Braintree could look out upon the harbor, had been urging Washington to block the channel, and thus imprison the British ships there at anchor, and prevent the coming of others. Washington appreciated the motives of that ardent patriot, but he would have liked better the cannon and powder that would have rendered the plan feasible.[445] At all events, the possible chances of the plan made not a very pleasant prospect for Howe, who had already set his mind—as, indeed, the ministry had already advised[446]—upon evacuating the town; but his ships were as yet not sufficient for the task, and hardly sufficient to protect his supply-boats from the improvised navy which Washington had been for some time commissioning.[447]

John Adams, in Philadelphia, was getting uneasy over the apparent inaction of Washington, and wrote in November (1775) to Mercy Warren that Mrs. Washington was going to Cambridge,[448] and he hoped she might prove to have ambition enough for her husband's glory to give occasion to the Lord to have mercy on the souls of Howe and Burgoyne![449]

The left wing of the beleaguering army was now pushed forward and occupied Cobble Hill, the site of the present McLean Asylum, and the two armies watched each other at closer quarters than before, the almost foolhardy Americans feeling increased confidence when the fortunate captain of an ordnance brig gave them a supply of munitions. In December, Massachusetts and New Hampshire[450] promptly supplied the loss of Connecticut and Rhode Island troops, who were not to be induced to prolong their enlistments. Washington was cheered with this alacrity of a portion, at least, of the New England yeomen, and he suffered as many as he could of those who had come hastily to the camp in the spring to go home on brief furloughs to make winter provision for their families. Before the year was out, Congress had authorized Washington to destroy Boston if he found it necessary. The British general was, on his part, organizing in that town a Royal Regiment of Highland Emigrants,[451] and other loyalist battalions, putting Ruggles, Forrest, and Gorham in command of them.[452]

On the first of January, 1776, the federal flag, with its thirteen stripes and British Union,[453] was first raised over the American camp, and their council of war was inspirited to determine upon an attack, as soon as the chances of success seemed favorable; but the prudent ones trusted rather to Howe's evacuating through his straits for provisions, and held back from the final decision. It was not forgotten that 2,000 men were still without firelocks, and there was not much powder in the magazines. The total environing army scarce numbered ten thousand men fit for duty, and they were stretched out in a long circumvallation, while the enemy could mass at least half that number on any one point, and had a fleet to sustain them. Howe had not shown a much more active spirit than Gage had displayed, and there was a feeling in the British camp that he was too timid for the task,[454] and there could not have been much hopefulness in seeing so much better a general as Clinton sent off in January with several regiments, to join other forces and a fleet on the coast of North Carolina.[455] Washington meanwhile kept up a show of activity, and when, on the evening of January 8, he sent Knowlton on a marauding scout into Charlestown, there was a little flutter of excitement in Boston for fear it foreboded more serious work, and the British officers were hastily summoned to their posts from the play-house, where they were diverting themselves,[456]—the play on this particular occasion being something they had planned, and called The Boston Blockade.

As early as the middle of June, 1775, General Wooster, with some Connecticut troops, had by invitation of Congress marched to the neighborhood of New York, to be prepared for any demonstration from British ships which might attempt to land troops, for the British naval power was and continued to be supreme in the harbor till Washington occupied the city.

Before Clinton had left Boston, Washington, under Lee's urgency, had decided to possess New York, and the plan, which was submitted to John Adams, as representing the Congress, met with that gentleman's approval.[457] Lee was accordingly sent into Connecticut to organize such a force as he could for advancing on that city.[458] He kept Washington informed of his success in these preliminaries, and finally reached New York himself on February 4,[459] and here he remained till it was ascertained that Clinton was proceeding to the South, where he was instructed to follow that general and confront him as best he could, as we shall presently see.[460]

The chief event of February, 1776, was the arrival of the cannon captured at Ticonderoga, and the placing them in the siege batteries along the American lines, for Washington had dispatched Knox to bring these much needed cannon to him. John Adams records meeting them on their way at Framingham, January 25;[461] and when the train of fifty pieces and other munitions reached the lines, there was something less of anxiety than there had been before.[462] The army, however, was still deficient in small arms, and Washington wrote urgently to the New York authorities for assistance of that kind.[463]

By the first of March powder had been obtained in considerable quantities, and Washington opened a bombardment from all parts of his lines, which was deemed necessary to conceal a projected movement. During the night of March 4-5, General Thomas, from the Roxbury lines,[464] with 2,500 men, took possession of Dorchester Heights.[465] It was moonlight, but the men worked on without discovery, and by morning had thrown up a cover. Both armies now laid plans for battle.

Howe determined to attack the Heights by a front and flank assault. Washington reinforced Thomas, and planned at the same time to move on Boston by boats across the back bay. The British dropped down on transports to the Castle, but a long storm delayed the projected movement. This so effectually gave the Americans time to increase their defences that the British general saw that to evacuate the town was the least of all likely evils. As he began to show signs of such a movement, the Americans began to speculate upon their significance. Heath, at least, was fearful that the appearances were only a cloak to cover an intention to land suddenly somewhere between Cambridge and Squantum.[466] But the genuineness of Howe's intention gradually became apparent, as, indeed, evacuation with him was a necessity, while Admiral Shuldam also saw that his fleet, too, was immediately imperilled from the newly raised works on Dorchester Heights. So Howe had scarce an alternative but to give a tacit consent to a plan of the selectmen of Boston for him to leave the town uninjured, if his troops were suffered to embark undisturbed. Washington entered upon no formal agreement to that end, but acquiesced silently as Howe had done.[467] There was still some cannonading as Washington pushed his batteries nearer Boston on the Dorchester side, at Nook's Hill, teaching Howe the necessity of increased expedition. By early light on the 17th of March it was discovered that Howe had begun to embark his troops, and by nine o'clock the last boat had pushed off, completing a roll, including seamen, fit for duty, of about 11,000 men, with about a thousand refugees.[468] The Continentals were alert, and their advanced guards promptly entered the British works on the several sides. The enemy's ships fell down the harbor unmolested; but that night they blew up Castle William, and the vessels gathered together in Nantasket Roads. Here they remained for ten days, causing Washington not a little anxiety; and he wrote to Quincy, at Braintree, to have all the roads from the landings patrolled, lest the British should send spies into the country.[469] On the 27th, all but a few armed vessels, intended to warn off belated succor,[470] had disappeared in the direction of Halifax.[471]

Ward was left with five regiments to hold the town and its neighborhood,[472] while Colonel Gridley, "whom I have been taught to view", said Washington, "as one of the greatest engineers of the age", was directed to fortify the sea approaches.[473]

Washington gradually moved his remaining army to New York, not without apprehension at one time that he would have to direct them to Rhode Island, for a fog had befooled some people in Newport into sending him a message that the British fleet was in the offing there. He left Cambridge himself April 4th, not for Virginia, as some good people imagined he would do, out of loyalty to his province,[474] but to defend as he could the line of the Hudson, of which signs were already accumulating that it was the game for each side to secure. A few of the enemy's ships still hung about Nantasket Roads, and some desultory fighting occurred in the harbor.[475] The British, however, failed to prevent some important captures of munition vessels being made. It was not till June that General Lincoln, with a militia force, brought guns to bear upon the still lingering enemy, when they sailed away, and Boston was at last free of a hostile force.

It is now necessary to follow two other movements, which had been begun while the siege of Boston was in progress, the one to the north, and the other to the south.

The exploits of Allen and Arnold at Ticonderoga, already related, had invited further conquests; but the Continental Congress hesitated to take any steps which might seem to carry war across the line till the Canadians had the opportunity of casting in their lot with their neighbors. On the 1st of June, 1775, Congress had distinctly avowed this purpose of restraint; and they well needed to be cautious, for the Canadian French had not forgotten the bitter aspersions on their religion which Congress had, with little compunction, launched upon its professors, under the irritation of the Quebec Act. Still their rulers were aliens, and the traditional hatred of centuries between races is not easily kept in abeyance. Ethan Allen was more eager to avail himself of this than Congress was to have him; but the march of events converted the legislators, and the opportunity which Allen grieved to see lost was not so easily regained when Congress at last authorized the northern invasion. Arnold and Allen had each aimed to secure the command of such an expedition, the one by appealing to the Continental Congress, the other by representations to that of New York. Allen had also gone in person to Philadelphia, and he and his Green Mountain Boys were not without influence upon Congress, in their quaint and somewhat rough ways, as their exuberant patriotism later made the New York authorities forget their riotous opposition to the policy which that province had been endeavoring to enforce in the New Hampshire Grants. Connecticut had already sent forward troops to Ticonderoga to hold that post till Congress should decide upon some definite action; and at the end of June, 1775, orders reached Schuyler which he might readily interpret as authorizing him, if the Canadians did not object, to advance upon Canada.[476] He soon started to assume command, but speedily found matters unpromising. The Johnsons were arming the Indians up the Mohawk and beyond in a way that boded no good, and they had entered into compacts with the British commanders in Canada. Arnold had been at Ticonderoga, and had quarrelled with Hinman, the commander of the Connecticut troops. Schuyler heard much of the Green Mountain Boys, but he only knew them as the lawless people of the Grants, and soon learned that Allen and Warner had themselves set to quarrelling. Presently, however, Allen reported at Ticonderoga for special service, as he had been cast off by his own people. Another volunteer, Major John Brown, was sent by Schuyler into Canada for information. Schuyler's position was a trying one. He had few troops of his own province. The Connecticut troops were too lax in discipline to suit his ideas of military propriety, and his temperament had little to induce him to make concessions to the exigencies of the conditions.[477] With the best heart he could, he tried to organize his force for an advance, and assisted, in Indian conferences at Albany, to disarm, as far as he might, the Mohawks of their hostility.

In August the news from Canada began to be alarming. Richard Montgomery, an Irish officer who had some years before left the army to settle on the Hudson and marry, was now one of the new brigadiers. He urged Schuyler to advance and anticipate the movement now said to be intended by Carleton, the English general commanding in Canada. At this juncture Schuyler got word from Washington that a coöperating expedition would be dispatched by way of the Kennebec, which, if everything went well, might unite with Schuyler's before Quebec.

Montgomery had already started from Ticonderoga, and it was not till the foot of Lake Champlain had been reached that Schuyler overtook him, and, with an effective force of about 1,000 men, he now prepared, on the 6th of September, to advance upon St. Johns. The demonstration caused a little bloodshed, but, getting information which deceived him, he fell back to the Isle-aux-Noix, and prepared to hold it against a counter attack, and to prevent any vessel of the enemy penetrating to the lake. The outlook for a while was not auspicious. Malaria made sad inroads among the men, and of those who were left on duty, insubordination and lack of discipline, and perhaps a shade of treachery, impaired their efficiency. Schuyler was prostrate on his bed, and Montgomery was forced to unmilitary expedients because of the temper of his troops. Schuyler's disorder seeming to have permanently mastered him, he resigned the command to Montgomery and returned up the lake. He had, at least, the satisfaction of meeting reinforcements pushing down to the main body. Before these arrived Montgomery had begun the siege of St. Johns, and he was pressing it, when Ethan Allen, whom Montgomery was expecting to join him, met with Brown, and these two planned an attack on Montreal. It was attempted, but Brown and his men failed to coöperate, and Allen and those he had with him were finally captured.[478] When the Canadians heard that the redoubtable Green Mountain leader was in irons on board an English vessel bound for Halifax,[479] a great deal was done towards awakening them from that spell of neutrality upon which the American campaign so much depended for success.

So Montgomery continued to keep his lines about St. Johns with great discouragement. He met every embarrassment which a hastily improvised and undisciplined mass of men could impose upon a man who was of high spirit and knew what soldierly discipline ought to be. A gleam of hope at last came. He detached a party to attack Fort Chamblée, further down the Sorel, and it succeeded (October 18), and he was thus enabled to replenish his store of ammunition, which was by this time running low.[480] So Montgomery was enabled to press the siege of St. Johns with renewed vigor. When Wooster, the veteran Connecticut general, joined him with the troops of that colony, there was some apprehension that the younger Montgomery might find it difficult to maintain his higher rank against the rather too independent spirit of the old fighter.[481] No disturbance, however, occurred, and both worked seemingly in union of spirit. Every effort of Carleton to relieve the British commander at St. Johns failing, that officer surrendered the post, and, on November 3d, Montgomery took possession.

We may turn now to the expedition that Washington had promised to dispatch from Cambridge, and which had been thought of as early as May. Benedict Arnold had hurried from Crown Point to lay his grievances before the commander-in-chief. It seemed to Washington worth while to assuage his passions and to profit by his dashing valor, for he had by this time become convinced that Howe had no intention of venturing beyond his lines. So Arnold was commissioned Colonel, and given command of the new expedition, and the satisfied leader saw gathering about him various quick spirits, better recognized later. Such was Morgan, who led some Virginia riflemen, and Aaron Burr, who sprang to the occasion as a volunteer.[482] Washington provided Arnold with explicit instructions, and with an address to circulate among the Canadians.[483] About eleven hundred men proceeded from Cambridge to Newburyport, whence, by vessel and bateaux, they reached Fort Western (Augusta, Maine), towards the end of September. Here the expeditionary force plunged into the wilderness, up the Kennebec, environed with perils and the burdens of labor. Suffering and nerving against vexations and weariness that grew worse as they went on, they saw the sick and disheartened fall out, and found their rear companies deserting for want of food.[484] Those that were steadfast were forced to eat moccasins and anything. On they struggled to the ridge of land which marked the summit of the water-shed between the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence. Then began the descent of the Chaudière, perilous amid the rush of its waters, which overturned their boats, and sent much of what stores they had left on a headlong drive down the stream. At last the open country was reached, and Arnold stopped to refresh the survivors. He dispatched Burr to see if he could find Montgomery,[485] and, making the most of the friendly assistance of the neighboring inhabitants, Arnold advanced to Point Levi, and began to make preparations for crossing the St. Lawrence. The city of Quebec looked across the basin in amazement on a stout little army, of whose coming, however, they had had an intimation; while Arnold's men were hard at work making or finding canoes and scaling-ladders.

Meanwhile where was Montgomery, whom Burr, disguised as a priest, and speaking French or Latin as required, was seeking up the river? He had got possession of Montreal without a blow, and sending Colonel Easton down to the mouth of the Sorel, that officer intercepted the little flotilla with which Carleton was trying to reach Quebec, and captured all of the fugitives except Carleton himself, who escaped in a disguise by night. The news of Arnold, which Burr at last brought to Montgomery, made that general more anxious than ever to push on to Quebec, but the expiration of the enlistments of some of his men much perplexed him, and he was obliged to make many promises to hold his army together. Before Montgomery could reach him, Arnold had in the night taken about 550 men across the river, and ascending at Wolfe's Cove, he had paraded them before the walls and demanded a surrender. The garrison was small, and in part doubtful, and the inhabitants were more than doubtful, but the lieutenant-governor, Cramahé, with his stanchest troops, the Royal Scotch, overawed the rest, and kept the gates closed. The vaporing Arnold had been known in the past within the town as a horse-jockey, and his promise as a general, with his shivering crowd, did not greatly impress those whom he had somewhat farcically beleaguered. In a day or two Arnold became frightened and drew off his men, strengthened now a little by others who had crossed the river. Unmolested he went up the river, to keep within reach of Montgomery, perceiving as he went up the banks the succor for Quebec which Carleton, having picked up men here and there, was bringing down by water.

By the 1st of December, Montgomery, with three armed schooners and only 300 men, reached Arnold at Point-aux-Trembles. The united forces now turned their faces towards Quebec, less than a thousand in all, with a body of two hundred Canadians, under Colonel James Livingston, acting in conjunction; and on the 5th were before the town. Carleton haughtily scorned all advances of Montgomery to communicate with him, and devoted himself to overawing the town, quite content that the rigors of winter should alone attack the invaders. While the Americans were making some show of planting siege-batteries, plans for assault were in reality maturing, and a stormy night was awaited to carry them out. It came on the night before the last day of the year. While two feints were to be made on the upper plain, the main assaults were to be along the banks of the St. Charles and the St. Lawrence, from opposite sides, with a view to joining and gaining the upper town from the lower. Montgomery led the attack beneath Cape Diamond on the St. Lawrence side, and while in advance with a small vanguard, and unsuspecting that his approach was discovered, he was opened upon with grape, and fell, with others about him.[486] His death was the end of the assault on that side. Arnold was at first successful in carrying the barriers opposed to him, but was soon severely wounded and taken to the rear. Morgan, who succeeded to the command, was pressing their advantage, when Carleton, relieved by Montgomery's failure, and by the discovery that the other attacks meant nothing, sent out a force, which so hemmed Morgan in, that, having already learned of Montgomery's failure, he found it prudent to surrender with the few hundred men still clinging to him. The Americans elsewhere in the field hastily withdrew to their camp, and Carleton was too suspicious of the townspeople to dare to take any further advantage of his success.

The command of the Americans now devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Campbell, who sent an express to Wooster at Montreal, urging him to come and take the control. That general thought it more prudent to hold Montreal as a base,[487] and remained where he was, while he forwarded the dismal news to his superior, Schuyler, at Albany, who had quite enough on his hands to overawe Sir John Johnson and the Tories up the Mohawk. The succession of Wooster to the command in Canada boded no good to the New York general, and led to such crimination and recrimination between the two that Congress, towards spring (1776), took steps to relieve Schuyler of the general charge of the campaign. Thomas, who had rendered himself conspicuous in driving the British from Boston, was made a major-general (March 6), and was ordered to take the active command in Canada. A New England general for troops in the main from those colonies seemed desirable, and Thomas was certainly the best of those furnished by Massachusetts during the early days of the war.

Meanwhile Arnold, amid the snows, was audaciously seeming to keep up the siege of Quebec in his little camp, three miles from the town. Small-pox was beginning to make inroads on his little army, scarce at some periods exceeding five hundred effective men. Wooster finally came from Montreal on the first of April, and assumed command. For the influence intended to soothe and gain the Canadians to pass from the courtly Montgomery to the rigid and puritanical Wooster was a great loss, and it soon became manifest in the growing hostility of the people of the neighboring country. It was by such a pitiful force that Carleton allowed himself to be shut up in Quebec for five months.

This was the condition of affairs when a commission, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, was sent by Congress, with delegated powers, to act with prompter decision on the spot.[488] They reached Albany early in April, and found Thomas, from Boston, already there. So the two generals, Schuyler and Thomas, pushed on ahead of the commissioners, and, with the reinforcements now setting towards Canada, before and behind them, it seemed as if a new vigor might be exerted upon the so far disastrous Northern campaign. Thomas directed his course to Quebec, while the commissioners went to Montreal, where they found the most gloomy apprehensions existing, and were soon convinced that, without hard money and troops, Canada must be relinquished. Franklin returned to Philadelphia to impress this upon Congress, while Schuyler was at his wits' ends to find men, provisions, and money to send forward, till Congress should act.

Washington, by this time in New York with the troops which had forced the evacuation of Boston, yielded to the orders of Congress, and sent Sullivan of New Hampshire with a brigade, carrying money and provisions, to reinforce the wretched army in Canada, thereby diminishing, with great risk, his own force to less than 5,000 men. Thomas had at this time reached Quebec (May 1), where he found, out of the 1,900 men constituting the beleaguering army, only about a thousand not in hospital, and scarcely five hundred of these were effective troops. It was necessary to do something at once, for the breaking ice told the American general that a passage was preparing for a British fleet, which was known to be below. Plans for an assault on the town miscarried, and while Thomas was beginning to remove his sick preparatory to a retreat, three British men-of-war appeared in the basin. They landed troops, and gave Carleton an opportunity to hang upon the rear of the retreating invaders, and pick up prisoners and cannon. He did not pursue them far.[489]

Near the same time a force of British and Tories, coming down the river from Ontario, had fallen upon Arnold's outpost at Cedar Rapids, above Montreal, and had captured its garrison. Thus disaster struck both ends of the American line of occupation. The force under Thomas was withdrawing to the Sorel, when Burgoyne, with large reinforcements, landed at Quebec. Up the Sorel the Americans retreated, joined now by the troops under Thompson, which Washington had earlier sent from New York. Thomas[490] soon died (June 2) of small-pox at Chamblée; and Wooster being recalled, Sullivan, who now met the army, took the command, and pushing forward to the mouth of the Sorel, prepared to make a stand. He soon sent a force under Thompson towards Three Rivers, to oppose the approaching British, now reaching 13,000 in number, either at Quebec or advancing from it,—a number to confront, of which apparently Sullivan had no conception. This general himself possessed hardly more than 2,500 men, for Arnold, instead of reinforcing him, as directed, had left Montreal for Chamblée. The action at Three Rivers, of which the cannonading had been heard at the Sorel, proved a disastrous defeat. It was followed by the British vessels pushing up the river, and as soon as they came in sight Sullivan broke camp and also retreated to Chamblée, followed languidly by Burgoyne. Here Sullivan joined Arnold, and the united fugitives, of whom a large part were weakened by inoculation, continued the retreat to the Isle-aux-Noix, thence on to Crown Point, where early in July the poor fragmentary army found a little rest,—five thousand in all, and of these at least one half were in hospital.[491]

We may glance now at the progress of events to the southward. In Virginia, Dunmore, the royal governor, hearing of Gage's proclamation proscribing Hancock and Adams, feared that he might be seized as a hostage, and took safety on board a man-of-war in Yorktown harbor. Events soon moved rapidly in that quarter.[492] Patrick Henry, perhaps a little unadvisedly, was made commander of their militia.[493] In due time, from his floating capitol, Dunmore issued his proclamation granting freedom to slaves of rebels,[494] and had directed a motley crew of his adherents to destroy the colonial stores at Suffolk, and this led to a brisk engagement at the Great Bridge (December 9, 1775), not far from Norfolk, in which the royalists were totally defeated.[495] The destruction of that town, now under the guns of the royal vessels, soon followed, on the first of January, 1776.[496]

On the 27th of February, 1776, the Scotch settlers of North Carolina, instigated by Martin, the royal governor, and under the lead of their chief, Macdonald,[497] endeavored to scatter a force of militia at Moore's Creek Bridge, but were brought to bay, and compelled to surrender about half of a force which had numbered fifteen or sixteen hundred.[498]

Early in 1776 the task was assigned to Clinton, who had in January departed from Boston, as we have seen, to force and hold the Southern colonies to their allegiance, and Cornwallis, with troops, was sent over under convoy of Sir Peter Parker's fleet, to give Clinton the army he needed. The fleet did not reach North Carolina till May. In March, Lee, while in New York, had wished to be ordered to the command in Canada, as "he was the only general officer on the continent who could speak and think in French." He was disappointed, and ordered farther south.[499] By May he was in Virginia, ridding the country of Tories, and trying to find out where Parker intended to land.[500] It was expected that Clinton would return north to New York in season to operate with Howe, when he opened the campaign there in the early summer, as that general expected to do, and the interval for a diversion farther south was not long. Lee had now gone as far as Charleston (S. C.), and taken command in that neighborhood, while in charge of the little fort at the entrance of the harbor was William Moultrie, upon whom Lee was inculcating the necessity of a slow and sure fire,[501] in case it should prove that Parker's destination, as it might well be, was to get a foothold in the Southern provinces, and break up the commerce which fed the rebellion through that harbor.

The people of Charleston had been for some time engaged on their defences, and "seem to wish a trial of their mettle", wrote a looker-on.[502] The fort in question was built of palmetto logs, and was unfinished on the land side. Its defenders had four days' warning, and the neighboring militia were summoned. On the 4th of June the hostile fleet appeared,[503] and having landed troops on an adjacent island, it was not till the 27th that their dispositions were made for an attack.

Their ships threw shot at the fort all day, which did very little damage, while the return fire was rendered with a precision surprising in untried artillerists, and seriously damaged the fleet,[504] of which one ship was grounded and abandoned.

The expected land attack from Clinton's troops, already ashore on Long Island, was not made. A strong wind had raised the waters of the channel between that island and Sullivan's Island so high that it could not be forded, and suitable boats for the passage were not at hand.[505] A few days later the shattered vessels and the troops left the neighborhood, and Colonel Moultrie had leisure to count the costs of his victory, which was twelve killed and twice as many wounded. The courage of Sergeant Jasper, in replacing on the bastion a flag which had been shot away, became at once a household anecdote.[506]

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE earliest attempt with any precision to enumerate the various sources of information upon the whole series of military events about Boston during 1775 and 1776 was by Richard Frothingham, in the notes of his Siege of Boston (1849), where, in an appendix, he groups together the principal authorities. Later than this, Barry (Massachusetts, iii. ch. 1), Dawson (Battles, vol. i.), and others had been full in footnotes; but the next systematized list of sources was printed by Justin Winsor in 1875, in the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library. This last enumeration was somewhat extended in the Bunker Hill Memorial, published by the city of Boston,[507] and still more so by the same writer in his Handbook of the American Revolution, Boston, 1879. It is condensed in the Memorial Hist. of Boston, iii. 117.

Salem, because of a little alleged pricking of bayonets when Leslie's expedition was harassed there in February, 1775, has sometimes claimed to have witnessed the first shedding of blood in the war. The principal monograph on the subject is C. M. Endicott's Account of Leslie's retreat at the North Bridge in Salem, on Sunday, Feb. 26, 1775 (Salem, 1856).[508] Early resistance to British arms, and even bloodshed in the act, had undoubtedly occurred before the affair at Lexington, and writers have cited the mob at Golden Hill,[509] in New York, and the massacre at Westminster, in the New Hampshire Grants, when an armed body of settlers arose against the authority of the king, as asserted in favor of the jurisdiction of New York in March, 1775.[510]

The precipitation of warfare, however, can only be connected with the expedition to Lexington and Concord. Every stage of the affair has been invested with interest by discussion and illustration. The ride of Paul Revere to give warning has grown to be a household tale in the spirited verse of Longfellow; but, as is the case with almost all of that poet's treatments of historical episodes, he has paid little attention to exactness of fact, and has wildly, and often without poetic necessity, turned the channels of events. In literary treatment, the events of Lexington and Concord form so distinct a group of references that they can be best considered in a later note (A), as can also the sources of information respecting the fight at Bunker Hill (B).

Of the siege of Boston, the chief monograph is Frothingham's, already referred to. Other contributions of a monographic nature are the address and chronicle of the siege by Dr. George E. Ellis in the Evacuation Memorial of the City of Boston (1876); W. W. Wheildon's Siege and Evacuation of Boston and Charlestown (Boston, 1876, pp. 64); and the chapters on the siege in Dawson's Battles of the United States, vol. i., and Carrington's Battles of the Revolution (1876).[511]

Among the general historians, Bancroft has made an elaborate study of the siege, devoting to it a large part of his vol. viii. (orig. edition), and all the histories of the United States, Massachusetts, and Boston necessarily cover it.[512]

The principal of the later British historians is Mahon, in his Hist. of England, vol. vi. Lecky (England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. ch. 12), while he goes little into details, gives an admirable account of the two respective camps. The Life of Burgoyne, by Fonblanque, is the fullest of the biographies of the actors on the British side.

On the American side, the lives of leading officers all necessarily yield to those of Washington,[513] whose letters, as contained in vol. iii. of Sparks's ed. of his Writings, can well be supplemented by those of Reed, then his secretary.[514] Of the contemporary general historians, Gordon and Mercy Warren were familiar with the actors of the time. The Journals of the Continental Congress and of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts follow the development of events, and show how in some ways the legislation shaped them.[515] Contemporary records and comments are garnered in Almon's Remembrancer, Force's Archives, Niles's Principles and Acts of the Revolution, and Moore's Diary of the Amer. Revolution. The life and daily routine of both camps are to be traced in abundant orderly books, diaries, and correspondence, of which the register is given in the notes (C and D) following this essay.

Of the Canada expedition, in its combined movements by the Kennebec and Lake Champlain, the authorities for detail may well be reserved for later notes (G and H), but for comprehensive treatment references may be made to the general historians and a few special monographs. As respects the campaign in general, the only considerable special study is Charles Henry Jones's History of the Campaign for the Conquest of Canada in 1776 (Philad., 1882). The book does not profess, however, to follow the movements before the death of Montgomery, nor to touch at all the coöperating column of Arnold before it had united with the other. A principal interest of its writer is, furthermore, to chronicle the share of Pennsylvanians in the campaign. The study is therefore but an imperfect one, and the author gives the student no assistance in indicating his sources. The reader most necessarily have recourse, then, for a survey of the whole campaign, to such general works as Bancroft's United States (vol. viii.), Carrington's Battles (p. 122), and other comprehensive and biographical works.[516]

The political aspects of the movement on Canada arise in the main from the mission of the Commissioners of Congress to the army, and their efforts to affect the sympathies of the Canadians. The sources of this matter are also traced in a subsequent note.[517]

NOTES.

A. Lexington and Concord.—The details of Revere's connection with the events of the 18th and 19th April are not altogether without dispute. Revere's own narrative was not written till 1798,[518] and was printed in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, vol. v., but not so accurately as to preclude the advisability of reprinting it in the same society's Proceedings, Nov., 1878. Richard Devens's nearly contemporary account of the signal lanterns is printed in Frothingham's Siege of Boston, p. 57.[519] The traditional story of the other messenger of that eventful night is told in H. W. Holland's William Dawes and his ride with Paul Revere.[520]

In a book which was published at Boston in 1873 as Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex, but whose title in a second edition, in 1876, reads Old Landmarks and Historic Fields of Middlesex, Mr. Samuel Adams Drake follows (ch. xvi.-xviii.) the route of the British troops from Lechmere Point to Concord and back to Charlestown, pointing out the localities of signal events in the day's course.

The provincial congress ordered depositions[521] to be taken of those who had participated in the events of the day, with a main purpose of establishing that the British fired first at Lexington. These were signed in several copies. One set of them, accompanied by a request from Warren to Franklin to have them printed and dispersed in England, was entrusted to Capt. John Derby, of Salem, who took also a copy of the Essex Gazette, in which an account of the fighting was printed, and sailed in a swift packet for England four days after Lieutenant Nunn, bearing Gage's despatches, had sailed from Boston (April 24). Derby reached Southampton on the 27th of May, and was in London the next day.[522] London had been stirred three weeks before with rumors of a bloody day with Gage's troops,[523] and now two days later the government felt called upon to announce they had no tidings; whereupon Arthur Lee, who, since Franklin had sailed for America, had succeeded to his place as agent of Massachusetts, and had received the papers, made a counter-announcement that the public could see the affidavits at the Mansion House.[524] The tidings spread. Hutchinson communicated the news to Gibbon, and he recorded it in a letter, May 31.[525] On the 5th of June Horace Walpole wrote it to Horace Mann. On the 7th, Dartmouth spoke of the "vague and uncertain accounts of a skirmish, made up for the purpose of conveying misrepresentation."[526]

On the same day the friends of America, forming the Constitutional Society, met at the King's Arms in Cornhill, and raised a subscription of £100, to be paid to the widows and families of the provincials who had been killed.[527] On the 8th another vessel reached Liverpool, confirming the news, but giving no particulars. Finally, on the 10th, the official report of Gage, with the statements of Percy and Smith, reached the government.[528]

Meanwhile, both sides at home had been busy with circulating their pleas of vindications. The provincial congress at once despatched messengers south,[529] and the Rev. William Gordon, an Englishman settled in Jamaica Plain, drew up (May 17, 1775) for the patriots their authoritative Account of the Commencement of hostilities;[530] and various other contemporary accounts on the provincial side have come down to us,[531] and of importance among them are the narratives of the ministers of Lexington and Concord, the Reverends Jonas Clark and William Emerson.[532]

The Memoirs of General Heath are, of course, of first importance; for he was on the ground soon after Percy took the command on the British side.[533]

A few days after the 19th, John Adams tells us[534] he rode along "the scene of action toward Lexington for many miles, and inquired of the inhabitants the circumstances." He gives us no particulars, but what he learned was not calculated to diminish his ardor in the cause.[535]

The accounts on the British side are almost equally numerous, including the official reports of Gage, Percy, and Smith, already referred to. General Gage sent (April 29)[536] to Gov. Trumbull, of Connecticut, a statement, which was printed at the time in a handbill as a Circumstantial Account, and he refers to it "as taken from gentlemen of indisputable honor and veracity, who were eye-witnesses of all the transactions of that day."[537]

In 1779 there was printed at Boston a pamphlet containing General Gage's instructions to Brown and De Bernière,[538] from a MS. left in Boston by a British officer, to which is appended an account of the "transactions" of April 19, with a list of the killed, wounded, and missing,[539] and in 1775 there was printed at London a contemporary summary in The Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Dispute.[540]

The question of firing the first shot at Lexington was studiously examined at the time, each side claiming exemption from the charge of being the aggressor, and Frothingham[541] and Hudson[542] collate the evidence. It seems probable that the British fired first, though by design or accident a musket on the provincial side flashed in the pan before the regulars fired.[543] That some irregular return of the British fire was made seems undeniable, though at the time of the semi-centennial celebration certain writers, anxious to establish for Concord the credit of first forcibly resisting the British arms, denied that claim on the part of the neighboring town. The controversy resulted in Elias Phinney's Battle of Lexington, published in 1825,[544] with depositions of survivors, taken in 1822; and Ezra Ripley's Fight at Concord, published in 1827.[545] The parts borne by the men of other towns have had their special commemorations.[546]

B. Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775.—There are four sufficient authorities for tracing all that is known respecting the battle of Bunker Hill, even to minute particulars, especially with respect to the testimony of those who, from nearness to the event, or from opportunity, are best entitled to be considered in the matter. The earliest master of the literature and records of the fight was Richard Frothingham, who through life was identified with the story of Bunker Hill, and who has on the whole, in his Siege of Boston and in his Life of Joseph Warren, given us the amplest details.[547] His latest gleanings were included in The Battlefield of Bunker hill: with a relation of the action by William Prescott, and illustrative documents. A paper communicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, June 10, 1875, with additions. (Boston: printed for the author. 1876. 46 pp.)[548]

In June, 1868, Henry B. Dawson, in a special number of the Historical Magazine, entered into an elaborate collation of nearly all that had been published up to that time, making his references in footnotes, which serve as a bibliography of the subject.[549]

In 1875 Justin Winsor published first in the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library a bibliographical commentary on all printed matter respecting the battle, grouping his notes by their affinities; and this was enlarged in the Celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Battle, published by the city of Boston in 1875; and still further augmented in a section of his Handbook of the American Revolution (Boston, 1879).

In 1880 James F. Hunnewell, in his Bibliography of Charlestown and Bunker Hill (Boston), grouped everything alphabetically under such main headings as monographs, maps and plans, contemporary newspapers, American statements, British accounts, French accounts, anniversaries. His enumeration is more nearly exhaustive than Mr. Winsor's, though this may still supplement it in some particulars.

The earliest printed accounts which we have of the battle are in the newspapers, and of these a full enumeration is given by Mr. Hunnewell.[550]

What may be called the official statements on the American side were speedily placed before the public, but, strange to say, neither of the two officers who have been held to have directed the conduct of the Americans vouched for any of the early accounts. From Putnam we have nothing. Prescott made no statement, which has come down to us, earlier than in a letter addressed to John Adams, Aug. 25, 1775,[551] though he is said to have assisted the Rev.

Peter Thacher in a narrative which was prepared within a fortnight, Thacher himself having observed the fight from the Malden side of Mystick River.[552] This Thacher MS. was made the basis of the account which the Committee of Safety, by order of the provincial congress, prepared for sending to England.[553] There have been preserved a large number of letters and statements written by eye-witnesses or by those near at hand, some of them conveying particulars essential to the understanding of the day's events, but most adding little beyond increasing our perceptions of the feelings of the hour.[554]

To these may be added various diaries and orderly-books, which are of little distinctive value.[555] There are other accounts, written at a later period, in which personal recollections are assisted by study of the recitals of others, and chief among them are the narrative in Thacher's Military Journal (Boston, 1823), where the account is entered as of July, 1775, and chapter xix. of General James Wilkinson's Memoirs (1816), embodying what he learned in going over the field in March, 1776, with Stark and Reed. Col. John Trumbull saw the smoke of the fight from the Roxbury lines, and gave an outline narrative in his Autobiography (1841).[556] The account in General Heath's Memoirs (Boston, 1798) is short.[557] A few of the earlier general histories of the war were written by those on the American side who had some advantages by reason of friendly or other relations with the actors.[558] Of the still later accounts, Frothingham and Dawson have already been referred to for their bibliographical accompaniments. The diversity of evidence[559] respecting almost all cardinal points of the battle's history has necessarily entailed more or less of the controversial spirit in all who have written upon it, but for thoroughness of research and a fair discrimination combined, the labors of Frothingham must be conceded to be foremost. Dawson is elaborate, and he reveals more than Frothingham the processes of his collations, but his spirit is not so tempered by discretion, and an air of flippant controversy often pervades his narrative. Of the more recent general historians it is only necessary to mention Bancroft[560] and Carrington. The former gave to it three chapters in his original edition, in 1858, which, by a little condensation, make a single one in his final revision, but without material change.[561] The account in Carrington[562] is intended to be distinctively a military criticism.[563]

The troops of Connecticut[564] and New Hampshire[565] were the only ones engaged beside those of Massachusetts.

The question of who commanded during the day has been the subject of continued controversy, arising from the too large claims of partisans. Though there is much conflict of contemporary evidence, it seems well established that Col. William Prescott commanded at the redoubt, and no one questioned his right. He also sent out the party which in the beginning protected his flank towards the Mystick; but when Stark, with his New Hampshire men, came up to strengthen that party, his authority seems to have been generally recognized, and he held the rail fence there as long as he could to cover the retreat of Prescott's men from the redoubt. Putnam, the ranking officer on the field, Warren disclaiming all right to command, withdrew men with entrenching tools from Prescott, and planned to throw up earthworks on the higher eminence, now known as Bunker Hill proper, and near the end of the retreat he assumed a general command, and directed the fortifying of Prospect Hill. It is not apparent, then, that any officer, previous to this last stage of the fight, can be said to have had general command in all parts of the field. The discussion of the claims of Putnam and Prescott has resulted in a large number of monographs, and has formed a particular feature in many of the general accounts of the battle, the mention of some of which has for this reason been deferred till they could be placed in the appended note.[566]

A list of officers in the battle, not named in Frothingham's Siege, is given in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1873; and an English list of the Yankee officers in the force about Boston in June, 1775, is in Ibid., July, 1874. The Lives of participants and observers add occasionally some items to the story.[567]

Among the anniversary discourses upon the battle, a few will bear reading. The earliest was by Josiah Bartlett in 1794, published by B. Edes, in Boston, the next year. Daniel Webster made a famous address at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument in 1825, which can be found in his Works, i. 59. (Cf. Analectic Mag., vol. xi.; A. Levasseur's Lafayette en Amérique, Paris, 1829.) The same orator, at the completion of the monument in 1843, embodied little of historical interest in his Address. (Works, i. 89.[568]) Alexander H. Everett's Address in 1836 was subsequently inwoven in his Life of Warren. The Rev. George E. Ellis began his conspicuous labors in this field in his discourse in 1841. Edward Everett spoke in 1850 (Orations, etc., iii. p. 3), and Gen. Charles Devens, at the Centennial in 1875, delivered an oration, which was published by the city of Boston. The most noteworthy address since that time was that of Robert C. Winthrop at the unveiling of the statue of Colonel William Prescott, June 17, 1881.[569] This statue, of which an engraving will be found in the Mem. Hist. of Boston (iv. 410), stands near the base of the monument.[570]

We turn now to the accounts on the British side. The orderly-books of General Howe are preserved among Lord Dorchester's (Carleton's) Papers in the Royal Institution, London. Sparks made extracts from them, now in no. xlv. of the Sparks MSS. in Harvard College library. Extracts relating to the dispositions for the day of the battle, and for subsequent days, are given by Ellis (1843) p. 88.[571] Cf. Mag. of Amer. Hist., 1885, p. 214. The more immediate English notes and comments on the battle can be best grouped in a note.[572]

During 1775 there were two English accounts, aiming at something like historical perspective. One of these was, very likely, by Edmund Burke, and was in the Annual Register (p. 133, etc.). The other was An Impartial and Authentic Narrative of the Battle fought on the 17th of June, 1775, between his Britannic Majesty's Troops and the American Provincial Army on Bunker's Hill near Charles Town in New England. The author was John Clark, a first lieutenant of marines. He gives a speech of Howe to his men, representing that it was delivered just as he advanced to the attack, but this and much else in the book are considered of doubtful authenticity.[573]

In 1780 there appeared in the London Chronicle some letters by Israel Mauduit, which were republished the same year as Three letters to Lord Viscount Howe: added, Remarks on the battle of Bunker's Hill (London, 1780), which in a second edition (1781) reads additionally in the title, To which is added a comparative view of the Conduct of Lord Cornwallis and General Howe. There was among the Chalmers' MSS. (Thorpe's Supplemental Catal., 1843, no. 660) a writing entitled Some particulars of the battle of Bunker's Hill, the situation of the ground, etc. (8 pp., 1784), which Chalmers calls a "most curious paper in the handwriting of Israel Mauduit, found among his pamphlets, Jan. 23, 1789."

In 1784 William Carter's Genuine Detail of the Royal and American Armies appeared in London. Carter was a lieutenant in the Fortieth Foot, and his book was seemingly reissued in 1785, with a new title-page. (Brinley, no. 1,789; Stevens, Bibl. Amer., 1885, nos. 80, 81; Harvard Coll. lib., 6351.16.)

The account of the loyalist Jones (N. Y. during the Rev., i. 52) has his usual twist of vision, though he is severe on Gage for "taking the bull by the horns" in making an attack in front.

The long list of general histories on the British side, detailing the events of the battle, begins with Murray's Impartial Hist. of the War (London, 1778; Newcastle, 1782), and is made up during the rest of that century by the Hist. of the War published at Dublin (1779-85); Hall's Civil War in America (1780); The Detail and Conduct of the Amer. War (1780); Andrews's Hist. of the War (1785, vol. i. 301,—quoted at length by Ryerson, Loyalists, i. 461); Stedman, Hist. Amer. War (London, 1794, vol. i. 125). The best of the later historians is Mahon (Hist. of England, vi.), who was forced to admit, when pressed upon the question, that the American claims of victory, which he says they have always held, appear only in the reports of later British tourists (vol. vi., App. xxix.). Lecky, in his brief account (England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 463), makes an intention of Gage to fortify the Charlestown and not the Dorchester heights the incentive to the American occupation of the former. Edw. Bernard's History of England (London) has a curious "View of the Attack on Bunker's Hill, with the burning of Charlestown."

Something confirmatory, rather than of original value, can be gained from the histories of various regiments which took part in the battle, as detailed in the series of Historical Records of such regiments.[574]

The battle almost immediately found commemoration in British ballads (Hist. Mag., ii. 58; v. 251; Hale's Hundred Years Ago, p. 7), and the slain were commemorated in elegiac verses, as in M. M. Robinson's To a young lady, on the death of her brother, slain in the late engagement at Boston (London, 1776). The same year there appeared at Philadelphia The Battle of Bunker's Hill, a dramatic piece in five acts, in heroic measure, by a gentleman of Maryland.

Its author is said to be Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and the frontispiece, "The Death of Warren", by Norman, is held to be the earliest engraving in British America by a native artist (Hunnewell, p. 13; Brinley, no. 1,787; Sabin, ii. 7,184; xiv. 58,640). In 1779 there was printed at Danvers, America Invincible, an heroic poem, in two books: a Battle at Bunker Hill, by an officer of rank in the Continental army (Hunnewell, p. 13). In 1781 an anonymous poem was published in London, known later to be the production of George Cockings, and called The American War, in which the names of the officers who have distinguished themselves during the war are introduced (Brinley, no. 1,788; Hunnewell, p. 14). Of later use of the battle in fiction, it is only necessary to name Cooper's novel of Lionel Lincoln and O. W. Holmes's Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1875, p. 33).

The chief enumerations which have been heretofore made of the plans of the battle of Bunker Hill are by Frothingham, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv. 53; by Hunnewell in his Bibliog. of Charlestown, p. 17; and by Winsor in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. (introduction). The earliest rude sketches are by Stiles in his diary (Dawson, p. 393), and one formed by printer's rules in Rivington's Gazetteer, Aug. 3, 1775 (Frothingham's Siege, p. 397, and Dawson, p. 390). Montresor, of the British engineers, very soon made a survey of the field, and this was used by Lieutenant Page in drawing a plan of the action, which he carried to England with him when, on account of wounds received while acting as an aid to Howe, he was given leave of absence (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1875, p. 56). In the Faden collection (nos. 25-30) of maps in the library of Congress there are Page's rough and finished plans, drawn before the British works on the hill were begun, and also plans by Montresor and R. W., of the Welsh Fusiliers. Page's plan, as engraved, was issued in London in 1776, and called A Plan of the Action at Bunker's Hill.[575]

Page's, however, was not the first engraved. One "by an officer on the spot" was published in London, Nov. 27, 1775, called Plan of the battle on Bunker's Hill. Fought on the 17th of June, which was issued as a broadside, with Burgoyne's letter to Lord Stanley on the same sheet. The central position of the Americans is called "Warren's redoubt." This is reproduced in F. Moore's Ballad History of the Revolution.

Another contemporary British plan—discovered probably "in the baggage of a British officer", after the royal troops left Boston in March, 1776, but not brought to light till forty years later, when it was mentioned in a newspaper in Wilkesbarre, Penn., as having been found in an old drawer—was one made by Henry de Bernière, of the Tenth Royal Infantry, on nearly the same scale as Page's, but less accurately.

It was engraved in 1818 in the Analectic Magazine (Philad., p. 150), and a fac-simile of that engraving is annexed. The text accompanying it states that its general accuracy had been vouched for by Governor Brooks, General Dearborn, Dr. A. Dexter, Deacon Thos. Miller, John Kettell, Dr. Bartlett, the Hon. James Winthrop, and Mr. [Judge] Prescott. General Dearborn and Deacon Miller thought the rail fence too far in the rear of the redoubt, having been really nearly in the line of it. Judge Winthrop and Dr. Bartlett thought the map in this particular correct. There was the same division of belief regarding the cannon behind the fence, Dearborn and Miller believing there were none there, Brooks and Winthrop holding the contrary. Other witnesses represented to the editor of the Magazine that there was no interval between the breastwork and the fence, but that an imperfect line of defence connected the redoubt with the Mystick shore, as represented in Stedman's (Page's) map.[576]

In the Portfolio (March, 1818) General Dearborn criticised the plan (Dawson, p. 406), and, using the same plate in his separate issue of his comments, he imposed in red his ideas of the position of the works, and this was in turn criticised by Governor Brooks.[577] Mr. G. G. Smith made a (plan) Sketch of the Battle of Bunker Hill by a British Officer (Boston, 1843), which grew out of the plan and the comments on it. Bernière's plan was also used by Colonel Swett as the basis of the one which he published in his History of the Battle of Bunker Hill (1828, 1826, 1827), which has been frequently copied (Ellis, Lossing, etc.). The latest attempt to map the phases of the action critically is by Carrington in his Battles of the Revolution (p. 112), who gives an eclectic plan. Plans adopting the features of earlier ones are in the English translation of Botta's War of Independence, Grant's British Battles (ii. 144). A plan of the present condition of the ground, by Thomas W. Davis, superposing the line of the American works, is given in the Bunker Hill Monument Association's Proceedings (1876). A map of Charlestown in 1775 with a plan of the battle was prepared and published in 1875 by James E. Stone. A plan of the works as reconstructed by the British, and deserted by them in March, 1776, is given in Carter's Genuine detail, etc. (London, 1784), which is reproduced in Frothingham's Siege, p. 330. Other MS. plans of their works on both hills are in the Faden maps in the library of Congress.

Before the war closed a plan was engraved by Norman, a Boston engraver, which is the earliest to appear near the scene itself. This was a Plan of the town of Boston with the attack on Bunker's Hill, in the peninsula of Charlestown, on June 17, 1775 (measuring 11-1/2 × 7 inches), which is, however, of no topographical value as respects the action. It appeared in Murray's Impartial History (1778), i. p. 430, and in An Impartial History of the War in America (Boston, 1781, vol. i.), and a reduced fac-simile of it is annexed.[578]

C. The American Camp.—A variety of journals and diaries have been preserved, the best known of which is that of Dr. Thacher, a surgeon on Prospect Hill.[579]

The daily life of the Cambridge camp is best seen in the letters sent from it, and foremost in interest among such are those of Washington.[580] From the Roxbury camp there are letters of General Thomas in the Thomas Papers, where is one of Dr. John Morgan, the medical director. Several from Jedediah Huntington are preserved in the Trumbull Papers, and are printed in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xlix.[581] The principal letters from the Winter Hill camp are those of General Sullivan,[582] and a few have been printed written at the Prospect Hill camp.[583]

Something of the spirit prevailing in Watertown, where the Provincial Congress was sitting, can be seen in the letters of James Warren and Samuel Cooper.[584]

There are in the library of the Amer. Antiq. Soc. at Worcester several orderly-books of the siege,[585] and others are preserved elsewhere.[586]

D. The British Camp.—The condition of Boston during the siege must be learned from various sources. The Boston News-Letter was still published, but numbers of it are very scarce for this period, and no other of the Boston newspapers continued to be published in the town.[587] It was a convenient vehicle for the British generals, and any morsel of news likely to be distasteful to the patriots, like the intercepted correspondence of Washington and John Adams, was pretty sure to reach the American lines through its columns. The correspondence of the generals is preserved in the British Archives and in the papers at the Royal Institution (London), and occasionally some few letters, like those of Percy in the Boston Public Library, have been found elsewhere. It is charged that Gage's papers were stolen in Boston.[588] Some new glimpses were got when Fonblanque published his Life of Burgoyne.[589] The best accounts of the succession of events in the town and the daily life are found in Dr. Ellis's "Chronicles of the Siege",[590] and in Mr. Horace E. Scudder's "Life in Boston during the Siege", a chapter in the Memorial Hist. of Boston, vol. iii.,[591] which may be consulted (p. 154) for various sources respecting the details of the privations and amusements of the people and the garrison, and of the vicissitudes of its buildings and landmarks.[592] An account of the British works in Boston is given in Frothingham's Siege of Boston, and the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 79. The current record of the outposts, etc., is noted in Moore's Diary of the Rev., 109, etc. Carrington (Battles, 154) refers to a MS. narrative of experiences in the town by one Edw. Stow. Some of the correspondence of the Boston selectmen with Thomas, at Roxbury, is in the Thomas Papers. It is, however, to the diaries, letters, and orderly-books which have been preserved that we must go for the details of life in the beleaguered town.[593]

E. Boston Evacuated.—The letters of Washington[594] best enable us to follow the movements, but they may be supplemented by other contemporary accounts.[595]

Howe's despatch to Dartmouth, dated Nantasket Roads, is in Dawson, i. 94.[596] His conduct of the siege is criticised in A view of the evidence relative to the Conduct of the American War (1779). Contemporary dissatisfaction was expressed in an ironical congratulatory poem published in London (Sabin, iv., 15,476).

One Crean Brush,[597] acting under orders of Howe, endeavored to carry off the merchandise from the stores of the town, so far as he could, on a vessel put at his disposal. Howe's proclamation in his favor is in fac-simile in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. 97. Brush's vessel was later captured by Manly (Evacuation Memorial, 166). Similar experience in trying to escape with his merchandise was suffered by Jolley Allen, as portrayed in his Account of a part of his sufferings and losses, ed. by C. C. Smith, given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Feb., 1878, and separately. Allen's narrative was reprinted in the spelling of the original MS. in An Account of a part of the sufferings and losses of Jolley Allen, a native of London, with a preface and Notes by Mrs. Frances Mary Stoddard (Boston, 1883). An inventory of the stores left by the British is in the Siege of Boston, 406.[598] In the cabinet of this society is a handbill adopted by the freeholders of Boston, Nov. 18 [1776?], calling upon all who had suffered in property in Boston since March, 1775, to report the same to a committee.[599]

Washington's instructions (April 4, 1776) to Ward are in the printed Heath Papers, P. 4. The Mass. legislature, April 30, 1776, ordered beacons to be set at Cape Ann, Marblehead, and Blue Hill, ready to be fired in case of the enemy's reappearing, which was for a long time dreaded. Ward writes to Washington of his measures in progress.[600]

The correspondence of John Adams and John Winthrop (Mass. Hist. Coll., xlv.) shows constant anxiety lest the defences should not be prepared in case of need.[601]

The cut on the title of the present volume represents one side of the medal given by Congress to Washington, to commemorate his raising the siege of Boston.[602]

F. Maps of the Siege of Boston.—Plans of Boston and its neighborhood, including its harbor, for the illustration of the siege of Boston, are numerous, and the account of them given in the Mem. Hist. of Boston (iii., introd.) is in the main followed in the present enumeration, which divides them into those of American, English, French, and German origin, and adheres as far as possible to the order of publication in each group.

The earliest American is the 1769 (or last) edition of what is known as Price's edition of Bonner's map of Boston, which had done service since 1722 by successive changes in the plate, this last issue showing Hancock's Wharf, and "Esqr. Hancock's seat" on Beacon Street.[603] This map sufficed for local use till the events of 1775 induced new interest in the topography, when the earliest response came from Philadelphia, where C. Lownes engraved A new plan of Boston Harbour from an actual survey, for the Pennsylvania Magazine. It presented a reminder of the great event of the year in its "N. B. Charlestown burnt, June 17, 1775, by the Regulars." There is another Draught of the Harbour of Boston and the adjacent towns and roads, a manuscript, dated 1775, among the Belknap Papers, i. 84, in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. The same Pennsylvania Magazine, the next month (July, 1775), gave as engraved by Aitkins A new and correct plan of the town of Boston and Provincial Camp. The town seems to be taken from a plan which had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (London) the previous January; but in one corner was added a plan of the circumvallating lines of the besieging army.[604] Later in the season two other plans were made, showing the American lines, which were not published, however, till long after. One is given in Force's American Archives, 4th series, vol. iii.,[605] and the other was made by Col. John Trumbull, in Sept., 1775, which was published in his Autobiography in 1841.[606] Of about the same time is another very small Plan of Boston and its environs, showing the circumvallating lines, which is in one corner of a large Map of the Seat of Civil War in America, engraved by B. Romans, and dedicated to Hancock. There is also, in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society, a rude plan of the harbor and vicinity, showing the positions of the provincials, which are reckoned at 20,000, while the royal forces are put at 8,000. I find no other American plan till Norman's, in 1781, reproduced on another page; and not another till The Seat of the late War at Boston appeared in the Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, July, 1789, p. 444, but this is a rather scant map of the country as far inland as Worcester. Gordon had the year before this given a map in his American Revolution (London, 1788) based on English sources; but it has been the foundation of most of the eclectic maps since published in this country.[607]

In 1822 a Mr. Finch printed in Silliman's Journal an account of the traces then remaining of the earthworks of the siege, both American and British.[608] There is an enumeration of the different sections of the lines, within and without Boston, in the Mem. Hist. Boston (vol. iii. 104).[609]

The earliest English plan of this period is one called A plan of Boston and Charlestown from a drawing made in 1771, which occupies the margin of a larger map, engraved for The Town and Country Magazine in 1776, later to be mentioned. The Catalogue of the King's Maps (British Museum) shows a colored plan of Boston and vicinity (1773) in the centre of a large sheet, with marginal views (later to be described).

In 1774 a Plan of the town of Boston made part of a Chart of the Coast of New England, which appeared in the London Magazine, April, 1774, and in The American Atlas, issued by Thomas Jefferys in London, in 1776. This map seems to be the model of a New and accurate Plan of the town of Boston, which is engraved in the corner of A Map of the most inhabited part of New England, by Thomas Jefferys, Nov. 29, 1774, usually also found in The American Atlas (1776, nos. 15 and 16). This map is found with the date 1755, even after changes of a later date had been made in the plate.[610] The original map has also a marginal plan of Boston harbor (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., September, 1864).

The earliest English map of 1775 is one which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (January, 1775), though it is dated Feb. 1, 1775. It shows the town and harbor.[611]

In the June number of the Gentleman's Magazine is a "map of the country one hundred miles round Boston, in order to show the situation and march of the troops, as well provincial as regulars, which are now within sight of each other, and are hourly expected to engage."

In June, 1775, was also made a not very accurate map of the town and its environs, which was published in London, Aug. 28, to satisfy the eagerness for a map of the region to which the news of the battle of Bunker Hill had turned all eyes. It is to be found in the first volume of Almon's Remembrancer, and is reproduced herewith. A few weeks after the fight at Charlestown there was probably made in Boston the MS. plan of Boston and circumjacent Country, showing the present situation of the king's troops and the rebel intrenchments. It is dated July 25, 1775, and is owned by Dr. Charles Deane.[612]

The largest chart which we have of Boston harbor of this period is dated August 5, 1775, and was the work of Samuel Holland, the surveyor-general of the Northern colonies, who was for some years employed on a coast survey.[613] It takes in Nahant, Nantasket, and Cambridge, and was based principally on the surveys of George Callendar (1769).[614] When Des Barres included it in his Atlantic Neptune (part iii., no. 6, 1780-1783), he marked in the besieging lines, and dated it Dec. 1, 1781, and in this state Des Barres also used it in his Coast and Harbors of New England.[615]

A map showing thirty miles round Boston, and bearing date Aug. 14, 1775, is in the king's library (British Museum), and is signed by M. Armstrong. It has marginal statistical tables, and in the upper right-hand corner is a plan of the "action near Charlestown, 17 June, 1775."[616] There is among the Force maps in the library of Congress the MS. original of the map (sketched herewith as Boston and Charlestown, 1775), which is called A Draught of the Towns of Boston and Charlestown and the circumjacent country, shewing the works thrown up by his Majesty's Troops, and also those by the Rebels during the campaign of 1775. N. B. The rebel entrenchments are expressed as they appear from Beacon Hill.

On August 28th the British town-major in Boston, James Urquhart, licensed Henry Pelham to make a Plan of Boston with its environs. It was engraved in aquatints in London, on two sheets, and not published till June 2, 1777. Dr. Belknap, who was much troubled to find a correct plan of the town for this period, thought Pelham's was the best.[617]

There are among the Faden MSS. in the library of Congress two MS. maps. One is probably the best plan of Boston itself of this period, and the other the best of those of the vicinity.[618] They represent the conditions of 1775, though they were not engraved and published by William Faden in London till Oct. 1, 1777, and Oct. 1, 1778, respectively. They are both, in the main, after a survey by William Page, of the British engineers. The first is called A Plan of the Town of Boston, with the Intrenchments, etc., of his Majesty's forces in 1775, from the observations of Lieut. Page and from the plans of other gentlemen. It gives the peninsula only, with a small portion of Charlestown, and was again issued in Oct., 1778.[619] The second is Boston, its environs and harbour, with the Rebels' works raised against that town in 1775, from the observations of Lieut. Page, and from the plans of Capt. Montresor. It includes Point Alderton, Chelsea, Cambridge, and Dorchester, and there is a copy in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.

In October, 1775, an "Engineer at Boston", Lieut. Richard Williams, made and sent over to England a plan showing the "redoubt taken from the rebels by General Howe", the British camp on the higher summit of Bunker Hill, together with the American lines at Cambridge and Roxbury. In London it was compared with "several other curious drawings", from which additions were made, when it was published by Andrew Dury, March 12, 1776, as engraved by Jno. Lodge for the late Mr. Jefferys, and called Plan of Boston and its environs, showing the true situation of his Majesty's Army, and also those of the rebels.[620] In the same month (Oct., 1775) a Plan of Boston, with Charlestown marked as in ruins, appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (p. 464). Another Map of Boston and Charlestown, by an English officer present at Bunker Hill, was published in London, Nov. 25, 1775. The last map made during the British occupation of Boston was An accurate map of the Country round Boston in New England, published by A. Hamilton, Jr., near St. John's Gate, Jan. 16, 1776, appearing in the Town and Country Magazine. It measures 11-1/2 × 12-1/2 inches, and extends from Plymouth to Ipswich, and inland to Groton and Providence.

The evacuation of Boston in March, 1776, removed the centre of interest elsewhere, but there was for some time an apprehension of the return of the British for a naval attack; and while the Americans were fortifying the harbor, the English were publishing in London several maps of its configuration. The earliest was a Chart of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbour, published April 29, 1776. With the date changed to Dec. 1, 1781, it was subsequently included by Des Barres in the Atlantic Neptune, and in the Charts of the Coast and Harbors of New England, 1781.[621] Another Chart of Boston Bay, whose limits include Salem, Watertown, and Scituate, following Holland's surveys, was published Nov. 13, 1776, and later appeared, dated Dec. 1, 1781, in the Atlantic Neptune, and in the Coast and Harbors of New England. A chart of the harbor, with soundings, was also included in the North American Pilot for New England (London, 1776), showing a solitary tree on the peninsula marked "Ruins of Charlestown." There was a second edition of the Pilot in 1800. A small plan of the harbor is also in the margin of Carrington Bowles's Map of the seat of war in New England (London, 1776).

The first eclectic map was that published by Gordon in his Amer. Revolution (London, 1788), which he based on Pelham's map for the country, and Page's for the harbor.[622]

The French maps published in Paris were almost always based on English sources. Such were the Carte de la baye de Baston (no. 30), and Plan de la ville de Baston (no. 31), in Le Petit Atlas maritime, vol. i., Amérique Septentrionale, par le S. Bellin, 1764. There are several other French maps without date, but probably a little antedating the outbreak of hostilities. Such are a Plan de la ville et du port de Boston, published by Lattré in Paris;[623] and a small map, Plan de la ville de Boston et ses environs, engraved by B. D. Bakker. An engraved map, without date, is in the British Museum, called Carte des environs de Boston, capitale de la N^lle Angleterre en Amérique.[624] It carries the coast from below Plymouth to above the Merrimac. There is in the Poore collection of maps in the Mass. State Archives a Carte de la baye de Baston (marked Tome i. no. 30).

The only dated map of this period is a Carte du porte et havre de Boston, par le Chevalier de Beaurain (Paris, 1776). The corner vignette shows a soldier bearing a banner with a pine-tree. Frothingham, who reëngraved this picture, could find no earlier representation of the pine-tree flag.

The English (1774) map of the "most inhabited part of New England" was reproduced "after the original by M. Le Rouge, 1777", under the title of La Nouvelle Angleterre en 4 feuilles; and it was again used in the Atlas Ameriquain Septentrional, à Paris, chez Le Rouge (1778), repeating the map of Boston, with names in English and descriptions in French. Another reproduction from the English appeared in the Carte particulière du Havre de Boston, reduite de la carte anglaise de Des Barres par ordre de M. de Sartine (1780). It belongs to the Neptune Americo-Septentrional, publié par ordre du Roi.

There is among the Rochambeau maps (no. 14), in the library of Congress, a Plan d'une partie de la rade de Boston, done in color, about eight inches wide by sixteen high, showing the forts and giving an elaborate key.

There is a curious map of Boston and its harbor, with names in Latin, but apparently of German make, Ichnographia urbis Boston and Ichnographia portus Bostoniensis, which make part of a larger map, perhaps the Nova Anglia of Homann of Nuremberg. The Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa, published also at Nuremberg in 1776 (erste theil) has a map of Boston. Of the same date (1776), and belonging to the Geographische Belustigungen für Erläuterung der neuesten Weltgeschichte (Zweytes Stück), published at Leipsic, is a Carte von dem Hafen und der Stadt Boston, following the French map of Beaurain even to reproducing the group with the pine-tree banner. It embraces a circuit about Boston of which the outer limits are Chelsea, Cambridge, Dorchester, Long Island, Deer Island, and Pulling Point.

G. The Capture of Ticonderoga, 1775.—It is in dispute who planned and who conducted the capture of Ticonderoga. On Feb. 21, 1775, Col. John Brown had suggested it to Warren (Force's Archives). Arnold made a statement of the post's defenceless condition to the Committee of Safety in Cambridge, April 30, 1775 (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. p. 30; Amer. Bibliopolist, 1873, p. 79). On the 2d of May he was given a money credit and munitions, and on the 3d he was definitely instructed to organize his party (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. p. 39). It is claimed that some purpose of acting on the suggestion of Brown prompted in part, at least, the Massachusetts provincial congress to appoint early in April a committee to proceed to Connecticut and the other New England colonies. Whether it was by their instigation, by certain movements in Connecticut, or by the direct agency of Arnold that the plan was formed, it is difficult to say. It is also claimed that the plan grew out of a conference with the Massachusetts delegates to the Philadelphia Congress, when, on their way, they stopped at Hartford and held a session with Governor Trumbull and his council (Force's Archives, ii. 507; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 298). Bancroft and the Connecticut antiquaries find the beginning rather in the impulses of one Parsons, who had just returned from Massachusetts, and had got from Benedict Arnold, whom he met on the way, a statement of the plunder to be obtained there, and, without any formal consent of the governor and council, proceeded in the organization of a committee in Connecticut (Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 338; final revision, iv. 182). Official sanction was first evoked when Massachusetts, a few days later, commissioned Arnold (Mass. Archives, cxlvi. 130, 139; American Bibliopolist, 1873, p. 79; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1844, p. 14). The Connecticut antiquaries have mainly set forth the claims of their colony for leadership of the affair in the papers which constitute vol. i. (pp. 163-185) of the Conn. Hist. Soc. Collections, in which is the journal of Edward Mott,[625] the chairman of the Connecticut committee, edited by J. H. Trumbull.[626]

The part taken in the movement in Western Massachusetts arose from confidence reposed in Brown and others of Pittsfield, by the Connecticut men who passed through that town on their way to the New Hampshire Grants.[627] Brown had, during the previous winter, notified the Massachusetts committee that Ticonderoga would receive the attention of Ethan Allen and Green Mountain boys as soon as the outbreak came. The credit which attaches to this commander is complicated by the relations which Arnold bore to the final capture, and has in turn given rise to controversy. The most comprehensive examination of the question on the Vermont side is L. E. Chittenden's Addresses before the Vermont Historical Society, Oct., 1872 (published at Rutland by the society), and at the unveiling of Allen's statue at Burlington, July 4, 1873. We have Allen's own statements in his Narrative of his captivity, etc.[628]

Dawson thinks that the merit of originating the active measures cannot be taken from Benedict Arnold, and in his chapter (Battles of the United States, i. ch. 2) on the subject traces minutely the sources of each step in the progress of events, and in his Appendix (p. 38) prints the protest (May 10th, p. 38) of the Connecticut committee against Arnold's interference and Arnold's report (May 11th, p. 38) to the Massachusetts Congress.[629] There are some of the current reports preserved in Moore's Diary of the Amer. Revolution (i. pp. 78-80), and the account, which ignores Arnold, of the Worcester Spy (May 16th) is given in the Amer. Bibliopolist (1871, p. 491). There are other contemporary accounts in the American Archives (vols. ii. and iii.); a journal by Elmer is in the New Jersey Hist. Soc. Proc., vols. ii. and iii.; a Tory account in Jones's New York during the Revolutionary War (vol. i. pp. 47, 546), with a letter of May 14th.[630] Narratives by Caldwell and Beaman are in the Historical Magazine, August, 1867, and May, 1868, respectively.[631]

H. The Canada Campaign, 1775-1776.—Washington in New York, June 25th, entrusted to Schuyler the command in the North (Lossing's Schuyler, i. 330; Jones's N. Y. during the Rev. War, 58), and Congress issued (May 29, 1775) an address to the Canadians (Journal of Congress; Pitkin's United States, i. App. 19). In August it was reported that this address was left at the door of every house in Canada. Schuyler reached Ticonderoga July 18th (Lossing's Schuyler, i. ch. 21; Palmer's Lake Champlain, ch. 6; Irving's Washington, ii.), and pushed on to the foot of Lake Champlain in September (Lossing, i. ch. 23).

Among the early reports, inducing the project of invading Canada, were the letters of Maj. John Brown (Aug. 14, 1775) and Ethan Allen (Sept. 14th) respecting the condition of the Canadians (Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., i. 461, 464). There are other letters on the state of Canada at this time in the N. H. Prov. Papers, vii. 515, 547, 561-62, 569. The Schuyler Papers, with the letters which they contain of Montgomery, Arnold, Wooster, and Sullivan, are a main source of information respecting the whole campaign.[632]

Schuyler's health preventing his taking the field in person, the interest in the campaign centres in Montgomery up to the time of his death.[633] We have despatches of his (Nov. 3, 1775) on the capture of St. Johns,[634] on the taking of Chamblée,[635] and on the capitulation of Montreal,[636] with his letters from before Quebec (Sparks, Corresp., i. 492, etc.). A letter from one of his aids at this time (Dec. 16, 1775) is in Life of George Read, p. 115.

The principal Life of Montgomery is that by J. Armstrong, in Sparks's Amer. Biography (i. p. 181), which may be supplemented by other minor accounts.[637]

The connection of Benedict Arnold with the Campaign is illustrated in his letters, beginning with those before he left the column advancing by Lake Champlain, and then following his progress on the expedition to coöperate by the Kennebec route, which Washington proposed to Schuyler in a letter of Aug. 20, 1775 (Sparks's Washington, iii. 63). On Sept. 14th Washington sealed his instructions to Arnold (Sparks, iii. 86; Dawson, 113; Henry's Journal, ed. 1877, p. 2). It is said that the route to be taken was suggested to Arnold by the journal of an exploration in that direction by Montresor in 1760.[638] That engineer had, by order of General Murray, made a survey of this route in 1761.[639] There are maps to illustrate Arnold's route in the Atlantic Neptune, London Mag., 1776, Marshall's Atlas to his Washington, and in the 1877 edition of Henry's Journal.[640] All the general histories and a few biographies and local records necessarily cover the story.[641] Arnold himself is the best contemporary authority.

A number of his letters respecting the expedition are in Bowdoin College library,[642] and they and others will be found in print in the Maine Hist. Soc. Collections (1831), vol. i. 357, etc., and in Sparks's Corresp. of the Revolution, i. 46, 60, 88, 475, etc.[643] His journal of his progress is unfortunately rather meagre, and covers but a few weeks, Sept. 27 to Oct. 30, 1775. The original manuscript was left by Arnold at West Point when he fled, and extracts from it are printed in S. L. Knapp's Life of Aaron Burr, 1835; it is now owned by Mr. S. L. M. Barlow, of New York, and a copy, made from it when owned by Judge Edwards, of New York, is in the Sparks MSS. (lii. vol. ii.).

Various other journals of the actors in the expedition have been preserved.[644]

Arnold's letters at the Point-aux-Trembles and before Quebec are in Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev. (i. App.), together with those addressed to Wooster,[645] Schuyler, and Washington after the failure of the assault on Quebec, Dec. 31, 1775.[646]

The great resource for original material on the siege of Quebec, beside the letters given by Sparks and Lossing, are in the gatherings of 4 Force's Archives, vols. iv., v., and vi.; Almon's Remembrancer, vol. ii.; N. Y. Col. Docs., viii. 663, etc.; and in a large number of diaries and other contemporary records, which may readily be classed as American or British, with a few emanating from the French Canadians.[647]

On Jan. 19, 1776, a report was made in Congress that the army in Canada be reinforced (Secret Journals, i. 241).

In April Arnold returned to Montreal, and Wooster took command before Quebec,[648] to be superseded by General Thomas, who reached the camp May 1st. Upon Carleton's being reinforced, Thomas began to retreat.[649] Burgoyne arrived with additional troops in June (Fonblanque's Burgoyne, 211). The affair at the Cedars took place May 19, 1776.[650] The movement against Three Rivers had been begun by orders of Thompson, who was in command upon the death of Thomas (June 2d), and remained so for a few days till Sullivan arrived.

Smith, in the St. Clair Papers, i. 17, collates the authorities on this movement,[651] calling in question the statements given by Bancroft.

Sullivan's Irish precipitancy and over-confidence did not mend matters as the retreat went on, and raised delusive hopes which were more welcome than Arnold's gloomy views.[652]

The retreat continued to Crown Point, and in July Sullivan was relieved by Gates; and the campaign was over,—nothing accomplished. On July 26th Governor Trumbull reviews the condition of the army in a letter in Hinman's Conn. during the Rev. (p. 560).[653] The letters of Ira Allen and John Hurd express the uneasy state of mind along the frontier, which now took possession of the exposed settlers (N. H. Prov. Papers, viii. pp. 301, 306, 311, 315-317, 405). Insecurity was felt at Ticonderoga (N. H. State Papers, viii. 576, 581).

Congress twice appointed commissioners to proceed towards Canada. In Nov., 1775, Robert R. Livingston, John Langdon, and Robert Treat Paine were sent, with instructions dated Nov. 8th,[654] to examine the fortifications of Ticonderoga and the highlands, and "to use their endeavors to procure an accession of the Canadians to a union with these colonies;" and their report (Nov. 17th), with a letter to Montgomery (Nov. 30th), is in the Sparks MSS. (lii. vol. ii.). In March, 1776, Benj. Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll were instructed (Journals of Congress, i. 289; Force, v. 411) to proceed to Canada to influence, if possible, the sympathies of the Canadians. Carroll was a Roman Catholic, and he was accompanied by his brother, John Carroll, a priest.[655] Much was expected of the mission on this account (Adams's Familiar Letters, 135). Franklin, delayed at Saratoga (April), began to feel that the exposures of the expedition were too much for one of his years, and sat down to write "to a few friends by way of farewell."[656] Carroll kept a diary, which has been since printed.[657] There are papers appertaining to the mission in Force's Archives, 4th, iv., v.; Sparks's Washington (iii. 390), and his Corresp. of the Rev. (i. 572), and Lossing's Schuyler (vol. ii.).[658] On Jan. 31, 1850, Mr. William Duane delivered an address on Canada and the Continental Congress before the Penna. Hist. Soc., which is printed among their occasional publications.

Mr. Brantz Mayer's introduction to the Centennial ed. of Carroll's journal is largely concerned with the question of the Catholic pacification of Canada. Cf. Brent's Life of Archbishop Carroll; and B. W. Campbell's "Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll" in U. S. Cath. Mag., iii. The unfortunate comments (Oct. 21, 1774) of the Continental Congress on the Quebec Act was much against the persuasions of the commissioners, and it was soon evident that all their efforts, on this side at least, were futile. (Cf. Force's Am. Archives, ii. 231.)

After Franklin and John Carroll had left Montreal, Charles Carroll and Chase remained, endeavoring to support the military councils.[659]

I. The Attack on Sullivan's Island, June, 1776.—Clinton's proclamation to the magistrates of South Carolina, June 6, 1776, is in Ramsay's Revolution in South Carolina, i. 330. Lee's report to Washington (July 1, 1776) is in Sparks's Correspondence of the Revolution, i. 243; to Congress (July 2d), in Ibid., ii. 502; in Lee's Memoirs, p. 386; in Force's American Archives, 5th ser., i. p. 435; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1872, pp. 100, 107; and in Dawson (p. 139). John Adams (Familiar Letters, 203) notes the exhilaration which the news caused in Philadelphia.

There are other contemporary accounts in Gen. Morris's letter in the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1875, p. 438; in R. W. Gibbes's Doc. Hist. of the Amer. Rev., 1776-1782, pp. 2-19; in Force's Archives; in Frank Moore's Diary of the Rev., i. p. 257; in Moore's Laurens Correspondence, p. 24. A "new war song" of the day, referring to the battle, is given in Moore's Songs and Ballads of the Rev., p. 135. A broadside account was printed in Philadelphia, June 20, 1776 (Hildeburn's Bibliog., no. 3342). A plan of the attack after a London original was published in Philadelphia in 1777, with a "Description of the attack in a letter from Sir Peter Parker to Mr. Stephens, and an extract from a letter of Lieut. Gen. Clinton to Lord Geo. Germaine" (Hildeburn, no. 3539).

The earliest general account is by Moultrie himself in his Memoirs of the American Revolution. Cf. Gordon's Amer. Rev.; and John Drayton's Memoirs of the American Revolution [through 1776] as relating to the State of South Carolina (Charleston, 1821, two vols.). Of the later general historians, reference may be made to Bancroft (orig. ed.), vol. viii. ch. 66, and final revision, iv. ch. xxv., a full account; to Dawson, i. ch. 10, to Carrington, ch. 27, 28; to Gay, iii. 467; Irving's Washington, ii. ch. 29; Lossing's Field-Book, ii. p. 754. Something can be gleaned from Garden's Anecdotes of the Revolution; Memoirs of Elkanah Watson; the life of Rutledge in Flanders's Chief Justices; and from such occasional productions as William Crafts's address (1825), included in his Miscellanies; Porcher's address in the South Carolina Hist. Coll., vol. i.; C. C. Jones, Jr.'s address on Sergeant Jasper in 1876, and the Centennial Memorial of that year and the paper in Harper's Monthly, xxi. 70, by T. D. English.

On the British side we have Parker's despatch (July 9th) in Dawson, p. 140; a letter of Clinton (July 8th) in the Sparks MSS., no. lviii.; Clinton's Observations on Stedman's History; the reports in the Gent. Mag. and Annual Register; the early historical estimate in Adolphus's England, ii. 346. Jones, New York in the Revolutionary War, i. 98, gives the Tory view. There is a contemporary letter by a British officer given in Lady Cavendish's Admiral Gambier, copied in Hist. Mag., v. 68. Hutchinson (Life and Diary, ii. 92) records the effects of the fight in England.[660]

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THE SENTIMENT OF INDEPENDENCE, ITS GROWTH AND CONSUMMATION.

BY GEORGE E. ELLIS, D. D., LL. D.,

President Mass. Hist. Society.

THE assertion needs no qualification that the thirteen colonies would not in the beginning have furnished delegates to a congress with the avowed purpose of seeking a separation from the mother country; and we may also affirm, that, with a possible forecast in the minds of some two or three members, such a result was not apprehended. If any deceptive methods—as was charged at the time—were engaged in turning a congress avowedly called to secure a redress of grievances into an agency for securing independence, they will appear in the sharp scrutiny with which we may now study the inner history of the subject. And if an explanation of the course of the Congress can be found, consistent with its perfect sincerity, we must then seek to trace the influences alike of the new light which came in upon the delegates, and of successive aggravating measures of the British government, in substituting independence as its object. Though it is certain that Samuel Adams, fretting under the hesitations of Congress, had proposed to an ardent sympathizer that the four New England colonies should act in that direction by themselves, his own clear judgment would have satisfied him that that step would have been futile unless the other colonies followed it. If there were but a single colony from which no response could be drawn, the consequences would have been obstructive. That different sections of the country should have furnished leaders so in accord as Samuel Adams, Richard H. Lee, and Gadsden was a most felicitous condition. A congress, then, composed of delegates from all the colonies was the indispensable and the only practicable method for working out the scheme of independence, and even such a congress must avoid basing its action on local grievances. The reserve which the delegates from Massachusetts found it politic to practise, in not obtruding their special grievances, was well decided upon from the first, and proved to be effective. That the circumstances required patience in such men as the Adamses is abundantly evident from the frankness with which they wrote outside of Congress of the temporizing and dilatoriness of what went on in it.

There is no general assertion which comes nearer to the truth on this subject than that, from the first colonization of America by the English, the spirit of independence was latent here, and was in a steady process of natural development. George Chalmers, with the opportunities of a clerk of the Board of Trade, made an inquisitive private study of State Papers, and reached the full conviction that the colonists from the start, not only quietly assumed, but really aimed at an independence. He quotes abundant warnings, and charges the successive crown officials here and at home with culpable negligence in not acting on these warnings when they might have done so.[661] The pages of Chalmers confirm and illustrate the fact that the colonists lived in the enjoyment of a more real autonomy, and a do-as-you-please enfranchisement, than was shared by home subjects. There went with this a sort of assumption, a bold conceit, a sturdy truculency, which could be easily trained into defiance.[662]

Large allowance also must be made on account of the fact that the colonies had mastered their most critical perils wholly from their own resources. English benevolence in private individuals had generously fostered some enterprises of learning and charity here. But government had left the exiles to fight their own battles against the savages and the earliest French enemies. Far back in colonial times Governor Winthrop records that, in some emergent strait of the exiles, a suggestion was made of turning to England for help. The suggestion was shrewdly put aside, lest, having asked such aid, they might incur obligations.

It was of course admitted that the colonists had come under some form of obligation to the home government during the exhausting campaigns of the French and Indian wars. A question, however, soon came under debate, as to what that obligation involved. Great Britain assumed that it justified a demand upon the colonists for revenue. The colonists roused themselves to repudiate any obligation to be enforced by the payment of a tax imposed by a Parliament in which they had no representation. It was just here that the latent spirit of independence led the colonists to examine to the root their relations of allegiance, and, on the other hand, their natural rights. The General Court of Massachusetts, in 1768, had admitted "that his Majesty's high court of Parliament is the supreme legislative power over the whole empire." It took less than ten years to bring it about that Massachusetts either had not understood what it said,—at least, had not meant to say exactly that,—or had come to think differently about it.

In the Bill of Rights coming from the first Congress the committee say: "In the course of their inquiry they find many infringements and violations of rights, which they pass over for the present." These previous impositions and disabilities came in, however, afterwards for their full share of rhetoric and argument. As we trace the method in which the controversy with government matured, we mark these stages of it. Objection and forcible resistance found their first occasion when, at the close of the French war, government devised the policy of the Stamp Act. The colonists came to distinguish this as creating an internal tax, in contrast to the previous external taxes, through the laws regulating commerce, to which heretofore they had not objected. Vindicating their resistance to the new internal tax, they came to find similar grievances in the former external taxes. So they were teaching themselves first to define and then to assert independence.

We have become accustomed to associate with the term Congress the idea of a legally constituted organic body, with defined powers authoritatively assigned to it, the exercise of which is binding on its constituents. Our Continental congresses were of quite another sort, and had no authority save what might be granted to the wisdom and practicability of the measures they advised. Most certain it is that only a very small minority of the people of the colonies were concerned in calling the early congresses. As certain, also, is it that a very large preponderance of the people of all classes were then strongly opposed to any violent measures, to sundering ties of allegiance, or to seeking anything beyond a peaceful redress of grievances. On the whole, while it must be admitted that Congress was generally in advance of its constituency, it knew how to temporize and to give intervals of pause in steadily working on to its ultimate declaration. "Natural leaders" always start forth in such a cause, and they learn their skill by practice.

When it became evident that, instead of any healing of the breach, the whole activity of the Congress tended to widen it, a regret was expressed in some quarters that, by the connivance and consent of the royal governors, and through the regular legislative processes, a more legal and conservative character had not been secured to this meeting of delegates,—as if dangerous plotting might thereby have been averted. But the patriot leaders of the movement were too well advised to look for any such official coöperation. The very life of their scheme depended upon its wholly popular conception. Nor could the consent of governors and formal assemblies have been won to it. The whole method of the steady strengthening of the spirit of alienation from Great Britain was a working of popular feeling in channels different from those of ordinary official direction and oversight.

It was but fair to assume that the objects of the first Congress would be defined by the instructions furnished by those who sent or commissioned its members. The delegates from New Hampshire were bid "to consult and adopt such measures as may have the most likely tendency to extricate the colonies from their present difficulties, to secure and perpetuate their rights, liberties, and privileges, and to restore that peace, harmony, and mutual confidence which once happily subsisted between the parent country and her colonies." Massachusetts bade her delegates "deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures, to be by them recommended to all the colonies, for the recovery and establishment of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious,[663] and the restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired by all good men." Rhode Island's charter governor empowered the delegates "to join in consulting upon proper measures to obtain a repeal of the several acts of the British Parliament, &c., and upon proper measures to establish the rights and liberties of the colonies upon a just and solid foundation." Connecticut authorized its delegates "to consult and advise on proper measures for advancing the best good of the colonies." The delegates from New York were trusted without any particular instructions, having merely a general commission "to attend the Congress at Philadelphia." So, also, New Jersey appointed its delegates "to represent the colony of New Jersey in the said General Congress." Pennsylvania sent a committee from its own Assembly in behalf of the province "to consult upon the present unhappy state of the colonies, and to form and adopt a plan for the purposes of obtaining redress of American grievances, ascertaining American rights upon the most solid and constitutional principles, and for establishing that union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies which is indispensably necessary to the welfare and happiness of both." The deputies from the three Lower Counties were "to consult and determine upon all such prudent and lawful measures as may be judged most expedient for the colonies immediately and unitedly to adopt, in order to obtain relief for an oppressed people, and the redress of our general grievances."

It will be observed that the instructions from these eight colonies are moderate and pacific in terms, without menace, or a looking to any other results than harmony. Something a little more emphatic appears in what follows. The Maryland delegates were to use all efforts in their power in the Congress "to effect one general plan of conduct operating on the commercial relations of the colonies with the mother country." Virginia bade her delegates "consider of the most proper and effectual manner of so operating on the commercial connection of the colonies with the mother country as to procure redress for the much-injured province of the Massachusetts Bay; to secure British America from the ravage and ruin of arbitrary taxes; and speedily to procure the return of that harmony and union so beneficial to the whole nation, and no ardently desired by all British America." The delegates of South Carolina are instructed "to concert, agree to, and effectually prosecute such legal measures as shall be most likely to obtain a repeal of the said acts and a redress of those grievances." The deputies of North Carolina were authorized "to deliberate upon the present state of British America, and to take such measures as they may deem prudent to effect the purpose of describing with certainty the rights of Americans, repairing the breach made in those rights, and for guarding them for the future from any such violations done under the sanction of public authority."

Now it is true that one may read as between the lines of these instructions intimations of reserved purposes, and possibly menaces that something more will be required if what is suggested in them fail of effect; but as they stand, their tone is not hostile or menacing. They limit the terms and measure of what they exact. Several very pregnant suggestions present themselves. Men of a large variety of opinions and purposes might take part in a congress so constituted. If the measures proposed had been restricted, so to speak, to the programme, there might have been substantial accord among the delegates, and no one could have been startled and offended with what they soon regarded as rebellious manifestations in the Congress.

The case of Joseph Galloway, at first esteemed a most resolute patriot, and then committing himself to extreme loyalty, presents us an example. He was a lawyer of great abilities, a gentleman of wealth and of high social position. He had made many strong protests against the oppressive measures of government. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly eighteen years, and twelve years its speaker. He says[664] that when he was chosen as a delegate to the first Congress he positively refused to serve unless he was allowed to draw his own "instructions." He was permitted to do so, and he himself signed them as speaker. They contain this injunction: "You are strictly charged to avoid everything indecent and disrespectful to the mother state." Chosen a delegate to the second Congress, he positively declined to serve, though importuned to do so by Dr. Franklin. The instructions given to the eight associates named with him for this second Congress contained the stringent words, "We strictly enjoin you that you, in behalf of this colony, dissent from and utterly reject any propositions, should such be made, that may cause or lead to a separation from the mother country, or a change of the form of government." The removal of this restriction on June 14, 1776, enabled a majority of the delegates to give the vote of the province for independence.

No man in this first Congress marked a stronger contrast to Galloway than Samuel Adams, the "man of the people." Compared with what Joseph Reed called "the fine fellows from Virginia", Adams was not what is conventionally called a gentleman; but while John Hancock brought from Massachusetts money and ambition, his colleague carried the hardier brains of the two. The odious epithet of "demagogue" attached to Adams, not because of any beguiling arts, but from his plain simplicity of garb, preferred associates, manners, and mode of life. In his cheap and homely attire, dispensing with any other mode of influence than that of an honest heart and a vigorous mind, he had made himself the familiar companion of the mechanics, artificers, and craftsmen of North Boston, the shipbuilders, joiners, and calkers,—the rough, honest, and thrifty democracy,—with whom, sitting on a spar or loitering in a workshop, he would spend long and instructive hours. He was puritanically religious and rigidly observant of solemnities, prayed in his family, and asked a blessing at each meal of his simple fare. He neglected his own business to devote himself to public interests. Of his own poverty he was neither ashamed nor proud. It would not have been seemly for him to have presented himself to the courtly gentry of the Congress as he appeared in the streets of Boston. It would doubtless have confirmed the prejudice which many entertained of him as an ill-bred mass-leader. For deep and wide learning in legal, political, and economical science, added to his college culture, and for debating powers, he was the peer of any of his associates. If he had been left to himself in his straits he would have gone on his high errand clad as he was; but before he was to go his friends had done the best they could for him. The tailor, the hatter, bootmaker, and haberdasher, appearing at his house from anonymous friends, had furnished him a complete outfit, not, however, of the full sumptuousness of Hancock's. As for the rest, Adams was well prepared in bodily presence to meet for the first time his warm friend in correspondence, Richard Henry Lee. No truly lineal citizen of the old Puritan colony will ever be ashamed of this characteristic representative of its traditions and its people at the first Congress,—this prophet of independence.

The fact, without any fulness of detail, is assured to us that there was much of discordance and dissension in this Congress of 1774. Probably there was scarcely a single proposition or speaker that did not find an antagonist. Certainly it appeared that Congress was not ready to break from the mother realm. Results, however, were reached of a sort to prompt just such further measures from the British government as to insure some livelier work in its next session. The most decisively contumacious act of the Congress was the adoption and approval of the resolves passed by the daring Suffolk County (Massachusetts) meeting, which most clearly endorsed rebellion, and took steps in initiating it.[665] It is to be remembered, moreover, that in this first Congress, Washington, whose frank sincerity stands unimpeached, denied that the colonies wished for, or could safely, separately or together, set up for independence. Before Congress again met in May, the first blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord; and Massachusetts, as the first colony to set up as a consequence its own autonomy, sought and received the ratification of its conduct by Congress, after it had assembled.

The instructions to the delegates still held them to seeking a redress of grievances and the restoration of harmony, as "desired by all good men", and in pursuit of this object a second letter or petition to the king, which John Adams calls "Dickinson's letter", was prepared and adopted by Congress. It was respectful, earnest, tender in its professions and appeals. It besought the king himself to interpose between his much-abused and long-enduring subjects and the oppressive measures of his ministers, as if he himself was misled and imposed upon by them. The bearing which this most remarkable letter has upon the charge of insincerity and hypocrisy in the action of Congress is apparent. It is enough to say here that Richard Penn, the messenger who bore the letter, was not permitted to see the king, whose only recognition of it was a violently toned proclamation for suppressing rebellion and sedition among his American subjects. Startling was the effect on the Congress of this royal declaration of an unrelenting purpose, which arrived on November 1st, coupled with the intelligence of a large reinforcement of the British army and navy, and with the purposed employment of seventeen thousand German mercenaries. The same day brought an account of the burning of Falmouth, now Portland, by Captain Mowat, reasonably exciting an alarm in all the settlements on the seaboard. What might be lacking in the final resolution of some of the leading members of Congress to come to the issue was well supplied by these last measures of government, which could work only in the direction of an implacable rupture. Still it is a matter of fact, now attested by full evidence, that the majority of Congress, either held by their lingering hope of some scheme of conciliation, or even doubtful if their constituents would reinforce their own resolution now, would not entertain a motion for independence.[666] A recess of the Congress from August 5th to September 5th gave to some of the members an opportunity to try the pulse of their constituents. The king in his speech, October 26, 1775, reiterated his stern purposes. It is noticeable that in the comments made upon it by speakers in the opposition, the avowals of members in the Congress were confidently quoted as repelling the charge that they were aiming for independence; but General Conway said significantly, "They will undoubtedly prefer independence to slavery."

The delegates of the thirteen colonies—Georgia being now represented—met in Philadelphia, May 12, 1776, having now the whole bearings of the struggle fully before them. The members had found their way to the assurance that their professed loyalty to the constitution of the realm consisted with, and might even require, a defiance of its monarch. There were those who still held back. We note that personal alienations declared themselves between members, starting from differences of opinion or strength of resolve, as they faced the final question. Perhaps it is well that oblivion has been allowed to settle over the attitudes and words of some of the actors of the time, whether in or out of Congress. Gadsden, Lee, the Adamses, and Patrick Henry were ready and eager for the boldest venture, supported by Chase of Maryland, Ward of Rhode Island, Wolcott and Sherman of Connecticut, and at last by Wyeth of Virginia. Wilson of Pennsylvania held back. So did the strongly patriotic Dickinson, restrained by Quaker influence. He was yet to be reassured, and his ballot was to be the decisive one. Massachusetts should have been a unit; but Samuel Adams and Hancock were alienated, and Paine and Cushing were not yet full-strung, but the last-named was soon superseded by Gerry, who was in entire sympathy with the Adamses. Congress recommended the colonies whose governors had deserted their posts to set up governments of their own, if only for a temporary purpose, till constitutional rule should be reëstablished. Then, after an emphatic but calm restatement of grievances, and the failure of all efforts to secure a redress, Congress engaged with the question whether all the colonies might not be forced to set up such a government of their own. The dastardly conduct of Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, in following his own flight for refuge on board a frigate with a proclamation to stir an insurrection among the slaves, might well have left it to R. H. Lee, by direct instruction from his constituents, early in May, to announce that on an appointed day he should move for a declaration of independence. He did so on Thursday, the 7th of June. His motions were for such a declaration, with a complete dissolution of all political connection between the colonies and Great Britain; for the forming of foreign alliances, and a plan of confederation. John Adams seconded the motions. They were discussed on Saturday in a committee of the whole. On Monday, after a long debate, Rutledge moved a postponement of the question for three weeks. Up to this point Jefferson says that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina were not ready for the decision, and thought it prudent to wait, though fast stiffening for the issue.

On June 10th Congress resolved that the consideration of Mr. Lee's first proposed resolution—that declaring independence—be postponed to the 1st of July; but that no time should be lost in the interval, it appointed, on June 11th, a committee to prepare such a declaration. This committee was Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston.[667] This postponement was in deference to the unreadiness of the delegates of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina to take the decisive step. Some unnamed member had procured the passage of a vote that on whichever side the majority should turn, the decision should be pronounced unanimous, for or against the resolutions. The vote of each colony was to count for one, whatever the number of its delegates, the majority in each delegation pronouncing for its colony. The debate was sharp and intensely earnest. The vote of Pennsylvania was divided. Those of the six colonies just named being in opposition, there was no decision. Two of the halting Pennsylvania delegates being induced to absent themselves on the next day, fifty delegates being present, the resolutions prevailed by a majority of one province.[668] They had been bitterly opposed by Livingston of New York, Dickinson and Wilson of Pennsylvania, and Rutledge of South Carolina. Argument, persuasion, and appeal were diligently pressed to draw the hesitating to acquiescence. Meanwhile several of the colonies were anticipating the action of Congress in taking their stand for independence: North Carolina, in April, 1776, and also Massachusetts, at the same date; Virginia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey followed; and New York, as we shall see, soon came into line.

The proposed measures of Congress, associated with the leading one of independence, were most sagaciously devised for dignifying the primary resolve and elevating the action which should sustain it above the character of a mere rebellion. Those measures assumed the rights and responsibilities of nationality. The issuing of letters of marque and reprisal, the making free of all the ports for commerce with all the world except Great Britain, and the inviting of foreign alliances, were exercises of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and were the reasons assigned by France for regarding the United States as a nation at war with another nation. On July 12th Congress appointed a committee of one delegate from each colony charged with reporting a plan of confederation, and another committee of five to propose a plan for foreign alliances.

The Declaration marked a crisis alike in the forum and for the people. It was read to Washington's army, and drew wild plaudits from officers and from the ranks. As rapidly as panting couriers could disperse it over the country it was formally received with parade and observance, and read in town and village. It gave life and inspiration for every successive measure to turn a purpose into an accomplished fact.[669]

Many of our writers, in tracing the working of the various opinions which aided in fostering the spirit of independence, have found reason to ascribe much influence to strong religious animosities, especially to hostility to the state religion of England. It might perhaps be difficult to trace sharply and directly through all the colonies any lines of division of this character attributable to such an agency, as distinct and positive as those which manifested themselves in secular affairs, but there can be no question that sectarian influences had an important part in the animosities of the time. It would have been but natural that in this matter the line between the loyal and the disloyal should have been drawn between the English Church and the dissenters, who were the vast majority of the colonists; but this rule was by no means without many marked exceptions. All the Episcopal ministers officiating in the colonies had received ordination in England. Their oath bound them to loyalty. Most of them, too, in the northern provinces, were pensioners of an English missionary society. The test applied to them when the spirit of rebellion was strengthening was whether they would read or omit in their services the prayers for the king. It stood little for them to plead in their defence their oath and their dependence on a foreign fund. Such a plea was a poor one, as being strictly personal and selfish, born of a love of ease and of a cringing spirit. Some of them left their pulpits, and maintained a discreet silence. Those who insisted upon fulfilling all the pledges and duties of their office were in many cases roughly handled. It is to be considered, however, that so far as sectarianism in religion would alienate the colonies from Great Britain, it could not have been a prime agent in the case, for then it would have alienated them from each other, to which result it did not avail. The Tory refugee Judge Jones uses the terms Presbyterians and Episcopalians as almost synonymous with the terms rebels and loyalists. But this was by no means true.[670] The leading patriot John Jay, with many others from his province, was an Episcopalian. The Episcopalians of Virginia, of Maryland, and of the Carolinas were as stiffly opposed to the importation here of English prelates as were the Congregationalists of New England. The Tory Galloway[671] traced our rebellious spirit to the same source as that of the English civil war, viz., to Puritanism. He wrote: "The disaffection is confined to two sets of dissenters, while the people of the Established Church, the Methodists, Lutherans, German Calvinists, Quakers, Moravians, etc., are warmly attached to the British government." Galloway exceeded the strict truth in that statement.

The numbers, position, and experiences of Episcopal ministers in the provinces at the period of the war have been recently presented in an elaborate and well-authenticated monograph on the subject.[672] From this it appears that there were at the time not far from two hundred and fifty clergymen, all of foreign ordination. The lack of Episcopal supervision brought with it laxity of discipline. At the southward the church gathered into it the wealthy, the officials of the government and of the army and navy, professional men, and merchants. But their clergy, instead of being, like their few brethren at the North, stipendiaries of a foreign society, largely derived their support from those to whom they ministered, and so, though being under the oath of allegiance, were more free to share the patriotic sentiments of the laity, and they did so. Clergy and laity in the Southern provinces seem, many of them, to have been as strongly opposed, for temporary or other reasons, to the introduction of a foreign prelacy as were those at the North. Several of the Episcopal clergy in the Middle and Southern provinces proved themselves most ardent patriots, not only in discourse but by taking chaplaincies in the Continental armies, and even serving in the ranks and as officers in command. The trial test for deciding their position was in the religious services required of them on the days appointed by Congress for thanksgiving or fasting. Their choice was not a free one between a full or a mutilated service of prayer. The severest sufferers of this class were among the Episcopal ministers of New York and Connecticut, who resolved to stand for loyalty. Some, however, trimmed to time and necessity; others were patriots. Provoost, afterwards the first Bishop of New York, espoused the side of the people.[673]

It was in New England that the "Puritanism" of which Galloway wrote had the prevailing influence; and a very energetic and effective influence it was, working with other agencies in making the English civil government all the more odious because of the lordly prelates, who ruled not only in church, but in state. The inherited and traditionary spirit of New England had kept alive the memory of the ecclesiastical tyranny which had developed Puritanism in Old England, and of the trials and sacrifices by which deliverance had been secured. Those very New England colonies in which the rebellious spirit was most vigorous had been in but recent years, by help alike of sympathizers and opponents, conservatives of the old ways and reformers with the new, working their own way of relief from their theocratic basis of government, and securing freedom for themselves in belief and worship, with progress in the severance of church and state. They could not patiently contemplate the establishment of prelacy among them. Two occasions, operating as warnings, had freshened the old Puritan spirit of New England just previous to the opening of civil contention. One was the project, which had been zealously pressed, of sending English bishops into the colonies, whose functions the popular mind refused to distinguish between those which they exercised as lords, both spiritual and temporal, in England and those of ordination and confirmation, etc., which was all that was required of them as "superior clergy" here. An animated pamphlet controversy had been waging on this subject a decade before the outbreak of hostilities, in which appeared as a champion on one side the bold and able minister Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, and on the other, Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury.[674] No English prelate ever had functions or presence on our territory. The other reason, for a revival of the hostility here against the Established Church, was found in the coming hither into the old Congregational parishes, and the maintenance here by an English missionary society, of a number of Episcopal ministers. It was charged—not, however, justly—that the benevolent founders of that society had endowed it solely for the support of missionaries to neglected and forlorn persons,—fishermen and others in the colonies,—whereas it was used to promote division and disaffection in places well provided with a ministry. This charge was overstrained, for no missionary was sent to any place where there were not those, few or many, who were actual members of the English Church, or who stood out against the doctrine and discipline of Congregationalism. None the less did hostility to the English Church help largely to stimulate the spirit of rebellion.[675]

The first provincial congress of Massachusetts, assembled in 1774, knew very well the grounds of their reliance when by resolution they sent an address to each and all of the ministers in the province, reminding them of the valued aid and sympathy which their common ancestors in the years of former trials had found in their religious guides, and earnestly appealing for their help and strong efforts among their people in resistance of the tyranny of the mother country. The New England ministers were not slow in responding to—indeed, they had in many cases anticipated—this appeal of their civil leaders. They had a marvellous skill for discerning the vital relations between politics and religion, while they had a strong repugnance to what was conveyed by the terms "church and state." With very few exceptions,—such, however, there were, in rare cases, of pastors in years and of timid spirits,—the ministers were foremost in inspiriting patriotism and in meeting all the emergencies of the times.[676]

The only organized and official measures taken by any one of the religious denominations in sympathy with the American Revolution was that of the Presbyterians, who had freed themselves from dependence on a civil establishment. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians on the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina had stoutly vindicated their religious rights against the Established Church in Virginia, and were among the foremost in asserting their independence of the mother country. With the sturdiest resolution they had successfully triumphed over the Episcopal party in New York and thwarted government influence in its behalf. John Witherspoon, the only clergyman in the Congress of 1776, gave by delegated authority the vote of the Presbyterians for independence.[677]

And now the question may well be asked, Where rests the chief responsibility for bringing to this result the protracted controversy between the mother realm and her colonies? The Declaration of Independence was yet to be made good by a severe struggle on the part of the colonies, and to be accepted by the other party in the issue. It is rarely, if indeed the case has any historical parallel, when so large a measure of the responsibility for bringing about a signal revolution in the great affairs of a nation can, as in this instance, be directly charged upon an individual, and that was his majesty George III.[678] The facts of the case with their full evidence stand now clearly certified. That Declaration, with the event which it signified, might have come in other ways. Agencies and events were working to it. But that it came when it did, and as it did, he at whose heavy cost it came was largely the conspicuous agent and cause of it. That this is so, let the following tracing of the stages of the developments attest. And by the charge here alleged is meant that the king was mainly instrumental in bringing about the result, not merely by an official or representative responsibility, nor by prerogative, but by the prompting of personal feeling and private decision. It is also to be admitted that the king may have been guided by the purest motives and the loftiest sense of duty to preserve in any way the jewels of his crown and the integrity of his empire. But none the less it was his will and resolve that decided the issue.

As we have seen, the effect of every measure of the British government brought to bear upon the colonies was directly the opposite of what had been intended. Threats and penalties exasperated, but did not intimidate. Seeming concessions and retractions did not conciliate. Contempt and defiance called out corresponding and reciprocal feelings. There was a strict parallelism between the ministerial inventions for securing the mastery and the patriot ingenuity and earnestness for nullifying them. The few incidental accompaniments of popular violence and mobs were so familiar to the people of England at home as to count for little. They were to be regretted and condemned, but they were fully offset by the indiscriminate and vengeful punishments which government visited upon them.

We are to remember that the king, if not the originator and adviser of all these measures, gave them his cordial approval. More and more, as the quarrel ripened, his personal will and resolve asserted themselves, even autocratically. When the catastrophe finally came, his prime minister frankly confessed, that by the king's urgency, and in compliance with his own view of the claims of loyalty, he had been acting against his own clear judgment of what was wise and right, if not against his conscience.[679] Who, then, so much as the king, as sole arbiter, by his own personal decision, substituted arms for debate? The colonies, no longer the aggressive party, were put on the defensive. Still, even after this dropping of the royal gage of battle, the Assembly of Pennsylvania, with its residuum of Quakerism, required of its members the old oath of allegiance to George III., and Dickinson reported to it strongly loyal instructions for its delegates. Is it strange that Franklin refused to take his seat in that body? Two years later,—March 17, 1778,—the king writes to Lord North: "No consideration in life shall make me stoop to opposition. Whilst any ten men in the kingdom will stand by me, I will not give myself up into bondage. I will rather risk my crown than do what I think personally disgraceful. It is impossible that the nation should not stand by me. If they will not, they shall have another king, for I will never put my hand to what will make me miserable to the last hour of my life."[680] And again, when the end was at hand, the king, writing to Lord North, March 7, 1780, says: "I can never suppose this country so lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant American independence. If that word be ever universally adopted, I shall despair of this country being preserved from a state of inferiority. I hope never to see that day, for, however I am treated, I must love this country."[681]

Recalling the fact that in all previous remonstrances[682] and petitions, without a single exception, whether coming from a convention, an assembly, or a congress, the ministry and Parliament were made to bear the burden of all complaints and reproaches, we note with emphasis that in the Declaration of Independence, for the first time, "the present king of Great Britain" is charged as the offender. Its scathing invectives in its short sentences begin with "He." His tools and supporters are all lost sight of, passed unmentioned. This substitution of the monarch himself as chargeable, through his own persistency, with the whole burden heretofore laid at the door of his advisers indicates the necessity which Congress felt of seeming to sever their plain constitutional allegiance to the monarch, and of ignoring all dependence on his ministers or Parliament, whose supremacy over the colonies they had always denied. Hence the tone and wording of all the previous utterances of Congress, deferential and even fulsome as they now seem, in sparing the king, for the first time, in the Declaration, are changed to give the necessary legal emphasis of the capital letter in He. Indeed, the law and the man were essentially as one, for the candid monarch told John Adams, on his subsequent appearance as the minister of the United States, that he was the last person in his realm to consent to the independence of the colonies. The utter hopelessness of the measures of government was obvious to the wiser statesmen of Britain and to those whose observation was guided by simple common sense.[683]

A matter of sharp and reproachful criticism—which has not wholly disappeared from more recent pages of history and comment—was found in what certainly had the seeming of insincerity and duplicity in the earnest professions of loyalty made by leading patriots while the spirit of absolute independence, latent and but thinly veiled, was instigating measures of defiance, and even of open hostility. The patriots, it was boldly charged, had practised a mean hypocrisy. The shock of the disclosure was at the time sudden and severe. Joseph Galloway, though perhaps the most hostile and vengeful, was by no means the least able or the most estranged and disappointed of a class of very prominent men, who avowed that they had been alienated from the patriot cause by the exposed duplicity of its wiliest leaders. They had joined heart and hand in council and measures with those who professed to be seeking only a redress of grievances, with an unqualified loyalty as British subjects to the king and the constitution, and in a disavowal of any idea of independence.

On the other side of the water, the Declaration, as "throwing off the mask of hypocrisy" by the patriots, was a very painful shock to many who had been most friendly and earnest champions of the cause of the colonists. The members of the opposition in Parliament and in high places were taunted by the supporters of government for all their pleading in behalf of rebels. And when, besides the bold avowal of independence, the added measures of a suspension of all commerce with Great Britain, and of an alliance of the patriots with the hereditary enemy of their mother country, came to the knowledge of those who had been our friends, the consternation which it caused them was but natural. Manufacturers and merchants, against whose interests so heavy a blow had been dealt, and all Englishmen who scorned the French, our new ally, might with reason rank themselves as now our enemies. Of course, the ministry and the abetters of the most offensive measures of government availed themselves of the evidence now offered of what they had maintained was the ultimate purpose of the disaffected colonists, hypocritically concealed, and they confidently looked for a well-nigh unanimous approval and support of the vengeful hostilities at once entered upon. It was affirmed that the British officers and soldiers here, who had before been but half-hearted and lukewarm in fulfilling their errand, now became as earnest and impassioned in war measures as if they were fighting Indians, Frenchmen, or Spaniards. Such were really the effects wrought on both sides of the water, not merely by the bold avowal of independence, but by what was viewed as the exposure of a subtle and hypocritical concealment of the purpose of it under beguiling professions of loyalty.

What is there to be said, either by way of explanation or of justification, of the course ascribed to the patriots? It is well to admit freely that there was much said, if not done, that had the seeming of duplicity and insincerity, of secrecy of design and of sinuous dealing. And after yielding all that can be charged of this, we may insist that, in reality, it was nothing beyond the seeming. Neither disguise, nor duplicity, nor hypocrisy, nor artful or cunning intrigue, in any shape or degree, was availed of by the patriots. The result to which they were led was from the first natural and inevitable, and it was reached by bold and honest stages, in thinking out and making sure of their way. The facts are all clearly revealed to us in their course of development. The maturing of opinion, till what had been repelled as a calamity was accepted as a necessity, is traceable through the changing events of a few heavily burdened years, if not even of months and days, to say nothing of the symptoms of it which a keen perception may discover during the career of four generations of Englishmen on this continent. Its own natural stages of growth were reached just at the time that it was attempted to bring it under check by artificial restraint of the home government. That government compelled the colonists to ask themselves the two questions: first, if they were anything less than Englishmen; and further, if their natural rights were any less than those of men. There has been much discussion as to when and by whom the idea of American independence was first entertained. It would be very difficult to assign that conception to a date or to an individual. All that was natural and spontaneous in the situation of the colonists would be suggestive of it; all that was artificial, like the tokens of a foreign oversight in matters of government, would be exceptional or strange to it. Husbandmen, mechanics, and fishermen would not be likely to trouble themselves with the ways in which their relations as British subjects interfered with their free range in life. Larger and deeper thinkers, like Samuel Adams, would feel their way down to comprehensive root questions, sure at last to reach the fundamentals of the whole matter,—as, What has the British ministry and Parliament to do with us? It required nine years to mature the puzzling of a peasant over the question of a trifling tax into the conclusion of a republican patriot statesman. Every stage of this process is traceable in abounding public and private papers, with its advances and arrests, its pauses and its quickenings, its misgivings and assurances, in all classes of persons, and in its dimmest and its fullest phases. We have seen how it was working its way in the honest secrecy of a few breasts in the first Congress, even when repelled as a dreaded fatality. Samuel Adams is generally, and with sufficient evidence, credited as having been the first of the leading spirits of the revolt to have reached—at first in private confidence, steadily strengthening into the frankest and boldest avowal—the conviction that the issue opened between the colonies and the mother country logically, necessarily, and inevitably must result in a complete severance of the tie between them. Even at that stage of his earliest insight into the superficial aspect of the controversy, when he is quoted as if hypocritically saying one thing while he intended another, it will be observed that his strong professions of loyalty are qualified by parenthetical suggestions of a possible alternative. Thus, in the Address which he wrote for the Massachusetts Assembly, in 1768, to the Lords of the Treasury, his explicit professions of loyalty for his constituents close with the caveat that this loyalty will conform itself to acquiescence so far as "consists with the fundamental rules of the Constitution."[684] Of course, as the oppressive measures of government exasperated the patriots, they were not only led on to discern the full alternative before them, but were unreserved in their expressions of a willingness to meet it, at whatever cost. Still, however, what seemed like hesitation in the boldest was simply a waiting for the slow and timid to summon resolution for decisive action. Of the single measures in Congress preceding the Declaration of Independence, the most farcical and the most likely to be regarded as hypocritical was the second petition to the king, which his majesty spurned. His ministers had to compare with its adulatory insincerities some intercepted letters of John Adams, written nearly at the same time, stinging with defiance and treason. But John Adams well described this petition to the king as "Dickinson's Letter." Dickinson himself is the most conspicuous and true-hearted of the class of men who to the last shrunk from the severance of the tie to the mother country. Yet he was to be the one whose casting vote, by a substitute, was to ratify the great Declaration. There may have been weakness in his urgency that that petition should proffer a final hope of amity, but it was the prompting of thorough manliness and honesty. As we have seen, it was the royal scorn of that petition, backed by a wilful personal espousal of responsibility, which made the king the real prompter of the Declaration of Independence.[685]

Leaving out of view all obligations of the colonies to the mother country, there was still quite another class of very reasonable apprehensions which had a vast influence over the halting minds. What would be the relations of the severed and possibly contentious colonies to each other, with all their separate interests, rivalries, and jealousies? Might not anarchy and civil war make them rue the day when, in rejecting the tempered severity of the rule of a lawful monarch, they had forfeited the privilege of having an arbiter and a common friend?

Nor was this the only dread. The Indians were still a formidable foe on the frontiers. So far as they were held in check, it was largely by English arms and influence. Without anticipating the cruel and disgraceful complication of the trouble which was to come, and the aggravations of civil war, by the enlistment of these savages by England as her allies against her former subjects, it was enough for timid colonists looking into the future to realize the power of mischief which lurked with these wild men in the woods. Every further advance of the colonists beyond the boundaries already secured would provoke new hostilities, and remind the pioneers of the value to them of English armaments and reinforcements. And yet once more, those were by no means bugbear alarms which foreboded for the colonists, left to themselves, outrages from French and Spanish intrigue, ambition, and greed of territory. France and Spain had losses and insults to avenge against England, and might seek for reprisals on the undefended colonists. It needs only an intimation, without detail, of the apprehensions which either reason or imagination might conjure from this foreboding, to show how powerfully it might operate with prudent men in suspending their decision between rebellion and loyalty. All these considerations, taken separately and together, whether as resulting in slow and timid maturing of sentiment and of profession in Congress, or as influencing the judgment of patriot leaders, or as guiding the vacillating course of individuals and multitudes, may have given a seeming show of insincerity and duplicity to words contrasted with subsequent deeds. But a clear apprehension of all the alternatives which were then to be balanced will satisfy us that there was little room for hypocrisy to fill.

Some show of reason for charging upon the patriots duplicity and lack of downright frankness was found in their professions of a steadfast, but still a qualified, loyalty. If there was not at first some confusion or vagueness in their own ideas on this point, they certainly set themselves open to such a misunderstanding by the ministry as to leave it in doubt whether they knew their own minds or candidly declared them. The controversy, from its beginning till its close, was constantly alleged to start from this discriminating standard of loyalty: the colonists repudiated the exercise of authority over them by Parliament and the ministry, and yet avowed themselves faithful and loyal subjects of the king. The king could govern and act only through Parliament. How could they repudiate the authority of Parliament and respect that of the king? What was to be the basis, scope, and mode of exercise of his authority? They certainly could not have in view the exercise of an autocracy over them, the restoration of the old royal prerogative which a previous glorious revolution had shattered. The king could exercise his authority in the colonial assemblies only through governors, and those governors had been rendered powerless here. Even the sage and philosophic Franklin found himself perplexed on this point. Writing from London to his son in New Jersey, March 13, 1768, he says: "I know not what the Boston people mean; what is the subordination they acknowledge in their Assembly to Parliament, while they deny its power to make laws for them?"[686] Galloway pertinently asked of the first Congress, "if they had any other union of the two countries more constitutional in view, why did they not petition for it?" "The Congress, while they professed themselves subjects, spoke in the language of allies, and were openly acting the part of enemies."[687] How are we to reconcile two statements made by Pitt in the same speech, in January, 1776: "This kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies." "At the same time, on every real point of legislation, I believe the authority of Parliament to be fixed as the Polar Star." Without any attempt to conceive or fashion a definition of their ideal, the good common sense of the patriots at last worked out the conclusion that their emancipation from the Parliament involved a dispensing with the king.[688]

There was no disguising the fact, however, that, with independence declared, there was no such unanimity of purpose among all the members of Congress, still less among their many-minded and vaguely-defined constituency. It was inevitable, therefore, that both a degree of arbitrariness towards halting and censorious objectors, and of harsh severity towards open resistants, should henceforward characterize the measures approved by the patriot leaders. There was a sagacious moderation and prudence in the measures taken by Congress to conciliate and reassure the half-hearted and the hesitating. For the final stand had been taken that nothing short of an achieved independence should be accepted as the issue.

The prime movers in the patriot cause continued to be the main workers for it, and gradually reinforced themselves by new and effective aiders. Astute and able men, well read in history and by no means without knowledge of international law and the methods of diplomacy, surveyed the field before them, provided for contingencies, and found full scope for their wits and wisdom. When we consider the distractions of the times, the overthrow of all previous authority, the presence and threats of anarchy, the lack of unanimity, and the number and virulence of discordant interests, and, above all, that Congress had only advisory, hardly instructive, powers, even with the most willing portion of its constituents, we can easily pardon excesses and errors, and heartily yield our admiration to the noble qualities and virtues of those who proved their claim to leadership. When we read the original papers and the full biographies of these men, we are impressed by the balance and force of their judgment, their power of expressing reasons and convictions, their calm self-mastery, and the fervor of their purposes.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE source to which naturally we should first apply ourselves for the fullest information on the development of the purpose of independence would be the Journals of Congress. But our disappointment would be complete. The same reasons which enjoined on the members secrecy as to the proceedings seem to have deprived the record even of some things that were done and of almost every utterance in debate. We have to look to other sources, the most scattered and fragmentary, to learn the names even of the principal leaders in the debates, and from beginning to end we have not the report, scarcely a summary, of a single speech. Our reasonable inference from such hints is that some ten, or at most fifteen, members were the master-spirits in securing the adoption of measures, while they were opposed by some as earnest as themselves, but not as numerous. But whatever may have been written in the original Journals was subjected to a cautious selection when they were printed by a committee. It is only from Jefferson himself, for instance, that we learn (Randall's Jefferson, i. 15) how, somewhat to his chagrin, "the rhetoric" of his draft of the Declaration was toned down. Especially do the Journals, as printed, suppress all evidences of strong dissension, of which we have abundant hints in fragments from John and Sam. Adams, Franklin, Dickinson, Galloway, Jefferson, Jay, and Livingston. But the Journals do spread before us at length sundry admirable papers, drawn by able and judicious committees.[689]

The reader must turn to the notes appended to chapter i. of the present volume for an examination of some of the leading pamphlets occasioned by the Congresses of 1774 and 1775, and for an examination of their opposing views, with more or less warning of the inevitable issue of independence.

One may easily trace in the writings of Franklin, extending through the years preceding the Revolution, and through all the phases of the struggle, seeming inconsistencies in the expression of his opinions and judgment. But these are readily explicable by changes in time and circumstance. We must pause, however, upon the strong statement made by Lecky in the following sentence: "It may be safely asserted that if Franklin had been able to guide American opinion, it would never have ended in revolution."[690]

Opportune in the date of its publication, as well as of mighty cogency in its tone and substance, was that vigorous work by Thomas Paine, a pamphlet bearing the title "Common Sense." If we take merely the average between the superlatively exalted tributes paid to his work as the one supremely effective agency for bringing vast numbers of the people of the colonies to front the issue of independence, and the most moderate judgments which have estimated its real merit, we should leave to be assigned to it the credit of being the most inspiriting of all the utterances and publications of the time for popular effect. The opportuneness of the appearance of this remarkable essay consisted in the fact that it came into the hands of multitudes, greedy to read it, a few months before the burning question of independency was to be settled. The papers issued by Congress might well answer the needs of the most intelligent classes of the people, in reconciling them to the new phase of the struggle. But there were large numbers of persons who needed the help of some short and easy argument, homely in style and quotable between plain neighbors. And this eighteen-penny pamphlet met that necessity. It appeared anonymously. John Adams says it was ascribed to his pen. Paine had been in confidential intercourse with Franklin, and the sagacious judgment of that philosopher doubtless suggested the form and substance of some of its contents, and may have kept out of it some things less apt or wise. Washington, Franklin, and John Adams welcomed it as a vigorous agency for persuading masses of simple and honest men that their rights must now be taken into their own hands for vindication. The character of the writer alienated from him the regard of those who could and who would willingly have advanced his interests, and made him to multitudes an object of horror and contempt. Though his pamphlet bore the title of "Common Sense", Gouverneur Morris says that that was a quality which Paine himself wholly lacked. Posterity, however, may well accord to him as a writer the high consideration given to him by his contemporaries, of having happily met by his pen a crisis and a pause in the state of the popular mind. Franklin wrote that "the pamphlet had prodigious effects."[691]

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in the same year. Wise men have often affirmed that if it had appeared a generation earlier, and if the doctrines and principles which it advocated had passed into the minds of statesmen and economists, peaceful rather than warlike measures would have disposed of the controversy. It required the lapse of twoscore years to convince English statesmen and economists of the practical wisdom of the leading principles advanced by this college professor. He maintained the general viciousness and folly of the English colonial administration; that while even the restricted commercial monopoly was more generous than the colonial rule of any other governments, the prohibition of manufactures was mischievous and oppressive. He agreed with Dean Tucker, that a peaceful separation of the colonies would benefit rather than harm the mother country. Yet, under existing circumstances, such a separation was impracticable, because neither the government nor the people of the realm would seriously entertain the proposition.[692]

One of the best expositions of the views held by some of the Tory writers, that the seeds of independency were sown with the early settlements and nurtured through their history, is given in a tract by Galloway,[693] which was published in London in 1780, as Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion. In which the Causes of that Rebellion are pointed out, and the Policy and Necessity of offering to the Americans a System of Government founded in the Principles of the British Constitution, are clearly demonstrated. By the Author of Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the American War. He pleads that the rebellion has been encouraged by the assertion "of the injustice and oppression of the present reign by a plan formed by the administration for enslaving the colonies", and asserts that the mother country had fostered the infancy and weakness of the colonies, had espoused their quarrels, and, at an enormous cost of debt, had defended them. "The colonies are very rich and prosperous, with more than a quarter of the population of Great Britain, and should share its burdens. The rebellion did not spring from a dread of being enslaved." The writer then ably and justly traces its origin to the principles of the Puritan exiles, from whose passion for religious freedom has grown that for civil independence. He attributes much influence helpful to rebellion to the organization among the Presbyterians at Philadelphia, in 1764, which united by correspondence with the Congregationalists of New England. The other sects were generally averse to measures of violent opposition to authority. The measures of government are vindicated, and all trouble is traced to a faction in New England, sympathized with and led on by a similar faction at home. The "Circular Letter", bringing the colonies into accord, wrought the mischief. Two sharply divided parties at once were formed, or proved to exist: the one defining and standing for the right of the colonies with a redress of grievances, on the basis of a solid constitutional union with the mother country, and opposed to sedition and all acts of violence; the other resolved by all means, even though covert and fraudulent, to throw off allegiance, appeal to arms, run the venture of anarchy, and assert, and if possible attain, independence. The latter party, acting with some temporary reserve and caution, opposed all peaceable propositions, and covertly worked for their own ends. They used most effectively a system of expresses between Philadelphia and the other towns, Sam. Adams being the artful and diligent fomenter of all this mischief. By his guile, Congress was brought to approve the Resolves of the Mass. Suffolk Conference, which declared "that no obedience is due to acts of Parliament affecting Boston", and provided for an organization of the provincial militia against government. He proceeded to argue that "the American faction", as in the fourth resolve of their Bill of Rights, explicitly declare their colonial independence. This was followed by an address to his majesty,—not calling it a petition,—and which the writer proceeded to analyze with much acuteness, as being vague and evasive in its professions, and suggestive of conditions which would prove satisfactory. Finally, "the mask was thrown off", and the casting vote of the "timid and variable Mr. Dickinson" carried the Declaration of Independence. "Samuel Adams, the great director of their councils, and the most cautious, artful, and reserved man among them, did not hesitate, as soon as the vote of independence had passed, to declare in all companies that he had labored upwards of twenty years to accomplish the measure." Mr. Galloway closes with sharp strictures upon the bewildered and vacillating policy which the government has heretofore pursued, and pleads for a firm and generous "constitutional union" between the realm and the colonies. The growth of the spirit of independence necessarily makes a part of all general histories of the war, which are characterized in another place.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

The claim of Chalmers that the passion for independence had latently existed from the very foundation of the New England colonies[694] had been early denied by Dummer in his Defence of the N. E. Charters. John Adams[695] had been outspoken in his advocacy of independence for more than a year before R. H. Lee introduced his resolution into Congress. He had avowed it in letters, which the British intercepted in July, 1775, and printed in a Boston newspaper. If Josiah Quincy, Jr. (Memoirs, 250, 341), can be believed, he found Franklin in London in 1774 holding ideas "extended on the broad scale of total emancipation" (Sparks's Franklin, i. 379). The resolves of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, in May, 1775, were strongly indicative. John Jay traced the beginning of an outspoken desire to the rejection by the king of the petition of the Congress of 1775 (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1776). In the autumn of that year it is certain that the passion for independence animated the army round Boston (Frothingham's Siege of Boston, 263), and in December James Bowdoin was confident that the dispute must end in independence (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xii. 228). There was very far from any general adhesion to the belief in its inevitableness at all times during 1775. Washington was not conscious of the wish (Sparks, i. 131, ii. 401; Smyth, ii. 457). Gov. Franklin was expressing to Dartmouth the prevalence of a detestation of such views (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv 342). The English historians have dwelt on this (Mahon, vi. 92, 94; Lecky, iii. 414, 447, iv. 41).[696]

Early in 1776 the passion for independence gathered head. In March, Edmund Quincy thought the feeling was universal in the Northern colonies (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1859, p. 232). Francis Dana, just home from England, was saying that he was satisfied no reconciliation was possible (Sparks, Corresp. of the Rev., i. 177). The probability of independence was recognized in the instructions which Congress gave to Silas Deane in March, on his sailing for Europe. In April came the violent measure in Congress of abolishing the British custom laws. The press was beginning to give the warning note,[697] but not without an occasional counter statement, as when the N. Y. Gazette (April 8, 1776) asserted that Congress had never lisped a desire for republicanism or independence. Sam Adams was urgent (Wells, ii. 397). John Adams was writing to Winthrop, of Cambridge, to restrain him from urging Massachusetts to break precipitately the union of the colonies (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xliv. 298), and he was counselling Joseph Ward to be patient, for it "required time to bring the colonies all of one mind; but", he adds, "time will do it" (Scribner's Mag., xi. 572).

May was the decisive month, and events marched rapidly. On the 1st, Massachusetts set up a committee to conduct the government of the province in the name of the people.[698] On the 4th the last Colonial Assembly of Rhode Island renounced its allegiance (Newport Hist. Mag., Jan., 1884, p. 131). A letter of Gen. Lee to Patrick Henry, on May 7th, has raised a doubt of Henry's steadfastness (Force, 5th ser., i. 95), but Henry assisted in that vote of the Virginia Convention, on the 15th, which instructed its representatives in Congress to move a vote of independence.[699] R. H. Lee wrote to Charles Lee that "the proprietary colonies do certainly obstruct and perplex the American machine."[700] Dickinson, as representing these proprietary governments, saw something different from independency in John Adams's motion of May 15th, that "the several colonies do establish governments of their own;" but when that vote had passed, Adams and everybody else, as he says, considered it was a practical throwing off of allegiance, and rendered the formal declaration of July 4th simply necessary.[701] Hawley and Warren now wrote to Sam Adams, inquiring why this hesitancy in declaring what even now exists? (Wells, ii. 393); and Winthrop urges the same question upon John Adams (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xliv. 306).

As the debates went on, reassuring notes came from New England in respect to the Virginia resolutions. Connecticut took action on June 14th (Hinman's Connecticut during the Rev., 94). Langdon wrote from New Hampshire, June 26th, that he knew of none who would oppose it (Hist. Mag., vi. 240). The vote of July 2d finished the issue. Honest belief, intimidation, a run for luck, and more or less of self-interest[702] had made the colonies free on paper, and compelled anew the conflict which was to make their pretensions good.

The resolutions of independency of June 7th, introduced by R. H. Lee, in accordance with instructions from Virginia,[703] are not preserved either in the MS. or printed journals, and John Adams tells us (Works, iii. 45) much was purposely kept out of the records; but they have been found in the secretary's files, and are given in fac-simile in Force (4th ser., vi. p. 1700). Of the proceedings and debates which followed we have, beside the printed journals (i. 365, 392), three manuscript journals.[704] For details we must go to the memoranda made by Jefferson from notes taken near the time.[705] There seems no doubt that John Adams was the leading advocate of the Declaration[706] and such traces as are found of other speakers are noted in Bancroft, orig. ed., viii. 349; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 413, 433; Randall's Jefferson, i. 182. Bancroft draws John Adams's character with some vigor (viii. 309). Dickinson made the main speech against Adams. Bancroft abridges it from Dickinson's own report (viii. 452); Ramsay (i. 339) sketched it. (Cf. Niles's Principles, 1876, p. 400, and John Adams's Works, iii. 54.) Adams thought Dickinson's printed speech very different from the one delivered. Galloway, in his Examination before Parliament, gave only the flying rumors of what passed. The later writers summarize the debates and proceedings.[707]

There is some confusion in later days in the memory of participants, by which the decision for independence on July 2d is not kept quite distinct from the formal expression of it on July 4th. (Cf. McKean in John Adams, x. 88.)

It was the New York, and not the New Jersey, delegates who were not instructed to vote for the Declaration (Wells, i. 226). The position of New York is explained by W. L. Stone in Harper's Mag., July, 1883. The instructions from Pennsylvania and Delaware came late.[708]

Notwithstanding that the statements of both Jefferson (Writings, Boston, 1830, vol. i. 20, etc.) and Adams, made at a later day (Autobiography), and the printed Journals of Congress, seem to the effect that the Declaration was signed by the members present on July 4, 1776, it is almost certain that such was not the case.

Note.—These four plates show the signatures of the signers (now very much faded in the original document), arranged not as they signed, but in the order of States, beginning with Massachusetts and ending with Georgia. The signatures were really attached in six columns, containing respectively 3, 7, 12 (John Hancock heading this one), 12, 9, 13,—as is shown in a reduced fac-simile of the entire document as signed, given in The Declaration of Independence (Boston, 1876). The signatures are also given in Sanderson's Signers, vol. i.; in Harper's Mag., iii. 158, etc. The formation of a set of the autographs of the "Signers" is, or rather has been, called the test of successful collecting. The signatures of Thomas Lynch, Jr., Button Gwinnett, and Lyman Hall are said to be the rarest. The Rev. Dr. Wm. B. Sprague is said to have formed three sets; but these collections, as well as those of Raffles, of Liverpool, and Tefft, of Savannah, have changed hands.

The finest is thought to belong to Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York. The set of Col. T. B. Myers is described in the Hist. Mag., 1868. One was sold in the Lewis J. Cist collection in N. Y., Oct., 1886 (p. 47). It has been said that "of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nine were born in Massachusetts, eight in Virginia, five in Maryland, four in Connecticut, four in New Jersey, four in Pennsylvania, four in South Carolina, three in New York, three in Delaware, two in Rhode Island, one in Maine, three in Ireland, two in England, two in Scotland, and one in Wales. Twenty-one were attorneys, ten Merchants, four physicians, three farmers, one clergyman, one printer; sixteen were men of fortune. Eight were graduates of Harvard College, four of Yale, three of New Jersey, two of Philadelphia, two of William and Mary, three of Cambridge, England, two of Edinburgh, and one of St. Omers.

At the time of their deaths, five were over ninety years of age, seven between eighty and ninety, eleven between seventy and eighty, twelve between sixty and seventy, eleven between fifty and sixty, seven between forty and fifty; one died at the age of twenty-seven, and the age of two is uncertain. At the time of signing the Declaration, the average of the members was forty-four years. They lived to the average age of more than sixty-five years and ten months. The youngest member was Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, who was in his twenty-seventh year. He lived to the age of fifty-one. The next youngest member was Thomas Lynch, of the same State, who was also in his twenty-seventh year. He was cast away at sea in the fall of 1776. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest member. He was in his seventy-first year when he signed the Declaration. He died in 1790, and survived sixteen of his younger brethren. Stephen Hopkins, of Rhode Island, the next oldest member, was born in 1707, and died in 1785. Charles Carroll attained the greatest age, dying in his ninety-sixth year. William Ellery, of Rhode Island, died in his ninety-first year." The standard collected edition of their lives is a work usually called Sanderson's Biography of the signers of the declaration of independence (Philadelphia, 1820-27, in 9 vols.)

Contents.—1. View of the British colonies from their origin to their independence; John Hancock, by John Adams. 2. Benjamin Franklin, by J. Sanderson; George Wythe, by Thomas Jefferson; Francis Hopkinson, by R. Penn Smith; Robert Treat Paine, by Alden Bradford. 3. Edward Rutledge, by Arthur Middleton; Lyman Hall, by Hugh McCall; Oliver Wolcott, by Oliver Wolcott, Jr.; Richard Stockton, by H. Stockton; Button Gwinnett, by Hugh McCall; Josiah Bartlett, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Philip Livingston, by De Witt Clinton; Roger Sherman, by Jeremiah Evarts. 4. Thomas Heyward, by James Hamilton; George Read, by —— Read; William Williams, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Samuel Huntington, by Robert Waln, Jr.; William Floyd, by Augustus Floyd; George Walton, by Hugh McCall; George Clymer, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Benjamin Rush, by John Sanderson. 5. Thomas Lynch, Jr., by James Hamilton; Matthew Thornton, by Robert Waln, Jr.; William Whipple, by Robert Waln, Jr.; John Witherspoon, by Ashbel Green; Robert Morris, by Robert Waln, Jr. 6. Arthur Middleton, by H. M. Rutledge; Abraham Clark, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Francis Lewis, by Morgan Lewis; John Penn, by John Taylor; James Wilson, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Carter Braxton, by Judge Brackenborough; John Morton, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Stephen Hopkins, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Thomas M'Kean, by Robert Waln, Jr. 7. Thomas Jefferson, by H. D. Gilpin; William Hooper, by J. C. Hooper; James Smith, by Edward Ingersoll; Charles Carroll, by H. B. Latrobe; Thomas Nelson, Jr., by H. D. Gilpin; Joseph Hewes, by Edward Ingersoll. 8. Elbridge Gerry, by H. D. Gilpin; Cæsar Rodney, by H. D. Gilpin; Benjamin Harrison, by H. D. Gilpin; William Paca, by Edward Ingersoll; George Ross, by H. D. Gilpin; John Adams, by E. Ingersoll. 9. Richard Henry Lee, by R. H. Lee; George Taylor, by H. D. Gilpin; John Hart, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Lewis Morris, by E. Ingersoll; Thomas Stone, by E. Ingersoll; Francis L. Lee, by Robert Waln, Jr.; Samuel Chase, by E. Ingersoll; William Ellery, by H. D. Gilpin; Samuel Adams, by H. D. Gilpin.

Vols. 1, 2 were edited by John Sanderson; the remainder by Robert Waln, Jr. A list of the authors of the different biographies is given in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceedings, xv. 393. There was a second edition, revised, improved, and enlarged (Philadelphia, 1828, in 5 vols.). An edition revised by Robert T. Conrad was published in Philadelphia in 1865.

An enumeration of books which grew out of Sanderson's Signers is given in Foster's Stephen Hopkins, ii. 183. Much smaller books are Charles A. Goodrich's Lives of the Signers (New York, 1829), and there are other collections of brief memoirs by L. C. Judson (1829) and Benson J. Lossing. Cf. also papers by Lossing in Harper's Mag., iii., vii., and xlviii., and his Field-Book, ii. 868.

A fac-simile of the engrossed document as signed is given in The Declaration of Independence (Boston, 1876), and others are in Force's Amer. Archives, 5th ser., i. 1595; and one was published in N. Y. in 1865. The earliest fac-simile is one engraved on copper by Peter Maverick, of which there are copies on vellum, as well as on paper. It is called Declaration of Independence, copied from the Original in the Department of State and published, by Benjamin Owen Tyler, Professor of Penmanship. The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing and has been particular to copy the Facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every Capital as in the original (Washington, 1818).

 

 

 

McKean, in 1814, said it was not so,[709] and the best investigators of our day are agreed that the president and secretary alone signed it on that day, though Lossing, following Jefferson, has held that, though signed on that day on paper by the members, it was in the nature of a temporary authentication, and it did not preclude the more formal act of signing it on parchment, which all are agreed was done on August 2d following. Thornton, of New Hampshire, signed as late as Nov. 4th; and McKean, who was absent with the army, seems to have temporarily returned so as to sign later in the year. Thornton's name appears in the printed Journal as attached to the Declaration on July 4th, and McKean's is not, though McKean was present and Thornton was not. The fact is, the printed Journal is not a copy of the record of that day, and was made up without due regard to the sequence of proceedings, when prepared by a committee for the press in the early part of 1777. There is in Force's American Archives (4th ser., vol. vi. p. 1729) a journal constructed by combining the original record (of which we have no printed copy) and the minutes and documents of the official files. From a collation of all these early records it appears that the vote of January 18, 1777, ordering the Declaration to be printed with the names attached,—then for the first time done,—made it convenient to use this printed record in making the published Journal entry under July 4th. In this way the name of Thornton, who signed it even subsequent to Aug. 2d, appears in that printed record as having been put to the Declaration on July 4th. That any paper copy was signed on July 4th is not believed, from the fact that no such copy exists; and if it be claimed that it has been lost, there is still ground for holding rather that it never existed, inasmuch as no vote is found for any authentication except in the usual way, by Hancock and Thomson, the president and secretary. McKean's criticism was the first to confront the usual public belief of its being signed July 4th, as many respectable writers have maintained since who preferred the authority of the printed Journal and of Jefferson and Adams. Such was Mahon's preference, and Peter Force rather curtly criticised him for it, in the National Intelligencer.[710] Force did not explain at length the grounds of his assertions, and Mahon did not alter his statement in a later edition; but a full explanation has been made by Mellen Chamberlain in his Authentication of the Declaration of Independence (Cambridge, 1885), which originally made part of the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Nov., 1884, p. 273. He gives full references.

The immediate effects of the Declaration in America are traced in Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, p. 548. "No one can read", says Wm. B. Reed in his Life of Joseph Reed (i. p. 195), "the private correspondence of the times without being struck with the slight impression made on either the army or the mass of the people by the Declaration of Independence."

The Declaration was, of course, at once commented on in the Gentleman's Magazine, in Almon's Remembrancer, and in the other periodical publications. Hutchinson's Strictures have been mentioned. The ministry seem to have been behind the Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, referred to in a preceding page, which was ostensibly written by John Lind and privately printed in London in 1776, but was soon published without his name, appearing in five different editions during the year, and was the next year (1777) printed in French both in London and La Haye. In the earlier edition the outline of a counter declaration was included (Sabin, x. 41,281-82). Lord Geo. Germaine is also said to have had a hand in The Rights of Great Britain asserted against the claims of America, which passed through three editions at least, the last with additions, during 1776, beside being reprinted in Philadelphia (Hildeburn, no. 3,352). Sir John Dalrymple and James Macpherson are also thought to have some share in it.[711] Lord Camden's views are given in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors (v. 301). It soon became apparent that the liberal party in England felt that the Declaration showed the Americans determined to act without their continued assistance (Smyth's Lectures, ii. 439). Bancroft (ix. ch. 3) traces the general effects in Europe.[712]

The appearance, Jan. 8, 1776, of the Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, a stay-maker and sailor whom Franklin had accredited when he came over in the summer of 1774, had produced a sudden effect throughout the continent.[713]

John Adams (Works, ii. 507; ix. 617) said of Common Sense that it embodied a "tolerable summary of the arguments for independence which he had been speaking in Congress for nine months", and which Mahon (vi. 96) has called "cogent arguments" "in clear, bold language;" but Adams deemed unwise some of its suggestions for the governments of the States, and to counteract their influence he published anonymously his Thoughts on Government (Philadelphia, 1776; Boston, 1776; often since, and also in Works, iv. 193; ix. 387, 398), which he says met the approval of no one of any consideration except Benjamin Rush. He added his name to the second edition, and records that it soon had due influence upon the Assemblies of the several States, when about this time they adopted their constitutions. Adams's views were first embodied in a letter to R. H. Lee, Nov. 15, 1775 (Works, iv. 185; Sparks's Washington, ii., App.). What seems an anonymous reply from a native of Virginia—that colony being then engaged in framing a constitution—was An address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia, which was an attempt to counteract the tendency to popular features in government, which Adams had inculcated. It is in Force, 4th ser., vi. 748, and was written by Carter Braxton (Hildeburn's Issues of the press in Pennsylvania, Philad., 1886, no. 3,340).

Adams also wrote an amplified statement of some of his views to John Penn, of North Carolina, which is given in John Taylor's Inquiry into the principles and policy of the Government of the United States (1814), and in Adams's Works, iv. 203.

The vote of Congress of May 15, 1776, had called upon the several colonies to provide for independent governments, and Jameson (Constitutional Conventions, N. Y., 1867, p. 112, etc.) summarizes the actions of the several States.[714] New Hampshire was the first to act, and Belknap in his New Hampshire, and the histories of the other States, tell the story of their procedures. South Carolina was the next, but Virginia was the earliest to form such a constitution that it could last for many years. On June 12, 1776, she adopted her famous Declaration of Rights, drawn by Geo. Mason,[715] and June 29th perfected her constitution.[716] For New Jersey, see L. Q. C. Elmer's Hist. of the Constitution adopted in 1776 and of the government under it (Newark, 1870, and in N. J. Hist. Soc. Proc., 2d ser., ii. 132), and the Journal and votes and Proceedings of the Convention of New Jersey (Burlington, 1776). For the movements in Pennsylvania, see Reed's Jos. Reed, i. ch. 7; the Proceedings relative to the calling of the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 (Harrisburg, 1825); Anna H. Wharton's "Thomas Wharton, first governor of Pennsylvania", in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., v. 426, vi. 91; and the biographies of the members of the convention in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., iii. and iv. The statements of the loyalist Jones in his New York during the Rev. (p. 321) are controverted by Johnston in his Observations (p. 41).

For the convention in New York, see Debates of the N. Y. Conventions (1821), App., p. 691; Flanders's Life of Jay, ch. 8; and Sparks's Gouverneur Morris.[717] For Georgia, see C. C. Jones's Georgia, ii. ch. 13. Jameson (p. 138) outlines the peculiar circumstances of the early constitutional history of Vermont. Massachusetts was the last (1780) of the original States to frame a constitution. (See John Adams's Works, iv. 213; ix. 618.) Adams drafted the constitution presented by the committee, which was printed as Report of a Constitution or form of government,[718] and is printed without embodying the Errata in John Adams's Works (iv. 219), which copies it from the Appendix of the Journal of the Convention (Boston, 1832), where it was also printed in that defective manner.[719]

John Adams, in his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787,—in Works, iv. 271), set forth the views which influenced largely the framers of many of the constitutions of the States. Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their original charters through the war.

This action of the States rendered easier a plan of confederation, which seems to have been proposed by Franklin as early as Aug. 21, 1775. On July 12, 1776, a plan in Dickinson's handwriting, based on Franklin's, was reported, and was finally adopted by Congress, Nov. 15, 1777 (Journals, ii. 330), which was ratified by all the States in 1778 except Delaware (1779) and Maryland (1781), at which last date it became obligatory on all.[720]

The reader needs to be cautioned against a publication which assumes to be an Oration delivered at the State House in Philadelphia Aug. 1, 1776, by Samuel Adams (Philadelphia, reprinted at London, 1776), and which was translated into French and German. It is reprinted in Wells, iii., App. There is no copy of the pretended Philadelphia original known, and the publication is a London forgery (Wells, ii. 439), discoverable, if for no other reason, from the fact that its writer was unaware that the Declaration of Independence had passed.

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THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HUDSON.

BY GEORGE W. CULLUM,

Major-General United States Army.

WHEN, in March, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, Washington felt assured that New York, already threatened, would be their objective point, not only on account of its commercial and strategical importance, but because it was the great arsenal of America. He therefore, as soon as practicable, concentrated in and about it his whole disposable force, and pushed forward the defences of the city and of its vicinity, already planned and partly executed by General Lee. Until the arrival of Washington, April 13, 1776, General Putnam commanded at New York, and General Greene, with a considerable body of troops, took charge of the incomplete intrenchments of Brooklyn, extending from the Wallabout (the present Navy Yard) to Gowanus Cove on New York Bay. These were now strengthened by four redoubts armed with twenty pieces of artillery, and by a strong interior keep mounting seven guns. These Brooklyn Heights, from their proximity and command of New York, were considered the key of the defence of this valuable city.

Fort George, with several redoubts and batteries, guarded the southern end of Manhattan Island, while the fortified hills overlooking Kingsbridge protected its northern extremity. On Red and Paulus Hooks, and at various points along the shores of the East and Hudson rivers, were erected earthworks, and a strong redoubt was built upon Governor's Island. Between the latter and the "Battery", hulks were sunk to obstruct the main channel. Notwithstanding all these defences, Manhattan Island, as events proved, was assailable at many points.

To defend these works, scattered over more than twenty miles, Washington had an army of only 17,225 men, of whom 6,711 were sick, on furlough, or detached, leaving but 10,514 present for duty. Most of these were militia, badly clothed, imperfectly armed, without discipline or military experience, and their artillery was old and of various patterns and calibres.

There had been dispatched from England a powerful fleet under Lord Howe, convoying a large body of troops to reinforce those already in America. The army of General William Howe (brother of the Admiral) on Staten Island in August (including some 8,600 German hirelings) numbered, as stated by General Clinton, 31,625 rank and file, of whom 24,464 were well-appointed, disciplined soldiers, fit for duty and equal to any in Europe.

The struggle for the Hudson, by the coöperation of the army of Canada with Howe, was now about to begin; but Washington was at his wits' end to foresee the particular point upon which the blow would fall. Hence he was obliged to retain the greater part of his troops in New York to defend the city, holding them ready, however, to support any point in the vicinity whether assailed by the enemy's large fleet or by their powerful army.

On the morning of August 22, 1776, General Howe, under cover of the guns of the British ships, without mishap, delay, or opposition, debarked, as stated by Admiral Howe, about 15,000 men, with artillery, baggage, and stores, on Long Island, in the vicinity of the Narrows; and on the 25th, General de Heister's German division was landed at Gravesend Cove. This invading force of "upwards of 20,000 rank and file", well armed and with forty cannon, promptly occupied a line extending from the Narrows, through Gravesend, to Flatlands, and made ready for an immediate advance through the passes of the long range of densely wooded hills running eastwardly from the Narrows to Jamaica, about two and a half miles in front of Brooklyn. To oppose this large force of regular troops, the Americans had not quite 8,000 men, most of whom were raw militia, and of these about one half were outside of the defences of Brooklyn, ready to participate in the impending battle.

The most direct route from the British landing-place to the Brooklyn intrenchments was by the road running nearly parallel to the bay, and passing through a gorge just back of the Red Lion Tavern, where Martense Lane joins the usual thoroughfare at the edge of Greenwood Cemetery. A second road led from Flatbush directly through the pass defended by General Sullivan's intrenchments. The third was by the road from Flatbush to Bedford. Finally, the fourth, extending to Flushing, intersected the Bedford and Jamaica road at the pass between the present Evergreen and Cypress Cemeteries, about three miles east of Bedford, or about ten miles from the Narrows.

When the British landed on the 22d, Colonel Hand's regiment was deployed to oppose them, but the enemy proving to be in too great force, Hand fell back to Prospect Hill and thence to Flatbush, burning property which would be of immediate use to the foe; but he did not at once apprise the commanding general of the real character of the British movement. So soon, however, as Washington heard of the landing, he dispatched six regiments to reinforce the garrison of Brooklyn Heights, and ordered additional forces to be in readiness to cross the East River from Manhattan Island, if Howe's movement did not prove to be a feint to cover a real attack upon New York. General Greene, unfortunately, was too sick to retain the active command on Long Island, every point of which, between Hell Gate and the Narrows, he had carefully studied. He was succeeded, August 20th, by General Sullivan, a far inferior officer. As Washington said of him, he was "active, spirited, and zealously attached to the cause", but was tinctured with "vanity, which now and then led him into embarrassments;" besides which he lacked "experience to move on a large scale", as he had just shown in Canada. On the 24th of August, Washington placed Putnam in command over Sullivan. Putnam was a brave soldier, but wholly ignorant of the science of war, besides being advanced in years. He was entirely unacquainted with the arrangements which had been made for the defence of his position, and he never went beyond the Brooklyn Heights intrenchments on the day of the battle. The truth is, no one exercised a general command in that conflict.

De Heister's division, constituting the enemy's centre, occupied Flatbush August 26th, threatening the pass in front, which Sullivan held with a large force under cover of intrenchments. During the evening, Cornwallis withdrew from Flatbush to Flatlands, there becoming the reserve of the British right, which was composed of choice regiments under General Clinton, aided by Lord Percy and accompanied by the commander-in-chief.

The British plan of attack would have been very hazardous in the presence of an enterprising enemy; but against undisciplined troops, small in numbers and without skilful leadership, it proved a brilliant success. The right, under Clinton, by a night march was to seize the Cypress Hill pass, and then move down the Jamaica road towards Bedford to get in the rear of Sullivan's left. To divert the attention of the Americans from this stealthy march, General Grant was to menace their right, towards Gravesend, before daybreak, and De Heister at the same time was to cannonade the American centre under Colonel Hand. These attacks were not, however, to be pressed till General Clinton's guns were heard in the rear of Sullivan, when the Americans were to be assailed with the utmost vigor from all quarters. Besides these land operations a squadron of five ships, under Sir Peter Parker, was to menace New York and keep up a cannonade against Governor's Island and the right flank of the American defences.

Sir Henry Clinton, the principal actor in this contest, with his heavy column and its artillery, guided by a Tory farmer, at nine in the evening of the 26th, moved silently forward from Flatlands through New Lots (now East New York), having successfully crossed Shoemaker's narrow causeway over a long marsh. At three on the morning of the 27th, Clinton arrived within half a mile of the pass he was to force, being followed and joined before daybreak by the main body under Lord Percy. Soon after daylight a small American patrol was captured and the unguarded pass occupied. Thus the whole right wing of the enemy, after partaking of refreshments, was marching unopposed directly to Brooklyn Heights. The battle, by this bold and lucky manœuvre, was in this way virtually gained before any real struggle had begun.

General Grant, on the enemy's left, with two brigades and a regiment, two companies of Tories and ten pieces of artillery, in the mean time advanced along the bay road against the flying Americans, and, at daybreak of the 27th, got through the pass in the hills and was marching on the Brooklyn lines. General Parsons, in command of the American outpost on the right, succeeded in rallying some of the fugitives and posting them advantageously on a hill until the arrival of Lord Stirling, who, with 1,500 choice Continental troops, had been sent by Putnam on learning the condition of affairs. For some hours Grant amused Stirling by slight skirmishes about Battle Hill (now in Greenwood Cemetery), till Clinton had reached his destined goal, when Grant, with quadruple forces, pushed forward to grapple in a death-struggle with his gallant foe. At the same time De Heister, who had slept upon his arms during the night at Flatbush, as soon as he heard Clinton's signal guns, sent Count Donop to storm the redoubt which protected Sullivan and defended the pass through the hills, while he himself pressed forward with the main body of the Hessians. Sullivan, hemmed in on all sides, ordered a retreat to the Brooklyn lines, but it was too late, as he was already ensnared in the prepared net, and before long all was a scene of confusion, consternation, and slaughter. Some of the Americans, after fighting desperately, broke through the enemy's line, but a large number were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. Washington, from Brooklyn, witnessed this sad catastrophe, but was powerless to prevent it.

Stirling in like manner, met by the force under Cornwallis, which had been detached from Clinton's column, was nearly surrounded, having no chance for escape except across Gowanus Creek, in which the tide was fast rising. After a terrible conflict of twenty minutes, the mass of Stirling's command succeeded in passing the muddy stream, but the general and some of his bravest companions were compelled to surrender to superior numbers. Washington wrung his hands in agony at the sight of such disaster. "Good God", he cried, "what brave fellows I must this day lose!"

By two o'clock in the afternoon, this battle, or rather this series of skirmishes between forces very unequal in numbers, quality, and skill, was terminated by the retreat of the remnant of Americans which had escaped capture. Howe stated his loss at 367 killed, wounded, and missing; and he estimated that of the Americans at 3,300, though probably it did not exceed one half of that number, of whom 1,076, including Generals Stirling, Sullivan, and Woodhull (captured at Jamaica on the next day), were made prisoners.

Fortunately the victor, instead of pressing his advantage and at once assaulting the Brooklyn intrenchments, which covered the demoralized troops, waited till the next day, when he broke ground as for a regular siege, and began cannonading the American works. "By such ill-timed caution", says Lord Mahon, "arising probably from an overestimate of the insurgents' force, the English general flung away the fairest opportunity of utterly destroying or capturing the flower of the American army;" yet such was the joy of the British government over this cheap success that General Howe was knighted for a victory over inexperienced troops one fifth his own numbers.

Washington, promptly profiting by the over-caution of his antagonist, strengthened his position, and conceived the masterly measures for his retreat from Long Island. Without the knowledge of Howe, availing himself of a dense fog and rain, and favored by a fair wind, he safely crossed the East River with all his troops, stores, and artillery, except a few heavy pieces which the mud prevented him from moving. The army reached New York on the morning of the 30th, Washington leaving in the last boat after having been forty-eight hours almost continuously in the saddle without once closing his eyes. "Whoever", says Botta, "will attend to all the details of this retreat will easily believe that no military operation was ever conducted by great captains with more ability and prudence, or under more unfavorable auspices."

Though the British general had gained a decided success, he was as far as ever from the object of his campaign—the capture of New York. The victors and the vanquished now confronted each other from opposite sides of a stream half a mile broad, each making ready for a decisive effort. Howe possessed a large, veteran, and disciplined European army, while Washington's troops, for the most part, were a demoralized assemblage of heterogeneous organizations, not much superior to an armed mob.

"Our situation", writes Washington to the President of Congress, "is truly distressing. The check our detachment sustained on the 27th ultimo has dispirited too great a proportion of our troops, and filled their minds with apprehension and despair. The militia, instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order to repair our losses, are discouraged, intractable, and impatient to return. Great numbers of them have gone off: in some instances almost by whole regiments, by half ones, and by companies at a time. This circumstance of itself, independently of others, when fronted by a well-appointed enemy superior in numbers to our whole collected force, would be sufficiently disagreeable; but when their example has infected another part of the army, when their want of discipline and refusal of almost every kind of restraint and government have produced a like conduct but too common to the whole, and an entire disregard of that order and subordination necessary to the well-doing of an army, and which had been inculcated before, as well as the nature of our military establishment would admit of, our condition becomes more alarming; and, with the deepest concern, I am obliged to confess my want of confidence in the generality of the troops.

"All these circumstances fully confirm the opinion I ever entertained, and which I more than once in my letters took the liberty of mentioning to Congress, that no dependence could be put in a militia, or other troops, than those enlisted and embodied for a longer period than our regulations heretofore have prescribed. I am persuaded, and as fully convinced as I am of any one fact that has happened, that our liberties must of necessity be greatly hazarded, if not entirely lost, if their defence is left to any but a permanent standing army; I mean, one to exist during the war. Nor would the expense incident to the support of such a body of troops as would be competent to almost every emergency far exceed that which is daily incurred by calling in succor and new enlistments, which, when effected, are not attended with any good consequences. Men who have been free and subject to no control cannot be reduced to order in an instant; and the privileges and exemptions, which they claim and will have, influence the conduct of others; and the aid derived from them is nearly counterbalanced by the disorder, irregularity, and confusion they occasion."

Three weeks later, he again writes: "It becomes evident to me, then, that, as this contest is not likely to be the work of a day, as the war must be carried on systematically, and to do it you must have good officers, there are no other possible means to obtain them but by establishing your army upon a permanent footing, and giving your officers good pay. This will induce gentlemen and men of character to engage; and till the bulk of your officers is composed of such persons as are actuated by principles of honor and a spirit of enterprise, you have little to expect from them.... But while the only merit an officer possesses is his ability to raise men, while these men consider and treat him as an equal, and in the character of an officer regard him no more than a broomstick, being mixed together as one common herd, no order nor discipline can prevail; nor will the officer ever meet with that respect which is essentially necessary to due subordination. To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff.... To bring men to a proper degree of subordination is not the work of a day, a month, or even a year; and unhappily for us and the cause we are engaged in, the little discipline I have been laboring to establish in the army under my immediate command is in a manner done away with by having such a mixture of troops as have been called together within these few months....

"The jealousy of a standing army and the evils to be apprehended from one are remote, and in my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded; but the consequence of wanting one, according to my ideas formed from the present view of things, is certain and inevitable ruin. For, if I was called upon to declare upon oath whether the militia have been most serviceable or hurtful, upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter."

The defeat of the American army on Long Island, a heavy blow to the patriot cause, suggested a desperate remedy to the mind of Washington,—no less a measure than the deliberate destruction of the great commercial city of New York. "Till of late", he writes to the President of Congress, "I had no doubt in my own mind of defending this place; nor should I have yet if the men would do their duty, but this I despair of.... If we should be obliged to abandon the town, ought it to stand as winter-quarters for the enemy? They would derive great conveniences from it on the one hand, and much property would be destroyed on the other.... At present I dare say the enemy mean to preserve it if they can. If Congress, therefore, should resolve upon the destruction of it, the resolution should be a profound secret, as the knowledge of it will make a capital change in their plans." General Greene, John Jay, and many others of note were of the same opinion. Congress decided otherwise, and Howe forbore to bombard it from Brooklyn Heights and Governor's Island, both belligerents deeming its possession of far greater service to either than its destruction.

As New York was not to be destroyed, it became a serious question how a city swarming with Tories was to be defended with less than twenty thousand militia against a powerful army. Washington, Greene, Putnam, and others were opposed to the attempt, but were overruled by a council of war. The question was finally left by Congress to the commander-in-chief, who, deeming the city untenable, made preparations, September 10th, for its speedy evacuation, which was concurred in, two days later, by a new council of war. This determination was timely, as the Americans were about to be driven out.

Howe, anticipating Washington's design, determined to prevent the execution of it by the same manœuvre he had tried so successfully on Long Island,—that was to threaten the city's front and right flank by the fleet, while his army, assembled about the present site of Astoria, should cross the East River, turn Washington's left flank, cut off his communications with the mainland, oblige him to fight on the enemy's terms, and force him to surrender at discretion, or by a brilliant stroke break the American army in pieces, and secure their arms and stores.

On the evening of September 14th Howe began his crossing of the East River by taking possession of Montressor (Randall's) Island, and the next morning he sent three ships up the Hudson as high as Bloomingdale, which stopped any further evacuation of the city by water. Soon after, under the fire of ten vessels-of-war, the main British force, under Sir Henry Clinton, embarked upon flatboats, barges, and galleys, at the mouth of Newtown Creek, and by the favoring tide was carried to Kip's Bay (34th Street), where they disembarked and quickly put to rout the panic-stricken American militia, and pursued the fugitives in disorderly flight over the fields to Murray Hill.

So soon as Washington heard the enemy's cannonade he rode with all speed to the front, and used every exertion to rally the runaways; but his efforts, though seconded by the officers in immediate command, were utterly futile. Mortified and in despair at such poltroonery, the commander-in-chief almost lost control of himself, and, says General Greene, "sought death rather than life" at the hands of the enemy.

Unopposed, the British marched to the Incleberg on Murray Hill and encamped, while the Americans retreated to Harlem Heights. Putnam, at the sacrifice of baggage and stores, and of most of his heavy artillery, by taking the river road, barely escaped with the troops remaining in the city. Howe was in close pursuit of this rear-guard of about four thousand men, but unexpectedly stopped for nearly two hours at the residence of Mrs. Murray[721] to enjoy her old Madeira, so that, in the language of the times, "Mrs. Murray saved the American army."

The British, on September 15, 1776, took possession of New York with a large detachment under General Robertson; while Howe with the main body of the army encamped on the outskirts of the city. The northern line of their camp extended from Horen's Hook on the East River to Bloomingdale on the Hudson, which line was fortified with field-works and protected on the flanks by vessels-of-war. Behind this line lay their disciplined army of twenty-five thousand British and Germans.

Washington took position in their front, and for the protection of his army of about fourteen thousand fit for duty he fortified Harlem Heights with a triple line of intrenchments extending across Manhattan Island. Immediately after securing his position, Washington, to arouse some military ardor in his discomfited militia, formed the design of cutting off some of the enemy's light troops, who, encouraged by their recent successes, had advanced to the extremity of the high ground opposite to the American camp. To effect this object, Colonel Knowlton, of Bunker Hill fame, and Major Leitch were detached with parties of rangers and riflemen to get in their rear, while Washington diverted their attention by a feigned direct attack. By some mistake, the fire was begun on the front instead of upon their flank and rear, by which the enemy, though defeated, secured their escape to their main body. This successful skirmish, called the battle of Harlem Plains, was purchased by the loss of the brave Knowlton and Leitch, both of whom were mortally wounded.

The British rejoicings upon the occupation of their snug winter-quarters in New York were suddenly interrupted, early on the morning of September 21st, by the breaking out of flames from a low groggery near Whitehall Slip, which, for want of proper fire apparatus to check them, spread rapidly over one fourth of the city, consuming five hundred buildings, including the Lutheran and Trinity churches. Whether this was the work of incendiaries is not positively known. Congress and the city's inhabitants had strenuously opposed such an act, though it was strongly recommended as a military necessity by Washington and by others of high rank and position.

While Howe "continued at gaze" awaiting coming events, Washington continued to strengthen his position on Harlem Heights, and established alarm posts on the east side of Harlem River as far as Throg's Neck on the Sound, to insure surveillance of the whole field of operations.

The Harlem lines being too strong for a front attack, Howe, after leaving a sufficient force under Lord Percy to watch them and guard the city, embarked, October 12th, his main army on ninety flatboats, to execute by his favorite manœuvre the turning of these obstacles and of Washington's left flank. His object was to cut off Washington's retreat and shut him up on Manhattan Island, the only exit from which was by Kingsbridge. Adverse winds so delayed the British general that he only passed Hell Gate on the afternoon of the 14th, and the fleet did not reach Throg's Neck till nightfall. Here Howe had previously landed his advance-guard, but Washington had anticipated him by occupying, on the 12th, the passes leading to the mainland.

The enemy's design being now fully developed, it was decided in a council of war, held in the American camp on the 16th, to leave Harlem Heights, no longer tenable, and to evacuate the whole of Manhattan Island except Fort Washington, which General Greene deemed impregnable and of great value for future operations. Accordingly, the American army formed a series of intrenched camps on the hills skirting the right bank of the swollen Bronx, and extending thirteen miles, from Fordham Heights to White Plains, and protected from the enemy by the river in front.

After waiting five days for supplies, Howe, on the 18th, left Throg's Neck, debarked again on Pell's Point, and on the march northward encountered Glover's brigade well posted behind stone fences. After a hot skirmish Glover slowly fell back, while the enemy advanced to the heights of New Rochelle. Here the British encamped till the 22d, when they were joined by the second division of Hessians under General Knyphausen. This delay gave Washington ample time to strengthen himself at White Plains, where he held a strong and important strategic position commanding the roads leading up the Hudson and to New England.

On the morning of the 28th of October the opposing armies, each about thirteen thousand strong, confronted each other. Washington's intrenchments, partly a double line, occupied the hilly ground within the village of White Plains, the left resting upon a mill-pond and the right on a bend of the Bronx, which protected its flank and rear. Across the Bronx rose Chatterton's Hill, presenting a steep rocky front to the enemy, but it was not fortified.

Howe, believing he was now to fight the decisive battle of the war, moved up in two heavy columns, Clinton commanding the one on the right and De Heister that on the left. They seemed at first as if intending to attack in front; but they soon filed off to the left, extending their line to the front of Chatterton's Hill. Here the main body halted, while a column four thousand strong proceeded to cross the Bronx and storm the hill under cover of the fire of twenty pieces of artillery. General McDougall with fifteen hundred Continentals and militia, and Captain Alexander Hamilton with two pieces of artillery, immediately arrayed themselves on the rocky brow of the hill for its defence. As the main British body, under General Leslie, clambered up the steep acclivity it was met by a withering fire from the infantry and artillery, from which it recoiled and sought shelter. A second assault up the slope met with an equally determined resistance, and for some time the enemy was held in check. Rahl, with two regiments that had forded the Bronx a quarter of a mile below, now appeared on the American right, and drove the militia from their post. This break compelled McDougall, exposed to a heavy fire in front and flank, to retreat across the Bronx to White Plains, though with his six hundred Continentals he maintained an obstinate conflict for an hour, and carried off all his wounded and artillery. The American loss in the engagement was 30 prisoners and 130 killed and wounded, while their opponents' losses were 231.

Howe contemplated an assault, the next morning, upon the American camp, but was deterred by the apparent strength of the lines. These had been built hastily, as General Heath says, of corn-stalks, the tops being turned inwards, and the roots with the adhering earth outwards. The British army, strongly reinforced by the arrival of Lord Percy on the 30th, designed attacking the American works on the following day, but a storm delayed their operations, and gave Washington time to withdraw his forces to the heights of New Castle, where he erected strong defences. In the meanwhile Knyphausen had been ordered to move from New Rochelle to Kingsbridge, where he encamped on November 2d, the Americans retiring to Fort Washington on his approach. Howe in person suddenly left White Plains on the night of the 5th for Dobbs's Ferry, to which his army was already moving. "The design of this manœuvre", wrote Washington on the 6th to the President of Congress, "is a matter of much conjecture and speculation, and cannot be accounted for with any degree of certainty." A council of war which met that day evidently inferred that it threatened a movement across or up the Hudson, for it was unanimously agreed immediately to throw a body of troops into New Jersey, and station three thousand at Peekskill to guard the Highlands. Howe really contemplated a far different move—the capture of Fort Washington.

Why Sir William did not again attack Washington, and why he changed his whole plan, is now well understood to be due to the treason of William Demont, the adjutant of Colonel Magaw, in command of Fort Washington. This man, on the 2d of November, undiscovered, passed into the British camp, and placed in the hands of Lord Percy complete plans of the defences of Mount Washington and a statement of their armament and garrisons. This detailed information was immediately sent, with its author, to Howe, and must have reached him a day or two before his sudden departure from White Plains. The conclusive evidence of this treason is furnished by the culprit himself in his letter,[722] dated London, January 16, 1792, to the Rev. Dr. Peters, of the Church of England, which was first published by Mr. E. F. DeLancey, in the Magazine of American History (Feb., 1877).

Fort Washington, built by Colonel Rufus Putnam soon after the evacuation of Boston, occupied the highest ground at the northern end of Manhattan Island. It was a pentagonal bastioned earthwork without a keep, having a feeble profile and scarcely any ditch. In its vicinity were batteries, redoubts, and intrenched lines. These various field fortifications, of which Fort Washington may be considered the citadel, extended north and south over two and a half miles, and had a circuit of six miles. The three intrenched lines of Harlem Heights, crossing the island, were to the south; Laurel Hill, with Fort George at its northern extremity, lay to the east; upon the River Ridge, near Tubby Hook, was Fort Tryon, and close to Spuyten Duyvel Creek were some slight works known as "Cork Hill Fort;" and across the creek, on Tetard's Hill, was Fort Independence. The main communication with these various works was the old Albany road, crossing Harlem River at Kingsbridge. This road was obstructed by three lines of abatis, extending from Laurel Hill to the River Ridge.

Fort Washington mounted not more than eighteen guns en barbette, of various calibres, from nines to thirty-twos. The garrison of all the various works was less than 3,000 men, mostly Pennsylvanians, who were commanded by Colonel Magaw, an officer of but little military experience. The ground about the fort was well suited for defence, and the works not only protected the upper part of Manhattan Island, but in conjunction with Fort Lee, on the palisades opposite, commanded the Hudson. However, from their too elevated positions and distance from each other, these two works, on the opposite sides of the river, with their feeble armament, proved insufficient, even with a partially constructed barrier of sunken hulks, to prevent the passage of the British vessels-of-war.

As these forts did not close the river, Washington did not deem it expedient to weaken his force, which was necessary to him for field operations, by leaving a large garrison on an island essentially in the hands of the enemy. To the opinion of General Greene, in general command of these works, and in deference to the expressed wishes of Congress to hold them at any cost, Washington yielded his better judgment. His modesty and sense of imperfect knowledge of the science and practice of war led him, as it did on several occasions, to defer too much to others, and though he did not think it "prudent to hazard the men and stores at Mount Washington", he left it discretionary with Greene to give the necessary orders for its evacuation.

Howe, November 15th, demanded the surrender of Fort Washington, stating that, if he were compelled to take it by assault, the garrison would be put to the sword. Magaw replied that to propose such an alternative was unworthy of a British officer, and that, for himself, he should defend the fort to the last extremity.

On the 15th Washington started across the river from Fort Lee, to which he had come, to determine the condition of the garrison at Fort Washington. He says, "I had partly crossed the North River when I met General Putnam and General Greene, who were just returning from thence, and they informed me that the troops were in high spirits and would make a good defence, and, it being late at night, I returned."

Magaw, awaiting the enemy's attack, made a judicious disposition of his forces to defend Fort Washington and the various intrenchments in its vicinity. Colonel Rawlings took command of Fort Tryon and the northern end of the River Ridge, with an outpost at Cork Hill Fort; Colonel Baxter held Fort George and the summit of Laurel Hill; Colonel Cadwallader occupied the Harlem Lines; while Magaw, at his central position of Fort Washington, directed the whole.

Howe's attack upon Fort Washington was skilfully planned and admirably executed. A vessel-of-war, the "Pearl", took up a position in the Hudson to protect the contemplated movement of the Hessian troops and enfilade the northern outworks of Fort Washington; while thirty flatboats were in the Harlem River for ferrying troops,—these boats having eluded the vigilance of the American sentries on the night of the 14th, when passing up the Hudson and through Spuyten Duyvel Creek.

On the morning of the 16th, under a furious cannonade from the heights on the east bank of the Harlem, three distinct assaults were ordered to be made upon the American defences, besides a fourth movement, which, though designed as a feint, became a real attack at the critical moment. The first British column, under General Knyphausen, moved down from Kingsbridge, and with him were Rahl's Germans marching close to the Hudson; the second, under General Matthews, supported by Lord Cornwallis, crossed the Harlem and moved upon Fort George and the northern end of Laurel Hill; the third, or feint, under Lieut.-Col. Stirling, floated down the Harlem to threaten the southerly part of Laurel Hill; while the fourth, of British and Hessians, led by Earl Percy and accompanied by Howe, moved from Harlem Plain upon the triple lines of Harlem Heights.

The latter column, advancing from the south, began the attack upon the outer or southernmost American line, where Cadwallader, unable to check Lord Percy's superior forces, fell back to his stronger middle line. Howe then ordered Stirling to land from the Harlem and clamber up the steep slope of Laurel Hill to threaten the rear of Cadwallader. The latter sent a detachment, as did also Colonel Magaw, to oppose Stirling's landing, without avail. Matthews at the same time debarked his column and attacked the Americans on Laurel Hill, where Baxter was killed. The united forces of Matthews and Stirling overcame all opposition and took 170 prisoners. Baxter's force was compelled, as was also Cadwallader, when pressed by Percy, to seek refuge in Fort Washington. About noon the Hessian column from the north was in motion. Rahl soon scattered the small guard in Cork Hill Fort and advanced upon Fort Tryon, crowding Rawlings by superior force nearly back to Fort Washington, when, being joined by Knyphausen, who had made his way over wooded and difficult ground and across abatis, the reunited German columns bore down all opposition. The Americans at this point also, after a spirited resistance, were compelled to take refuge in Fort Washington, which, now overcrowded and exposed to the deadly concentric fire of the enemy, left Magaw no alternative but surrender. He asked for a parley of four hours, but he was allowed only half an hour. In the end he capitulated, upon honorable terms, to General Knyphausen, to whom the glory of the day belonged. Magaw had received a promise from Washington to attempt to bring off the troops if he would hold out till night, which Magaw deemed impossible, with troops huddled together and exposed to destruction from the enemy's near circle of fire. This capture cost the enemy nearly 500 men in killed and wounded. The American loss was 150 killed and wounded, 2,634 taken prisoners (including many of their best troops), 43 pieces of artillery of from three to thirty-two pounds calibre, a large number of small arms, and much ammunition and stores. The whole of Manhattan Island thus passed into British hands.

Immediately after the capture of Fort Washington, Sir William Howe crossed with his army into New Jersey, it being too late for any coöperation with the Northern army under General Carleton, who had already retreated from Crown Point into Canada.[723]

This New York campaign had been most disastrous to the American cause; yet it was far from a brilliant success for the Anglo-Hessian arms. Washington, with troops inferior in numbers, arms, organization, discipline, and experience, had outgeneralled Howe, with a superior veteran army, whenever he acted upon his own good judgment and did not yield his convictions to his subordinates, to whom most of the errors of the campaign were due.

It is doubtful whether there was any necessity whatever for the British to fight the battle of Long Island, as their fleet might have occupied the East River, as it subsequently did, and thus have caged the part of Washington's army which was on Long Island. It is true that the American batteries on Brooklyn Heights and Governor's Island might have done the fleet much damage; but if it was too dangerous to run the gauntlet of the Buttermilk Channel, four fathoms deep, it would have been an easy matter to sail around the eastern end of Long Island, and safely enter the East River from that direction.

Had the East River been occupied by the British fleet, it could, while cutting off half of our army from the defence of New York, at the same time have threatened the city front pending the transportation of the British army by water to points above the city from whence to turn either or both flanks of Manhattan Island. Washington, thus shut up, would have been compelled to fight at great disadvantage, and possibly surrender at discretion.

Even admitting that the battle of Long Island was necessary, Howe, in dividing his army into three masses, stretching over a line of more than ten miles, ran great risk of being beaten in detail had all of the American forces on the island been concentrated at a central position, ready to be thrown successively upon his isolated columns. It is true the undisciplined American forces might not have been able to cope in the open field with British and German regulars; but Howe had no right to presume their inferiority after his own experience of their good conduct at Bunker Hill and Clinton's trial at Sullivan's Island.

The American general also committed a great military blunder in leaving with raw troops the shelter of the Brooklyn intrenchments for the precarious protection of the Long Island Ridge, several important passes in which were left entirely unguarded, though Washington had ordered their careful observation.

After the retreat of the American army to New York, Howe wasted two precious weeks, during which Washington had time to organize his defence; and when the British general crossed the East River, he committed a great mistake in debarking at Kip's Bay,—a halfway measure which involved a long land march to his objective, White Plains. Washington, with great vigor, seized his advantage, and, by availing himself of his shorter interior line, arrived first at the coveted position and fortified it. Had Howe moved to this point by water immediately after the battle of Long Island, he undoubtedly would have succeeded in turning Washington's left flank, and would thus have cut off his retreat. The British general's delay of two months after the battle of Long Island in moving less than thirty miles to reach White Plains was inexcusable. In a shorter period Moltke began and ended the campaign of 1866, which so humbled the great power of the Austrian empire.

When Howe decided to attack the American army at White Plains he should have thrown his entire force upon Washington's centre, and thus have won a decisive victory with his superior troops; whereas he used less than one third of his army in driving Washington's right wing from Chatterton's Hill upon his main body, which then successfully retreated before the tardy and inert British general.

Howe's good fortune in capturing Fort Washington was due more to the treason of Magaw's adjutant and to Washington's yielding to bad advice, than to any skill of the British commander.[724]

With the invasion of New Jersey by the Anglo-Hessian army all military operations at the mouth of the Hudson were terminated. The struggle for the control of this great river was to be transferred to its upper waters, and it was expected that the coming campaign would be so conducted as soon to force the whole power of the colonies into silence and submission.

General Gates, who was appointed the successor of Sullivan in the command of the army of Canada, was, says Horace Walpole, "the son of a housekeeper of the second Duke of Leeds." He had neither brilliant qualities nor military genius, but possessed the vanity and ambition to covet the highest position, for the attainment of which he resorted to disgraceful intrigue. When assigned to this command, in June, 1776, the army of Canada was flying to Crown Point; so, like Sancho Panza, Gates found himself a governor without a government; but, nothing abashed, he at once claimed the command of the Northern department, then under Schuyler. Congress sustained the latter, whereupon Gates took post at Ticonderoga, where the remnant of the American army had retired upon the abandonment of Crown Point, and promptly adopted vigorous measures to put the work in good condition for defence and to reinforce its garrison against any forward movement of General Carleton.

To secure control of Lake Champlain, a squadron of small vessels was ordered to be constructed at its head (Skenesborough), which, to the number of nine, mounting in all fifty-five guns, were completed by the middle of August. Arnold, in command of these and some additional galleys from Ticonderoga, moved down to the foot of the lake, and anchored his vessels across it to bar the passage of the enemy.

Carleton, as active as his adversary, had built at St. Johns a flotilla of "thirty fighting vessels." When Arnold discovered the superiority of the enemy's fleet in vessels and guns to be more than double his own, and that they were manned by picked British sailors, he fell back and formed line of battle between Valcour's Island and the western shore of the lake. In this disadvantageous position he was attacked, October 11th, by Captain Pringle, of the British navy, with thirty-eight vessels and boats, mounting 123 guns. Though the crews of Arnold's flotilla were landsmen, he maintained a desperate fight from eleven in the forenoon until dark, when, availing himself of the obscurity of a thick fog, he escaped with part of his vessels, unobserved, through the enemy's fleet; but, owing to adverse winds and his crippled condition, he was overtaken on the 13th off Split Rock, where he was again attacked. Some of his flotilla escaped and some were captured, but he himself, after fighting four hours, ran his remaining vessels ashore, set them on fire with their flags flying, and escaped with their crews through the forests to Ticonderoga. General Carleton now advanced to Crown Point, of which he took possession October 14th, and pushed a reconnoissance to within sight of Ticonderoga. When Carleton's boats appeared, Gates made an effective display of his garrison, whereupon the British general fell back to Crown Point, which he evacuated, and, it being too late for further active operations, he retired to Canada.

The enemy had scarcely departed when Schuyler applied himself with tireless assiduity to prepare against a new invasion during that winter or in the coming year. He continually pressed upon Congress and Washington the wants of his department in men and munitions of war. In every way he tried to conciliate the Indian tribes; and he lost no opportunity of gaining information of the enemy's designs and movements.

Burgoyne, after the battle of Bunker Hill, had suggested to Lord Rochefort, Secretary of State for the colonies, that, as there was "no probable prospect of bringing the war to a speedy conclusion with any force that Great Britain and Ireland could supply", there should be employed "a large army of such foreign troops as might be hired, to begin their operations up the Hudson River; another army, composed partly of old disciplined troops and partly of Canadians, to act from Canada; a large levy of Indians and a supply of arms for the blacks, to awe the Southern provinces, conjointly with detachments of regulars; and a numerous fleet to sweep the whole coast,—might possibly do the business in one campaign."

The importance of securing the control of the Hudson, thereby to separate the New England from the Middle and Southern States, was eminently correct; but the proposed mode of accomplishing it was, as the sequel proved, entirely wrong.

Burgoyne, like many other Englishmen, had held American prowess in contempt, and ridiculed the enrolment of provincials as "a preposterous parade of military arrangement." His later experience probably changed his views, for when he had supplanted that noble soldier Sir Guy Carleton in the command of the British army in Canada, through "family support" more than from "military merit", he took good care to secure a strong and veteran force, commanded by officers of noted skill and long experience.

Burgoyne's army, which took the field in July, 1777, had a total, rank and file, of 7,902, of which 4,135 were British, 3,116 Germans, 148 Canadian militia, and 503 Indians. The artillery corps and train were of the most serviceable character, "probably the finest and most excellently supplied as to officers and private men that had ever been allotted to second the operations of any army."

The commander-in-chief was a polished gentleman, a popular dramatist, an effective speaker, a useful member of Parliament, and a gallant officer who had won laurels in Portugal; Major-General Phillips, the second in command, was a distinguished artillerist who had earned a high reputation in Germany; Major-General Riedesel had been selected because of his long experience, especially in the Seven Years' War; Brigadier-General Fraser, who commanded the light brigade, was a knightly soldier, ambitious of glory, who had seen much service in America; Hamilton and Powel, who commanded brigades, had been twenty years on active duty; Lord Balcarras and Major Acland, commanding respectively the light infantry and grenadiers, were soldiers of high professional attainments; La Corne St. Luc, the commander of the Indians, had been an active partisan of the French in Canada wars, and "was notorious for brutal inhumanity;" and the many staff and regimental officers were already men of mark, or subsequently rose to high positions.

With such a thoroughly disciplined and well-appointed army, Burgoyne fondly anticipated making a triumphal march of two hundred miles to Albany, there to meet St. Leger descending the Mohawk, and Howe ascending the Hudson, and thus by combined movements to dismember the thirteen United States. This march of the Northern army seemed not arduous, as most of Burgoyne's way was by water through the Sorel, Lake Champlain, and the upper Hudson; but he had taken little account of the extraordinary physical difficulties he was doomed to encounter, and the hostility of the inhabitants along much of his route.

Another embarrassment greatly marred the British plans. Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State for the colonies, had given Burgoyne positive orders for his march to Albany, from which he was not to deviate; while Howe was left, through a piece of criminal negligence,[725] without any imperative instructions to coöperate with the army in Canada; besides which, it was almost impossible to arrange any concerted action between forces separated by four hundred miles of hostile country.

Burgoyne, however, like a true soldier, determined to obey orders, though it might break empires. Consequently, on June 13th, at St. Johns, the standard of England was hoisted on board the "Radeau", and saluted by all the rest of the shipping and forts, thus announcing the beginning of this eventful and important campaign.

On the 20th, Burgoyne issued, with seeming royal prerogative, a bombastic proclamation, commending the justice and clemency of the king, who had directed "that Indians be employed;" denouncing the obstinacy of Americans as "wilful outcasts;" threatening the terrors of savage warfare of the "thousands of Indians" under his command, "to overtake the hardened enemies of Great Britain;" and, "in consciousness of Christianity and the honor of soldiership", warned all of his opposers that "the messengers of justice and wrath await them on the field, and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion."[726]

Burgoyne, after delivering himself of this pronunciamiento of loving-kindness towards his American erring brothers, and setting forth the sweet humanity of his dusky allies, who "had sharpened their affections upon their hatchets", proceeded up Lake Champlain, pioneered by these children of the forest in their birch canoes, the fleet and army following, with music and banners, as if engaged in a splendid regatta.

While Burgoyne with the main army was moving south, Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger, in conformity with instructions from the British cabinet, with a detachment of about 1,000 men (English regulars, provincials, and Indians), was rapidly advancing west to Fort Stanwix, by the St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario and Oneida. After reducing this post and subjugating the patriots of the Mohawk valley, he was ordered to join his chief at or near Albany.

Burgoyne's formidable invading force of 7,863 men, with 42 pieces of artillery, which reached Crown Point June 27th, advanced thence, July 1st, in battle array: the right wing of British troops under General Phillips, upon Fort Ticonderoga on the west bank of the lake; the left wing of Germans under General Riedesel, upon Fort Independence on the east bank; and the floating batteries in line across the lake. Burgoyne had announced in orders: "This army must not retreat."

General Schuyler had recently visited Forts Ticonderoga and Independence, where, instead of a garrison of 5,000 men, he found only 2,546 half-armed and poorly provided Continental troops and 900 raw militia, "many of them mere boys, and one third of the whole force unfit for duty." He noted, with serious forebodings, the unfitness of the works to resist attack, a state to which lack of workmen and the neglect of Gates had brought them. The reduction of this stronghold was indispensable to Burgoyne's progress, not only as insuring his communications with Canada, but because of the danger of leaving such a force in his rear.

In an endeavor to strengthen these fortifications, of which General St. Clair had recently taken command, the works had been too much extended, and the key-points—Mount Hope, commanding Fort Ticonderoga, and Mount Defiance, a supposed inaccessible eminence at the confluence of the waters of Lakes George and Champlain—had not been occupied; consequently, they were seized by the British and artillery was planted upon them.

St. Clair, no favorite of fortune, finding himself nearly invested on the 5th, and exposed to a plunging fire from these heights, which he could not return, wisely determined to evacuate all his works that night, under pretence of making a sortie. As soon as it was dark enough, the women and wounded, together with some ammunition and stores, were placed upon 200 bateaux, which were to be escorted to Skenesborough by five armed galleys and a guard of 600 men, all under the command of Colonel Long. In thus abandoning Ticonderoga, St. Clair justified himself, saying that "we had lost a post, but saved a province."

St. Clair, leaving his heavy artillery and many supplies behind, with the garrison of Fort Ticonderoga passed undisturbed, at midnight, over the floating bridge across the lake. On the southern side the troops from Fort Independence joined him, and all were safely escaping, when, without orders, General De Fermois's headquarters were fired, the blaze of which disclosed the retreat to the enemy. The alarm was at once given, and the deserted forts were seized by the British. General Fraser was in pursuit at daylight of the 6th, followed soon after by General Riedesel with the German grenadiers.

Meanwhile, Burgoyne and Phillips, in the fleet, broke through the boom and bridge across the lake, in chase of Colonel Long and the American flotilla, which, on the afternoon of the 7th, was overtaken and attacked at the wharves of Skenesborough. Two of the covering galleys struck their colors, and the others were blown up by their crews. The bateaux, mills, and stockade there were promptly burned, and then the detachment fled to Fort Anne, eleven miles below. Early the next morning Long sallied out and had a sharp encounter with his pursuers under Colonel Hill; but when victory was almost within his grasp, the enemy was reinforced by a number of savages sent forward by Burgoyne, who had remained at Skenesborough. Colonel Long, after burning Fort Anne, retreated sixteen miles to Fort Edward, where he met Schuyler on his way to Ticonderoga with a small reinforcement.

St. Clair, with the main body, was even less fortunate. He retreated through the wilderness to Castleton, his rear-guard of 1,200 men, under Colonel Warner, stopping over night at Hubbardton, where on the morning of the 8th it was attacked by Fraser with an inferior force. After a spirited engagement Hale's militia regiment abandoned the field, and the enemy was reinforced by the arrival of Riedesel's Brunswickers, which latter turned the American right flank and compelled their retreat to Rutland, the rendezvous appointed by St. Clair in the event of disaster. From here the remnant of St. Clair's forces, by a circuitous march of more than a hundred miles, on the 12th reached Fort Edward, where Schuyler, on the 20th, could muster only 4,467 men fit for duty. This little army was deficient in almost every requisite for battle, while Burgoyne, flushed with victory, lay within a day's forced march with his veteran army of nearly double the American force.

Schuyler was charged by Congress with "neglect of duty" in not ordering a timely retreat of the garrison from Ticonderoga, if untenable; and, if to be defended, not to have been present at the attack upon it. The court-martial, of thirteen distinguished officers, unanimously acquitted him "with the highest honor."[727]

These reverses, which closed the first act of the drama of varied events in this checkered campaign, seemed to open the way to Burgoyne's triumph, and they spread universal alarm among the patriots, who had considered Ticonderoga the closed gate to northern invasion. These disasters, however, were blessings in disguise, despite the desertion of the militia. Washington predicted ultimate success, and Schuyler was roused to great efforts to oppose the enemy's advance. Wood Creek was at once obstructed with logs and huge stones; all roads were broken up and their bridges destroyed; dry land was converted into morass, trees were felled in every direction, and the whole of this wild and savage country was stripped of cattle and supplies, for which the enemy had consequently to depend upon Canada and remoter England.

Having provided this barrier against the enemy, Schuyler, who had been joined by Arnold, fell back to Fort Miller with his artillery (brought from Fort George), where he tarried till he had ruined the road over which he passed, and thence proceeded to Stillwater to await reinforcements, making that his fortified headquarters, while his little army occupied a camp, which was intrenched on Van Schaick's Island, near the mouth of the Mohawk.

Burgoyne was so elated by his successes that he dispatched his aide-de-camp Captain Gardner to England, "with news so important to the king's service, and so honorable to the troops under his command." But while the British colors were flying over Ticonderoga, he little dreamed of the difficulties and reverses which were awaiting him. To provide garrisons for these works in his rear, to which he had sent all his surplus artillery and baggage, he was compelled "to drain the life-blood of his army", since Carleton had declined to supply the necessary troops for their defence, on the ground that his jurisdiction as governor did not extend beyond the bounds of Canada.

Burgoyne availed himself of the water transportation of Lake George for most of his artillery and stores; but, for the march of his army from Skenesborough, a trackless wilderness confronted him, through which he had to remove countless obstacles, cut a new pathway, and build no less than forty bridges, one of which, over a swamp, was two miles long. Wood Creek had also to be opened for his bateaux. In these laborious undertakings his army was exhausted with overwork, and suffered terribly with midsummer heat and innumerable insects. Consequently, with his utmost efforts, he did not reach Fort Edward till July 30th, or twenty-four days after leaving Lake Champlain, a distance of only twenty-six miles. Burgoyne remained at Fort Edward till August 15th, awaiting the transportation across the portage from Lake George of the necessary artillery, ammunition, provisions, and bateaux for his descent of the Hudson.

During this enforced delay important events were occurring elsewhere, on the Mohawk and near Bennington. General Lincoln at the same time was recruiting troops in New England, with which to attempt the recapture of Ticonderoga and cut off the British retreat to Canada.

Fort Stanwix, or Fort Schuyler as it was subsequently called, on the head-waters of the Mohawk, near the present Rome, N. Y., was built in 1758, and in April, 1777, was put under command of Colonel Gansevoort, who, with Colonel Marinus Willet, placed it in a better condition of defence. The garrison of the work was 750 Continental troops, before which St. Leger, accompanied by the loyalist Sir John Johnson, and Joseph Brant the great Mohawk chief, appeared, August 2, and the next day summoned it to surrender. Gansevoort paying no attention to this, the British colonel prepared for a regular siege, and sent out detachments to cut off all succor.

The inhabitants of Tryon County were panic-stricken, but the aged General Herkimer by great efforts collected 800 militia and marched to Oriskany, within eight miles of the fort, to which he sent a messenger with a request that upon the messenger's arrival three guns should be fired and a sortie made to facilitate the advance of the succoring party through the besiegers. The signal was delayed, and, unfortunately, Herkimer's better judgment was overruled by his younger officers, who were impatient of delay. This led to his moving forward and to his being ambushed in a valley, the head of which was held by loyalists, while Indian allies under Brant occupied the sides. Here a desperate hand-to-hand fight of five hours ensued, early in which the brave Herkimer was mortally wounded; but seated upon his saddle, and propped against a tree, he calmly continued to give his orders and animate his men with his own heroism till the end of the battle.

At length the long-expected signal guns were heard, when Colonel Willet with 250 men made a sudden dash upon a weak part of the besiegers' camp. Though he failed to reach Herkimer, he destroyed two sections of the enemy's intrenchments, and captured the British camp equipage, Sir John Johnson's papers, five flags, and some prisoners.

The Indians, who had lost many of their braves at Oriskany, hearing the sound of Willet's musketry in their rear, quickly retreated, and were soon followed by the loyalists, leaving Herkimer in possession of the field. St. Leger still continued the siege of the fort, where now floated for the first time the American flag, just adopted by Congress, made of alternate stripes of a soldier's white shirt and a camp-woman's red petticoat, the field being cut out of an old blue overcoat. Beneath this were hung the five captured British standards.

St. Leger on the 7th again demanded the surrender of the fort, threatening Indian vengeance, and falsely stating that Burgoyne was in possession of Albany. Gansevoort returned an indignant refusal to this disgraceful threat. Soon came rumors of the approach of the intrepid Arnold to raise the siege. Statements sent forward of his numbers, purposely exaggerated, caused the flight of the panic-stricken Indians, and St. Leger, August 22, abandoned his trenches, some artillery and camp equipage, and fled to Canada. The right wing of the invaders being thus paralyzed, Arnold returned in triumph to join Schuyler.

Burgoyne's difficulties increased. His Indian allies were insubordinate, and the patriots swelled the American ranks. Finding that his scanty supplies had to be replenished from his distant base in Canada, or rather from England, he decided to make a raid upon Bennington, to secure horses, cattle, and provisions from the depot there. He hoped also that this move would strike terror among the unfriendly inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants, who hung "like a gathering storm upon his left", and also would elevate the flagging spirits of his army, by a victory which he supposed would be easy. Accordingly, Lieutenant-Colonel Baum was dispatched with a select corps of 550 British, German, and loyalist troops and 150 Indians. Colonel Breyman, with 642 heavy dismounted Brunswick chasseurs, was sent on the 15th as a support. To oppose this expedition, General John Stark hastily collected 1,400 trained militia.

Though constant skirmishing took place on the 15th, a pouring rain prevented a general engagement till the next day, when the determined Yankee leader declared he would beat the invader or "before night Molly Stark would be a widow." To fulfil his pledge he seized the initiative, attacked the enemy on three sides, stormed their intrenchments on the Walloomscoick River and captured their guns, dispersed the Indians and loyalists, and went in hot pursuit of the Germans and British, when his exhausted forces were checked by Breyman's supporting detachment. Colonel Warner's excellent regiment, at once fresh and eager, arrived that afternoon and renewed the action, which was continued till dark, when Breyman, under the cover of night, made good his retreat. Baum was mortally wounded, 207 men were killed, 700 were captured, including the wounded; and 1,000 stand of small arms, all the enemy's artillery and most of their baggage fell into the hands of the Americans. Had there been another hour of daylight, none would have escaped. Stark's losses were 40 killed and 42 wounded.

This victory and the success in the Mohawk valley were as inspiriting to the American as depressing to the Anglo-German army. Burgoyne was now beset with danger on every side. Formidable obstacles accumulated in his path, famine stared him in the face; all his English flour and beef had been consumed, and the whole surrounding country was sending enthusiastic volunteers to bar his progress.

Nearly a month before, Washington had predicted that Burgoyne's successes "would precipitate his ruin", and that his "acting in detachments was the course of all others most favorable to the American cause", as cutting off any of them "would inspirit the people and do away with much of their present anxiety." The beginning of the end had already come.

The first stage in this eventful campaign was for Burgoyne a great success; the second was an equally great failure; and now the last was coming, in which the most decisive results and the highest plaudits were to be won or lost. Schuyler unquestionably would have been the hero of this final development had he not most inopportunely been replaced by Gates, a mediocre soldier. Fortunately, the latter's deficiencies were compensated by officers inferior in rank but superior in ability,—the dashing Arnold, the daring Morgan, not to name others.

Congress, in the exercise of its prerogative, made and displaced generals at its will, and too often was influenced by sectional interests and rivalries. The command of the Northern Department was especially the prize of party favorites. Wooster, Thomas, Sullivan, Schuyler, and Gates had in rapid succession followed each other, and now Schuyler, after all he had done to baffle the enemy and organize victory, was to be the victim of prejudice—of New England against New York—which dated back to colonial days. Schuyler placed little reliance upon New England troops, and their representatives in Congress had as little confidence in Schuyler's generalship.

Each misjudged the other; but the outcome of this feeling between Dutch and Puritan blood was unfortunate in superseding the soldierly Schuyler by the intriguing Gates. And it was a cruel reverse to the former, just as his skilful plans were culminating in the utter discomfiture of the enemy, and his successes at Stanwix and Bennington were bringing reinforcements from every quarter to his standard with which to take the offensive, that he should be shorn of the laurels which were about to crown him as the brilliant leader in this most important campaign of the Revolution. If Schuyler had been left in command, probably all the after-complications connected with Burgoyne's surrender would have been avoided.

The resolution of Congress superseding Schuyler reached him on the 10th of August. The noble patriot responded to this ungenerous censure by renewed efforts for his army till Gates's arrival on the 19th, and then he extended to his unworthy successor the courtesy of a true gentleman, for with him the country's welfare was paramount to all personal wrongs.

Gates, clothed with plenary powers and granted by Congress almost everything denied to Schuyler, moved, after a delay of three weeks, with his army, 6,000 strong, from the mouth of the Mohawk to Bemis's Heights, a commanding position on the west bank of the Hudson, which was selected by Arnold and fortified by the engineer Kosciusko. The principal hill was occupied on three sides by extensive intrenchments and redoubts with an abatis. A line of breastworks on the east extended from the hill to the Hudson, to guard a floating bridge across the river and to sweep the plain in front; and on the west was a lower hill which was only partially fortified. The whole position was covered by a ravine in front, through which flowed a branch of Mill Creek.

Gates took personal command of the right wing of the army, occupying the intrenchments between the Hudson and the heights to the west; Learned held the centre; while Arnold had charge of the left wing, comprising Morgan's riflemen, some Continental troops, and a body of militia.

To coöperate in checking the advance of the enemy, General Lincoln with 2,000 militia was sent to threaten Burgoyne's communications. Colonel Brown with 500 of Lincoln's force, on September 18th, surprised the outposts and key-points of Ticonderoga, destroyed over two hundred bateaux and gunboats, captured 293 prisoners and 5 cannon, released 100 Americans, and brought away the Continental standard left flying over the fort when abandoned by St. Clair.

Burgoyne was greatly perplexed. To retreat was to acknowledge his weakness, and to advance was possibly to sacrifice his army and lose his coveted peerage. Under these circumstances he stood still, hoping his recent defeats would soon be forgotten, and he should be strengthened for the future.

Having finally received from Lake George his artillery, military stores, and thirty days' provisions, Burgoyne crossed to the west bank of the Hudson; September 13th-14th, he moved with his army to Saratoga; on the 15th-16th he tarried at Dovegot (near Coveville) to reconnoitre, repair bridges, and open roads over this rugged country; on the 17th he marched to Sword's Farm; on the 18th he advanced to Wilbur's Basin, within two miles of the American position, having constantly to skirmish with Arnold; and on the morning of the 19th he was engaged in reconnoitring and making preparations to attack Gates, if deemed expedient.

A table-land, intersected with ravines through which flowed Mill Creek and its branches, separated the two armies. Except a narrow cultivated strip, adjoining the Hudson, the ground was covered in great part by a dense forest. The river formed its eastern boundary, and on the north, west, and south sides were wooded heights, separated from each other by valleys.

While the Americans occupied the south heights, the Anglo-German army made ready to take possession of those on the north, and then to turn the western hills, thus to get in rear of the American left by a flank movement of their right, while their centre attacked in front and was supported by their left.

About eleven o'clock on the morning of the 19th, Burgoyne's army advanced in three columns. He, in person, in command of the centre column, moved towards Freeman's Farm, opposite to the American left; Riedesel and Phillips with a large train of artillery, forming the left column, followed the river road, and, after the attack had begun, turned westward to support and prolong the line of battle of the deployed centre; while, by a circuitous march, Fraser, with Breyman's German riflemen, having his flanks covered by Canadians, loyalists, and Indians, moved with the right column, taking post westward of the centre, thus greatly overlapping the American left, which it was designed to turn and rout.

Gates, called by Burgoyne "an old midwife", impassively looked on, giving no orders and evincing no desire to fight, while the impatient Arnold, foreseeing the enemy's movement to turn his left, sent Morgan's riflemen and some of Dearborn's light infantry to check it. They rushed upon the enemy, and dispersed the Canadians and Indians; but following up their success too eagerly, they soon encountered the British line of battle, and were overpowered by superior numbers. This being reported to Gates, the Continental troops were sent to support Morgan, but the entire force proved insufficient to cope with and counteract Fraser's movement. Arnold, undismayed, then changed his direction, and fell suddenly upon the enemy's centre with a view of separating Burgoyne from Fraser. The battle was waged with great fury by both antagonists, and as each received reinforcements the conflict deepened, and, with varying success, became more and more stubborn. Burgoyne finally escaped defeat by the timely coming up of Riedesel with Pausch's artillery. After this death-struggle of four hours' duration, darkness terminated the contest. The Americans fell back in good order to their intrenchments, while the Anglo-German army, lying on their arms, retained the barren field of their foiled efforts to advance. Though both sides claimed the victory, neither had triumphed at "Freeman's Farm." It was in reality a drawn battle. The forces engaged in the conflict were nearly equal, the Americans having about 3,000 and the enemy nearly 3,500 of their best troops. The loss of the former was 65 killed, 218 wounded, and 38 missing; while that of the latter, according to their own authorities, was about 600 killed and wounded. British bayonets and abundant artillery were fully matched by American rifles, without a single piece of ordnance. Had Arnold been properly reinforced by Gates, he might have broken the enemy's line and have gained a complete victory.

Gates's army was confident and jubilant as to the issue of the campaign, Burgoyne's anxious and despondent; while both generals strengthened their positions, and their camps resounded with "dreadful note of preparation" for a coming conflict.

The quarrel which had been brewing between Gates and Arnold, growing out of former jealousy and the supersedure of Schuyler, ripened into open hostility. The crisis of the feud came when Gates failed in his official report to make any mention of Arnold's personal participation in the battle of Freeman's Farm. Thereupon a violent altercation ensued, resulting in Arnold being relieved of his command and excluded from headquarters.

Though unemployed, he continued with the army, the officers of his division begging him not to leave them, as another battle was impending.

The two armies confronted each other within cannon-shot, and scarcely a night passed without some contest between pickets or foraging parties. Burgoyne, anxiously awaiting news of Sir Henry Clinton's coöperation from New York, tenaciously held his ground, though living upon half rations. Gates in the mean time supinely rested in his camp, awaiting the day when the ripened fruit of Schuyler's skill, in retarding the enemy's march and cutting off his detachments, should fall at his feet, and Burgoyne be compelled to starve or pass under the Caudine Forks.

Sir Henry Clinton, having been reinforced from England, left New York, October 3, with a large fleet and 3,000 troops, to effect the long-expected junction with Burgoyne. On the 5th he reached Verplanck's Point, on the Hudson River, from which he made a feint upon Peekskill. Having by this ruse deceived the aged Putnam, in command of the Hudson Highlands, Clinton crossed with his main body on the 6th to King's Ferry, and, by following a circuitous route around the Dunderberg Mountain, the British general in the afternoon carried by assault the feebly garrisoned but bravely defended Forts Montgomery and Clinton. The enemy's fleet then destroyed the boom and chain across the river, forced the Americans to burn two frigates, which could not escape, and ended their excursion up the Hudson at Esopus (now Kingston) by laying it in ashes and returning to New York, it being too late to save Burgoyne.

The American army, after the battle of Freeman's Farm, was daily growing stronger in men and fortifications, while the Anglo-German force was constantly becoming weaker and worn out by watching and incessant alarms. Burgoyne's situation was critical, for he could neither advance nor retreat with safety, and to stand still was to starve. Already the loyalists and Canadians were deserting in numbers, and his Indians, having little opportunity for plundering and scalping, were abandoning him altogether.

Receiving no tidings from Sir Henry Clinton, Burgoyne determined to make an armed reconnoissance of the American left on the 7th of October, and attack the next day, should there be a reasonable prospect of success; if not, to fall back on the 11th behind the Batten-Kill.

Accordingly, leaving proper guards for his camp, Burgoyne in person, at ten A. M. of the 7th, with 1,500 choice troops and ten pieces of artillery, moved out for the contemplated reconnoissance, which was at the same time to cover a foraging party to gather wheat for the pressing necessities of his army. His troops were formed in three columns, and when within three quarters of a mile of the American left were deployed in line of battle upon open ground behind a screen of dense forest. Fraser, with 500 picked men, formed the right, ready to fall upon Gates's left; Riedesel, with his Brunswickers, held the centre; Phillips was in charge of the British left; while the Indians, rangers, and provincials were to work their way through the woods to gain the left and rear of the American camp, in which Lincoln then commanded the right, and Gates had taken Arnold's place on the left.

So soon as the enemy moved and the foragers were at work, Gates ordered out Morgan. Divining Burgoyne's intention, Morgan was to seize the high ground on the enemy's right by making a wide sweep; Learned was to hold the German centre in check; and Poor, with his brigade of Continentals and some militia, concealed by the woods, was to assail the British left. Poor, supported by Learned, opened the battle at half past two with great fury against Major Acland's grenadiers, and extended his blows to Riedesel's centre; Morgan and Dearborn almost simultaneously fell like a thunderbolt upon the enemy's right.

Burgoyne, seeing the danger of Fraser's right being turned, ordered him to fall back to a new position, in doing which Fraser was mortally wounded by one of Morgan's sharpshooters. In the mean time, Poor was playing wild havoc with Acland's grenadiers, captured Phillips's artillery after killing nearly all of its gunners, and then turned their own pieces upon the British, putting the entire left of their army to flight.

The Germans still firmly held their ground in the centre, when Arnold, maddened by his wrongs, dashed wildly into the thickest of the fight, without authority assumed command of his old division, with audacity and judgment led regiment after regiment to the attack at different points, roused his troops to the highest enthusiasm, and forced back by his impetuous assaults the already shattered British line, which Burgoyne then courageously led in person. But all of the British commander's determination was of little avail, his entire forces being driven back into their intrenched camp. Here the wreck of the Anglo-German army made a firm stand; but Arnold still sought new dangers. With desperation he and his fearless followers mounted embankments and abatis to assail Balcarras, then dashed upon the strong works of the German camp, and ceased not his furious onsets till the whole of the enemy's fortified position lay open, when night closed the scene.

The American army in this decisive battle lost 50 killed and 150 wounded, including among the latter the dauntless Arnold. The enemy, besides nine guns, a large supply of ammunition, and much baggage, lost 176 killed, about 250 wounded, and some 200 prisoners. Among those who lost their lives were the gallant Fraser and the sturdy Breyman, and included in the wounded were several British officers of high rank.

Burgoyne, signally defeated and exposed to a new attack by double his fighting force, prudently retreated, on the stormy night of the 8th, to Saratoga, leaving behind his sick, wounded, and everything he could possibly spare. General Fraser was buried, as he had requested, in a large redoubt near the Hudson, the guns fired over his grave being the American artillery aimed at the group of distinguished mourners before knowing the occasion of their assembling.

Gates, who had not been personally engaged in either battle of his army, remained two days with his main body in the abandoned camp of the enemy at Wilbur's Basin, he judiciously having sent detachments to take advantageous positions to hem in Burgoyne. On the 11th, Gates ordered his main body to cross the Fishkill, supposing Burgoyne had further retreated; but his advanced guard of 1,500 men under Nixon quickly withdrew, having discovered the enemy intrenched and in battle array on the other side of the stream.

Burgoyne, now finding himself exposed to the concentric fire of the Americans, who nearly surrounded him, and having no opening through which to retreat to Lake George or to Lake Champlain, called a council of war to deliberate upon his desperate situation. "By their unanimous concurrence and advice", says he, "I was induced to open a treaty with Major-General Gates." At ten A. M. of the 14th, a flag of truce was sent by Burgoyne, asking for a parley, during which Gates demanded an unconditional surrender of the enemy's troops as prisoners of war. This proposition Burgoyne peremptorily refused to entertain. Hostilities in the mean time were suspended, and modified proposals were made. After two days' delay, Gates, hearing of Sir Henry Clinton's advance up the Hudson, and fearing that he might reach Albany, agreed upon the terms, dictated by Burgoyne, as follows:—

The Anglo-German troops to march out of their camp with all the honors of war, and their artillery to be moved to the bank of the Hudson River, and there left, together with the soldiers' arms, which were to be piled at the word of command from their own officers. It was further agreed that a free passage to Great Britain should be granted to the troops on condition of their not serving again in the present contest; that all officers should retain their baggage and side-arms, and not be separated from their men; and that all, of whatever country they might be, following the camp, should be included in the terms of capitulation. Before signing the treaty, Burgoyne demurred to designate it as a capitulation, whereupon Gates readily consented to its being called a Treaty of Convention, and as such it was signed October 16, 1777.

Burgoyne in a rich uniform, accompanied by his brilliant staff and general officers, rode, on October 17, to the headquarters of General Gates, who was simply attired in a plain blue coat. Reining up their horses, Burgoyne gracefully raising his cocked hat, said, "The fortune of war, General Gates, has made me your prisoner;" to which the victor, gracefully returning the salute, replied, "I shall always be ready to bear testimony that it has not been through any fault of your excellency."

On the site of old Fort Hardy the Anglo-German army, October 17, grounded their arms at the command of their own officers, none of the American troops being present to witness this humiliation of the enemy. In the afternoon the captured troops crossed the Hudson, and, escorted by a company of light dragoons, were marched between the parallel lines of American soldiers, preceded by two officers, unfurling "the stars and stripes" just adopted by Congress. While this ceremony took place in the presence of Burgoyne and Gates, the former drew his sword and presented it to the latter, which being received was courteously returned, when both generals retired into Gates's tent.[728]

While the prisoners, under guard of General Heath, were marching to Boston, Gates hurried to Albany to oppose any movement of Sir Henry Clinton; and Major Wilkinson was sent to Congress to communicate the joyful tidings of Burgoyne's surrender. Rejoicings were heard throughout the United States, and the successful general was so elated and his vanity so stimulated that he aspired to supplant Washington, as he had Schuyler.

A few criticisms upon the plan of the campaign of 1777, and the mode of conducting it, may be permitted. The British cabinet wisely decided upon the seizure of the Hudson as the most efficient way of breaking the power of the revolted colonies; but, in carrying out its design, it violated a fundamental maxim of war. No principle of strategy is better established than the superiority of interior as against exterior lines of operation of armies, as was so admirably illustrated in the "Seven Years' War." Frederic the Great, without any frontier barriers and open to attack on all sides, from his central position kept at bay France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and the Germanic body, whose united population was over twenty times as great as that of Prussia, including Silesia, a recently conquered province. In like manner, the Americans, in July, 1777, were within a great circle,—Schuyler on the upper Hudson, Putnam at the Highlands, and Washington in New Jersey, within supporting distance of each other; while the British armies were widely separated upon its vast circumference,—St. Leger moving to the upper Mohawk, Burgoyne from Canada, Clinton at New York, and Howe sailing to the Chesapeake.

In the struggle for the Hudson, the two independent British armies—one in Canada and the other in New York—were expected to coöperate in order to attain a common object, while Burgoyne with the one was tied down by fixed orders, and Clinton with the other had no instructions as to the part he was expected to perform. Besides, their bases were separated by about four hundred miles of wild, hostile, and thinly populated country, rendering intercommunication so difficult that, of ten messengers sent out by different routes to Howe, not one returned to Burgoyne.

No precaution was taken to provide for the losses of Burgoyne's army, nor to supply the necessary drafts upon it to garrison the posts in his rear, guarding his communications with Canada. When he gained possession of Ticonderoga, he called upon Sir Guy Carleton to furnish the necessary force to hold the place; but Carleton did not feel justified, under his precise orders, to send troops beyond his jurisdiction. Consequently, Burgoyne "drained the life-blood of his force" in the field to provide for the defence of this and other works left behind.

Burgoyne's logistics, or means of supplying and moving his army, were very defective. Not till June 7, 1777, a month after his arrival in Canada, did he make provision for the transportation of either stores or artillery, and then his arrangements were so entirely inadequate that they seemed based upon the assumption that his adversary was his inferior in all military qualities. Hence, he decided "to trust to the resources of the expedition for the rest", while for his own personal baggage he used no less than "thirty carts." Most of his provisions had to be brought from England, a distance of 3,600 miles; some from Canada; and for the rest he relied upon the meagre resources of the hostile country he was to traverse. Consequently his army was often on reduced rations, sometimes nearly starving, and finally, to secure its existence, he undertook his disastrous raid upon Bennington.

After the pursuit of St. Clair, Burgoyne should have returned with his army to Ticonderoga, and taken the water route by Lake George, instead of forcing his way through an obstructed wilderness to Fort Edward, which he did not reach till July 30th, nor leave till August 14th. Had Schuyler directed Burgoyne's operations he could not have planned measures more conducive to his own advantage. On the Lake George route were only two small armed schooners to oppose any resistance, and from the head of the lake was a direct road to Albany, which had been followed by Abercrombie and Amherst. As it was, Burgoyne was compelled to send his supplies and artillery by the lake, and then carry them over the portage to Fort Edward, which consumed more time than would have been necessary to move in light marching order direct to Albany. General De Peyster, a careful student of this campaign, says: "Burgoyne could have been reassembled at 'Old Ty' by the 10th July; could have been transported to Fort George by the 12th; and, having left his heavy guns and all but his light artillery and indispensable materials there or at Ty, in depot, with a sufficient guard, could have reached Fort Edward on the evening of the 13th July. From this point to Albany is about fifty miles. With six or ten days' rations and an extra supply of ammunition sufficient for a battle of that period, Burgoyne could have swept Schuyler out of his path with ease, and, allowing one day's delay for a fight, could have occupied Albany on the 16th July." But the British commander had proclaimed, "This army must not retreat." Though he subsequently tried to palliate his mistake, all his correspondence shows that pride in carrying out his declaration, not military principles, made him persevere in the false movement which lost him the campaign, and secured in the end American independence.

Burgoyne, after his brilliant success at the opening of the campaign, suddenly relapsed into the sluggishness of his German allies. Instead of rapidly pursuing his demoralized foe, he tarried at Skenesborough till his pathway was thoroughly obstructed and the fugitives had recovered from their panic. After he had lost his prestige and the Americans had gained confidence by success at Stanwix and Bennington, he attempted with diminished forces to cope with the growing strength of his opponent. Thus, by delay, he lost in September what he might have achieved in July. From his arrival at Skenesborough till he had reached his southernmost point at Freeman's Farm, he moved only fifty miles in seventy-four days.

Slow in all his movements, Burgoyne's tardiness was increased by his large and superfluous train of artillery which accompanied all his toilsome marches. Even when he required the greatest celerity, he chose for his raid upon Bennington, not the nimble-footed light infantry under the dashing Fraser, but cumbrous dismounted German dragoons moving only a mile and a third an hour.

Burgoyne was not only slow, but he was irresolute. After his disastrous defeat at Bemis's Heights he lost five precious days in fatal indecision while retreat was possible. On October 12th his last chance had passed, he then being completely invested by the Americans, and nothing was left to him but surrender. According to Madame Riedesel, he had given in this crisis of his fate more attention to his mistress than to his army. Aspasia had triumphed over Mars.

While Burgoyne committed many blunders, his opponents had their shortcomings also. The fortifications of Ticonderoga, after falling into the hands of the Americans, were too much extended for their defence by a moderate garrison; but the most fatal error was the failure to occupy Mount Defiance, which completely commanded all the American works, and, when seized by the British, left St. Clair no alternative but hasty retreat and the abandonment of much artillery and considerable supplies. The fugitives then counted largely on the delay of their pursuers, who followed them with celerity, severely punishing them at Skenesborough and Hubbardton.

Congress committed the most criminal error, outweighing all others, in substituting, at the most critical moment of the campaign, a military charlatan for an accomplished soldier,—in supplanting Schuyler, who was the organizer of the victories, by Gates, who "had no fitness for command and wanted personal courage." To say nothing of the difference in merit of the two commanders, the time for making the change was most inopportune.

Putnam, a brave officer but no general, managed things so badly in the Highlands that Forts Montgomery and Clinton were lost, and the Hudson was opened to the enemy whenever he chose to advance.[729]

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE titles alone of the numerous works which have been consulted in the preparation of the foregoing narratives would fill many of these pages. Therefore, to avoid repetition, as most of them are common to all the chapters of this History of the American Revolution, reference will be made only to those authorities which have a bearing upon disputed points, or to newly discovered facts respecting the "Struggle for the Hudson."

Of the many authors who have written of the New York campaign of 1776, nearly all have followed the narrations given in Sparks's Washington and in the official despatches of the various officers engaged. For topographical details we have relied upon Des Barres' Atlantic Neptune (1780-81), with its plans of battles, sieges, etc., and maps of the seat of war, and upon the recent Coast Survey charts. Local historians have supplied many minor particulars, which need not be enumerated, except, perhaps, the one relating to the treason of William Demont, already referred to in the text. Much new light has been thrown upon the Burgoyne campaign by works published within the last few years.[730]

One of the most earnestly disputed points of Burgoyne's campaign is whether Arnold was personally engaged with the enemy at the battle of Freeman's Farm, on Sept. 19, 1777. Some authorities, notably Bancroft, while admitting that Arnold's troops were in the thickest of the fray, deny that the general himself was on the battlefield; while Stedman, Irving, Stone, and many others, equally competent to weigh the facts, maintain that Arnold was the conquering hero of the fight, and that, but for him, Burgoyne would have marched straight on to Albany.

Just after Gates had superseded Schuyler in the command of the Northern army, Arnold had returned from the Mohawk valley flushed with success and impatient to win new laurels. He was incessantly engaged in skirmishing with the enemy and adding to his reputation as a brilliant, dashing officer. Gates was envious of Arnold's growing fame, and resentful of his partiality for Schuyler. Hence arose a coolness towards Arnold, which rapidly ripened into bitter hostility. That the action of Freeman's Farm, a five hours' battle, full of skilful movements, was purely a series of chance operations without a guiding spirit, is utterly preposterous. As Gates was not engaged, whose was the directing mind but Arnold's, the second in command?

It seems impossible that one devoid of fear, brave even to rashness, who even courted danger at the risk of death, and one too who was filled with ambition and love of military glory, could possibly have allowed his command to go into action without leading its movements and sharing its perils. His subsequent heroism amid the carnage of battle at Bemis's Heights would seem a sufficient refutation of the charge that he who was always in the thickest of the fight was only a looker-on while the conflict of September 19th was raging around Freeman's Farm.

Gates, in his official report of the battle of Freeman's Farm, makes no mention of Arnold being engaged; and his adjutant-general, Wilkinson, in his Memoirs, written long after Arnold's good name had been blasted by his treason, says: "Not a single general officer was on the field of battle on the 19th of September, until evening, when General Learned was ordered out."

Under ordinary circumstances, the testimony of the commander-in-chief and his adjutant-general would be considered conclusive; but it must be borne in mind that both of these officers were inimical to Arnold, that neither was personally engaged in the battle, and that the wooded character of the ground precluded either from following any one's movements through the conflict.

On the other side, we have the contemporary testimony of officers present on the battlefield, newspaper accounts of the time, and Arnold's own division order of the day after the battle, in which he speaks of the zeal and spirit of the company officers engaged, in a manner which none but a close observer could notice. Besides, we have the direct evidence of two of Arnold's staff officers—Colonels Livingston and Varick—that their chief was the hero of the battle of Freeman's Farm; the former warmly lauding "his conduct during the late action", and declaring that "to him alone is due the honor of our late victory." Even the enemy's chief, Burgoyne, said in the British House of Commons: "Mr. Gates had determined to receive the attack in his lines. Mr. Arnold, who commanded on the left, foreseeing the danger of being turned, advanced without consultation with his general, and gave instead of receiving battle."

Another much-disputed point is whether to Schuyler or Gates is chiefly due the triumph of our arms in the Burgoyne campaign. Bancroft, in his History of the United States (vol. ix. ch. 21, orig. ed.), states that Schuyler lacked military talents, failed to harry the advance of Burgoyne, wanted personal courage, and had no influence with the people. All these charges have been triumphantly refuted by his grandson and by his biographer.[731]

General Schuyler's zeal, energy, ability, and sterling virtues have been so fully set forth in the preceding narrative of the Burgoyne campaign that any amplification here is needless; but it may be proper to add the testimony of some of our most distinguished countrymen as to the merits of this true gentleman, noble soldier, and patriotic Fabian hero. Chief Justice Marshall says: "In this gloomy state of things no officer could have exerted more diligence and skill than Schuyler." Chancellor Kent writes: "In acuteness of intellect, profound thought, indefatigable activity, exhaustless energy, pure patriotism, and persevering and intrepid public efforts, Schuyler had no superior." Daniel Webster said: "I consider Schuyler as second only to Washington in the services he rendered to the country in the war of the Revolution. His zeal and devotion to the cause under difficulties which would have paralyzed the efforts of most men, and his fortitude and courage when assailed by malicious attacks upon his public and private character, every one of which was proved to be false, have impressed me with a strong desire to express publicly my sense of his great qualities."

Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson, and most of the great men of the Revolution had unbounded confidence in Schuyler; and modern historians, such as Irving, Sparks, Lossing, and others, bear like testimony to his virtues and services. Even Congress, which had so unjustly removed Schuyler from his command, when convinced of its error, would not consent to his resignation from the army till he persistently demanded it. Though Schuyler's military career did not sparkle with "feats of broil and battle", he exhibited those great qualities which are as conducive to the success of war as "the magnificently stern array" of arms in the heady fight. He was ready in expedients to foil the enemy, skilful and persevering in executing them, and resolute and untiring till his end was obtained. Never discouraged by disaster, and stimulated to higher effort as fortune frowned, he continued sanguine of success in the darkest hour of adversity. Every assault upon his reputation fell harmless before his invulnerable patriotism; no injustice could swerve him from the path of honor; and to him, as to all true men, the meaning of life was concentrated in the single word Duty.

NOTE BY GENERAL CULLUM.

Disposal of the Convention Troops.[732]—In accordance with Article IV. of the convention, the captured army was marched, under guard of General Glover, to the neighborhood of Boston, where it arrived about Nov. 6th. The British troops were barracked on Prospect Hill and the German troops on Winter Hill, the officers being quartered in Cambridge and the neighboring towns. Much complaint was made of the character and insufficiency of their accommodations, but considering the limited supply of houses at the disposal of General Heath, commanding the Eastern department, he did the best in his power, without the aid of the State of Massachusetts, to whose Council he appealed for the use of "at least one of the colleges" for their comfort. At the worst, however, these captives fared far better than our own troops at Valley Forge during that winter.[733]

Under Article V. supplies were to be furnished to Burgoyne's army "at the same rates." This was interpreted by Congress, Dec. 19th, to mean "that the accounts of all provisions and other necessaries which already have been or which hereafter may be supplied by the public to prisoners in the power of these States shall be discharged by either receiving from the British Commissary of Prisoners, or any of his agents, provisions or other necessaries, equal in quality and kind to what had been supplied, or the amount thereof in gold or silver."

Exacting provisions in kind, though inconvenient to the British commissary, was not unreasonable, considering their scarcity; but the condition that expenditures made in depreciated Continental money should be liquidated, dollar for dollar, in gold and silver, was a hard one. As a justification for this latter requirement, it was stated by Congress "that General Howe had required that provisions should be sent in for the subsistence of the American prisoners in his possession, and that for the purchase of such necessaries he had forbidden the circulation of the currency of the States within such parts as are subject to his power."

By Article II. General Howe was authorized to send transports to Boston to receive the troops for their conveyance to England. For its failure to carry out the obligation imposed upon it by its own general, the American government, through Congress, justified itself by claiming that Burgoyne had already evaded the provisions of Article I. of the convention. Bancroft, in his History of the United States, contends that it had been broken by Burgoyne at the time of the surrender, by the concealment of the military chest and other public property, of which the United States were thus defrauded.[734] He therefore sustains Congress in its subsequent demand for the descriptive lists "of all persons comprehended in the surrender", and the postponing of the embarkation of Burgoyne's army "until his capitulation should be expressly confirmed by Great Britain."

On the other side are many high authorities, among whom is Dr. Charles Deane, who, Oct. 22, 1877, made an exhaustive report upon the subject of the Convention of Saratoga to the American Antiquarian Society. He contends that the acts of Congress "were not marked by the highest exhibition of good policy or of good faith."[735]

Fair inferences, from the facts in evidence, lead to the belief that neither party was scrupulous in carrying out its obligations. Burgoyne, after a preliminary agreement to the terms of the convention, was in favor of breaking the treaty, because, before affixing his signature to it, he had heard of the success of Sir Henry Clinton in the Hudson Highlands. He was willing, therefore, to barter his plighted promise to further his own interest, and actually submitted to a council of his officers "whether it was consistent with public faith, and if so, expedient, to suspend the execution of the treaty, and trust to events." To the honor of the officers of the Anglo-German army, a decided majority of the council overruled the wishes of the general-in-chief, whereupon Burgoyne, Oct. 17, signed the convention.

Its second article stipulated that "a free passage be granted to the army, under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, to Great Britain, on condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest." It seems almost incredible that even Gates could have been guilty of such fatuity in sacrificing by this article all the fruits of the past campaign, and jeoparding American independence. It would have been better to have disarmed and disbanded these demoralized troops on the spot. He could thus have saved the country much anxiety, inconvenience, and expense, in guarding, housing, and caring for them till rested from their fatigues and embarked for England, where they could be exchanged for an army of fresh troops, which might cross the ocean in the spring to plague the inventors of such a stupid compact, or convention.

Burgoyne was not slow to avail himself of a literal interpretation of words he had designedly used in drawing up the convention, for we find him, only three days after the surrender, writing to his friend, Colonel Phillopson: "I dictated terms of convention which save the army to the State for the next campaign."

Was it in the same spirit that Burgoyne carried out the first article of the convention, by which his "arms and artillery" were to be left piled on the banks of the Hudson? By a literal interpretation this might mean only muskets and cannon, but certainly such would not be the accepted military meaning of that article, especially as it had to be construed in connection with the sixth article, permitting all officers "to retain their carriages, bat-horses, and other cattle, and no baggage to be molested or searched; Lieutenant-General Burgoyne giving his honor that there are no public stores secreted therein." But, notwithstanding all this, Madame Riedesel, the wife of General Riedesel, says in her journal: "Now I was forced to consider how I should safely carry the colors of our German regiments still further, as we had made the Americans at Saratoga believe that they were burnt up—a circumstance which they at first took in bad part, though afterwards they tacitly overlooked it. But it was only the staves that had been burned, the colors having been thus far concealed. Now my husband confided to me his secret, and entrusted me with their still further concealment. I therefore shut myself in with a right honorable tailor, who helped me make a mattress in which we sewed every one of them. Captain O'Connell, under pretence of some errand, was dispatched to New York and passed the mattress off as his bed. He sent it to Halifax, where we again found it on our passage from New York to Canada, and where—in order to ward off all suspicion in case our ship should be taken—I transferred it into my cabin, and slept during the whole of the remaining voyage to Canada upon those honorable badges." She truly called them "honorable badges", for to an army they are the insignia of nationality and emblems of power, under which the soldier ventures his life and reputation.

How was it with the British flags? Burgoyne stated that they were all left in Canada. But it happens that one of them was displayed at Ticonderoga upon the evacuation of that place by St. Clair; and five of them were captured at Fort Stanwix from St. Leger, whose detachment accompanied Burgoyne till just before leaving Canada upon his great campaign. Further, it is written in the Historical Record of the Ninth Regiment that Lieutenant-Colonel Hill, of that regiment, "being anxious to preserve the colors, took them off the staves and concealed them in his baggage, which he was permitted to retain." Subsequently these colors, hidden among his baggage, in which Burgoyne had given his honor that no public property was secreted, Colonel Hill presented "to George III., who rewarded his faithful services with the appointment of aide-de-camp to his Majesty, and the rank of Colonel in the army."

As Burgoyne was by Article I. allowed to march to the ground of surrender "with the honors of war", General Horatio Rogers, with the sentiment of a true soldier, says in one of his admirable annotations of Hadden's Journal: "Had Burgoyne's officers believed that their colors were not embraced in the terms of the convention, they would have flung them to the breeze and proudly marched out under them, as an indication of how much of their honor they had preserved, especially when they supposed they were about to embark for England; for soldiers lay down their lives for their flags, the loss, surrender, or concealment of which, save in rare instances, is synonymous with defeat and humiliation."[736]

Though it appears that all of the accoutrements and other public property of the Anglo-German army were not surrendered and a considerable part was found unserviceable, it is unnecessary to make a special point of this minor matter, after presenting the graver delinquencies on Burgoyne's part.

General Halleck, one of the best authorities on the Laws of War, in his work on International Law, says: "The general phrase, 'with all the honors of war,' is usually construed to include the right to march with colors displayed, drums beating, etc.... A capitulation includes all property in the place not expressly excepted, and a commander who destroys military stores or other property after entering into such agreement not only forfeits all its benefits, but he subjects himself to severe punishment for his perfidy. So, after a capitulation for the surrender of an army in the field, any officer who destroys his side arms or his insignia of rank deprives himself of all the privileges of that rank, and may be treated as a private soldier. The reason of the rule is manifest. The victor is entitled to all the honors and benefits of his agreement the moment it is entered into, and to destroy colors, arms, etc. thereafter is to deprive him of his just rights. Such conduct is both dishonorable and criminal."

Whether the shortcomings of the British general-in-chief were known to Washington cannot be determined, but the latter's correspondence clearly indicates what he believed would be the action of George III. upon the arrival of the convention troops in Great Britain. Hence he writes, November 13, to General Heath: "Policy and a regard to our own interest are strongly opposed to our adopting or pursuing any measures to facilitate their embarkation and passage home, which are not required of us by the capitulation."[737] Congress, December 17, concurred in these views, and consequently refused Burgoyne's application for his army to embark from Newport or some port on Long Island Sound, to avoid the long and dangerous winter passage around Cape Cod of the British transports which were to receive the troops.

In this, as in all matters involving the success of the Revolution, Washington was not only patriotic, but morally right. We had committed a blunder at Saratoga, but there was no reason why we should increase the mischievous effect of it by expediting the enemy's movements from Boston, and thus add to the danger of our destruction by enabling him to replace Burgoyne's troops in America by others they might relieve elsewhere, in time for the next year's campaign.

Congress had, November 8th, instructed General Heath to require descriptive lists of all the convention troops, to secure us against their reappearing in arms against us during the war. This Burgoyne resented as impeaching the honor of his nation, but he subsequently complied with a measure so essential to our protection.

In Burgoyne's complaint of November 14th regarding the quarters for his officers and men, he inadvertently said, "The public faith is broke", which unguarded expression was at once seized upon by Congress; when a committee, of which Francis Lightfoot Lee was chairman, submitted its report, upon which Congress, then composed "of but a few members, and all of them not the most suitable for the station", adopted, January 8, 1778, the following resolutions:—

"Resolved, that as many of the cartouch-boxes and several other articles of military accoutrements annexed to the persons of the non-commissioned officers and soldiers included in the Convention of Saratoga have not been delivered up, the Convention, on the part of the British army, has not been strictly complied with.

"Resolved, that the refusal of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne to give descriptive lists of the non-commissioned officers and privates belonging to his army, subsequent to his declaration that the public faith was broke, is considered by Congress in an alarming point of view; since a compliance with the resolution of Congress could only have been prejudicial to that army in case of an infraction of the convention on their part.

"Resolved, that the charge made by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, in his letter to Major-General Gates of the 14th of November, of a breach of the public faith on the part of these States, is not warranted by the just construction of any article of the Convention of Saratoga; that it is a strong indication of his intention, and affords just ground of fear that he will avail himself of such pretended breach of the convention, in order to disengage himself and the army under him of the obligation they are under to these United States; and that the security which these States have had in his personal honor is thereby destroyed.

"Resolved, therefore, that the embarkation of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and the troops under his command be suspended till a distinct and explicit ratification of the Convention of Saratoga shall be properly notified by the court of Great Britain to Congress."[738]

Delays followed these resolutions, and finally, February 3, 1778, General Heath was instructed that the embarkation of the troops was to be indefinitely postponed, the transports upon their arrival to be ordered away from the port of Boston, and the guard over the prisoners to be strengthened. General Burgoyne, of course, was indignant, and offered that, "should any doubt still subsist that the idea of being released from the engagement of the convention has been adopted by any part of the troops", he would give a further pledge of the faith of every officer in his command, "provided the suspension is immediately broken off." This frank offer was referred to a committee, which reported that in their opinion it contained nothing "sufficient to induce Congress to recede from their resolution of the 8th of January;" and the report was agreed to March 2, 1778.

This disingenuous resolution of Congress, "that the embarkation be suspended" until the happening of some further contingent event, was returning the poisoned chalice to Burgoyne's lips, being exactly in keeping with his proposition submitted, October 15, 1777, to a council of his officers, "whether it was consistent with public faith, and if so, expedient, to suspend the execution of the treaty and trust to events."

Notwithstanding many members had no confidence in the political integrity of Great Britain,[739] such holding of the convention troops as prisoners of war, contrary to the principles of international law, certainly placed Congress in a most unfavorable light. Even so distinguished a member as Richard Henry Lee, writing to Washington, says: "It is unfortunately too true that our enemies pay little regard to good faith, or any obligations of justice and humanity which render the Convention of Saratoga a matter of great moment; and it is also, as you justly observe, an affair of infinite delicacy. The undoubted advantage they will take even of the appearance of infraction on our part, and the American character, which is concerned in preserving its faith inviolate, cover this affair with difficulties, and prove the disadvantage we are under in conducting war against an old, corrupt, and powerful people, who, having much credit and influence in the world, will venture on things that would totally ruin the reputation of young and rising communities like ours." We would further remark that the moral standard of even the most civilized nations was not then as high as in this more advanced age, and that upon the construction of this convention hung the independence of the United States. Napier said of the Convention of Cintra in 1808: "A convention implies some weakness, and must be weighed in the scales of prudence, not those of justice."

General Burgoyne and his staff were allowed by Congress to return to England on parole. Soon after their departure the British troops were removed to Rutland, Mass., because of fears of their being rescued by the British forces then at Newport, R. I. Congress finally directed that the Convention troops, in order to be more easily subsisted, should be removed to Charlottesville, Virginia,[740] where they arrived in January, 1779, and they were detained in the United States till the conclusion of peace with Great Britain. Most of the officers had in the mean time been exchanged.

Dr. Deane, in concluding his investigation of this subject, says: "There can be no doubt that the supreme authority in the State would always have the right, as it has the power, to revise a treaty made by its agents, as in the case we have been considering. This follows from the nature of sovereignty itself. An Arnold might be bribed to to capitulate to the enemy. But where such treaties are entered into in good faith, and the obvious powers of the commanders have not been exceeded, the agreements between the victor and the vanquished are regarded by the highest authorities as to be sacredly kept. Humanity demands it; otherwise there would be no cessation of hostilities till the annihilation of both belligerents."[741]

While Great Britain had just cause to complain of the violation of the Convention of Saratoga by the American Congress, she might ask herself, did she always observe strict faith with her revolted colonies.

According to the Articles of Capitulation of Charleston, S. C., May 12, 1780, the garrison were allowed some of the honors of war. They were to march out and deposit their arms between the canal and the works of the place, but the drums were not to beat a British march, nor the colors to be uncased; the Continental troops and seamen, keeping their baggage, were to remain prisoners of war until exchanged; the militia were to be permitted to return to their respective homes as prisoners on parole, and while they kept their parole were not to be molested in their property by the British troops; the citizens of all descriptions were to be considered as prisoners on parole, and to hold their property in the town on the same terms as the militia.

After the capitulation, Sir Henry Clinton sent out three expeditions and issued three proclamations, all having in view the subjugation of South Carolina. The butchery which Tarleton inflicted is well known; and even the British historian, Stedman, who was then an officer under General Clinton, says of it: "The virtue of humanity was totally forgot." The enemy's detachments, sent to various parts of the State, paid little regard to the rights and property of its inhabitants. Sir Henry, assuming that the province was already conquered, issued, before his departure to New York, a proclamation discharging all the military prisoners, except those captured in Fort Moultrie and Charleston, from their parole after June 20, 1780. Thus, without their own consent, by Clinton's arbitrary fiat, these paroled persons were converted from their neutrality into British subjects, and compelled to take up arms against their neighbors, or, failing to comply with this enforced allegiance, were treated as rebels. The Whig inhabitants were worried, plundered, and murdered by Tories, in open violation of all British pledges; leading men were confined in prison-ships; and patriotic citizens, who had resumed their swords upon finding all guaranties violated, had their property sequestrated, and themselves were severely punished, sometimes with death. The British rule was truly a reign of terror.

Lord Mahon stigmatizes in the severest language American faith as utterly derelict in carrying out the Convention of Saratoga,[742] while of the sequel of the capitulation of Charleston he has no holy horror. His only remark is: "Perhaps these measures exceeded the bounds of justice; certainly they did the bounds of policy." This same English historian, in his account of Arnold's treason, speaks of the death of André as the "greatest blot" upon the career of Washington. He contends that it was unjust to arrest André, because he had a safeguard from Arnold; and sneers at the twelve distinguished American generals upon the Board which condemned the spy, as incompetent plebeians, drawn from "the plough-handle and from the shop-board." According to Mahon's fallacious mode of reasoning, Washington should not only have let André go free, because protected by the traitor's pass, but should have given up West Point, its garrison and arms, to Sir Henry Clinton, as fully agreed upon by Arnold, the duly constituted American commander. According to such reasoning, Judas Iscariot was justified in betraying the Saviour, because he had been one of the trusted twelve who sat down to the Last Supper. The just fate of the spy and betrayer was the same, except that Judas was his own executioner.

Of the various military conventions, that of Kloster-Zeven, of September 8, 1757, between the Duke of Cumberland and Marshal Richelieu, most resembles that of Saratoga. In both the victors had the vanquished at their mercy; in both the terms of surrender, under the circumstances, were moderate beyond all necessity; in both the capitulations were unsatisfactory to the governments concerned; and in both the treaties were broken from motives of expediency, frivolous pretexts being used to cover the odium of bad faith.

George II., as Elector of Hanover, "to clear himself", says Sir Edward Cust, "from the dishonor of the convention, disavowed his son's authority to sign it", recalled him from his command, and declared that the hero of Culloden had ruined his father and disgraced himself. We cannot enter into the reasons assigned by the British ministry for abrogating this compact, but they were at the least as invalid as those used by our Congress in suspending the execution of the Convention of Saratoga. When the Hanoverian army, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, took the field in contravention of agreement, Marshal Richelieu declared his own fidelity in keeping the treaty, and that, should the enemy "commit any act of hostility", he, as authorized by the laws of war, "would push matters to the last extremity." The declaration of the French marshal "was seconded", says Smollett, the British historian, "by the Count de Lynar, the Danish ambassador, who had meditated the Convention of Kloster-Zeven under direction of his master to save Hanover from the horrors of war."

EDITORIAL NOTES ON THE AUTHORITIES.

I. The Campaign around New York City in 1776.—The Americans had been early warned of the British plans to secure the line of the Hudson (Journal of the Provincial Congress of New York, 172; Lossing's Schuyler, ii. 16), and on the American side plans of obstructing and defending the river had been made as early as Sept., 1775, and they ever after constituted a chief anxiety of the continental and provincial authorities.[743] Several early maps making record of these efforts have been preserved.[744]

The anomalous condition of New York during the later part of 1775 is shown from the Tory point of view in Jones's New York during the Revolution. Rivington's press was destroyed in Nov., 1775 (N. Y. City Manual, 1868, p. 813). There was an irruption from New Jersey into Long Island in Jan., 1776 (Jones, i. 68). In Feb. the military control appears in Col. David Waterbury's orderly-book (Mag. of American Hist., Dec., 1884, p. 555). Moore gives current published reports, including Gov. Tryon's proclamation in March (Diary of the Rev., i. 216). During the same month Lee made a report on the fortifications of the city (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1871, p. 354), and Field, in his Battle of Long Island, traces the measures of Lee to convert New York into a camp and to root out the Tories on Long Island.

Stirling had also been exercising command in New York (Duer's Stirling, 139), and had seized Gov. Franklin of New Jersey (N. J. Archives, x. 702). In April, 1776, Putnam arrived with instructions from Washington (Sparks's Washington, iii. 337), finding Heath fresh from a review of the troops (Moore, i. 228).[745]

With the arrival of Washington in the middle of April, 1776, the campaign may be said to have begun. His batteries soon sent the few British ships in the harbor down to Sandy Hook, and Benjamin Tupper, commanding the little American flotilla, tried to destroy the lighthouse at that point, June 21.[746] Beside the official letters of this time there are numerous private ones.[747]

Late in June and early in July Lord Howe's fleet arrived in the lower harbor, and the troops were landed on Staten Island.[748]

The harbor of New York necessarily had more or less hydrographical treatment in all the early plans. Before the outbreak of hostilities, this may be seen, not only in the Des Barres series of maps, but in the chart of 1764,[749] reproduced in Valentine's Manual (1861, p. 597).[750] After the war began, we find several harbor maps worthy of note.[751]

During June came the plot for assassinating Washington in New York.[752] Washington was discouraged with the progress of the recruiting. "Washington and Mercer's camps recruit with amazing slowness", wrote Jefferson from Philadelphia, July 20th.[753] Mercer commanded the Flying Camp of militia from Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, which were hovering between the British and Philadelphia.[754]

Clinton's expeditionary force returned from Sullivan's Island Aug. 1st, and the active campaign began when, three weeks later, Howe moved a large part of his force across from Staten Island[755] to Gravesend, on Long Island, Aug. 22d, Sir George Collier commanding the fleet which covered the landing,[756] and the advance then began towards the lines near Brooklyn which General Greene had had the charge of constructing.[757]

Respecting the orders antecedent to and during the battle, those of Washington are in Force; but Johnston adds to them from the orderly-books.[758] Washington's own account can be found in his letters to Congress, to Gov. Trumbull, to the Mass. Assembly,[759] and he probably dictated the letter of Col. Harrison, his secretary, to Congress.[760]

Sullivan's letter is in effect a defence of himself,[761] and other letters from participants and observers are preserved,[762] as well as journals of actors on the field,[763] and other personal recitals,[764] and narratives in the public press.[765] On the British side we have Howe's despatch[766] of Sept. 3, with the comments and inquiry which it elicited,[767] and the report and journals of Sir George Collier, in command of the fleet.[768] In addition we have a number of personal experiences and accounts of eye-witnesses,[769] as well as statements from the German participants.[770]

The circumstances of the battle and retreat have occasioned some controversy, in which Bancroft has been criticised by the grandsons of Gen. Greene[771] and Joseph Reed.[772]

Respecting the armies on both sides and their losses, there is ground for dispute. It is claimed that the British had about double the numbers of the Americans, and the losses of killed and wounded were about equal on both sides, though the Americans also lost heavily in prisoners.[773] But on this point see the preceding chapter.

Without enumerating at length the treatment of the general histories,[774] and the biographies of participants,[775] the battle of Long Island has had much special local[776] and monographic treatment, particularly at the hands of Field, Johnston, Dawson, and Carrington.[777] On the English side we have contemporary and later examples of historical treatment.[778] It was the first substantial victory for the royal arms, and had little of the disheartening influence which the forcing of the redoubt at Bunker Hill had brought with it. The effect was correspondingly inspiriting to the Tories in America and to the government party in England.[779]

In transferring the scene across the river to New York, it is best in the first place to trace the topography of the town and island by the maps of the period, and to follow the cartographical records of the military movements during the campaign, before classifying the authorities.

John Hill's large plan of New York, extending as far north as Thirty-fourth Street, surveyed in 1782, and dedicated to Gov. George Clinton, was drawn in 1785.[780] He marks all the works of the Revolution,—coloring yellow those thrown up by the Americans in 1776; orange, those of the Americans which the British repaired; and green, those later erected by the royal forces. Johnston's map[781] adopts these yellow lines. Loosing (Field-Book, ii. 593, 799), in describing the New York lines, differs somewhat from Hill's map. Johnston controverts Jones and De Lancey (Jones's New York during the Revolutionary War), who claim that the American lines were levelled by the British; he also cites Smythe, who described them in March, 1777, as was also done by Thomas Eddis in Aug., 1777,[782] and by Anburey in 1781, and he depends on Hill's draft of them in 1782. Johnston (p. 36) also describes the appearance of the town at the opening of the war.[783] Johnston (p. 194) claims that his eclectic map is the first to give the entire island as it was in 1776. He followed the surveys of Ratzer and Montresor as far north as Fiftieth Street, and from that point to Kingsbridge he used the map of 1814, made by Randall for the commissioners to lay out streets. The annexed sketch of Johnston's map shows the fortifications surrounding the town of New York.

Howe was much criticised for his dilatoriness and his failure promptly to use his fleet to get in the rear of Washington's army.[784] There was a division of counsels among Washington's officers as to the advisability of attempting to hold the city; but a decision to evacuate finally prevailed.[785] Washington's army was gradually dwindling, for Congress and the country had hardly reached a conception of the necessity of long enlistments.[786] Finally on Sept. 15th the British passed over from Long Island to Kip's Bay, and the Americans fled in a panic;[787] and, with loss of many stores, Washington gathered his forces within the Harlem lines. Johnston's draft of the works on Harlem Heights follows Sauthier's plan. The site of the fight thereabouts is west of Eighth Avenue and north of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street of the modern city. Johnston (p. 258) identifies the localities by the present landmarks, and says (p.264) that "some of the works are well preserved to-day" (1878). He also says that Randall, when he surveyed the island in 1812, found the remains of the works agreeing with Sauthier's drafts.[788]

Sauthier's draft of the conflict at Harlem Plains is reproduced in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., May, 1880. Later plans of the locality, drawn with reference to the landmarks of the battle, or interesting for comparison, are the map of 1814 in Valentine's Manual (1856) and the large folding plan of the upper part of New York, with the modern streets, upon which, in colors, is superposed a draft of this action. This last is given, with an account of the fight, in Shannon's N. Y. City Manual, 1868, p. 812.[789] We may note some of the principal contemporary and later authorities on this action of Harlem Plains.[790]

The origin of the fire of Sept. 21st, by which a considerable part of New York was burned, has been a subject of dispute, the Tories charging it upon the Americans;[791] but later authorities, English as well as American, agree in not believing it the work of incendiaries. It is known that Washington advocated the burning of the city if evacuation became necessary, and Jones (i. p. 84) says committees of Congress had agreed upon it, but that body certainly in the end directed Washington to spare it (Journals, Sept. 3, 1776).[792]

The movement of Howe, which now forced Washington off New York Island and to a position at White Plains, is illustrated by a sketch of the "Sauthier-Faden plan", herewith given, and which may be explained by the annexed note[793] in connection with the special original sources,[794] and later historians.[795]

The reader may now revert to two outline maps already given, namely Johnston's New York Island and the Sauthier-Faden plan, in order to follow the movements which led to the fall of Fort Washington, using the annexed descriptive key;[796] but the outline of the original sources of the fall of Fort Washington, as well as the later accounts, are much the same as for the earlier events of the campaign.[797]

The letters of Washington and Greene are still the main source of information for the evacuation of Fort Lee, which at once followed.[798]

It may be well now to note some of the contemporary maps of the whole campaign, as indicating the extent and character of the geographical knowledge then current. The earliest of these is one which appeared in the supplement (p. 607) of the Gentleman's Magazine, 1776, and is called a Map of the Progress of his Majesty's Armies. Two of the American household manuals, Low's Almanac (1776) and Isaac Warren's Almanac (1777), had the same rude cut, a fac-simile of which, with the key, is shown below.

A popular map (price one shilling) of The Country twenty-five miles round New York, drawn by a gentleman from that City, was also published in London, Jan. 1, 1777, by W. Hawkes, with a chronological table of events from Dec. 16, 1773, to Oct. 18, 1776.

Des Barres issued in London, Jan. 17, 1777, a large map, Plan of the operations of the army and fleet of Admiral and Lord Howe near New York, 1776,[799] and a more popular presentation of the same field was made in the Political Mag., vol. ii. p. 657. The earliest attempt at historical rendering, Capt. Hall's History of the Civil War in America (London, 1780), was accompanied by a map, a portion of which is here given in fac-simile; and Gordon (ii. 310), a few years later, gave an eclectic map, made in the main from American data.[800]

In giving detailed references for the several stages of the campaign, the letters from and to Washington have been a source of the first importance; and beside those given by Sparks in his printed works, there are others registered in the Sparks MSS. (no. xxix.), the Heath Papers (Mass. Hist. Coll., xliv.), not to name less important gatherings,[801] all of which form a general running commentary on events of the summer's and autumn's campaign, which could be further elucidated by the memoirs of Heath and Graydon, the lives of Reed and Greene, and by various diaries on both sides.[802]

II. The Northern Campaign, 1776-1777.—Gates had taken command in Canada early in the summer of 1776, under instructions from Washington;[803] but as his army fell back within the department which had been assigned to Schuyler, questions of authority arose between them.[804]

The condition of the army during the summer is noted in Colonel Trumbull's Autobiography (p. 302), and in General Gates's returns of September 22, 1776, in 5 Force's American Archives (ii. 479).[805]

There is a list of armed vessels on Lake Champlain in 1776 in Letters and Papers, 1761-1776 (MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc.). Arnold received his instructions from Gates.[806]

Arnold's reports on the fight near Valcour's Island, Oct., 1776, are dated Oct. 12 (to Gates) and Oct. 15 (to Schuyler).[807]

Waterbury's account to Congress, Oct. 24, is in Dawson (i. p. 173) and in Hadden's Journal (App.). Gen. Maxwell gave no very flattering account of Arnold's manœuvres in a letter from Ticonderoga, Oct. 20, in Sedgwick's Livingston (p. 209).[808]

On the English side, Carleton's despatch, Oct. 14, and Capt. Pringle's, are in Dawson (pp. 174, 175). The Hanau artillerist Pausch covers the fight in his journal.[809]

The earliest plan of this naval action seems to have been added to the then recently published plate of Lake Champlain, engraved after surveys by William Brassier, by order of Amherst, in 1762,[810] which, with Jackson's survey of Lake George, was published by Sayer and Bennett, in London, Aug. 5, 1776. Some copies of the map with the same date show the position of Arnold's fight of Oct. 11. The plate has been altered at that point, and it is this section of the map which Lossing copies in his Field-Book[811] (i. 163) and in his paper in Harper's Monthly (vol. xxiii. p. 726). The annexed sketch is based upon a plan in the Sparks maps (Cornell University), kindly transmitted to the editor by the librarian.[812]

In the winter of 1776-77, Burgoyne had submitted to the government some "Thoughts for conducting the war from the side of Canada",—a paper which, barring some important changes, became the scheme of the summer's plans.[813]

The stages of the preparation in Canada can be followed in Force's American Archives; and references will be found in the Index to MSS. in the British Museum (particularly under "Canada" and "Burgoyne", in those acquired 1854-1875).[814]

The records of the Germans are mentioned in Lowell's Hessians (p. 117), and in the sources indicated by Mr. Lowell in another chapter of the present volume[815]

In the spring of 1777 St. Clair was designated for the command at Ticonderoga, the advanced post against the invasion of Burgoyne (St. Clair Papers). The light-headed Sullivan thought it unfair that he was not selected for the post (Correspondence of the Rev., i. 352). The British onset was appalling. James Lovell, in March, wrote, "It is plain that we must look forward for another summer's bloody work" (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1860, p. 9). Congress was emphasizing the stories of British brutality (Journals of Congress, ii. 97).

On May 22d Schuyler had been confirmed in his command of the Northern department, and Gates had gone to Philadelphia to lay his grievances before Congress (Lossing's Schuyler, ii.; Irving's Washington, iii.). Burgoyne (Fonblanque, App. E) was talking to his Indians in June, and two days later he made his famous proclamation to frighten or allure the country people. Fonblanque (p. 23) is not unmindful of its unworthy bombast, and Lecky (vi. 64) says it was "greatly and justly blamed."[816]

There will be occasion later to enumerate the maps illustrating the successive stages and conflicts of the campaign; but it may be well at this point to append in a note the principal maps of the entire movement of the British army, which cover also the field of its actions on both flanks.[817]

The most important source respecting the siege and evacuation of Ticonderoga is the Proceedings of a General Court Martial, held at Whiteplains, N. Y., for the trial of Maj.-Gen. St. Clair, Aug. 25, 1778 (Philad., 1778).[818] It was reprinted in the Collections of the N. Y. Hist. Soc. in 1880. It includes various letters of Schuyler and St. Clair in June (pp. 14, 101, 121, etc.), the doings of the council of war, July 5th, which decided upon a retreat (p. 33), and the letters of St. Clair at Ticonderoga, and one to Hancock, July 14th, from Fort Edward (p. 69, etc.). Three days later, July 17th, St. Clair sent an account from Fort Edward to Washington, which, with the letter of Schuyler, likewise to Washington, is in Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., i. 393, 400.[819] Much of this material is also included in the published St. Clair Papers.[820] Sparks had earlier added copies of some of the St. Clair papers to his Collection of Manuscripts.[821]

On the English side, Burgoyne's letters are in Fonblanque's Burgoyne (p. 248), Gent. Mag., Aug., 1777, and Dawson's Battles. Anburey's Travels (letter xxx.) throws some light.

For the effect of the evacuation on the country, see Journals of Congress, iv. 719; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 485, 488; Diplomatic Correspondence of the Amer. Rev., i. 315. The apprehension felt in the adjacent country is shown in letters of Ira Allen and others in the N. H. State Papers, viii. 632, 633, 643, 644, 648, 651.

We have some contemporary maps of Ticonderoga previous to and during the siege. In August, 1776, Colonel John Trumbull made a plan which is engraved in his Autobiography (N. Y., 1841, p. 32),[822] and is reproduced herewith.[823] The map used at the trial of St. Clair is engraved in the Proceedings; and from a MS. copy made for Sparks, and now at Cornell University, the annexed sketch (p. 353) is drawn.

On the affair at Hubbardton, July 7th, the official accounts of St. Clair (July 14th) and Burgoyne (July 11th) are given in Dawson's Battles (i. 224, 229, 231), and other contemporary accounts in the Vermont Hist. Soc. Coll., i. p. 168, etc.[824]

In Burgoyne's State of the Expedition is a "plan of the action at Huberton under Brig.-Gen. Fraser, supported by Maj.-Gen. Riedesel, on the 7th July, 1777, drawn by P. Gerlach, engraved by Wm. Faden", and published at London, Feb. 1, 1780.[825] Three days later, Burgoyne (July 10) issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Vermont, and Schuyler (July 13) made a counter proclamation.[826]

The chief sources of documentary evidence regarding the movements in 1777 around Fort Stanwix are 5 Force's Archives (vols. i., ii., and iii.) and the Gansevoort Papers (copies in Sparks MSS., lx.), including a letter of Arnold, August 22, 1777, dated at German Flats, which Sparks has indorsed "evidently intended to be intercepted." On the American side, we have further Colonel Willet's letter[827] to Trumbull, Aug. 11th, in Dawson (i. 248); the account in the Penna. Evening Post, given in Moore's Diary (i. 477); Wilkinson's Memoirs (pp. 204, 212); the Journals of the New York Provincial Congress (vol. i.); and Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev. (ii. 578). Gordon gives some details from eye-witnesses, mainly through reports made to him by the Rev. Samuel Kirkland. Dwight picked up anecdotes about the battlefield in 1799, which he prints in his Travels (vol. iii.). The best eclectic accounts are those by William L. Stone, father and son,—the elder giving us his Life of Brant (i. ch. 10 and 11), and the younger, his Orderly-book of Sir John Johnson during the Oriskany campaign, 1776-1777, annotated by William L. Stone. With an historical introduction illustrating the life of Sir John Johnson, by J. Watts De Peyster. And some tracings from the footprints of the tories or loyalists in America contributed by Theodorus Bailey Myers (Albany, 1882), being no. 11 of Munsell's historical series.[828] The younger Stone's labors took a wider range in that portion of his Campaign of Lieutenant-Gen. John Burgoyne which is given to the expedition of St. Leger, though he followed in the main his father's Life of Brant. In the Orderly-book, just mentioned, however he modified some of his views.

There is rather too much of patriotic fervor for a discriminating analysis in a monograph, The Battle of Oriskany, its place in History, an address at the Centennial Celebration, Aug. 6, 1877, by Ellis H. Roberts (Utica, 1877), but it is in most respects valuable and a convenient gathering of information, not otherwise found without much trouble, and is well fortified with notes.[829]

The principal English source is the account by St. Leger.[830]

To illustrate the movements near Fort Schuyler or Stanwix, we have the plan made by Fleury in Sept., 1777, which is engraved in Stone's Life of Brant, i. p. 230,—the essential portion of which is given herewith.[831]

The position of the ground as shown by Fleury can be compared with that of a Topographical map of the country between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek, from an actual survey taken in Nov., 1758, which is engraved from the original MS. (in the N. Y. State library) in the Doc. Hist. N. Y. (quarto ed. iv. p. 324), where will also be found (p. 327) a detailed plan of Fort Stanwix, as erected in 1758 (see Vol. V., p. 528).[832]

Respecting the action (Aug. 16th) at Bennington, General Lincoln sent the first accounts to Schuyler, who transmitted them to Washington (Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., i. 425). Stark's letter to Gates, of Aug. 22d, is in Wilkinson's Memoirs (p. 209); Vermont Hist. Coll. (i. 206); Dawson's Battles (i. 260). His letter of the same day to the Council of New Hampshire is in the N. H. State Papers, viii. 670. The papers of Stark were used by Sparks in copies in the Sparks MSS. (no. xxxix.).[833]

There is in the Gates Papers (copies in Sparks MSS., xx.) an "account of the enemy's loss in the late action of the 16th Aug., 1777, near Bennington",—amounting to 991 killed, wounded, and prisoners; Hessians, Canadians, and Tories. American loss, killed, between twenty and thirty; wounded, not known.[834]

Burgoyne's original instructions to Baum are in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Soc.,[835] and are printed in their Collections (vol. ii.).[836]

Letters of Baum and Burgoyne, Riedesel's report to the Duke of Brunswick, Breymann's report[837] to Burgoyne, and Burgoyne's reports to Germain, are in the Documents in relation to the part taken by Vermont in resisting the invasion of Burgoyne (Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. i. pp. 198, 223, 225); Dawson's Battles (i. 261-264); Eelking's Riedesel (iii. 184, 210, 261). A long account by Glick, a German officer, is also in the Vt. Hist. Coll. (i. 211). On the jealousy of the British and Hessians, see a letter by Hagan in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (1864, p. 33).[838] An account "by a gentleman who was present" is copied from the Penna. Evening Post, Sept. 4th, in Moore's Diary of the Rev. (p. 479). A narrative by the Rev. Mr. Allen in the Connecticut Courant, Aug. 25th, is copied in Smith's Pittsfield, Mass.[839]

The local aspects of the fight are touched upon in Hall's and other histories of Vermont,[840] and the general authorities necessarily enlarge more or less upon it, as an episode.[841] At the first anniversary of the Bennington fight, in 1778, a speech was made by Noah Smith, which was printed at Hartford in 1779, and is reprinted in the Vermont Hist. Coll. (i. p. 251). On Oct. 20, 1848, James D. Butler gave an address before the Legislature of Vermont, which "contained original testimonies of witnesses now long dead, and notes from papers since burned in the Vermont State House." When printed at Burlington, in 1849, it was accompanied by an address by George Frederick Houghton on the life and services of Col. Seth Warner.[842] The centennial observances of 1877 produced several memorials.[843]

Gen. Carrington (Battles, p. 334) gives one of the best plans of the Bennington fight. There is among the Sparks MSS. (no. xxviii.) a sketch map, with this indorsement by Mr. Sparks: "Drawn by Mr. Hiland Hall, Bennington, Oct. 13, 1826. Very accurate. Ground examined by myself at the time." It shows the Walloomsack River (a branch of the Hoosick River) with the skirting road to Bennington, three times crossing the river. On this road, going up stream, are marked (in order) the beginning of the second action, the hill where the stand was attempted, the places where Breyman was met by Warner, where the cannon were posted in the first battle, and the line of Stark's advance.

In Burgoyne's State of the Expedition is a plan called "Position of the Detachment under Lieut.-Col. Baum, at Walmscook, near Bennington, shewing the attacks of the enemy on the 16th of August, 1777, drawn by Lieut. Durnford, engineer; engraved by Wm. Faden", and published at London, Feb. 1, 1780.[844]

Meanwhile Schuyler was gathering an army as best he could. In July he wrote to Heath that its spirits were recovering (Heath Papers, i. 300). The militia were called out early in August to assist him (Journals of Congress, ii. 214). W. L. Stone tells the story of Moses Harris, his faithful spy, in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. (ii. 414). The discontent with Schuyler on the part of the politicians was beginning to be shaped to party measures, and led to his being superseded in August by Gates, while a battle was imminent, as Schuyler thought.[845]

Bancroft (vol. ix.) does not hold Schuyler free from the responsibility of the ill success of the campaign up to this time; but he is controverted by G. W. Schuyler in his Correspondence and Remarks upon Bancroft's History of the Northern Campaign; by Lossing in his Schuyler; and by J. W. De Peyster in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. (February, 1877, vol. i. 134).[846]

Burgoyne meanwhile (August 26) was writing to Germain that the campaign was looking badly, and the loyalists not as helpful as he hoped. The conflict which Schuyler thought impending took place September 19, and is variously known as the battle of Freeman's Farm, or Stillwater, or the first battle of Bemis's Heights. Gates had already appealed to the Green Mountain boys for assistance, as the records of the Vermont Council of Safety show (Stevens, Bibl. Geog., 1870, no. 693). Gen. Glover's letters to James Warren during Aug. and Sept. are in the Sparks MSS. (no. xlvii.) and in Upham's Glover, and his account of the battle of the 19th is in Essex Institute Hist. Coll. (v. no. 3). Col. Varick's letter to Schuyler is in the Sparks MSS., lxvi. Wilkinson gives the best account of any participant (i. ch. 6), and his letter of Sept. 20 is in Dawson (i. 301). Gates's letter to Congress, Sept. 22, is also in Dawson (i. 301). Gordon gives the American loss.[847]

The question of Arnold's participancy in the battle of the 19th, while the left wing—his own command—was engaged, has been the subject of controversy.[848]

The attempt of an American force to cut Burgoyne's line of communications by the lakes is described in the "Fight at Diamond Island", Sept. 24, by De Costa, who gives the official report of Col. Brown (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1872, p. 147). These evidences come mainly from the Gates Papers, and are recapitulated in Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne (App. 10).

Respecting the action of Oct. 7, the earliest official accounts are in Glover's letter of Oct. 9, and in Gates's to Congress, of Oct. 18,—both of which are reprinted by Dawson (i. 302, 303). James Wilkinson's letter of Oct. 9 is in the New York Archives, with various other letters of the campaign (Sparks MSS., no. xxix.). A letter of Oliver Wolcott from Bemis's Heights is in the Trumbull MSS. (vol. vii.). The lives of Arnold (by I. N. Arnold, ch. 10, etc.) indicate his important influence on the field, where he was wounded.[849]

On the action of Col. Brooks in the field see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (vii. 478). There is an account by Samuel Woodruff, an eye-witness, in the appendix of An account of Burgoyne's Campaign and the memorable battles of Bemis's Heights, Sept. 19th, and October 7th, 1777, from the most authentic resources of information, including many incidents connected with the same, by Charles Neilson (Albany, 1844).[850]

The story of Major Acland and Lady Acland has long been one of the romantic episodes of the campaign. The family account is given by W. L. Stone in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. 1877 (iv. 50), and Jan., 1880, and in Lippincott's Mag., Oct., 1879.[851]

The various stages of the negotiations which resulted in what is known as the "Convention" can be followed in the documents given in Fonblanque (p. 306); Wilkinson's Memoirs (pp. 304, 306, 317); Dawson (i. 303); Stedman's Amer. War; Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne (p. 102); and O'Callaghan's Orderly-Book of Burgoyne. The original definitive articles are in the N. Y. Hist. Soc., and fac-similes of the signatures are in Lossing's Field-Book (i. 79).[852]

Wilkinson carried the news of the surrender to Congress (Wilkinson's Memoirs; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 494). Gates describes his own success to his wife (Moore's Diary, 511). Chaplain Smith gives some details of the meeting of Gates and Burgoyne (Chaplain Smith and the Baptists, p. 222). There are reminiscences in Surgeon Meyrick's letter in Trumbull's Autobiography (p. 301), and papers in Pennsylvania Archives (vol. v.). Recollections of Gen. Ebenezer Mattoon, an actor in the scene as written out in 1835, are in the Appendix (no. 13) of Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne. The comment of Wm. Whipple is in N. H. State Papers, viii. 707. Burgoyne's letter from Albany, Oct. 20, to Germain is in his State of the Expedition.[853]

De Lancey (App. p. 674, to Jones's New York during the Rev.) collates the authorities on the strength of the respective armies. Gates's returns of his army (11,098) are in the Gates MSS. Burgoyne, in his State of the Expedition, gives Gates's returns as 18,624,—the difference may be the number of sick and furloughed men. Burgoyne praised Gates's men after he had seen them (Fonblanque, 316). The numbers of Burgoyne's army are given in Appendix D in Fonblanque. The question is also examined in the App. of Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne. Gordon (Amer. Rev., ii. 578) gives the number surrendered at 5,791; but there is a great difference in the estimates. Alexander Scammell makes it 10,611 in Letters and Papers, 1777-80 (Mass. Hist. Soc. Cabinet). In the Stark MSS. is a table of Burgoyne's losses (14,000), covering the whole campaign, and put into verse (Sparks MSS., xxxix.).[854]

Respecting the campaign as a whole, the best contemporary accounts on the American side are found in the official correspondence as embraced in Sparks's Washington (iv. 486, etc.) and Correspondence of the Revolution (vol. ii., App.), and in the letters of the commanding generals.[855]

Various important letters are put in evidence in the Proceedings of the general court martial for the trial of Maj.-Gen. Schuyler, Oct. 1, 1778 (Philad., 1778).[856]

An account of Alexander Bryan, Gates's chief scout, is in the App. of Stone's Campaign of Burgoyne.

There are among the copies of the Lincoln Papers in the Sparks MSS. (xii.) various letters, etc., respecting the campaign against Burgoyne. The earliest is one from Gen. Schuyler to Lincoln, dated at Saratoga, July 31, 1777, and the last is one from Lincoln to Gov. Clinton, Oct. 5, 1777, expressing anxiety lest Putnam should not be able to resist Gen. Clinton, to whom Burgoyne in his straits was looking for relief.[857] At a later day Lincoln wrote a long letter from Boston, Feb. 5, 1781, to John Laurens, recounting his part in this campaign from the time of Gates's taking command to the date of Lincoln's being wounded, Oct. 8th (Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., ii. 533).

Various letters of Henry Brockholst Livingston during the Northern campaign of 1777 (June-Aug.), only parts of which are printed in Sedgwick's Livingston, are among the papers of Gov. William Livingston, which, when Sparks made his copies in 1832 (Sparks MSS., lii., vol. iii.) were in the possession of Theodore Sedgwick, Jr. Other letters will be found in the Trumbull MSS. (Mass. Hist. Soc.)[858]

The campaign of Burgoyne has necessarily made part of the labors of the general historians. Gordon and Ramsay were among the earliest, on the American, and Stedman (i. ch. 16) on the English side. Of the later writers, Bancroft gives it three chapters (21, 22, 24) in his original edition, and four in his final revision[859] (10, 11, 12, 13). Lowell finds it an important section of his history of the German auxiliaries (Hessians, p. 221, etc.). The lives of principal participants, like Arnold, Lincoln, Gates, and Schuyler on the American side, cover it.

A recent life of Morgan, The Hero of Cowpens, by Rebecca McConkey (N. Y., 1881), would claim for the Virginian the praise which is usually given to Arnold. The general surveys of Marshall (iii. ch. 5) and Irving (iii. ch. 9-22) brought it within the scope of their lives of Washington; and J. C. Hamilton's Republic of the United States includes it. Local aspects are treated in Dunlap's New York; Holden's Queensbury (p. 433); Hollister's Connecticut; Hinman's Connecticut during the Revolution (p. 112); and Mrs. Bonney's Historical Gleanings (i. 58). Robin's New Travels (letter 12) gives the current accounts prevailing a little later.

The earliest considerable monographic narrative was Charles Neilson's Original, Compiled and Corrected Account of Burgoyne's Campaign, and the Memorable Battle of Bemis's Heights, September 19, and October 7, 1777, from the most Authentic Sources of Information, etc. (Albany, 1844).

The most devoted chronicler of the campaign, however, is the younger William L. Stone (b. 1835), who published Reminiscences of Saratoga and Ballston in 1875, an article on "Burgoyne in a new light" in The Galaxy (v. 78), and one on the campaign in Harper's Monthly in 1877 (vol. lv. p. 673), and in the same year the most important work on the subject yet produced, The Campaign of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne and the Expedition of Lieutenant-Colonel Barry St. Leger, which draws from every important help to the study of the military movements which had been so far brought to light. In the next year (1878), Mr. Stone prepared the Memoir of the Centennial Celebration of Burgoyne's Surrender, Schuylerville, Oct. 17, 1875. It included an historical address by Mr. Stone himself, others by Horatio Seymour and George William Curtis.[860]

The English later writers have been in the main fair in their statements. Mahon (vi. 191), while praising the army of Gates, denies him the merit of its successful conduct, giving it essentially to Stark and Arnold. The American student finds little to question in the unusually impartial narrative embodied in Edward Barrington De Fonblanque's Political and Military episodes in the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, derived from the life and Correspondence of John Burgoyne (London, 1776).[861]

On the German side the main sources are Max von Eelking's Die Deutschen Hülfstruppen im nord-amerikanischen Befreiungskriege, 1776-1783 (Hannover, 1863,—2 vols.), who gives chapters 7 and 8 to this campaign; the same writer's Leben und Wirken des Herzoglich-Braunschweig'schen General-lieutenants Friedrich Adolph von Riedesel (Leipzig, 1856,—3 vols.) and Generalin von Riedesel's Berufs-Reise nach Amerika (Berlin, 1801), both of which Riedesel memoirs have been translated by W. L. Stone.[862]

The succession of battles and movements preceding the final surrender of Burgoyne have been well mapped.[863]

Respecting the diversion of Clinton in Burgoyne's favor, the letters of Putnam, whose business it was to hold the passes of the Hudson against the British, are in Sparks's Washington (v. App. p. 471), and in his Correspondence of the Revolution (i. 438; ii. App. 536, etc.), and in the Western Reserve Hist. Soc. Tracts, no. 46.[864] Dawson, beside the despatch of Putnam to Washington on the capture, gives also George Clinton's to Washington (i. 341, 342).[865] Contemporary American accounts of the capture and of the burning of Kingston are in Moore's Diary (p. 506, 510); and a narrative, by G. W. Pratt, of the Kingston episode is in the Ulster Hist. Soc. Coll. (i. 107).

On the British side, Sir Henry Clinton's despatches are in Almon's Remembrancer (vol. v.), and that to Howe of Oct. 9th is in Dawson (i. 344), with one from Commodore Hotham to Howe (p. 346).[866]

The maps of the Hudson already enumerated are of use in the study of this movement.[867] Plans of intended works (1776) and obstructions in the river near Fort Montgomery are given in the Calendar of Historical MSS. relating to the War of the Rev. (Albany, 1868, vol. i. 474, 616),[868] and a MS. plan of William A. Patterson, first lieutenant, 15th reg., April 22, 1776, is in the Heath MSS., i. 246 (Mass. Hist. Soc.).

The correspondence of the committee of Congress with the commissioners in France, regarding the effect of the surrender of Burgoyne, is in Diplomatic Correspondence (i. 338, 355). Cf. Stuart's Jonathan Trumbull. Jonathan Loring Austin, dispatched by the Massachusetts authorities, carried the first intelligence to France.[869] Schulenberg wrote to the commissioners from Berlin (Diplom. Corresp., ii. 120), and Izard replied (Ibid., ii. 370).[870]

Burgoyne sailed from Rhode Island for England in April, 1778.[871] On arriving, he had an early interview with Lord George Germain, but the king refused to see him. He appeared in Parliament,[872] where he had earlier been a firm but not bellicose upholder of the government,[873] on May 21st, and on the 26th and 28th made speeches in his own defence, which were published in London, June 16, 1778, as The substance of General Burgoyne's speeches, ... with an appendix containing Gen. Washington's letter to Gen. Burgoyne.[874]

The king, piqued at finding Burgoyne on the side of the opposition in Parliament, ordered him to return to his imprisoned troops, and, rather than go, the general resigned his civil and military offices, and printed an explanation in A letter from Lieutenant-General Burgoyne to his constituents, with the correspondence between the secretaries of war and him, relative to his return to America (London, 1779).[875]

Lord George Germain, or, as some have thought, Sir John Dalrymple, published a Reply to Lieutenant-General Burgoyne's letter to his constituents[876] (London, 1779), pronouncing it a libel upon the king's government, and this was seconded by an anonymous Letter to Lieutenant-General Burgoyne on his letter to his constituents (London, 1779).[877]

The further controversy over Burgoyne's failure includes the following publications:—

A brief examination of the plan and conduct of the Northern expedition in America in 1777, and of the surrender of the army under the command of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne (London, 1779),—a severe attack.[878]

An Enquiry into and remarks upon the Conduct of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne; the plan of operations for the campaign of 1777; the instructions from the Secretary of State, and the circumstances that led to the loss of the northern army (London, 1780).[879]

Essay on modern martyrs, with a letter to General Burgoyne (London, 1780),[880]—charging him with being the personal cause of his own misfortunes.

In addition, there were some publications reviewing the conduct of Howe's as well as Burgoyne's campaigns in 1777, which will be noticed in another place.

Burgoyne's main defence against all these charges appeared in his A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons, with a collection of Authentic Documents, and an addition of many circumstances which were prevented from appearing before the House by the Prorogation of Parliament, written and collated by himself, with plans (London, 1780).[881] In his introduction Burgoyne says, that, being denied a professional examination of his conduct, and disappointed in a parliamentary one, he was induced to make this publication.[882]

This publication was followed by A Supplement to the State of the Expedition from Canada, containing Gen. Burgoyne's Orders respecting the Principal Movements and Operations of the Army to the Raising of the Siege of Ticonderoga (London, 1780).[883]

Burgoyne was attacked in return in the following: Remarks on General Burgoyne's State of the Expedition from Canada (London, 1780),[884] being a defence of the ministry, and holding that Burgoyne had forfeited all claims to pity. A letter to Lieutenant-General Burgoyne occasioned by a second edition of his State of the Expedition, etc. (London, 1780).[885] Fonblanque (ch. viii.) portrays the effect in England of the parliamentary inquiry. Cf. Macknight's Burke (ch. 30). The Rev. Samuel Peters' reply to Burgoyne in the Appendix of Jones's New York during the Revolutionary War (vol. i. p. 683).

The Centennial Celebrations of the State of New York (Albany, 1879) gives the addresses of that period, by M. I. Townshend and John A. Stevens.[886]

---

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE DELAWARE.—PHILADELPHIA UNDER HOWE AND UNDER ARNOLD.

BY FREDERICK D. STONE,

Librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

So wrote Thomas Paine, December 19, 1776. The preceding month had been fraught with adversity. The loss of Fort Washington on the 16th of November had rendered Fort Lee useless, as with it alone the passage of the river could not be obstructed. Its evacuation was immediately ordered, and the ammunition and some of the guns were removed. Before all could be taken away, however, the fort became the object of the enemy's attention. On the night of the 19th, two columns under Cornwallis, composed of British and Germans, with a detachment from the fleet, in all about six thousand men, crossed the river and landed at Closter dock, seven miles above Fort Lee, then commanded by General Greene. The night was stormy, and the movement escaped the notice of Greene's sentries. By morning the sailors had dragged the artillery to the top of the Palisades, and everything was ready for an advance upon the fort. Greene was informed of the landing of Cornwallis, and immediately took steps to secure a retreat for his command, then numbering about three thousand men. Word was sent to Washington, who was at the village of Hackensack with the troops which he had brought with him from White Plains. In three quarters of an hour the commanding general was at Greene's side. Seeing that the fort was not tenable, he ordered a retreat. No time was to be lost; and leaving the tents standing, the kettles over the fires, and such stores as could not be removed, the troops were hurried towards the advancing enemy with such speed that they gained the road leading to the only bridge over the Hackensack before Cornwallis could intercept them.

The situation of the Americans was now more precarious than it had been at Fort Lee. They were in danger of being shut in between the Hackensack and Passaic rivers; they were in a perfectly flat country, without intrenching tools or camp equipage; their right flank could be turned and their line of retreat threatened if the British should land a force at the head of Newark Bay or at Amboy. Washington's forces were greatly reduced by reverses and by desertions. Nearly all that were left were militia of the flying camp, called out for an emergency, and impatient to return home, as their time of service had nearly expired. Small as his numbers were, Washington was obliged to post some at Amboy and others at Brunswick, to protect his flanks. As those remaining were insufficient to hinder the advance of the enemy in his front, he ordered Lee, whom he had left in command on the east of the Hudson, to cross that river and join him, and, with hardly three thousand men, Washington began his retreat through the Jerseys.

On the 21st he was at Aquacknoc Bridge on the Passaic, and by the 23d at Newark. On the 28th he left Newark, the advance-guard of the British entering the town as his rear-guard quitted it, and the next day he arrived at Brunswick. Here an attempt would have been made to prevent the enemy crossing the Raritan, but the stream was fordable in a number of places. As the British approached, the Jersey and Maryland brigades, whose terms of service expired that day, refused to stay an hour longer, and as the British crossed the river the line of march was again taken up for Trenton. This point was reached on the 2d of December, two brigades having been left at Princeton, under Stirling, to watch the enemy.

Having seen his stores and baggage safely over the Delaware, and being reinforced by about twelve hundred militia from the neighborhood of Philadelphia, Washington faced about on the 6th, with such men as were fit for service, and set out to join Stirling at Princeton.

It had not been the intention of Howe, when he ordered Cornwallis over the Hudson, to do more than take possession of and hold East Jersey, and Cornwallis's orders did not permit him to go beyond Brunswick. But the slight opposition which Washington was able to offer to the British advance excited in Howe the hopes of capturing Philadelphia, and he joined Cornwallis in person at Brunswick. After a short halt, he pushed on towards Stirling at Princeton, and before Washington could reach that general Stirling was in full retreat, to avoid being intercepted. A retrograde movement was ordered, and by the 8th the American army was on the west bank of the Delaware. The advance of Cornwallis's column reached the river before the rear-guard of the Americans had landed on the Pennsylvania side; but as Washington had secured all the boats for a considerable distance above and below Trenton, his position was comparatively a safe one. Here for a time he rested his men, and urged upon Congress the necessity of raising additional troops, and the importance of preparing for the defence of Philadelphia, as the military stores were in that city.

In his retreat through the Jerseys, Washington was greatly embarrassed by the conduct of General Charles Lee. The instructions he had given Lee on the 17th of November to join him may have been discretionary, but the language and frequency of his orders left no doubt of the expectations of the commander-in-chief. But Lee chose to read the orders in the light of his wishes. On the east of the Hudson he had an independent command, which he purposed to retain as long as he could. Schemes and suggestions that should have had no weight were allowed to delay his passage over the river until December 2d, and then his advance was slow and hesitating. The prospect of receiving reinforcements from the Northern army, which would make his command equal to that of Washington, strengthened his wish to act independently. He proposed, as soon as the troops from the north should join him, to attack the rear of the enemy. While this plan may not have been devoid of military judgment, it is doubtful if it would have had more than a temporary effect on Howe's movements, while it would have deprived Washington of the reinforcements he so greatly needed. Notwithstanding Washington's explicit directions to avoid the enemy in joining him, Lee hung so close to the enemy's flank as to leave a doubt of his real intentions, and on the morning of the 13th, just after having put on record that he believed Washington to be "damnably deficient", he was surprised and taken prisoner by Lieutenant-Colonel Harcourt, at White's tavern, near Baskingridge, three miles from his camp.

The estimation in which Lee was held gave an undue importance to his capture. The British thought that in it they had deprived their opponents of nearly all the military science they possessed, and they styled him the American Palladium. With the Americans he had many friends, who were flattered that a soldier of European distinction should have espoused their cause, and, dazzled with his success at Charleston, they rated him higher than Washington, and, unintentionally perhaps, weakened the confidence that should have been reposed in the commander-in-chief by his subordinates.

Having failed to overtake Washington in New Jersey, Howe turned northward to Coryell's Ferry, fifteen miles above Trenton, in hopes of finding boats to enable him to cross the Delaware; but in this he was disappointed. He then took post at Pennington with a portion of his force, while with the remainder he returned to Trenton, repaired the bridges below the town which the Americans had destroyed, and extended his line as far as Burlington.

So great was the terror spread through New Jersey as the British advanced, that many of her citizens took advantage of the amnesty which was offered by the Howes to all who would put themselves under their protection within sixty days from the 30th of November. Chief among these was Samuel Tucker, president of the Committee of Safety, who had held many positions of honor and trust. Nor was this defection confined to the east side of the Delaware. It was now that Joseph Galloway, and citizens of Philadelphia, like the Allens, who had supported the cause of the colonies until independence became the avowed object of the war, sought safety within the British lines. But the influence which their conduct might have exercised upon the people was neutralized by what was soon endured at the hands of the British and Hessian troops. Never before had any of the colonies been exposed to the unbridled impulses of a mercenary and licentious soldiery. Houses were plundered and their contents destroyed in mere wantonness, women were forced to submit to indignities, and all the horrors which usually attended the invasion of a European country by a foreign army in the eighteenth century were transferred to the soil of New Jersey.[887]

In Philadelphia the excitement was intense. On the 28th of November a meeting was held in the State House yard to consider the condition of affairs. It was addressed by Mifflin, who had been sent to the city to warn Congress of the danger which threatened the army. He spoke with animation, and endeavored to rouse the people to action. His efforts met with some success, and in a few days the troops that reinforced Washington prior to his retreat into Pennsylvania were in motion. On the 30th the Council of Safety advised the citizens to prepare, upon short notice, to remove their wives and children to places of safety. On December 2d, when it was known in the city that Howe's army was at Brunswick, crowds gathered at the Coffee House to learn the news. The stores and schools were closed, and all business was suspended. No one was allowed to cross the Delaware without a pass, while recruiting parties with drums beating paraded in the streets. The roads leading from the city were crowded with vehicles of every description, bearing the families of citizens and their effects to places of refuge.

When these means of transportation failed, the water craft on the Delaware was pressed into service. Women with children in their arms were crowded in smoky cabins so low that they could not sit upright, while the younger girls were quartered on the decks, from whence they were driven by the snow and rain. But sadder sights presented themselves in the streets of the city. The sick of the army arrived daily. Many of the men had gone to the field clad only for a summer campaign. They had succumbed to exposure, and had reached Philadelphia in an almost naked condition. Measures were at once set on foot for their relief. Vacant houses were taken for their accommodation. The most seriously afflicted were sent to the hospitals, while committees of citizens went from door to door begging clothing for their use.

Handbills were issued giving information of the advance of the enemy, and to awaken the indignation of the people printed sheets were circulated describing the insults to which the women of New Jersey had been subjected. Some of the citizens refused to take the Continental money, as it was rumored that Congress would soon disperse. On the 11th of December Congress requested Washington to contradict this rumor in general orders, and to assure the army that the delegates would remain in Philadelphia until it was certain the enemy would capture the city. It was well that Washington exercised his discretion in this matter, for the next day the crushing news was known throughout the city that he had been obliged to cross the Delaware. Congress at once adjourned to Baltimore, having first conferred on Washington "full power to order and direct all things relative to the department and to the operations of the war."

The state of political affairs in Pennsylvania was the chief cause of the inefficiency which exposed Philadelphia to the danger of capture and of the panic with which her citizens were seized. The old colonial charter had been abrogated, but the new constitution had not been put into effect, and the condition of society bordered upon anarchy.

For two weeks after Washington had retreated across the Delaware there seemed little chance of impeding the British advance. "Day by day the little handful was decreasing, from sickness and other causes." The services of all the regular troops in it, with the exception of those from Virginia and Maryland, expired on the first of the year, and the militia could not be depended upon. "They come", wrote Washington, "you cannot tell how, go you cannot tell when, and act you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment." "These", he said again to Congress, on the 20th of December, "are the men I am to depend upon ten days hence." On Congress he urged the importance of raising at once an army upon a more substantial basis, and impressed upon those around him the necessity of the utmost vigilance. But in the anguish of the moment he wrote to his brother: "If every nerve is not strained to recruit the new army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up.... I cannot entertain the idea that [our cause] will finally sink, though it may remain for some time under a cloud."

Each day brought new difficulties to be overcome. When it was learned that the fleet that had sailed from New York had appeared off New London, the march of a portion of Heath's troops, which had been ordered from Peekskill, was countermanded, and three regiments from Ticonderoga were directed to halt at Morristown, where about eight hundred militia had been collected, and General Maxwell was sent to command them. On the 20th, the troops under Gates and Sullivan joined Washington. The former had been sent by Schuyler. Sullivan's division was that which had been commanded by Lee up to the time of his capture. Washington had been led to believe that a portion of these troops had reënlisted, and he had been waiting until they should join him to strike a blow at Howe's forces. Only a small number of the men had done so, however, and he found that on the first of the year he would have but fifteen hundred men independent of the militia. It was evident, therefore, that the blow must be struck at once.

On the 14th of December the British troops went into winter-quarters. They were stationed at Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, and Bordentown. Howe returned to his easy quarters in New York. Cornwallis obtained permission to visit England, and left Grant at Brunswick in command of New Jersey. The troops at Trenton were under the Hessian, Lieut.-Col. Rahl; those at Bordentown were commanded by his superior, Count Donop, who had some outposts as far south as Burlington and Mount Holly. Howe knew his line was too far extended, but he wished to cover the county of Monmouth, where there were indications of an outbreak on the part of some loyalists. The American army reached from Coryell's Ferry to Bristol. The crossings above Trenton were guarded by Stirling, Mercer, Stephen, and Fermoy. Ewing lay opposite Trenton. Dickinson with a few New Jersey troops was opposite Bordentown, and Cadwalader with the Pennsylvania militia was at Bristol.

Washington decided to attack the troops at Trenton. His men fit for duty did not exceed five thousand, and of these nearly two thousand were militia. The troops under Rahl consisted of three battalions of Hessians, having with them six field-pieces, fifty chasseurs, and twenty dragoons,—twelve hundred in all. Circumstances favored the plan which Washington now adopted. Colonel Griffin, with two companies of Virginians and some militia, had driven a party of Hessians, who had penetrated as far south as Moorestown and Haddonfield, back to Mount Holly, where they had been reinforced by Donop, who was thus too far removed from Trenton to support Rahl in case of an emergency. The success of Griffin made the militia at Bristol anxious for service, and it was decided by Cadwalader and Reed, who was with him, to gratify them by supporting Griffin. To this Washington assented, and at the same time confided to Reed and Cadwalader his contemplated movement against Trenton. On the morning of the 23d he wrote to them asking if the plan had been carried out, and informed them that one hour before day on the morning of the 26th was the time he had fixed upon for attacking Rahl. "For heaven's sake", he wrote, "keep this to yourselves as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us. Our numbers, sorry I am to say, being less than I had any conception of; but necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must justify an attack. Prepare and concert with Griffin; attack as many of their posts as you possibly can with a prospect of success; the more we can attack at the same instant the more confusion we shall spread, and the greater good will result from it."

Washington was informed that it was impracticable to act with Griffin; and Reed repaired to Philadelphia to urge Putnam to create a diversion by crossing the river at Cooper's Ferry. He found, however, that little could be expected from Putnam, and returned to Bristol on the 25th, where Cadwalader was preparing to carry out the part which Washington had assigned to him. It was the intention of Washington to cross the Delaware above Trenton with about one half of his command, and attack the enemy, while Ewing and Cadwalader should cross opposite Trenton and Bristol, and not only cut Rahl's line of retreat but prevent Donop from reinforcing him.

Notwithstanding the fact that no aid could be expected from Putnam, Washington determined to proceed, and urged Cadwalader to do all in his power to support him. The boats had been gathered at McKonkey's Ferry, nine miles above Trenton, and as the men marched to them the footprints they left in the snow were here and there tinged with blood from the feet of those who wore broken shoes. The boats were promptly manned by Glover's regiment from Marblehead, and at dark the crossing began. It was three o'clock before the artillery was landed, and four before the troops took up the line of march. The attack was to have been made about five, and against a more vigilant enemy this delay would have proved fatal. But Rahl was not vigilant. He despised his opponents, and refused to protect his position with redoubts as instructed by Donop. He had been informed of Washington's intended movement, but paid no attention to the report. It so happened that on the morning of the attack his outposts had been fired upon by a body of strolling militia, and this he supposed was the attack he was to look for. Washington had with him two thousand four hundred men. These he divided into two columns. One was commanded by Sullivan, and marched by the river road which entered the town on the northwest. The other, under Greene, took the Pennington road which approached the town from the north. The Americans advanced in a violent storm of snow and hail. Greene's command arrived at the outskirts of the town three minutes before Sullivan's. The attacks of both parties were almost simultaneously. Many of the guns were rendered useless by the storm, and the men were ordered to charge. Those who had bayonets fixed them and rushed upon the pickets, who retired. The Hessians were taken entirely by surprise. For a while Rahl was allowed to remain undisturbed in bed, but when matters grew serious he was aroused and hurriedly assumed command. Some of his half-formed regiments were advanced towards the Americans, but were driven back, throwing those in their rear into inextricable confusion. Two lines of retreat were open to Rahl. One lay over the bridge which crossed the Assanpink, south of the town; the other was the road to Brunswick. But Sullivan's attack was so spirited that the Hessians were driven past the road which led to the bridge, and as they attempted to escape towards Brunswick, Washington intercepted them with Hand's riflemen and held them in check. A battery under Captain Thomas Forrest created great havoc in their ranks, and two of their guns were turned against it. These were immediately charged by the Americans, who were led by Captain William Washington and Lieutenant James Monroe. Both were wounded, but the guns were captured. Rahl was mortally wounded in trying to rally his men, and shortly after he fell his command surrendered. All was over in three quarters of an hour. With the exception of the horse and a small number of the infantry which escaped over the Assanpink or to Brunswick, Rahl's entire force was either killed or captured. The prisoners numbered nine hundred and eighteen. The killed, Washington thought, did not exceed twenty or thirty. The Americans had two privates killed, one frozen to death, and two officers and four men wounded. As the enemy were supposed to be in force at Princeton and Bordentown, and the Americans were in no condition to withstand an attack, it was thought best not to risk the advantage which had been gained, and as soon as the men were rested the army, with its prisoners, returned to Pennsylvania.

Ewing and Cadwalader had been unable to carry out the parts assigned them, on account of the ice. The latter sent a portion of his infantry over the river, but recalled it when he found he could not land his artillery. With no definite news of Washington's success, Cadwalader recrossed on the morning of the 27th, supposing Washington to be at Trenton. He soon learned his mistake, but discovered that Donop had retreated towards Brunswick when he heard of the action at Trenton. Cadwalader then moved on to Burlington, and on the 29th marched to Crosswicks. The desperate condition of affairs previous to the battle had stimulated the people to extraordinary efforts, and the news of the victory raised their spirits in proportion to the depression they had so lately suffered. Ignorant of the victory Washington had achieved, Congress on the 27th vested him with powers that virtually constituted him a military dictator for the period of six months. To convince the people of the reality of the victory, the Hessians were marched through the streets of Philadelphia, and one of their standards was hung up in the chamber of Congress at Baltimore. Public rejoicings broke forth on every side. "The Lord of Hosts has heard the cry of the distressed, and sent an angel to their assistance", exclaimed Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutherans. On the 27th and 28th of December, fifteen hundred militia under Mifflin followed Cadwalader into New Jersey, while the Jerseymen gathered at Morristown and other points. In the face of this feeling it was necessary that the offensive should be resumed, and on the 30th Washington occupied Trenton. The service of the New England troops expired on the first of the year; but through the efforts of Robert Morris money was raised to offer bounties, which, with appeals to their patriotism, induced them to remain six weeks longer with the army.

As soon as Cornwallis heard of the surprise at Trenton, he gave up his visit to England and hastily joined Grant at Brunswick. On the 30th, with 8,000 men, he marched towards Trenton, with the determination of driving Washington over the Delaware or capturing his entire force. Washington immediately ordered Cadwalader and Mifflin to Trenton, and sent forward a detachment under General Fermoy to retard the advance of Cornwallis. On the night of January the 1st this detachment was at Five Mile Run, between Trenton and Princeton. Early on the morning of the 2d Cornwallis set out from Princeton, where he had halted the night previous. The Americans retired before him, disputing every foot of ground. Hand's riflemen, Scott's Virginians, and Forrest's battery bore the brunt of the fighting. It was nearly noon by the time Shabbakong Creek was reached, and two hours passed before the British succeeded in crossing it. The main portion of the American army was strongly posted on the south side of the Assanpink, the banks being sufficiently high to enable the men in the rear to fire over the heads of those in front of them. As the British approached Trenton, troops were sent forward by Washington to support the Americans. A battery placed on a hill beyond Trenton held the British in check for a short time, but the Americans were soon driven into the town and across the bridge. The cannonading on both sides was heavy, but the British were unable to force their way across the stream, and as night approached Cornwallis, against the advice of his officers, withdrew his troops, determined to renew the conflict in the morning. "If ever there was a crisis in the affairs of the Revolution", wrote Wilkinson, "this was the moment. Thirty minutes would have sufficed to have brought the two armies into contact, and thirty minutes more would have decided the combat." Washington's position was indeed critical. It was hardly possible that with his raw levies he could continue to hold in check the well-disciplined troops of Cornwallis, which in the morning would be reinforced with troops he had left at Maidenhead and Princeton. The Delaware behind Washington was full of floating ice, and to cross it in that condition was impossible. If Cornwallis should force the Americans' position, the victory of the British would be decisive. Immediately after dark a council of war was held. It was then decided to turn the left flank of the enemy, strike a blow at Princeton, where the garrison was small, and march on Brunswick, the depository of the British stores. The sentries of both armies were posted along the banks of the Assanpink, and at some points were within one hundred and fifty yards of each other. Working parties were sent within hearing distance of the enemy to throw up intrenchments, the guards were doubled, and everything was done to indicate that Washington intended to defend his position to the last. But at midnight the fires were replenished and the troops silently withdrawn. Marching by the Quaker road, Washington turned the left flank of Cornwallis, and by daybreak reached a point directly south of Princeton. With the main body he moved directly on the town, and ordered a detachment under Mercer to march to the left and demolish the bridge over Stony Brook, thus destroying direct communication with Cornwallis. The garrison at Princeton consisted of the 17th, 40th, and 55th regiments and three companies of light horse. The 17th and 55th, with a few dragoons, started at sunrise on the morning of the 3d to join Cornwallis. The 17th, under Colonel Mawhood, had crossed the bridge over Stony Brook, that Mercer was to destroy, and was some distance beyond it, when Mawhood discovered Mercer on his flank and rear, moving north on the east side of the stream. He at once recrossed the bridge, and both parties endeavored to gain the high ground east of the stream. As the Americans had the shortest distance to march, they were successful, and with their rifles they poured a deadly fire into the 17th and 55th, as they advanced to drive them from their position. They had no bayonets, however, and were unable to stand the charge of the British. They fled through an orchard in their rear, leaving their commander mortally wounded on the ground. It was not until Mawhood emerged from the orchard that he was aware that the whole American army was within supporting distance of the troops he had just engaged. On hearing the firing on his left, Washington halted his column, and with the Pennsylvania militia moved to the support of Mercer. Encouraged by the irresolution of the militia, Mawhood charged them, but other regiments coming up and the militia gaining confidence, the British halted, and then fled, as the Americans in turn advanced against them. The 55th retreated to Princeton and joined the 40th. They made a mere show of defending the town, took refuge in the college building, deserted it, and were soon seen in full retreat across the Millstone towards Brunswick. Washington's troops had been under arms for over eighteen hours, and were too much fatigued to follow them. Having dispersed the 17th regiment, he destroyed the bridge over Stony Brook and Millstone as the head of Cornwallis's rear-guard came in sight. It was commanded by Leslie, who had marched from Maidenhead as soon as he heard the firing in his rear. Washington turned north at Kingston, and proceeded to Somerset Court-House, where he rested his men. Cornwallis was not aware that the Americans had been withdrawn from his front until he heard the sound of the guns at Princeton. Realizing at once that he had been outgeneralled, and that his stores were in danger, he ordered a retreat. Failing to reach Princeton in time to be of service, he continued his march to Brunswick, and made no attempt to follow Washington. The losses of the British in these engagements were severe; those on the 2d of January were never known. At Princeton, Washington estimated that one hundred men were left dead upon the field, and that the killed, wounded, and prisoners amounted to five hundred. Ensign Inman, of the 17th, wrote that of the two hundred and twenty-four rank and file of his regiment, which set out on the morning of the 3d, one hundred and one were either killed or wounded, and that he was the only officer of the right wing not injured. The Americans lost only twenty or thirty privates, but many officers. Bravely had they urged their men on in the thickest of the fight. That Washington escaped seemed a miracle to those who saw him lead the troops which drove Mawhood back. Hazlet, Morris, Neal, and Shippin fell upon the field. Mercer, mortally wounded, died upon the 12th, lamented by the whole country. From Somerset Court-House Washington marched to Morristown, where he went into winter-quarters. The British troops were soon all withdrawn to Amboy and Brunswick. In less than three weeks Washington had turned back the tide of adversity, and had compelled his opponents to evacuate West Jersey.

Washington remained at Morristown from the 7th of January until the 28th of May, during which time no military movement of importance took place. His men left for their homes as soon as their terms of service expired, and as few militia entered the camp to take their places, at times it seemed as if the army would be so reduced as to be unworthy of the name. It was not until late in the spring that the new levies reached headquarters. On the 28th of May the Americans marched to Middlebrook, and took position behind the Raritan. On the 13th of June Howe marched from Brunswick and extended his line to Somerset Court-House, and Arnold was sent to Trenton to take measures to prevent his crossing the Delaware. The militia turned out in a spirited manner, and Howe did not care to advance in the face of the opposition they could offer, with Washington on his flank. He endeavored to bring on a general engagement with the latter, but Washington refused to leave the strong position he occupied, and Howe retired to Amboy.

Early in April Howe had settled upon a campaign having for its object the capture of Philadelphia. He determined to embark his troops and transport them to the banks of the Delaware or Chesapeake, and march directly on the city. With the object of reaching the fleet he started to cross to Staten Island; but learning that Washington was at Quibbletown, he recalled his men and proceeded to Westfield, hoping to outflank him. But, as Washington retired, Howe was unsuccessful, and finally passed over to Staten Island, totally evacuating New Jersey.

For over six weeks Washington was ignorant of Howe's intentions. Supposing that he would endeavor to coöperate with Burgoyne, and would sail up the Hudson, Washington moved his army to Ramapo, in New York. On the 23d of July, after Howe's troops had been three weeks on the vessels, the fleet sailed, shaping its course southwesterly. Its departure was promptly reported to Congress. Signal fires were lighted along the Jersey coast as it was seen from time to time by those who were watching for it, and messengers carried inland the news of its progress. At last, on the 30th, it was spoken off the capes of Delaware, but Lord Howe deemed it too hazardous to sail up that river, and after consulting with his brother, the general, continued on his course southward. On the 15th of August he entered Chesapeake Bay, and on the 25th the troops were landed at Elk Ferry.

On the 24th of July Washington heard that the fleet had sailed southward, and in consequence marched his army from Ramapo to Coryell's Ferry. He continued his march to Philadelphia, when he learned that the fleet was off the capes of Delaware; but as it was soon lost sight of, he retraced his steps, and halted in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, twenty miles from Philadelphia. While there, Lafayette, De Kalb, and Pulaski joined the army.

For a while everything was in suspense. Concluding at last that Howe had sailed for Charleston, Washington consulted with his officers, and decided to return to the Hudson, so that Burgoyne could be opposed or New York attacked, as circumstances should direct. He was just about to do this when word was brought that the fleet had entered Chesapeake Bay, and was at least two hundred miles from the capes. This news created great consternation in Philadelphia, but the excitement was not as great as it had been the previous winter, when Howe was at Trenton. Repeated alarms had made the people callous, and internal political differences continued to divide them. Besides this, the pacific influence which the presence of a large Quaker population exercised seemed to bear down all military efforts. Stirring appeals were made by the authorities, new bodies of militia were ordered to be raised, handbills calculated to arouse the people were issued, but all with unsatisfactory results. To impress the lukewarm with the strength of his forces, and to inspire hopes in the breasts of the patriotic, on the 24th of August Washington marched his army through the streets of Philadelphia. The men were poorly armed and clothed, and to give them some uniformity they wore sprigs of green in their hats.

The Americans halted south of Wilmington, and a picked corps under Maxwell was thrown to the front. The country below was patrolled by parties of Delaware militia under Rodney, and Washington reconnoitred it in person. The disembarkation of Howe's army on the 25th was watched by a few militia, who fled when a landing was effected. Howe's men were in good health, but hundreds of his horses had died on the voyage, and those that survived were little better than carrion. His advance, therefore, was slow. He moved in two columns, one on each side of Elk River. Several days were spent in collecting horses, and on the 3d of September the columns joined at Aitken's tavern. Here a severe skirmish took place with Maxwell's corps, which was driven back. Washington's force then lay behind Red Clay Creek, his left resting on Christiana Creek, and extending in the direction of Newport. On the 8th the British advanced as if to attack the American left, but by night Washington learned that the greater part of Howe's army was at Milltown, on his right. Fearing that Howe would push past him in that direction, cross the Brandywine, and gain the road to Philadelphia, Washington, on the evening of the 8th, quietly withdrew his troops from Red Clay Creek, and threw them in front of Howe, at Chad's Ford, on the Brandywine. A redoubt, commanded by Proctor, was thrown up on the east bank to protect the crossing. Wayne's division, formerly Lincoln's, was within supporting distance, and Greene's, still further to the rear, was to act as a reserve. The Pennsylvania militia, under Armstrong, formed the left wing. They were posted at the fords below Chad's, which were easily protected. The right wing was commanded by Sullivan. It was composed of his own division and those of Stirling and Stephen. Both Washington and Sullivan were unacquainted with the country to their right, and supposed that, when they guarded the fords three miles above where Sullivan was stationed, the enemy could not approach from that direction without their receiving timely notice.

The British marched from Milltown to Kennett Square. On the morning of the 11th, Knyphausen with 7,000 men took the direct road to Chad's Ford. He skirmished with Maxwell, who had crossed the stream to meet him, and drove him back over the Brandywine. At daybreak on the same day, another column, 7,000 strong, set out from Kennett Square. It was commanded by Cornwallis, and Howe accompanied it in person. It took a road leading north to a point above the forks of the Brandywine, turned to the east, crossed the west branch at Trimble's Ford and the east at Jeffrey's, and then moved south. The plan was that Knyphausen should engage the attention of the Americans in front until Cornwallis had gained a position to attack their right. In this Knyphausen was successful, his attempts to cross the Brandywine at Chad's Ford being only feints.

About noon Washington heard of Cornwallis's march. He promptly determined to cross the stream and engage Knyphausen, while Cornwallis was too far distant to reinforce him or threaten the American right. Wayne, Greene, and Sullivan's divisions were ordered to advance. Greene had gained the west bank when word was received from Sullivan that a Major Spear had assured him that there must be some mistake. He had that morning passed over the road Cornwallis was said to be on, and had seen nothing of him. Fearing that Cornwallis's march was only a feint, and that he had returned and rejoined Knyphausen, Washington ordered Greene back and sent scouts out for additional information. By two o'clock it was obtained. Cornwallis was discovered on the road to Dilworth, and would soon be in the rear of the Americans. Stirling and Stephen were deployed on the hill southwest of Birmingham Meeting-House, and Sullivan's division was ordered to join them. Before it could reach its position Cornwallis began the attack. As he attempted to turn the American right, Sullivan endeavored to move his three divisions to the east. His own division had been formed in line half a mile from those of Stirling and Stephen, and in closing the gap it fell into confusion and was routed. With the divisions of Stirling and Stephen, Sullivan made every effort to hold the position; but he was outnumbered, his left flank was uncovered, and his entire command was finally driven in confusion from the field. Sullivan, Stirling, and Conway had encouraged their men with exhibitions of personal bravery, and Lafayette, who acted as a volunteer, was wounded while endeavoring to rally some fugitives. When Washington heard the firing in the direction of Birmingham he rode thither with the utmost speed. Meeting the fugitives, he ordered Greene to support the right wing. The order was executed with wonderful promptness. Greene, throwing Weedon's brigade on the flank of the enemy and Muhlenberg's in their front, checked the pursuit. But the Americans were obliged to fall back until they came to a narrow defile, flanked on both sides by woods, from which the British could not drive them, and night ended the conflict. When Knyphausen learned that Cornwallis was engaged he pushed across the stream at Chad's Ford, but Wayne, Maxwell, and Proctor held him in check until they found that the right wing had been defeated, when they retired in good order, fighting as they fell back towards Chester. There at night the defeated army gathered, and Washington reported to Congress that, notwithstanding the misfortunes of the day, his troops were in good spirits.

The American loss was about one thousand, killed, wounded, and prisoners; that of the British, five hundred and seventy-nine. That the conduct of the Americans inspired their opponents with respect is shown by the language of Sir William Howe in summarizing the opposition he had met with up to this time. "They fought the king's army", he wrote, "on Long Island; they sustained the attack at Fort Washington; they stood the battle at Brandywine: and our loss upon those occasions, though by no means equal to theirs, was not inconsiderable."

The day after the battle Washington marched from Chester to Philadelphia. He rested his army two days at Germantown, and then recrossed the Schuylkill; public opinion demanding that another battle should be risked before the city should be given up. On the 16th the two armies met on the high ground south of Chester Valley and prepared for action. The skirmishing had actually begun, when a violent storm stopped the engagement by ruining the ammunition of both armies. Washington withdrew to the hills north of the valley, and finding it impossible to repair the damage done by the storm, retreated again over the Schuylkill, leaving Wayne behind him to watch the enemy and attack their rear should they attempt to follow. Wayne was to have been reinforced by detachments under Smallwood and Gist, which did not reach him. When the British moved nearer to the Lancaster road, Wayne took position in their rear. He supposed that they were ignorant of his presence, and wrote to Washington to that effect. But on the night of the 20th he was attacked by a strong detachment under Major-General Grey, and although he had taken measures to guard against a surprise, the onslaught was so sudden that his men, who were sleeping on their arms, were unable to make an effective resistance, and about one hundred and fifty were either killed or wounded by the bayonet.

Howe on the 21st resumed his march towards Philadelphia. Finding that the Americans had thrown up intrenchments at Swedes Ford, he turned up the river as if to cross above. Washington feared that it was his intention to strike at Reading, where his stores were deposited, and to protect them marched in the same direction on the opposite side of the river. When he reached Potts Grove, now Pottstown, he discovered that Howe, by a retrograde movement on the night of the 22d, had crossed at Fatland and Gordon's fords, and was in full march for Philadelphia.

On the day of the battle of Brandywine the citizens of Philadelphia heard the sound of cannon in the west, and gathered in the streets to discuss and wonder what the future would bring forth. At night a messenger arrived with news of the disaster. Everything was in confusion, and when, on the morning of the 19th, about one o'clock, a letter was received from Colonel Hamilton stating that the British were marching on the city, the members of Congress were aroused from their beds, and departed in haste for Lancaster, where they had agreed to meet should their removal from Philadelphia become necessary.

"It was a beautiful still moonlight night, and the streets as full of men, women, and children as on a market day." The alarm was premature, but on the 25th Howe's army encamped at Germantown. Through Thomas Willing, a leading citizen of Philadelphia, the inhabitants were promised by Sir William Howe that if they should remain peaceably in their dwellings they would not be molested. The next morning, Cornwallis, with three thousand men, took possession of the city. The troops marched down Second Street to the music of "God save the King", and were greeted by some of the inhabitants with "acclamations of joy", but the people generally "appeared sad and serious." Howe immediately began to throw up a line of intrenchments north of the city, extending from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, and informed his brother, the admiral, who was in Delaware Bay, that the army was in possession of the city. The defences of the river prevented the fleet from approaching, and the day after the occupation an attempt was made by the American flotilla to cannonade the city. The smaller vessels were driven off before they had done serious damage, but the frigate "Delaware" ran aground and was captured.

The main portion of Howe's army remained at Germantown, a village of a single street, two miles in length, and five from the city. In the centre stood the market-house, and along the road which there crosses the main street Howe's army was encamped. The left under Knyphausen reached to the Schuylkill, the right under Grant and Mathews to the York road. At the upper end of the town stood the large stone mansion of Benjamin Chew, late chief justice of the province, and in a field opposite the 40th Regiment under Colonel Musgrave was encamped. The advance was a mile beyond at Mount Pleasant, where the second battalion of light infantry was stationed, with their pickets thrown out at Mount Airy still further on. After Howe crossed the Schuylkill, Washington marched to Pennybacker's Mills, and thence to Metutchen Hills, fifteen miles from Philadelphia. He had been reinforced by McDougall's brigade and other troops; and learning that Howe had detached a portion of his command to reduce the forts on the Delaware, he determined to attack him at Germantown. His plan was to engage the troops at Mount Pleasant with a portion of his army, while a large force under Greene should move down the Lime Kiln road, which enters the town from the east at the market-house, and attack Grant and Mathews. At the same time the Pennsylvania and Jersey militia were to make demonstrations on the enemy's left and right flanks respectively.

Washington moved from his quarters on the evening of October 3d. Sullivan commanded the troops that were to attack the enemy in front, and was followed by the reserve under Stirling, which Washington accompanied. Sullivan arrived at Chestnut Hill on the morning of the 4th at sunrise, and halted two hours to allow Greene to gain his ground, that the attacks might be made at the same time. Captain Allen McLane's company and a portion of Conway's brigade were then ordered to advance. They drove the guard at Mount Airy back on the light infantry, and held them in check while Sullivan formed his line. Wayne's division was on the east of the road, Sullivan's on the west. The whole under Sullivan then moved forward, driving the light infantry before them. A thick fog enveloped everything, and the men could not see forty yards in front of them. But Wayne's men dashed on, calling to each other to remember Paoli and crying for vengeance. The light infantry were reinforced by the 40th Regiment under Musgrave. Just then Howe rode up, calling out: "For shame, light infantry! I never saw you retreat before." But he found the attack was general, and rode back to the main line. Down the main street and past Chew's house Sullivan and Wayne pursued the flying troops. But here the rout of the British was checked by Agnew, who hastened forward with a portion of the left wing. As the reserve passed Chew's house they were fired upon by six companies of the 40th that had taken refuge there with their commander Musgrave. Stirling endeavored to dislodge them, but the effort was futile. Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens and Major Louis Fleury daringly attempted to fire the house, but were unsuccessful. While this was going on, Greene made his attack on the right wing. His march had taken half an hour longer than anticipated, while he still met the enemy sooner than planned, as their first battalion of light infantry had been moved forward the night before on the Lime Kiln road. Greene attempted to advance in line of battle, but his line was thrown into confusion. He drove a portion of the troops back to the market-house, but when he encountered Grant he was obliged to retire, and a part of his command was captured. Woodford's brigade wandered so far from Greene's right as to reach the rear of Chew's house. It was then directly behind Wayne's division, and when the brigade fired on the house Wayne's men retired, as they supposed the enemy were in their rear. This uncovered Sullivan's flank, and he too was obliged to fall back. The British pursued until Whitemarsh was reached, where Wayne checked them with a battery posted on the hill, near the church. The Americans lost nearly eleven hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners; the British, five hundred and twenty-one. The American General Nash, of North Carolina, and the British General Agnew were mortally wounded. While the Americans were defeated in their object, the moral results of the battle were in their favor. It inspired them with confidence, and showed the world that though driven from the field of Brandywine they were still aggressive.

It was now evident to Howe that he must open communication with New York by water, or his army would be in a state of siege. His attention was therefore turned to the defences of the Delaware which were held by the Americans. The most formidable of these was Fort Mifflin, situated on an island in the river a short distance below the mouth of the Schuylkill. Opposite this, at Red Bank, on the Jersey shore, was Fort Mercer, while four or five miles below, at Billingsport, was another fortification. Opposite these points chevaux-de-frise were sunk in the channel, which were protected by the batteries and by a fleet of small vessels, known as the Pennsylvania navy, commanded by Commodore John Hazelwood. Besides these, there were several larger vessels which had been built by order of Congress.

On the 19th of October Howe withdrew his troops from Germantown and encamped them behind his lines of intrenchments on the north side of the city. Before this he had erected batteries to attack Fort Mifflin. He now sent a body of men, under Colonel Stirling, over the river from Chester to capture the fort at Billingsport. The garrison there was not sufficient for the defence of the fort, and as the British approached they evacuated the post. By the 21st Admiral Howe succeeded in passing the lower chevaux-de-frise, and his vessels sailed up the river to a point nearly opposite Fort Mifflin. On the same day three battalions of Hessians, with artillery, crossed into Jersey from Philadelphia to attack Fort Mercer. They arrived before the fort on the afternoon of the 22d. It was commanded by Colonel Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, who had with him but six hundred men. The fortifications were unfinished, but a strong redoubt, with an abatis, had been constructed. Donop summoned the garrison to surrender, and upon receiving a refusal formed his regiments for the attack. They rushed upon the embankments and passed the abandoned lines with little opposition. But when they charged the redoubt, they were met with a fire that nearly filled the ditches with killed and wounded. Most of the men retired in confusion, and those who attempted to scale the works were beaten back in a hand-to-hand conflict. It was intended that the fleet should coöperate with Donop; that the "Vigilant", with sixteen 24-pounders, should pass to the west of Fort Mifflin, while other vessels should engage Hazelwood and prevent his offering assistance to Greene. The plan failed, however, at all points. The "Vigilant" could not sail up the west channel, and Hazelwood was more than a match for the vessels sent against him. He drove them back, while some of his boats sailed close to the shore and poured an effective fire into the flank of Donop's column. It was in vain that Donop and his officers re-formed the men and led them back to the attack. They were shot down in scores as they attempted to remove the abatis, and in three quarters of an hour from the time the engagement opened the men withdrew for the last time, leaving Donop behind them, mortally wounded. He died three days afterwards, "finishing", to use his own words, "a noble career early." His command had numbered about twenty-five hundred men, one sixth of whom were either killed or wounded. The Americans had but fourteen killed and twenty-three wounded. Two of the vessels which had been sent against Hazelwood, the "Augusta" and the "Merlin", ran aground, and were discovered in that position by the Americans on the 22d. They were at once attacked, and the magazine of the "Augusta" exploded with terrific force. She had been set on fire either by accident or by a shot from the American batteries, and blew up before all of her crew could be removed. It was found impossible to save the "Merlin", and she was fired by her officers and destroyed.

Taught caution by these reverses, Howe made no further effort to capture the forts until he had succeeded in erecting a number of batteries on the Pennsylvania shore within range of Fort Mifflin. On the 10th of November these were opened with serious result to the Americans. The reply from the fort was spirited, and the damage done to it in daytime was repaired during the night. On the first day, Colonel Samuel Smith, of Maryland, who commanded the garrison, was wounded, and was taken to Red Bank. The second in command, Lieutenant-Colonel Russell, was relieved, on account of ill-health, by Major Simeon Thayer, of Rhode Island, and the defence of the fort was continued. On the 15th the "Vigilant", carrying sixteen 24-pounders, and a hulk with three guns of the same capacity, succeeded in passing up the west channel and taking the fort in the rear, while other vessels engaged the fleet. The fort by this time was little more than a mass of ruins. The ammunition was nearly exhausted. Major Fleury, the engineer of the fort, and Major Talbot were wounded; nearly all the guns were dismounted, and whenever the men appeared on the platforms they were picked off by sharpshooters in the shrouds of the vessels. During the night of the 15th the garrison was removed to Red Bank, as preparations were being made to storm the place the next day, and on the morning of the 16th the British took possession of the place. The gallant defence of this fort by about three hundred men called forth commendations from all sides. Swords were voted to Hazelwood and Smith by Congress, while Fleury and Thayer were promoted. Fort Mercer was now the only water-defence held by the Americans. With the object of capturing it, on the 18th Cornwallis marched to Chester and crossed to Billingsport. Greene was sent to oppose him, and crossed the Delaware at Bristol; but before he could render any assistance to Varnum, who commanded the troops on the Jersey side of the river, that officer was obliged to retire before Cornwallis and abandon Fort Mercer, which the British now destroyed. Lafayette, who was with Greene, made a spirited attack on a body of Hessians encamped near Gloucester, for which he gained considerable credit. The majority of the small vessels of the Pennsylvania navy succeeded in passing up the river by the batteries that Howe had erected at Philadelphia, but the larger ones, together with nearly all those built by Congress, were destroyed.

A few days after the fall of Fort Mifflin the British transports made their way up to Philadelphia, and to some extent relieved the distress that the scarcity of provisions occasioned. About the end of October Washington removed his headquarters to Whitemarsh, and on November 24th reconnoitred the enemy's lines with a view to attack them. A majority of his officers, however, opposed the plan. It was soon evident that Sir William Howe was about to resume the offensive, and Greene was recalled from Jersey. On the evening of December 4th, Howe, with nearly all his army, marched out of Philadelphia with the avowed intention of driving Washington over the mountains. His advance-guard arrived at Chestnut Hill about daylight the next morning. General James Irvine with the Pennsylvania militia met them at the foot of the hill, and, after a sharp skirmish, the militia fled, leaving Irvine wounded in the hands of the British. When Howe arrived in front of Washington's lines he found them so strong that he did not dare to attack them, and after spending four days in endeavoring to gain a position that would compel Washington to attack him, he suddenly gave up the design and returned to the city.

As the season was advancing, and the Americans were in no condition to keep the field, it was decided to go into winter-quarters at Valley Forge, on the west side of the Schuylkill, where the Valley Creek empties into the river. The surrounding hills were covered with woods and presented an inhospitable appearance. The choice was severely criticised, and De Kalb described it as a wilderness. But the position was central and easily defended. The army arrived there about the middle of December, and the erection of huts began. They were built of logs, and were fourteen by fifteen feet each. The windows were covered with oiled paper, and the openings between the logs were closed with clay. The huts were arranged in streets, giving the place the appearance of a city. It was the first of the year, however, before they were occupied, and previous to that the suffering of the army had become great. Although the weather was intensely cold the men were obliged to work at the buildings, with nothing to support life but flour mixed with water, which they baked into cakes at the open fires. "My brigade's out of provisions, nor can the commissary obtain any meat", wrote Huntington on the 22d of December. "Three days successively we have been destitute of bread", said Varnum the same day, "and two days we have been entirely without meat." Soap, vinegar, and other articles necessary for the health of the men were never furnished, and so imperfectly did the clothier-general perform his duties that many of the men were without shirts, and hundreds were confined to the hospitals and farm-houses for want of shoes. Blankets and proper coverings were so scarce that numbers, after toiling during the day, were obliged to sit by the fires all night to keep from freezing. By the 23d of December two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men were unfit for duty, because they were barefoot and otherwise naked. The horses died of starvation by hundreds, and the men were obliged to haul their own provisions and firewood. As straw could not be found to protect the men from the cold ground, sickness spread through their quarters with fearful rapidity. "The unfortunate soldiers", wrote Lafayette, in after-years, "were in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; their feet and their legs froze till they became black, and it was often necessary to amputate them.... The army frequently remained whole days without provisions, and the patient endurance of both soldiers and officers was a miracle which each moment served to renew." At times, however, it seemed as if the forbearance of the men was exhausted, and that the war would end in mutiny. But the officers succeeded in allaying the feelings of discontent, and under the management of Greene, who assumed the duties of quarter-master-general on the 23d of March, a change for the better took place.

While the country around Valley Forge was so impoverished by the military operations of the previous summer as to make it impossible for it to support the army, the sufferings of the latter were chiefly owing to the inefficiency of Congress. That body met at Lancaster after leaving Philadelphia, and at once adjourned to York, where its sessions were continued. But it in no way equalled the congresses which had preceded it. "The Continental Congress and the currency", wrote Gouverneur Morris in 1778, "have greatly depreciated." Many of the members entertained the widespread fear of a standing army, and refused to follow the advice given by Washington for the relief of the men who defended them. Some of the delegates, indeed, did not hesitate to criticise the judgment of Washington, and question his abilities. The capture of Burgoyne gave them an opportunity of comparing the results of the Northern and Southern campaigns. In writing of Washington's army a member of Congress said to Gates: "We have had a noble army melted down by ill-judged marches, which disgrace their authors and directors, and which have occasioned the severest and most just sarcasm and contempt of our enemies. How much you are to be envied, my dear general! How different your conduct and your fortune! In short, this army will be totally lost unless you come down and collect the virtuous band, who wish to fight under your banner, and with their aid save the southern hemisphere. Congress must send for you." "I am weary", exclaimed John Adams, "with so much insipidity." "I am sick of Fabian systems in all quarters." It was a matter for thanksgiving, he thought, that the credit of defending the Delaware was "not immediately due to the commander-in-chief nor to Southern troops. If it had been, idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded." The prevalence of these sentiments made it easy for disappointed soldiers like Mifflin and Conway to spread dissensions which, if they had been allowed to grow, would have brought about the removal of Washington. Mifflin's eloquence and abilities as a politician far exceeded his merits in the field; and he was jealous of the preference shown by Washington for Greene and Knox. Conway aspired to a major-generalship, and was chagrined that Washington opposed him. If Washington had been removed and Lee or Gates appointed in his place, Mifflin and Conway would have been benefited by the change. The schemes of the last two were warmly supported by James Lovell and Dr. Benjamin Rush, and the most insidious measures were entered upon to undermine the reputation of Washington. Anonymous letters were circulated for this purpose, and the country was made to ring with the cry that, under a Gates, a Lee, or a Conway, the Southern army would be victorious. Through the influence of this faction, Gates was made president of the Board of War, of which Mifflin was a member, and authority which belonged to the commander-in-chief was vested in it. To separate Lafayette from Washington, and gain for themselves the influence of his name, the "Cabal", as it has been called, proposed an impracticable winter campaign against Canada, which Lafayette was to command, with Conway to assist him. But here the faction spent its strength. The friends of Washington had been put on their guard by the disclosure of a correspondence which showed the malignity of his enemies. Wilkinson, who was on Gates's staff, repeated, while his tongue was loosened with wine, an opinion expressed in a letter that Conway had written to Gates. Gates read it to his military family. "Heaven has been determined to save your country", it said, "or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it." The words reached Washington, who enclosed them to Conway, simply informing him that he understood they formed a portion of a letter of his to Gates. It was in vain that the members of the Cabal attempted at first to carry the matter through with a high hand, then to deny that such a letter had ever been written, and finally to excuse themselves. Their ends were discovered and their power was gone. Lafayette would have nothing to do with the Canadian expedition unless De Kalb was made his second in command. He repaired to Albany only to find that no measures had been taken to carry out the promises made him, and as the friends of Washington were soon in the ascendency in Congress, Lafayette was recalled to Valley Forge.

Through the advice of a committee which Congress had sent to camp to inquire into the condition of the army, many defects and abuses were corrected, and its organization was improved. The new troops that had been called for came in slowly, but their effectiveness was increased through the exertion of Baron Steuben, who joined the army about the close of February. A pupil of Frederick the Great, and a distinguished officer in the Prussian service, he won the esteem of Congress by offering to serve as a volunteer. His experience and industry soon instilled a discipline into the army which it had never known, and in May he was made inspector-general, with the rank and pay of a major-general.

While the American army was suffering at Valley Forge the British were comfortably quartered in Philadelphia. When they first entered the city it presented a sorry appearance: 590 dwellings and 240 stores were unoccupied; the leaden spouts of many houses had been taken down to mould into bullets, and the bells of the churches and public buildings had been removed to places of safety. The male population between the ages of eighteen and sixty numbered but 5,335, and of these one fifth were Quakers. The feelings of the Quaker citizens had been greatly outraged by the arrest and banishment to the western part of Virginia of a number of their people. Sullivan had discovered on his march through New Jersey what he believed to be a treasonable correspondence on their part with the enemy, and he had forwarded the papers to Congress. The matter had been referred to the authorities of Pennsylvania, who found in the correspondence, and in an address issued by the Quaker meeting in December, the grounds for sending the Quaker leaders into exile. It was but natural that the families of these men should have looked upon the British as their deliverers from an outrageous tyranny. But they soon found to their sorrow that their opposition to war afforded them as little protection from one side as from the other. The property destroyed by the British was enormous, and a revulsion of feeling was the consequence. At one time seventeen handsome houses beyond the lines were set on fire to prevent their being occupied by the American pickets. Persons living in the neighborhood of the city were robbed by both parties, and their crops carried off or destroyed. The temptation to sell their produce for hard money induced some of the neighboring farmers to supply the enemy with luxuries, though they found access to the city hazardous. The Americans under Smallwood guarded the roads leading to Wilmington, while Generals Potter and Lacy scoured the country west and north of the city. Captains Allen McLane, Clark, and Lee watched the movements of the enemy and reported them to Washington, but they could not oppose the large forces that Howe frequently sent out to protect those who were willing to risk furnishing him with provisions.

The desolation which surrounded the town was soon in striking contrast with the scenes within. The empty stores were occupied by itinerant traders from New York, who offered for sale articles of luxury that the war had driven from the American market. The officers of the army were quartered on the citizens, and after the campaign closed they gave themselves up to social enjoyments. Clubs met at the public-houses, and weekly balls were given at the City Tavern. As many of the officers were men of education and refinement, they were warmly welcomed in the families of leading citizens; but there was another class who did much to change the moral aspect of the city, when, by following the loose example of their commander, Sir William Howe, they shocked the staid citizens with their immorality. Cock-fighting and gambling were favorite amusements, and a faro-table kept by a foreigner proved the ruin of many young officers. The theatre on South Street was fitted up under directions of Captains André and De Lancey. Some of the scenes were painted by André. The profits of the performances were divided among the widows and orphans of the soldiers. As spring approached, horse-racing was added to the list of amusements. While citizens of wealth could take part in the gaieties which surrounded them, those in moderate circumstances suffered privations. Firewood was extremely scarce and provisions high. "Nothing but hard money will pass", wrote a resident to a relative outside of the lines. "There is plenty of goods, but little money among the tradespeople. The market is poor. I received the butter by J——; we are no longer accustomed to eat butter on our bread. I keep it to make water soup, which we have nearly every day." The army of occupation, on the other hand, was plentifully supplied with military stores after the defences on the Delaware were captured.

Martial law ruled supreme. The appointment of Joseph Galloway to be superintendent of police and the designation of magistrates under him were the only steps taken towards the revival of civil authority, and Galloway received his orders from headquarters.

The supineness of Howe robbed the British of all the benefits that might have resulted from the capture of Philadelphia. Attempts were made to raise regiments of loyalists, but so little support did the scheme receive that it was only partially successful. The "Pennsylvania Loyalists", of which William Allen, Jr., was colonel, and the "Queen's Rangers", commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, were the most efficient of these corps. No attempt was made to drive Washington's half-starved forces from their camp, although their condition was perfectly well known to Howe through the deserters that flocked to the city. The military movements of Howe while in Philadelphia were confined to foraging expeditions and attacks on isolated posts that could be surprised and broken up with little danger of loss. While these were successful, they gave to the war a predatory character that reflected little credit on British arms, and intensified the bitterness entertained for all representatives of royal authority.

The British government, dissatisfied with the results of Howe's campaigns, decided early in 1778 upon his recall. Sir Henry Clinton, his successor, arrived in Philadelphia the 8th of May, and on the 18th an entertainment was given by the officers of the army in honor of the retiring commander. The fête was styled the "Mischianza", and consisted of a regatta, a mock tournament, and a ball. But "Knights of the Burning Mountain" and of the "Blended Rose", with squires and ladies decked with spangles and ribbons, could not disguise the fact that the royal army had failed in accomplishing the task assigned to it, and the chagrin of its veterans was deepened by the frivolous scenes which marked the retirement of Sir William Howe.

The alliance with France made it necessary for the British to contract their operations, and Sir Henry Clinton brought with him orders to evacuate Philadelphia. His intention of doing so became known to Washington, and that his information might be more certain he ordered Lafayette, with a body of two thousand four hundred men, the flower of the army, to cross the Schuylkill and take a position near the city. This movement was made on the very day of the Mischianza, and on the morning of the 19th Howe learned that Lafayette was at Barren Hill, twelve miles distant. Clinton had not yet assumed command, and in the hope of closing his career in America by a brilliant stroke, Howe determined to make an effort to capture the young Frenchman and his detachment. So confident was he of doing this, that, before leaving the city, he invited his friends to meet Lafayette, whom he promised to bring with him on his return, while his brother, the admiral, prepared a vessel in which to take the distinguished captive to England. On the night of the 19th Grant, with five thousand men, marched by way of Frankford and Oxford, and by morning he had gained a point on the Swedes Ford road two miles in the rear of Lafayette. Another detachment, under Grey, was sent by way of Chestnut Hill to attack Lafayette's flank; while the main portion of the army, under Howe, took the Ridge road, to attack him in front. Lafayette's position was on high ground, and was naturally strong. Neither Grey nor Howe could approach him without his being aware of their advance. In his rear were two roads. One led along the riverside to Matson's Ford, three miles distant; the other along a ridge, a short distance from the river, to Swedes Ford, still higher up. The ground between the roads was heavily wooded. Had Grant, who held the Swedes Ford road, sent a portion of his force to Matson's Ford (which he could have done by a cross-road), Lafayette's only line of retreat would have been destroyed. But in place of doing this he marched down the Swedes Ford road to attack the American rear. Through the carelessness of his scouts, Lafayette was ignorant of Grant's position. He was preparing his force to receive Howe, when he heard of the column advancing from Chestnut Hill. He had just faced a portion of his troops in that direction when he learned that Grant was in his rear. Lafayette's danger was now apparent, but he was equal to the occasion. Without losing a moment, he sent troops through the woods, with orders to allow themselves to be seen at times by Grant, and lead him to suppose that they were the advance-guards of larger numbers. He also left a small body to engage the attention of Howe and Grey, and then silently marched his detachment along the river road, below Grant, to Matson's Ford. Grant was entirely deceived. He halted his men, reconnoitred the troops seen in the woods, and then pushed on to Barren Hill, where he met the other columns and discovered that Lafayette had escaped. The British pursued him to the ford, but by the time they reached it Lafayette had drawn up his force on the other side, and his rear-guard could be seen following him, dotting the river like the corks of a seine. Fearing that Lafayette had been reinforced by the entire American army, Howe made no attempt to follow him, but returned to the city, and on the 24th sailed for England.

The evacuation of Philadelphia was now only a question of time, and the news that it had been decided upon was appalling to the Tory citizens who had openly committed themselves to the royal side. In their despair they offered to raise three thousand men, if two thousand of the royal army could be left in addition, to protect the city. Howe had advised some of them to make terms with Congress, but those who had been most active in serving him decided to leave with the army. One hundred and eighty transports arrived in the Delaware, and such diligence was used in loading them that for days light carts drawn by soldiers, and every kind of carriage, from wagons to wheelbarrows, were constantly rolling between the houses and the river. As fast as the transports received their cargoes they dropped down the river. The defences were dismantled. On the 30th of May bodies of troops were thrown across the Delaware to protect the passage of the army. Everything was now ready for the departure of the British, but the final movement was delayed for a few days on account of the arrival of the commissioners appointed under the conciliatory bills of Parliament. At last, on the morning of June 18th, the men were withdrawn from the lines and marched below the city, where they were embarked upon boats and taken over to Gloucester. This was done so quietly that many of the citizens were not aware of the departure of the army until they noticed the absence of the redcoats in the streets. "They did not go away", wrote a resident, "they vanished."

By narrowly watching the movements of the enemy Washington was convinced that it was Clinton's intention to march the greater part of his army across Jersey. In this opinion he was opposed by the erratic Charles Lee, who had been exchanged, and had reached the camp. Lee could not believe that the British would give up Pennsylvania, and argued that it was more probable that they would strike at Lancaster, or possibly cross the lower Susquehanna and take up a position on its west bank. Before this, however, Washington had sent all of the Jersey troops into that State. He had put them under the command of Maxwell, with directions to coöperate with Dickinson, who commanded the militia, in opposing any attempt Clinton should make to cross the State. On the 18th of June George Roberts rode at full speed into camp at Valley Forge. He had been at the ferry over the Schuylkill at Market Street, and citizens on the Philadelphia side had shouted over the water that the British had gone. They had destroyed the bridge, so that he was unable to cross, but the intelligence could be relied upon. Shortly afterwards a letter was received from Captain Allen McLane confirming the news. He had ridden into the city from the north, and had picked up some stragglers.

Washington had everything in readiness to move the army at a moment's notice. Six brigades were immediately put in motion, and the remainder of the army followed the next day. Crossing the Schuylkill at Valley Forge, Washington marched directly for Coryell's Ferry on the Delaware, which he crossed on the 22d. He now sent a picked corps under Morgan to assist Maxwell. At Hopewell a council of war was held. Lee opposed any attack, and argued that, on military grounds, rather than delay the British, he would build a bridge of gold to facilitate their march. He so successfully urged his views that it was decided to move on a line parallel with the enemy, and send only a detachment of fifteen hundred men under Scott to aid Maxwell in annoying their flanks. Greene, Lafayette, and Wayne protested against the decision of the Council, and as their views agreed with Washington's, and were supported by Steuben and Du Portail, Washington determined to attack Clinton if an opportunity offered. For this purpose he moved his army to Kingston, whence he could strike at Clinton's line if he attempted to cross the Raritan. He also sent Wayne with a thousand men and Poor's detachment to join Scott and Maxwell. The command of this body belonged to Lee, but as he did not approve of the change in the plans, he declined it in favor of Lafayette. Subsequently, however, Lee claimed it, and to relieve Washington from an embarrassing position, and save Lee's feelings, Lafayette magnanimously yielded. The Jersey militia had turned out in a spirited manner, and under Dickinson and Forman were doing all in their power to retard Clinton's advance. They destroyed the bridges as they retired from Haddonfield to Mount Holly, and filled up the wells so that the enemy could not obtain water. The heat was intense and the British suffered severely. Clinton arrived at Crosswicks on the 23d, just in time to save a bridge over the creek at that place. There he learned that Washington was in Jersey, and would soon be on his flank if he continued to march in his present direction. Encumbered as he was with a baggage train twelve miles long, Clinton knew it would be impossible to protect it in crossing the Raritan. He determined, therefore, to march by the way of Freehold to the Neversink Hills, from which place he could embark his army for New York. Morgan and Maxwell hung on his rear from the time he left Crosswicks, and to protect his baggage Clinton sent it to the head of the column. As he approached Freehold, he knew from the frequency with which troops were seen on his left that he was in close proximity to the American army. He arrived at Freehold, where the court-house of Monmouth County is situated, on the morning of the 26th, and there encamped. The head of his column extended a mile and a half beyond the court-house on the road to Middletown. His left was on the road just marched over from Crosswicks to Freehold. The village was entered on the west by a road leading to Cranberry. It passed over low ground that was intersected by several swamps and ravines, which, with woods, completely covered the left of Clinton's line. The American army reached Cranberry, eight miles from Freehold, on the morning of the 26th. On account of a violent storm it was obliged to halt there, but the advance under Lee was within five miles of the enemy. When Washington heard of Clinton's position he ordered Lee to prepare a plan to attack him as soon as he resumed his march, unless it should prove that there were strong reasons for his not doing so. On the evening of the 27th Lee called his officers together only to tell them that no plan could be decided upon until the field was reached. At sunrise on the morning of the 28th, Knyphausen, with the baggage, began his march towards Middletown. At eight o'clock he was followed by the rest of the army. Scarcely had the rear-guard moved from its ground when it was fired upon by the militia under Dickinson. The militia were forced to retire, and as they did so were met by Lee's detachment as it advanced from Englishtown. On account of conflicting information the Americans halted for a short time, and then engaged the enemy and drove them towards their retreating columns. As matters were growing serious, Clinton reinforced his rear-guard, and the fighting promised to become general. But Lee had no faith in the ability of the Americans to cope with the British, and as the latter occupied strong ground he withdrew his men. From the time Clinton began his march across Jersey, Lee had contended that all the Americans could hope to do was to fall upon some isolated party of the enemy and either rout or capture it. To effect this he endeavored to draw the rear-guard of the British across the ravines intersecting the low ground west of Freehold, and while they were thus separated from the main body to defeat them. But his men could not understand his strategy. As they were withdrawn from one position after another they lost heart. It seemed to them that they were flying from a shadow, and so frequently were they ordered back that the retreat became rapid and confused. When Washington heard that Dickinson had engaged the enemy he again sent word to Lee to attack them also, unless there were powerful reasons for the contrary, and he would support him with the entire army. The day was excessively hot, and the men threw off their knapsacks that they might march more quickly. As they came to the church which stands between Englishtown and Freehold, stragglers were met who told them that Lee was retreating. Unwilling to believe the story, Washington spurred to the front to learn the truth. After passing the ravine which borders the low ground we have spoken of, on the west, he met Lee and his men in full retreat. A stormy scene ensued. Overwhelmed by the indignation which Washington manifested, Lee vainly endeavored to excuse his conduct. Little time, however, was lost in wasting words. Calling upon Colonels Stewart and Ramsey, who were near him with their regiments, to check the enemy, then but two hundred yards distant, Washington crossed the ravine in his rear, and formed his men as they came up on its western bank. Greene was placed on the right and Stirling on the left, while Wayne remained east of the ravine in front of Greene. In this position a severe engagement took place. Encouraged by the retreat of Lee, Clinton sent additional reinforcements to his rear, and vainly strove to drive Washington from his chosen ground. A battery under the Chevalier de Mauduit Duplessis, planted on an elevation on Greene's right, kept up an effective fire on the enemy's left, while Wayne repelled a desperate charge led by Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, in which that officer fell at the head of his men. Night ended the conflict, and both parties slept on the ground which they had occupied. At midnight Clinton withdrew his troops, and, leaving his dead unburied, resumed his march to Middletown. He retired so silently that Poor, who lay close to his right, was not aware of the movement, and on the morning of the 29th the Americans found themselves alone on the field. By daybreak Clinton was on too strong ground to be attacked, and after resting his men a few days Washington marched to the North River, and Clinton embarked for New York.

The battle of Monmouth, as the conflict at Freehold was called, was the last general engagement fought on Northern soil. The Americans had 229 killed and wounded, the British over 400. Besides this, the latter lost many by desertion on their march, and numbers fell from the effects of the heat, which registered ninety-six degrees on the day of the battle.

Lee's conduct would probably have passed unnoticed had he not, in a letter to Washington, endeavored to defend himself, while he demanded the grounds which called forth the remarks addressed to him on the battlefield. The letter was written in a highly improper spirit, and the result was a court-martial, that found Lee guilty of disobedience of orders, misbehavior before the enemy, and disrespect of the commander-in-chief. For these reasons he was suspended from command for twelve months, and before he was again ordered to service he was dismissed from the army for having written an impertinent letter to Congress.

Before leaving Valley Forge, Washington directed General Arnold, who had not fully recovered from the wounds received at Saratoga, to proceed to Philadelphia and take military command of the city. The duties assigned him were of a delicate nature. Congress had ordered that when the Americans took possession of the city no goods should be sold or removed until their ownership had been decided upon by a properly constituted commission. The object of this was to secure for the army such goods as the British and Tories might have abandoned or parted with at nominal prices to their friends. In his instructions to Arnold, Washington had referred him to the resolutions of Congress for his guidance, and had urged him to take every step in his power to preserve tranquillity and give security to individuals of every class until the restoration of civil power. Arnold arrived on the morning of the 19th of June, and with the approbation of several of the principal citizens issued a proclamation that closed the stores and suspended business. It also commanded the citizens to make returns to the town major of goods in their possession, beyond those needed for family use, that the purchasing agents of the army might contract for those they required. The temptation to benefit himself by the power he now exercised was greater than Arnold could withstand, and three days after he issued his first proclamation he entered into an agreement with the clothier-general of the army and another individual, that all goods purchased for the public and found to be superfluous should be charged to them and sold for their joint account. It soon became noised about that Arnold was personally interested in the purchases ostensibly made for the government, and although the secret of the agreement was preserved until after his treason, the knowledge of his speculations in Montreal gave such a color of truth to the rumor that the community were greatly dissatisfied: besides, he took up his abode in a spacious mansion on Market Street, formerly the residence of Governor Penn, which Howe had just vacated, and entered upon a style of living far beyond his means.

When the exiled Whigs returned to their homes they found the city in a filthy condition, and its surroundings a scene of desolation. The houses in the built-up portions of the city were not much injured, but many of them had been stripped of their furniture, and the papers were filled with advertisements of missing articles which the owners hoped to recover. The Supreme Executive Council resumed its sessions in Philadelphia on the 26th of June. Its patriotic president, Thomas Wharton, Jr., had died at Lancaster the month previous, and it was presided over by the vice-president, George Bryan. The Congress assembled more slowly. On the 2d of July a few delegates gathered in the State House, and two days afterwards celebrated the anniversary of Independence at the City Tavern; but it was not until the 7th that a sufficient number were present to conduct business. On the 12th, Gérard, the French ambassador, arrived. Until a suitable residence could be found for him he was the guest of Arnold. Congress received and entertained him on the 6th of August. No opportunity was lost of honoring the new ally. On the birthday of Louis XVI. the president and members of Congress called upon his ambassador and offered their congratulations, and on the 25th were in turn entertained by Gérard.

In the midst of their rejoicings the Whigs did not forget the Tories, whom they looked upon as promoters of their sufferings. Many of them had been attainted of treason while the government was at Lancaster, but the most obnoxious had gone off with the British. Such as remained were summoned before the authorities, and so great was the clamor against them that several were executed for aiding the enemy. The new Constitution had been put into effect, but it was opposed by a number of conscientious Whigs, and its administration was largely in the hands of new men, who did not command universal respect. The depreciation of the currency had also a demoralizing effect. Speculation ran wild, and the greatest extravagance prevailed. The prices of all kinds of commodities rose to enormous figures, and the attempts of Congress to regulate them by law and fix the value of the currency only served to increase the evil. The community was soon divided into two classes. The Anti-Constitutionalists and the Tories formed one party; the supporters of the new government the other. The latter zealously advocated all the measures of Congress, and, classing their opponents under the one head of "Tories", accused them of being the authors of all the difficulties that embarrassed the government; it was through their efforts that traitors were allowed to go unpunished, and the necessaries of life locked up so that higher prices could be wrung from the people. "Party disputes and personal quarrels", wrote Washington from Philadelphia, in December, "are the great business of the day; whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit ... are but secondary considerations." "Our money", he continued, "is now sinking fifty per cent. a day in this city; and yet an assembly, a concert, a dinner, or a supper, that will cost three or four hundred pounds, will not only take men off from acting in this business, but even from thinking of it."

It was in a community thus rent by faction and passion that Arnold commanded. The early restoration of civil power limited his authority, but his arrogance soon brought him in conflict with the new government. Unable to brook the restraint it put upon him, he joined its opponents, and was soon the centre of a gay and fashionable circle that gladly added so distinguished a soldier to their number. Arnold at that time was a widower, in his thirty-eighth year. He was of a susceptible nature, and before long fell in love with Miss Peggy Shippen, the daughter of Edward Shippen, a leading lawyer of character and position, whose political opinions caused him to be numbered among the disaffected. In this company the temptations to spend money were not easily resisted, and Arnold soon yielded to them. He gave elegant entertainments, and lived ostentatiously, if not extravagantly. He was soon involved in debt, and in the hopes of extracting himself entered into questionable speculations. His quarrel with the state authorities became more bitter, and in February, 1779, the Council published a series of charges which were referred to Congress. The committee who considered them failed to find Arnold guilty of any intentional wrong, and on the 19th of March he resigned the command of Philadelphia, and on the 8th of April was married to Miss Shippen. The Pennsylvania authorities were dissatisfied with the action of the committee of Congress, and succeeded in having the case reconsidered. After considerable delay, it was determined that the whole matter should be referred to a court-martial, to be appointed by the commander-in-chief. The court met in December, and the following month found Arnold guilty of two of the charges that had been preferred against him. The most serious one, that of speculating in goods bought for the public while the stores were closed, was not sustained for want of evidence, which was not discovered until after his treason. The acts he was found guilty of were indiscretions rather than crimes; and for these he was sentenced to be reprimanded by the commander-in-chief.

EDITORIAL NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

During the movements of Washington to check the British in their attempts to secure New York, what Congress called a flying camp was formed of some militia in Jersey, under Mercer, to impede the enemy's advance in case he turned towards Philadelphia.[888]

In Nov., 1776, Washington, crossing into New Jersey,[889] left Lee in command on the New York side, but Washington, at first requesting, afterwards instructed Lee to follow him (Sparks's Washington, iv. 168, 186-7, 193; 5 Force, iii. 779; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1872, p. 267). Lee's secret purpose was to find some excuse for delaying, and so to prolong his independent command, with a chance of making a brilliant stroke. He endeavored at first to quiet Washington's importunities by detaching a part of Heath's force at Peekskill, but Heath would take orders only from Washington (Memoirs).[890] Finally Lee was moved to follow (Dec. 2d and 3d), and while crossing Jersey "to reconquer it" he was surprised at his transient quarters, Dec. 13, 1776, and captured. Captain Bradford, Lee's aid, gave Stiles the account which is entered in his diary (Johnston's Campaign of 1776, Docs., p. 146, and N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1860, p. 33).[891]

We have abundant evidence of the consternation which ensued in Philadelphia upon the advance of the British to Trenton.[892] The political condition of the government of the colony was very unstable. The colonial charter, under the instigation of Congress (May 10, 1776), had been overthrown by a convention called in the interests of the patriot party, which in July had met to frame a new constitution.[893] This, however, upon its adoption, failed of being effective, by its opponents' obstructive movements to prevent the organization of an executive council, so that in the interim the supreme power, such as it was, resided in a Council of Safety, which was hampered in its control of the militia. Such was the conjunction when fear of an invasion came, and the Quaker element was passive under the alarm, and, indeed, antagonistic to measures of resistance.[894]

The Jersey campaign in general can be followed in original authorities in Sparks's Washington, vol. iv.; Force's 5 Amer. Archives, iii.; in Joseph Reed's "Narrative of the movements of the American army in the neighborhood of Trenton in the winter of 1776-1777", which, having been used in Reed's Reed, i. ch. 14, is printed in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., Dec., 1884, p. 391; the account by Congress,—not very correct,—dated Baltimore, Jan. 9, 1777, and sent to France (Lee's R. H. Lee, and E. E. Hale's Franklin in France, 97); and the current reports sent from Boston, Feb. 27, by Bowdoin to Franklin (Hale, p. 110.)[895]

The principal British contemporary accounts are in Stedman, Annual Register, Howe's Narrative, the evidence of Cornwallis in the Detail and Conduct of the War, and Letter to a Nobleman, 1779.

The story is also told in local monographs,[896] and by the general historians.[897]

On the temporary clothing of Washington with dictatorial powers, see the Circular of Congress (Dec. 28th), explaining why it was done (Journals, i. 585). Cf. also Sparks's Washington, iv. 550; Greene's Greene, i. 292; Thacher's Military Journal, 74; Wells's Sam. Adams, ii. 458, and the adverse views of Abraham Clark in N. Jersey Rev. Corresp., p. 68.

The purpose of some sudden stroke on Washington's part is well indicated.[898] The advance of Griffin with militia was opportune in drawing Donop forward to Mount Holly, so that he was too distant to support Rahl at Trenton.

On the attack on Trenton there is special record from the Washington papers in Sparks (iv. 242, 246, 541), Dawson, i. 20 (to Congress), Mass. Soc. Hist. Col., xliv. 32 (to Heath, and Heath's letter in N. H. State Papers, viii. 445). Others are in 5 Force, iii., a full record of the battle. Congress wrote to the agents in France (Diplom. Corresp., i. 246.)[899]

What is known as the Reed-Cadwalader controversy, hinging upon the alleged weakness or defection of Joseph Reed at this time, is more particularly examined in another place.

On the English side we have Howe's despatch in Dawson (i. 202) Tryon to Germain in N. Y. Col. Doc. (viii. 694). The effect of the battle in England to discourage the expatriated loyalists is told in Hutchinson's Diary, ii. 139. Stedman accuses Howe of bad judgment in placing so unfit a man in command as Rahl. Adolphus (ii. 385), On "private information" supposed to have been Arnold's, says that Arnold suggested to Washington the movement, and Mahon (vi. 130) has followed Adolphus.

Bancroft (ix. 217; cf. Irving, ii. 466) notes the Hessian journals which he had used.[900]

The affair at Princeton has special treatment in the Washington papers (Sparks, iv. 259; Dawson, i. 204), and is necessarily covered by the general historians.[901] On the English side Howe's letter (Jan. 5, 1777) to Germain is the principal source, and it will be found in Gent. Mag., Feb., 1777; C. C. Haven's Thirty days, 60; Dawson, i. 210. Cf. Mahon, vi. 132.[902]

Howe's campaign of 1777 was the ruin of his military reputation.[903] Jones, in his severe criticism upon Howe, unjustly charges Galloway with making the suggestion of the expedition to the Head of Elk.[904] It is certain that Galloway threw himself upon Howe's protection not far from the time when Howe committed himself to a plan of capturing Philadelphia. About the same time it has been charged that General Lee, by a treasonable project, aided Howe's purposes in the same direction.

George H. Moore laid before the N. Y. Hist. Soc., in June, 1859, the document in Lee's handwriting, dated March 29, 1777, while he was a prisoner in New York, in which he sketches a plan for Howe's guidance in the coming campaign. The "plan" in fac-simile, together with an elucidation of it, was printed in Moore's Treason of Charles Lee, New York, 1860. The "plan" is also in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1872, p. 361. Lee was at that time trying to induce Congress to send commissioners to New York to confer with him (Bancroft, ix. ch. 19), but Congress was not ensnared. Moore contends (p. 84) that the "plan" is responsible for Howe turning towards Philadelphia, instead of going north to help Burgoyne. Bancroft (ix. 333; also see p. 211) asserts that it could have had no influence on Howe's movements.[905]

Lecky quotes Galloway's testimony, that of the 66,000 men voted by Congress for this campaign, hardly 16,000 were in the field. Bancroft admits that no one better than Marshall (iii. ch. 3) has described the part of Washington in this campaign.[906]

At the opening of the campaign Washington was kept long in suspense as to the purpose of Howe. The eastern people feared his object was Boston.[907] Alexander Hamilton early in the season had become Washington's aide, and his letters at once begin to contain speculations on Howe's purpose (Works, Lodge's ed., vii. 481, 496, 500). On May 28th, Washington moved his headquarters from Morristown[908] to Middlebrook, and it was thought Howe would attempt to march direct for Philadelphia. On June 12th, Sullivan writes to Weare that Howe was to be confronted the next day (N. H. State Papers, viii. 584); and when it was known that Howe was retiring towards New York, Washington, June 23d, little credited a report, then prevalent, that the British army was panic-struck (Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 138).[909] Cf., for all these movements, Montresor's Journal.

In July, when news came of the fall of Ticonderoga, there were no signs that Howe was preparing to coöperate with Burgoyne, and Hamilton wondered (Works, vii. 507, 515). When Howe sailed from New York, Washington was in suspense.[910] On July 31st, it was learned that Howe's fleet was at the capes of Delaware, and the next day the vessels had disappeared.[911] It was now supposed that Howe had gone to Charleston, S. C., and that Washington might safely reinforce the Northern army (Hamilton's Works, vii. 517). Lafayette first took his seat at a council of war called to consider the propriety of this (Sparks's Washington, v. 445).

In August, 1777, Gen. Sullivan conducted a raid into Staten Island to seize Tories. He captured some papers which implicated the Philadelphia Quakers in inimical movements. (Cf. Journals of Congress, ii. 246, 253.) In other respects the incursion was unfortunate, and his movements were examined by a court of inquiry, which acquitted him.[912]

Howe had been six weeks at sea, with three weeks' provisions, when he landed at the Head of Elk.[913]

Upon Washington's march to confront Howe, see, for the preliminary movements, William J. Buck's paper on "Washington's Head Quarters on the Neshaminy", in the Penna. Mag. Hist., i. 275.[914]

Upon the battle on the Brandywine the main American source is the letters of Washington. With Washington's aid, R. H. Harrison wrote to Congress from Chad's Ford, Sept. 11th, at 5 P. M., a letter which was at once circulated in broadside (Sabin, iii. p. 463; Hildeburn, no. 3,533). Pickering drafted for the commander-in-chief the report (Life of T. Pickering, i. 157) written at Chester, at midnight, September 11th (Sparks, i. 251; v. 58; Dawson, i. 278). Hamilton was on Washington's staff (J. C. Hamilton's Life of Hamilton). C. C. Pinckney, also on the staff, wrote a letter in 1820 (Hist. Mag., July, 1866, x. 202). Marshall, as a participant, drew somewhat upon personal experience in his account in the Life of Washington. Lafayette's narrative, as given to Sparks, is in the Sparks MSS. (no. xxxii. Cf. also Lafayette's Mémoires). There is a journal of Capt. William Beatty, of the Maryland line, in the Hist. Mag., 2d. ser., i. 79. Sparks examines some of the disputed points of the battle.[915]

There are contemporary records and opinions in the Penna. Archives, 2d ser., x. 316; the letter of the N. H. delegates in Congress in N. H. State Papers, viii. 678; current reports in Moore's Diary, 495; gossip in Adams's Familiar Letters, 296, etc.; Knox's account (Sept. 13th) in Drake's Knox, 48.[916]

On the British side, we find Howe's report, Oct. 10th, to Germain in Almon, v. 409; Dawson, i. 281. Cf. the evidence before Parliament in the Conduct of the War and the narrative in Stedman.[917]

The Hessian participancy is examined in Lowell's Hessians, 197. Bancroft quotes Ewald's Beyspiele grosser Helden as the testimony of an eye-witness of Washington's well-conducted retreat.[918]

A portion of the British troops used breech-loaders.[919]

The movements of the opposing armies toward Philadelphia can be followed in the main in the authorities cited for the battle. Some local details are in Pennypacker's Phœnixville, and an account of the damage done by the British on the march is in Smith's Delaware County (p. 544).

For the Paoli attack, we have Wayne's defence at the court-martial in Dawson, i. 315, and in the One hundredth anniversary of the Paoli massacre, p. 52, which last contains also, beside sundry contemporary records, the addresses of J. S. Futhey (also in Penna. Mag. Hist., i. 285) and Wayne McVeagh. The report of Howe to Germain is in Dawson, i. 317.[920]

On Sept. 26th, Washington described the state of the army, then at Potsgrove (Mag. Amer. Hist., Nov., 1884, p. 461). He was foiled by a rain in an effort to hold the British once more at bay, and Howe entered Philadelphia.[921]

Sullivan, with the charge of inefficiency for Brandywine still hanging over him, was the first to encounter the outposts of the British at Chestnut Hill, when he opened the day of Germantown. His letter (Oct. 25th) addressed to the president of New Hampshire was first printed by Sparks.[922]

Washington's letters to Congress and others are of the first importance.[923]

In Timothy Pickering's Life (i. 166) there is an account of the battle from his journal, which sustains the positions taken by Pickering in 1826,—though he does not refer to it at that time,—in the controversy which was waged by him and Sparks with Johnson, the author of the Life of Greene.[924]

Of the writers near the event, Gordon drew from original sources; Marshall was an actor in the scenes; and there are accounts in Wilkinson, i. 353, 359, 361. G. W. P. Custis's Recollections, ch. 4, and the later writers need to be consulted.[925]

On the English side, Howe's despatch to Germain is in Dawson (i. 330). The letter of a British officer, dated Philadelphia, Oct. 19, 1777 (London Chronicle, Jan. 3-6, 1778), is reprinted in Penna. Mag. of Hist., April, 1887, p. 112.[926]

The seaward defence of Philadelphia depended on the forts Mercer and Mifflin, on the chevaux-de-frise in the river, and on the Pennsylvania navy. Howe's first attempt, in October, to get his shipping up to support his army failed.[927]

 

The chevaux-de-frise at Billingsport was laid by Robert Whyte, who went subsequently over the enemy, and he is charged with placing it purposely in a defective manner. Wallace (p. 228, with plans, p. 134), who examines the evidence, seems to think the charge is proved. Respecting the share of the navy in the defence of the river, the principal sources are the minutes of the naval board, etc., in 2 Penna. Archives, vol. i., and other papers in iv. 748. An examination of this defence is made in Wallace, p. 130, etc.[928]

Upon the attack of Donop on Fort Mercer, at Red Bank (Oct. 22), the letter received by Washington from Major Ward, written at the desire of the commander of the fort, Col. Christopher Greene (cf. Greene's Nath. Greene, i. 489), is in Sparks's Washington, v. 112, and Dawson, i. 355, as is also Commodore Hazlewood's description of the naval part of the attack.[929]

Lafayette talked with Sparks of Donop (Sparks MSS., xxxii.). Knyphausen's report is in the archives at Marburg, and is used by Lowell (Hessians, 206). The despatches of the Howes are in Almon (v. 499), and Dawson (i. 356, 357).

Of the attack (Nov. 10-16) on Fort Mifflin (Mud Island) and its evacuation, with the opening of the river to the British fleet, the best garner of contemporary accounts with comment, is in Wallace's Bradford (p. 194, etc.), but some of this material is found also elsewhere.[930]

There has been some dispute over the respective claims of Col. Samuel Smith[931] and Commodore Hazlewood for the defence of the fort (Wallace, App. 10).

 

 

On the British side we have the despatches of the Howes (Dawson, i. 364, 366), the journal of Montresor (Penna. Mag. of Hist., 1882, v. 393; vi. 34); the letters in Scull's Evelyns in America, 246, 253; and the account in Rivington's Gazette, cited by Wallace.

In addition to the references already made for the two attacks, the entire movements on the river are illustrated more generally in the letters of Washington, copied from the Penna. Archives, as well as in the diary of the Council of War in the Sparks MSS., no. 2. There are other contemporary accounts.[932]

Lafayette's attack on Gloucester soon followed. See plan on page 430.

The contrasts between the hilarities of the British in Philadelphia and the trials of the Americans at Valley Forge during the winter are abundantly illustrated.

The publication of the Penna. Evening Post was resumed in Philadelphia, Oct. 11, 1777, and continued during the British occupation of Philadelphia.[933]

Various diaries kept in and near Philadelphia have been preserved,[934] and the details of the life in the town have been worked up by modern writers.[935]

The complimentary festival given to General Howe on his departure, known as the Mischianza, took place May 18th, at the Wharton house.[936]

On the condition of Washington's camp at Valley Forge we have first the testimony of his own letters and those of his corespondents,[937] as well as that of sundry diaries and journals.[938]

The question of supplies as affecting the camp is considered in Stuart's Trumbull and Greene's Greene (ii. 48), this general being made quartermaster-general in March.

There are preserved various orderly-books of the camp.[939]

There were efforts to reorganize the army during the winter. Congress had created a board of war in November, 1777 (Pickering, i. 187; Lossing, ii. 867). On Jan. 10, 1778, a committee of Congress was appointed to visit the camp and concert plans for the reorganization (Journals, ii. 401). A plan was drawn up by conference, and later adopted by Congress (Sparks, v. 525). Francis Dana wrote from the camp, Feb. 12th, to Congress, and the draft, found among the papers of Laurens, was printed in the Polit. Mag. (vol. i.,—1780), by which it was thought to appear that Howe could have destroyed the American army if he had had enterprise.[940]

A few days after the taking of Philadelphia, the Rev. Jacob Duché, of that city, who had been an approved supporter of the Americans, transmitted a letter to Washington, tempting him to desert the cause. Washington sent the letter to Congress; but Sparks could not find it in the Archives at Washington, and prints it from Rivington's Gazette (Corresp. of the Rev., i. 448). The letters which grew out of this act, including one of expostulation from Francis Hopkinson, the brother-in-law of Duché, and that of repentance sent to Washington by Duché in 1783, can be found in Sparks, v. 94, 476.[941]

The military movements during the autumn of 1777 were mainly to try the temper of the opposing forces and to secure forage, and the incessant watching of each other's motions made Pickering write to Elbridge Gerry (Nov. 2d,—Mag. Amer. Hist., Nov., 1884, p. 461) that "since Brandywine we have been in a constant state of hurry."[942]

During this time, Oct.-Dec., Washington was kept informed of the British movements through the letters of Maj. Clark (Penna. Hist. Soc. Bull., vol. i.). There was in November a project discussed of taking Philadelphia by storm (Drake's Knox, 136). Congress was urging the States to renewed efforts (N. H. State Papers, viii. 728). Early in December Howe had tried to allure Washington to a battle near Chestnut Hill or Whitemarsh (Sparks, v. 180; Dawson, i. ch. 31). By the middle of December the American army had gone into winter-quarters at Valley Forge (Reed's Reed, i. 345), but not without having thought at the same time of an attack on New York (Ibid., 344).

In January an attempt by the Americans to destroy the shipping at Philadelphia, by floating combustibles down the river from above, failed; but it gave rise to Hopkinson's humorous verses on the "Battle of the Kegs."[943]

In March Congress was urging young men of spirit and property to raise light cavalry troops (Journals, ii. 463), for Simcoe's British horsemen were raiding about the country for forage, meeting, however, now and then with resistance, as at Quintin's Bridge (March 18th) and Hancock's Bridge (March 21st).[944] At the beginning of May there was another conflict at Crooked Billet.[945] Three weeks later (May 20th) Lafayette skilfully extricated himself from an advanced position at Barren Hill, whither Washington had sent him towards the enemy, and Where the British commander sought to cut him off.[946]

Clinton, on relieving Howe from the command in Philadelphia, was instructed to evacuate the city (Sparks, v. 548). This materially changed the plans for the campaign, which had been determined upon prior to the announcement of the French alliance (Sparks MSS., xlv. and lviii.). Washington meanwhile was considering an alternative of plans, and getting the opinions of his general officers;[947] but the movements of the British to evacuate Philadelphia soon changed all.[948]

The battle of Monmouth, though in the end a victory for Washington, secured for the British what they fought for, a further unimpeded march toward New York. Washington's letters are of the first importance.[949] We have also accounts by Hamilton;[950] by Lafayette,[951] as given to Sparks; and statements by several other witnesses.[952]

The trial of Lee, and the papers produced by it, furnish abundant contemporary evidence. The trial was published at Philadelphia, 1778, as Proceedings of Court-Martial held at Brunswick in New Jersey, July 4, 1778.[953]

On the British side, Clinton's despatch is in Lee Papers, (1872), p. 461; Dawson, i. 415. A British journal kept during the march is in the N. J. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 15; an orderly-book picked up on the field is in a transcript in the Penna. Hist. Society.[954]

The British retreat is commended in Baron von Ochs's Betrachtungen über die neuere Kriegskunst (Cassel, 1817). Cf. Lowell's Hessians, p. 209.

Respecting the Conway Cabal, the best gathering of the documentary evidence is in an appendix to Sparks's Washington.[955] Sparks's conclusion is that the plot never developed into "a clear and fixed purpose", and that no one section of the country more than another specially promoted it. Mahon (vi. 243) thinks that Sparks glides over too gently the participation of the New Englanders, who have been defended from the charge of participation by Austin in his Life of Elbridge Gerry (ch. 16). Gordon implicates Samuel Adams, and J. C. Hamilton is severe on the Adamses (Repub. U. S., i. ch. 13, 14). Mrs. Warren found no cause to connect Sam. Adams with the plot, and Wells (Sam. Adams, ii. ch. 46) naturally dismisses the charge. It is not to be denied that among the New England members of Congress there were strong partisans of Gates, and the action of Congress for good in military matters was impaired by an unsettled estimate of the wisdom of keeping Washington at the head of the army, though it did not always manifest itself in assertion (Greene's Greene, i. 287, 403, 411). Nothing could be worse than John Adams's proposition to have Congress annually elect the generals (Works, i. 263); and he was not chary of his disgust with what was called Washington's Fabian policy. Sullivan, in one of his oily, fussy letters to Washington (Corresp. of the Rev., ii. 366) finds expression of a purpose to revive the plot in William Tudor's massacre oration in Boston in March, 1779. The expressions of Charles Lee, that "a certain great man is most damnably deficient" (Moore's Treason of Lee, p. 68), like utterances of others, are rather indicative of ordinary revulsions of feeling under misfortunes than of a purpose of combination among the disaffected. Gates's refusal to reinforce Washington, and Hamilton's vain efforts to persuade him, naturally fall among the indicative signs;[956] and this apathy of Gates very likely conduced immediately to the loss of Fort Mifflin at the time it was abandoned (Wallace's Bradford, App. 12). The attempt to gain over Lafayette by the attractions of a command in invading Canada, can be followed in Sparks's Washington.[957]

THE TREASON OF ARNOLD.

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE AUTHORITIES BY THE EDITOR.

Just when and by what act Arnold was put in treasonable correspondence with the British is not clearly established. Bancroft[958] says it was towards the end of February, 1779,[959] but he gives no authority.

Clinton, in Oct., 1780,[960] says it was eighteen months before, which would place it about April, 1779, and this is the period adopted by Sparks[961] and Sargent.[962] The latter writer thinks Arnold made the advances; the former believes them to have come from the British.[963] It has also been believed that the mutual recognition was effected in some way through a Lieutenant Hele, a British spy, who was in Philadelphia after Arnold took command. There might arise a suspicion that the understanding was induced through the Tory family of Miss Peggy Shippen, whom Arnold had married in April, 1779. There are stories of her maintaining correspondence with her British friends in New York, but we do not know of any letters remaining as proof of it, except one from André to that lady after her marriage to Arnold, and after the British correspondence with him under feigned names had begun, in which letter the gambolling Major André commiserated his fair friend of the previous winter on the difficulty she might experience in buying gewgaws in Philadelphia, and offering to find them for her in New York. Whether this language, like the commercial phrases in which Arnold was at this time conducting his correspondence under the name of "Gustavus" with one "John Anderson", a British merchant in that city, was likewise a blind is not probably to be discovered, and it might or might not involve a doubt as to the privity of Peggy Arnold in the rather lagging negotiations;[964] but the probability is that André wrote the letter in his own name in order that Arnold might, by the similarity of the handwriting, identify his pseudo Anderson; for by this time the nature of information which inured to the advantage of the British, and which Gustavus communicated to Anderson from time to time, had pretty well convinced Clinton that the person with whom he was dealing was high in rank, and probably near headquarters in Philadelphia.

Arnold had warm admirers; and those who trusted him for certain brilliant merits in the field included, among others, Washington himself; but Congress did not confide in him with so unquestioning a spirit. That body had raised over him in rank several of his juniors, much to Arnold's chagrin[965] and Washington's annoyance; and it was only after a renewed exhibition of his intrepidity at Danbury that it had tardily raised him to a major-generalship. Though his commission of May, 1777, gave him equal rank, it made him still, by its later date, the junior of those who had been his inferiors.[966] The Burgoyne campaign had been fought by him under a consequent vexation of mind, and his spirits chafed, not unreasonably, at the slight. The wound he then received incapacitating him for the field, had induced Washington, as has been shown, to put him in command of Philadelphia after the British evacuated it. It was now observed that he more willingly consorted with the Tory friends of his wife than with the tried adherents of the cause. His arrogance and impetuosity of manner always made him enemies. The Council of Pennsylvania by a resolution (Hist. Mag., Dec., 1870), as we have seen, brought Congress to the point of ordering a court-martial to decide upon the charges preferred against the general, and to Arnold's revulsion of feelings at this time has been traced, by some, the beginning of his defection.[967] Certain it is that he was kept in suspense too long to render him better proof against insidious thought, for it was not till December, 1779, that the trial came on. Meanwhile his debts pressed, his scrutinizers were vigilant, and there seems some reason to believe that he sought to get relief by selling himself to the French minister,—a project which, if we may believe the account, was repelled by that ambassador. To add to his irritation, Congress did not find the accounts which he had rendered of his expenditures in the Canada expedition well vouched, and Arnold resented their inquiries as an imputation upon his honesty.[968]

The trial at last resulted in his acquittal on two of the more serious charges; but being judged censurable on two others, he was sentenced to a public reprimand from the commander-in-chief.[969]

The burden of a public reproof, no matter how delicately imposed, was not calculated to arrest the defection of man already too far committed to retreat. If we may believe Marbois, not the best of guides, there was found among Arnold's papers, after his flight, a letter, undated and unsigned, in which he was urged to emulate the example of Gen. Monk, and save his country by an opportune desertion of what was no longer a prospering cause.[970] It soon became evident to Arnold that of himself, destitute of representative value, he was not a commodity that Clinton was eager to buy. Accordingly the recusant soldier sought to offer a better bargain to the purchaser by the makeweight of something that Clinton particularly longed for, and this was the possession of the Hudson Valley through its chief military posts.[971] To get a hold upon this, the time was opportune, for there was a change to be made in its commander. Arnold, however, did not get the coveted prize without some intrigue, for Washington, when he found that the wounded soldier professed eagerness for hotter work, proposed his taking the command of one of the wings of the main army. Arnold met the compliment by referring to his wounds as precluding work in the saddle, and induced Schuyler and R. R. Livingston to importune Washington to assign him to West Point.[972] The device succeeded, and Arnold reached West Point, as its commander, in the first week of August, and established his headquarters in the confiscated house which had belonged to Beverley Robinson, and which was situated on the east bank of the river, a little below West Point.[973] Clinton could have no longer any doubt of the identity of his correspondent, now that "Gustavus" wrote from the Robinson house.

The conspirators' first effort was to establish communications through Robinson, on business ostensibly having relations to this confiscated property; but Washington, to whom, for appearances, Arnold showed Robinson's application for an interview, told him that the civil, and not the military, powers should meet such proposals. Arnold could find at this time little difficulty in transmitting his clandestine letters, for there was constant occasion for the passage of flags from his own headquarters. To cover his proceedings from the officers of the American outposts, he only had to pretend that the expected messages or messengers were from his own spies in New York.[974]

Clinton was apparently not willing to commit himself to any bargain, unless Arnold would give a personal interview as an evidence of his sincerity; while Arnold, in according, on his part insisted that his interviewer should be the convenient Anderson. André, since he had become the adjutant-general of the British army, was now fully understood to represent that fictitious New York merchant. Arnold named Robinson's house for the meeting, and would make arrangements by which any flag should pass the outposts. This was objected to, and the neutral ground near Dobbs Ferry was settled upon. Here Arnold went in his barge; but the officers of the British guard-boats were not in the secret, and the meeting failed by reason of their chasing Arnold's barge up the river. Another attempt was planned, but this failed in the beginning, apparently by André's going up to the "Vulture", sloop-of-war, which was lying in the river, instead of landing lower down, as was expected. André was provided with full instructions, which if obeyed would have saved him the ignominy of a felon's death. He was not to put off his uniform, was not to go within the American lines, and was not to receive any papers. His bargain with Arnold was to have no written expression, and it involved on Sir Henry's part the dispatch of an ample force in a flotilla from Sir George Rodney's fleet, then in New York, where the men were already embarked, ostensibly for the Chesapeake, and the attack was to be made on the 25th of September, when it was supposed that Washington would have left the Hudson to go to Connecticut for an interview with Rochambeau. There was further to be made by André a promise that Arnold should have a commission in the British army and a sum of money. The American general, on his part, was so to dispose the forces in the works about West Point that the attack would, beyond doubt, end in a surprise and a mastery that would give color to the necessity of a surrender, which he was promptly to make.

It now became necessary that some device should be practised to let Arnold know that André had reached the "Vulture." There had just happened some firing upon a boat of the "Vulture", in going to meet what the British captain supposed or pretended to suppose a white flag displayed on the shore. This gave the opportunity of dispatching a flag to the commander in the Highlands, to remonstrate against such perfidy. The British captain accordingly sent such a message, and André wrote the letter in a hand which he knew Arnold would recognize, and moreover countersigned it with "John Anderson, Secretary."

Arnold at once bent to the occasion. He engaged one Joshua Hett Smith, who lived in the neighborhood, to go by night to the "Vulture" in a boat, and bring to the adjacent shore a gentleman whom he would find on board, from whom Arnold expected to get information. How far Smith was a dupe or a knave has never been satisfactorily determined. The business would seem to have had a plain significance to a quick-witted man; but a court was not able later to convict Smith of knowing precisely what it all meant. Smith had also with him two oarsmen, and it was not apparently believed that they were in a position to know enough to render their patriotism doubtful. It was then by night, in a boat steered by Smith, that André, dressed in his uniform, but with an overcoat wrapped about him, was rowed ashore. According to Smith, the darkness and the outer garment so concealed Andre's dress that his steersman never suspected him to be an officer. Arnold was found waiting in the bushes, a little remote from the landing. Here Smith left the two conspirators alone and returned to his boat; but when the signs of dawn began to appear he returned to warn them. Arnold, who had brought along with him an extra horse, mounted André on it, and the two started to go to Smith's house,[975] which was two or three miles away on the hill, and within the American lines.

If André is to be believed, he was not told that he was to go within the American outposts, and indeed there is no conclusive evidence to show why they went to Smith's house at all. Perhaps Smith or the boatmen refused, in the growing light, to take the risk of the return to the vessel. The general opinion has been that the conspirators had not concluded their negotiations, and needed more time. That Arnold had had a predetermined purpose to go to the house, if necessary, seems to be made clear from the fact that he had induced Smith to move his family away from their home temporarily, and on some pretext which Smith did not object to. André says that he first discovered Arnold's plan to get him within the American lines when, as they rode on their way, Arnold gave the countersign at the outposts. This was the first departure from Clinton's instructions. After they had reached the house the day broadened, and, the sound of cannon being heard, André went to a window, whence he could see the "Vulture" in the distance,[976] and saw that the Americans had dragged some cannon to a neighboring point, whence their fire became so annoying that the vessel raised her anchor and fell down the river. André became anxious lest this incident should preclude his return by water. The day had not far advanced when the bargain was completed, and Arnold prepared to leave for West Point to perfect the dispositions expected of him. He left behind sundry papers, mostly in his own handwriting, which André was to take to Clinton. Why another injunction of his superior was evaded by André in accepting the papers is not clear. They conveyed no information about the condition of the post which Clinton did not already possess or André could repeat to him. Possibly it was thought that, being in Arnold's autograph, the documents might serve as a pledge for what André was verbally to report to him.

Arnold seems to have made no certain provision for his fellow-conspirator's return to the "Vulture", but he left passes, which could be used either on the water or land passage, as circumstance might determine. André spent an anxious day after Arnold left. He was finally cheered by observing that the "Vulture", as if mindful of him, had returned to her previous moorings; but his hopes were futile. As night came on Smith showed no signs of arranging for a water passage to the ship, and made excuses.

The fact probably was, that, after the cannonading of the morning, Smith had no desire to risk himself on the river in a boat. It was accordingly agreed that André should undertake to return to New York by land, and that Smith should accompany him beyond the American outposts, under the protection of Arnold's pass and of his own acquaintance with the officers of the lower posts. It now became necessary for André to disregard another of Clinton's directions, and exchange his uniform for common clothes.[977] This done, he put the papers which Arnold had given him under his soles and within his stockings. Thus arrayed, about dusk the two started, accompanied by Smith's negro servant. They crossed King's Ferry, and proceeding on their way were stopped once, but suffered to advance on showing Arnold's pass. After spending the night at a house, they had gone on some distance the next morning when Smith parted with André, and, going to Robinson's house, reported to Arnold that André had been conducted beyond the lines. André went on in better spirits than before, feeling sure now that he could encounter nothing more serious than some wandering cowboys, as the British marauders who infested the Neutral Ground between the two armies were called, and with whom he could easily parley to their satisfaction. The natural foes of the "Cowboys" were the "Skinners", who harried the unfortunate adherents of the British along the same roads, and wrestled with the Cowboys as opportunity offered.[978] As it happened, a party of the American prowlers were out to intercept some British marauders, and three of the number were ensconced close by a stream not far from Tarrytown, on the upper side. They were by name John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. Paulding was by force of character the leader, and was dressed in a refugee's suit, which not many days before had been put upon him in exchange for his own better garments, when he had come out from confinement within the British lines. This suit, as well as Paulding's profession that he was "of the lower party", given to André's inquiry when, as he came along, he was stopped by the men, led to André's revealing himself as a British officer. When the traveller found he had made a mistake, he showed Arnold's pass, and tried to enforce it by threats of the American commander's displeasure if the captors dared to disregard it. This failing, he tried bribes, and it was André's opinion that if he could have made the payment sure he might have got off, as money seemed to be their object. The men, on the other hand, said that they could have resisted any offer of money when, on searching their prisoner, they found the papers in his boots.[979] Paulding, who alone could read, saw the purport of the documents, and pronounced André a spy.

André was remounted and led under their combined guidance to the quarters[980] of Colonel Jameson, who commanded some dragoons at Northcastle. That officer recognized Arnold's handwriting in the papers found on the prisoner, but he seems to have been bewildered by the discovery, though it was afterwards urged that he thought the transaction was a plot of "John Anderson", whoever he might be, to implicate Arnold in some mischief. How far the prisoner himself may have prompted Jameson is not known, for it was clear enough to André that Arnold only could now extricate him from the gathering toils. Accordingly, events took a promising turn for him when Jameson dispatched the prisoner, under escort, to Arnold's headquarters, with a letter which informed his superior of what was apparent enough, that some dangerous papers had been found on Anderson, and that he had sent them to Washington. Major Benjamin Tallmadge, one of his officers, who was absent on a scout, returned before André had long been gone, and learning the particulars from Jameson saw at once the blunder, and persuaded Jameson to send a messenger to recall André and his escort. Jameson did so, but insisted that the letter to Arnold should go on, as it did.

The messenger with the papers sought to intercept Washington on the lower road from Hartford, which the commander-in-chief was supposed at that time to be traversing on his return from the interview with Rochambeau.

The next morning André was sent, for better security, in the charge of Tallmadge to Colonel Sheldon's quarters at New Salem. Here, getting permission to walk in the door-yard in the custody of an officer named King, André revealed his name and station, and being allowed pen and paper, he made the same avowal in a letter to Washington, which, when written, he handed to Tallmadge. Its contents confirmed that officer's suspicion that the prisoner was a military man, for he had shown a soldier's habit of turning on his heel as he paced his room.

Washington, returning by the upper road, had missed Jameson's messenger, who, retracing his steps, passed through New Salem, where he was entrusted also with the letter which André had just written, and then went on towards the Robinson house, where Washington was then supposed to be.

It was now the 25th, the very day when Rodney was to come up the river with his flotilla, and Arnold sat at breakfast at this same Robinson house,[981] not knowing what the day would develop. There were with him Mrs. Arnold, who had not long before (Sept. 15) come from Philadelphia, and two of Washington's aides, who had arrived a little in advance of their chief.

It was two days earlier than Washington had been expected back, and this was a serious perplexity in the mind of the conspirator. The suspense was soon ended, for Jameson's messenger to him shortly arrived, and the letter was put in Arnold's hands before the company. He read it, showed, as was remembered afterwards, a little agitation, but only a little, and in a few minutes left the table, saying that it was necessary for him to go to West Point. It seemed natural enough to his guests; but Mrs. Arnold observed his agitation more keenly, and followed him to their chamber, where all was revealed to her. She swooned; he kissed the infant lying there; descended the stairs;[982] stopped an instant to say to the breakfast party that Mrs. Arnold was not feeling well and would not come down again; mounted a horse which he had already ordered; hurried down the steep road to the river; entered his barge and seated himself in its prow; directed his men to row to mid-stream; and then priming his pistols, which he had taken from his holster, he ordered them to hurry down the river, as he had to go with a flag to the "Vulture", and must hasten back to meet Washington, who was shortly to reach his quarters. He tied a white handkerchief to a cane, and waved it as he passed Livingston's batteries at Verplanck's Point, and that officer recognizing the barge allowed it to pass on. In a few minutes more he was under the "Vulture's" guns, and then under her flag. His boatmen resisted his offers of recompense for desertion, and were not allowed to return to shore to spread the intelligence, which they now comprehended.[983]

Not long after Arnold left the Robinson house, Washington arrived, and, learning that Arnold had gone to West Point, he passed over unsuspicious to that post, where he was surprised not to find Arnold.[984] While Washington was gone, Jameson's messenger with the captured papers and André's letter arrived, and Hamilton, left behind by Washington, opened them as his confidential aide.[985] As soon as Washington's boat approached on his return from West Point, Hamilton went towards the dock to meet his chief, whispered a word, and both later entered the house and were closeted. The plot was revealed. Hamilton was dispatched to Livingston to head off Arnold in his escape if possible, but on reaching that officer's post it was found that Arnold's boat had already passed. Before Hamilton was ready to set out on his return, a flag from the "Vulture" brought ashore a letter from Arnold, addressed to Washington, framed in lofty expressions of his own rectitude, and avowing the innocence of Smith, of his own wife, and his aides.[986] Before Hamilton's return, Washington had dined with his officers without revealing the secret, but he shortly took Knox and Lafayette into his confidence. There was naturally great uncertainty as respects the extent of the conspiracy, and of what preparations the enemy had made for an immediate onset. The anxiety of the moment was soon evinced by the great activity of aides and orderlies. Word was sent in every direction for arrangements to be made for any emergency.[987]

André was brought to West Point, and Smith was arrested and held for examination. Special precautions were taken to keep them apart and to prevent escape. André was then conveyed down the river, still under Tallmadge's care, to headquarters at Tappan, where he was closely guarded in an old stone house, still standing.[988]

A board of general officers was at once summoned to consider the case and recommend what action should be taken. The papers taken from André were laid before them.[989] André himself was brought into their presence, when he made a written statement, and answered questions. He acknowledged everything, but said nothing to implicate others. He affirmed that he did not consider himself under the protection of a flag when he landed from the "Vulture." The report of the board was that André was a spy, and merited the death of a spy. Washington ordered the execution, and sent a record of the proceedings to Congress and recommended its publication. Congress printed the record.[990]

Clinton was meanwhile informed of what had happened by the return of the "Vulture" to New York, and wrote to Washington that Arnold's flag and pass should save André from the character of a spy. Beverley Robinson wrote to a similar purport, and so did Arnold; but the latter added a threat of retaliation in case André was executed, which was not calculated to further the purpose of André's friends, and it is rather surprising they allowed the letter to proceed. Washington replied in effect that a flag must be used in good faith to preserve its character, and that the concealment of dress and papers was the action of a spy.

Gen. Robertson was sent by Clinton to make further representations, and Washington put off the execution till Greene could confer with that general at an outpost. A repetition of the arguments on the British side made no change in the aspects of the case; and when Robertson quoted Arnold as saying André was under a flag, Greene told him they believed André rather than Arnold. Robertson wrote again to Washington, who had now definitely fixed mid-day of Oct. 2d for the execution. Washington thought it also best to leave unanswered a note of André requesting to be shot rather than hanged. Further letters, amplifying the British arguments, were prepared,[991] but before they could be sent to Washington word came that the execution had taken place.

During his confinement in Tappan, and after he became aware of his fate, André conducted himself with a cheerful dignity that much endeared him to the gentlemen who came in contact with him. His servant had brought from New York fresh linen and his uniform, which André put on with evident satisfaction. He practised his ready skill in pen-and-ink drawing, and made several sketches, which he gave to his attendants as souvenirs.[992] As his hour approached, he said graciously to his escort, "I am ready", and went to the place appointed, surrounded by guards and through a large concourse of people. Of the general officers of the army at the post only the commander-in-chief and staff were absent; and as the sad procession passed headquarters the blinds were drawn, and no one was seen. When the gibbet came in sight, André shrank a moment, but instantly recovered, for he had nourished hopes that his request as to the manner of his death would not be denied. He bandaged his eyes himself; lifted the cloth a moment to say that he wished all to bear witness to the firmness with which he met his death; and when the cart was withdrawn died instantly.[993] When his uniform was removed and placed in his servant's hands, the coffin which contained the body was buried near the spot.

His remains were disinterred in 1821 and taken to England,[994] where they were deposited in Westminster Abbey, beside the monument which had been erected there to his memory shortly after his death.[995] Many years after the removal, a rude boulder,[996] on which a simple record was chiselled, was placed on the spot of his burial; but this had disappeared when a few years since a plain monument, with an inscription by Dean Stanley of the Abbey, was made to perpetuate the record of his grave.[997]

Arnold received the price of his desertion,[998] was made a general in the British service, and turned his sword, both in Connecticut and Virginia, against his countrymen. Afterwards he went to England, was treated with an enforced respect in some places, and scorned in others.[999] He lived for a while in New Brunswick, but he never escaped the torments which the presence of honorable men inflicted upon him. His descendants live to-day in England and in Canada, and some of them have attained high rank in the British army; and no one of them, as far as known, has disgraced the good name of the old Rhode Island family, whence Benedict Arnold descended.[1000]

The report of the court respecting André, with its appendix (already referred to), and the trial of Smith were the first public sifting of the evidence about the conspiracy. Smith was acquitted by the military tribunal,[1001] and was then turned over to the civil authorities for a further trial; but, succeeding in escaping in women's clothes, he reached New York, and England, where several years later he published a narrative, which it is not easy to reconcile with all his evidence in his trial,—the supposition[1002] being that he was addressing injured Americans in the one case and disappointed Britons in the other.[1003] Marbois, the secretary of the French legation at Philadelphia at the time, wrote a Complot d'Arnold et Clinton, which was not published till 1816 at Paris. Sparks says, that what came under Marbois' personal observation is valuable; but otherwise the book, as most students think, should be used with caution.[1004]

The earliest comprehensive treatment of the subject—and it has hardly been surpassed since—was in Sparks's Life and Treason of Arnold (Boston), and he gives the principal documentary evidence in his Washington, vol. vii. App.[1005]

The next special examination of the conspiracy was made in Winthrop Sargent's[1006] Life and Career of Major John André (Boston, 1861),—an excellent book.[1007]

In 1864 the story necessarily made a part of Edward C. Boynton's History of West Point, who pointed out the military advantage of the Highlands of the Hudson.[1008] Not long after this, Henry B. Dawson, then editing the Yonkers Gazette, printed in its columns sixty-eight contemporary documents or narratives, and these, subsequently printed from the same type in book-form, constitute no. 1 of Dawson's Gazette Series, under the title of Papers concerning the capture and detention of Major John André (1866). It is the most complete gathering of authentic material which has been made.

The volume (x.) of Bancroft which contains his account of the conspiracy appeared in 1875, and was constructed "by following only contemporary documents, which are abundant and of the surest character, and which, taken collectively, solve every question.... The reminiscences of men who wrote in later days are so mixed up with errors of memory and fable that they offer no sure foothold."[1009]

The Life of Arnold, by Isaac N. Arnold, of Chicago, and the Two Spies of Benson J. Lossing, are the last considerable examinations of the subject.[1010]

The story of the culmination and collapse of the conspiracy is easily told with the abundant testimony of those who were observers and actors,—much of the record being made at the time, though some of it, put upon paper at varying intervals later, may need to be scrutinized closely, particularly as regards André's demeanor from the moment of his arrest to his execution.[1011]

For the English side we must mainly depend on the letters and statements of Clinton, which are elaborate, and may well be supplemented by contemporary and later English historians.[1012]

As respects the justice of André's execution, the military authorities were disagreed on the two sides at the time, and for a while the alleged offence of Washington was considered in England a conspicuous blot upon his character; but Lord Mahon has been the only prominent instance of continued belief in this view among English writers, who have generally conceded the right of the Americans to count André a spy, however they might wish that Washington had been more clement. The attractive manners and brilliant mental habit of André have blinded even American writers to the atrocious nature of his mission, and to the sinister purpose which a man of sensibility and elevated character should never have grasped, even amid the license which a state of war gives. The power to face death with a calm and graceful courage may indeed be mated with the moral lightness that belongs to an intellectual popinjay and a debased intriguer.[1013]

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THE WAR IN THE SOUTHERN DEPARTMENT.

BY EDWARD CHANNING,

Instructor in History in Harvard College.

IN the autumn of 1778 the British commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton, determined to attempt for the second time the subjugation of the Southern colonies, and Savannah was selected as the first point of attack. On November 27, 1778, Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, with thirty-five hundred men of all arms, sailed from Sandy Hook, and anchored off Tybee Entrance December 23d. Meantime a deserter from an advance transport had given the Americans warning. Their commander was General Robert Howe, a good but unsuccessful officer, who had not been fortunate in securing the confidence of the authorities of Georgia. Ascertaining these facts, Campbell pressed on without awaiting the arrival of Brigadier-General Augustine Prevost with a reinforcement from Florida. On the 28th, late in the afternoon, the British fleet assembled in the Savannah River, off Giradeau's house on Brewton Hill, which is about two miles from Savannah in a straight line, though double that distance by road. A causeway, nearly half a mile in length, ran from the river to the bluff through a rice-field which in ordinary times could have been flooded, but over which the bluff was now accessible from all points.

On the morning of the 29th the Highlanders carried the position with trifling loss, when Campbell, advancing toward Savannah, found the Americans most advantageously posted across the highroad. Through no fault of Howe, his rear was attained, while he awaited an attack in front. The Americans suffered a severe loss, and only a small part of them succeeded in joining Lincoln beyond the Savannah River. Campbell pushed up the Savannah, and in ten days the frontier of Georgia was secured, and this was the condition when Prevost arrived and took command.

Although Lincoln had arrived at Charleston on December 6th, he was not able to reach Purisburgh before the 5th of January, 1779. His army, composed almost entirely of militia, refused under him, as it had under Howe, to be governed by the Continental rules of war.[1014]

At first it seemed to the enemy that the occupation of Georgia could be easily maintained, but the neighboring militia rallied under Pickens, and drove the British back. The American success, however, was brief, for Colonel Prevost, a brother of the general, turned upon General Ashe, who with a detachment from Lincoln's army was following the British retreat. The Americans were surprised and suffered a defeat, which cost Lincoln one third of his army and restored to Prevost his superiority in Georgia.[1015]

The scale again turned. Lincoln, reinforced, once more severed the British communications with the up-country Tories, when Prevost, to disconcert his adversary, at first sought to get between him and Charleston, and then suddenly advanced on the city itself. Here Moultrie, who had been watching the British advance, threw up some defences. Negotiations for a surrender followed, and Governor Rutledge, who was in the town, even proposed a scheme of neutrality for the State during the war, to which Prevost would not listen. The British now intercepted a messenger from Lincoln, and finding that general closing in upon him, Prevost suddenly decamped and marched toward Savannah.

The summer was uneventful; but in the early autumn D'Estaing, who after leaving Newport had been cruising with some success in the West Indies, now turned northerly, and on September 3 (1779) his advance ships arrived off the mouth of the Savannah River. A landing, however, was not effected until the 12th, when the troops landed at Beaulieu, on Ossabaw Sound, fourteen to sixteen miles from Savannah. They did not reach that town until the 16th, so that Prevost had time to call in his scattered detachments, and all but those from Beaufort had arrived when, on the evening of that day, D'Estaing, in the name of the king of France, summoned him to surrender. A correspondence followed, which was prolonged till the defences were strengthened and Maitland got up from Beaufort with eight hundred men, when Prevost refused to surrender.

D'Estaing had been all the more willing to grant the truce as Lincoln, who was looked for from Charleston, had not arrived on the 16th. By the 23d a considerable part of the Americans had joined the French, and siege operations were begun. Guns were brought up from the French ships and trenches pushed to within three hundred yards of the besieged lines. On September 24th a sortie was made by the garrison for the purpose of developing the strength of the besiegers. The sortie was repulsed with ease, but the French, following the assailants back to their lines, were exposed to a murderous fire, and incurred a heavy loss in killed and wounded. The bombardment was then begun with vigor, but with little effect. At last, on October 8th, D'Estaing declared that he could not keep his vessels longer exposed to the Atlantic gales. An assault was determined on. In the night the sergeant-major of one of the Charleston militia regiments deserted to the enemy and gave full information of the intended movement, and further declared that the attack on the British left would be only a feint, the real attack being directed against the Spring Hill redoubt, on the right.[1016]

The assault took place, and failed as much by a lack of coöperation between the columns as by the treachery. This disaster so dispirited the allies that Lincoln crossed the river on the 19th, and when he was safe on the other side the French withdrew to their ships and sailed away,—their last frigate leaving the river on the 2d of November.

The sailing of the French left the coast again exposed, and Clinton, coming from New York, now prepared to attack Charleston. On the 11th of February, 1780, a landing was made on Simmons' Island, just to the north of the North Edisto River. Thence by John's Island, Stono Ferry, Wappoo Cut and River, the Ashley was reached, and a lodgment was effected on the neck of land at the seaward end of which Charleston stands. Clinton advanced with caution. On the 1st of April the first parallel was opened about eight hundred yards from the American works.

On the 21st of March the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot in person, had crossed the bar unopposed. Some time was spent in taking on board their provisions and guns. Then on the afternoon of the 7th, 8th, or 9th of April—for there is a hopeless confusion as to the exact date—in the midst of a furious thunder-shower the fleet ran by Fort Moultrie without material damage, except to the store-ship "Eolus", which was abandoned. The greater portion of the garrison of Moultrie, commanded by Colonel C. C. Pinckney, was then withdrawn,—the feeble remnant surrendering on the 6th of May, with scarcely a show of resistance.

On the 8th of April guns were mounted in battery in the first British parallel. On the 11th, Lincoln having refused to surrender, fire was opened. The second parallel was completed on the 19th, bringing the British to within four hundred and fifty yards of the opposing line.

On the morning of the 13th Tarleton and Ferguson, by a sudden push, dispersed the force at Monk's Corner, which had guarded Lincoln's supplies. On the 18th a reinforcement of three thousand men arrived from New York, and enabled Clinton to complete the investment of the town, the command on the eastern side of the Cooper being given to Cornwallis. There was during the next few days a sortie, some desultory fighting, and an unsuccessful correspondence for a surrender. On May 8th the third parallel was completed, bringing the besiegers to within forty yards of the works, while the canal in front of the lines was partly drained and the batteries were ready to open fire. Clinton again summoned the garrison, but again Lincoln declined to surrender,—this time because Clinton refused to regard the citizens as anything but prisoners on parole. On the 11th the British reached the ditch and advanced to within twenty-five yards of the works. Resistance was no longer to be thought of, especially as the citizens themselves now petitioned to have the terms offered by Clinton accepted. The articles were accordingly drawn up and signed on the 12th, and the English took possession.

On that day the Continentals to the number of perhaps fifteen hundred—there were about five hundred in the hospital at the time—marched out, with colors cased and drums beating the "Turk's March", and laid down their arms. By regarding every adult capable of bearing arms as a militiaman, Clinton reckoned his prisoners at five thousand. Lincoln has been severely censured for this defence, but if the Carolinians had rallied as expected, he might have held out until the heats of the summer and the arrival of De Ternay would have compelled Clinton's retirement.

Clinton now sent out three expeditions to the up-country, the most important of which was destined to secure the region north of the Santee and Wateree.[1017] Cornwallis, commanding this expedition, detached Tarleton against Buford, who had with him the remnants of the American cavalry and some Continentals from Virginia. Tarleton overtook him at Waxhaw Creek on the 29th of May. Of the five hundred Americans who entered the fight, one hundred and thirteen were killed, while one hundred and fifty were wounded. The slaughter was vindictive, and "Tarleton's Quarters" will never be forgotten in the upper regions of South Carolina.

Clinton and Arbuthnot, judging their conquest of the province permanent, now proclaimed as rebels all who refused the oath of allegiance, and then sailed for New York, leaving Cornwallis in command.

The new commander's proclamations, following upon those of Clinton and Arbuthnot, were enough at variance with them to create discontent among those inclined toward the British side. The spirits of the patriots began to revive, especially in the back regions, where Colonels Locke and Williams and Generals Rutherford and Sumter gathered strong bands around their standards. The fights at Ramsour Mills, Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, and Musgrove Mills, which these partisans conducted, were in the main successful, but all were lost to sight in the great disaster which soon overtook the American arms near Camden.

Early in the spring of 1780, it had been decided to send a reinforcement under De Kalb to Lincoln, at Charleston. With about fourteen hundred men of the Maryland and Delaware lines, that general left Morristown on the 16th of April, 1780, and on the 1st of June, in Petersburg, he learned of the fall of Charleston. He decided to push on with the utmost speed, in the hope that his coming might still save the interior of the State. But delay after delay occurred, and De Kalb did not reach the Deep River before the 6th of July, when he found nothing prepared for his reception; and what was still more inexcusable, the North Carolina militia, under Caswell, were holding aloof. On the 25th a new commander of the Southern armies arrived in Horatio Gates, the popular hero of Saratoga. His appointment had been made by Congress against the wishes of Washington, but in obedience to a general popular consent. De Kalb received Gates with genuine pleasure, and took his place at the head of the regulars, then forming the whole army.

Against the advice of his ablest officer, Otho H. Williams, Gates determined to join the North Carolinians in their camp near Lynch's Creek, since they would not join him, and with them he hoped to seize Camden. Two days after his arrival, on July 27th, the march began, and after the most acute suffering from hunger the regulars joined the militia. So lax was the discipline among Caswell's men, that Williams and a party of officers rode through their lines and camp without being once challenged. Approaching the general's tent, they were informed that it was an unseasonable hour for gentlemen to call. Yet Caswell was within striking distance of a disciplined army, commanded by an enterprising general, Lord Rawdon. Marching a little farther, the British were found in a strong position on the southern bank of Little Lynch's Creek.

By a march up the creek, Gates might have placed his superior force on Rawdon's flank and rear. This was what Rawdon feared, and what De Kalb is said to have advised. Instead he passed two days in idleness, and then, inclining to the right, marched to Clermont or Rugeley's Mill, on the road from Charlotte to Camden, and not more than thirteen miles from the latter. There, seven hundred militia from Virginia joined him. From that place, too, he sent four hundred men, including some regulars, to assist Sumter in a contemplated attack on the enemy's communications. It was now determined to seek a more defensible position on the banks of a creek seven miles nearer Camden. This position could be turned only by marching a considerable distance either up or down the creek. Exactly what Gates had in view by this movement can not now be ascertained.[1018]

Cornwallis arrived at the front on the morning of August 14th, and decided to surprise Gates; but the two armies started on respective marches at precisely the same hour, ten o'clock of the evening of August 15, 1780. Their advanced guards met at about half past two the next morning. Armand, a French adventurer, with his "legion" forming the American van, retired panic-stricken, and the two armies deployed across the road. The position in which the opposing generals now found themselves was singularly favorable to the smaller numbers of the British, as the front was necessarily very short, owing to a marsh which protected while limiting either flank. This advantage Cornwallis was not slow to perceive. A hurried council was held on the American side, and it was decided that there was no alternative but to fight. At dawn the enemy was observed getting into position on the extreme left. Stevens, with the Virginia militia, already in line, was ordered to charge before the enemy's formation was complete. It so happened that Cornwallis, thinking the Virginians were making some change in their dispositions, ordered his right forward. Led by the gallant Webster, the British came on with such a rush that the men of Virginia threw down their loaded guns with bayonets set, broke and dispersed to the rear. Nor did the North Carolinians do better. Seeing the Virginians break, they did not await the onset, but threw away their arms and fled. One regiment indeed, inspired by the example of the regulars, fired several rounds before it broke. Deserted by those whom they had marched so many weary miles to succor, the men of Maryland and Delaware fought till to fight longer was criminal. Then the under-officers, on their own responsibility, brought off all they could, for their commander, De Kalb, overwhelmed by eleven wounds, had fallen into the hands of the enemy,—"a fate", says Williams, "which probably was avoided by other generals only by an opportune retreat." That night Gates found himself at Charlotte, sixty miles from the scene of conflict. Caswell was with him, and they were soon joined by Smallwood and Gist. In fact, excepting the one order issued to the Virginians at the outset, the leaders seem to have left the conduct of the fight to De Kalb and the subordinate officers. From Charlotte Gates retired to Hillsborough, where the legislature was then sitting.

Cornwallis seems to have been satisfied with the havoc wrought on the field of battle, for he pursued without vigor, and soon returned to Camden and gave his attention to Sumter. That enterprising but negligent chieftain had captured the redoubt at the ferry over the Wateree, and had ensnared a convoy destined for Cornwallis. On the night of the 17th, hearing of Gates's overthrow, Sumter left his camp, and moved with such celerity that a corps which Cornwallis sent against him failed to strike him. Shortly after, Tarleton found him less vigilant, and came upon him so unexpectedly that resistance was hardly attempted, and Sumter escaped with scarcely half his force.

Gates has been severely blamed for this defeat; too severely, it seems to me. The march of the regulars from Buffalo Ford to Lynch's Creek was undoubtedly full of hardship, but it was well planned and executed. Nor do the troops who made it seem to have been demoralized by it. On the contrary, seldom have men fought more gallantly than De Kalb's division fought on the morning of August 16, 1780. The Virginians, whose flight made defeat probable, followed the Continentals in the march across the "desert", and did not suffer nearly as much as the leading division. The North Carolina militia, whose panic turned a probable defeat into a rout, had no part whatever in that painful march. The disaster was due to the over-confidence which Gates felt in his men. Had the militia stood firm, the event of the campaign might have been different. There was no defect in Gates as a strategist or tactician. He had a larger number of men in line than his opponent. His dispositions were as perfect as the time and place permitted. The defeat Was "brought on", to use the emphatic words of Stevens, the gallant leader of the Virginians, "by the damned cowardly behavior of the militia."

From Camden Cornwallis advanced to Charlotte, overcoming all obstacles which the militia under Davie interposed. Other militia, meanwhile, under Clarke, advanced on Augusta, but British reinforcements from Ninety-Six, under Cruger, forced Clarke to abandon the attack, and, burdened with the families of some leading Whigs, he retired towards the mountains. Cornwallis, hearing of this, ordered Ferguson, who had been beating up recruits in the upper country, to endeavor to cut Clarke off. Now it happened that at this very time the sturdy frontiersmen, under the leadership of Colonel William Campbell, Colonel Isaac Shelby, Lieutenant-Colonel John Sevier, and Colonel Charles McDowell, had assembled at Watauga, bent on the destruction of Ferguson and his little army.[1019] To the number of one thousand and forty they left their place of meeting on September 26th and marched for Gilberton, where Ferguson was supposed to be. On the 30th they were joined by Colonel Cleveland, with three hundred and fifty men from North Carolina. The senior officer was McDowell, but from his slowness he was not deemed the best man to conduct such an arduous enterprise, and while he was sent to Gates to name a leader they chose Campbell for their chief. Pressing on, they reached the Cowpens, where they were joined by Williams and Lacy, with about four hundred men from the Carolinas.

Meantime Ferguson, not ignorant of the approach of this formidable force, which appeared to have sprung from the earth, had begun his retreat towards Charlotte. Anxious to intercept Clarke, he had delayed his march longer than was prudent, and had taken post on the top of a spur of King's Mountain, where he probably hoped to be reinforced before the enemy should come up with him. While at the Cowpens, on October 6th, the Americans received certain information of Ferguson's position. They resolved to select the best mounted of their little army, and, leaving the poorly mounted and the footmen to follow, to go in pursuit of Ferguson and fight him wherever found. In the evening, therefore, they broke up from the Cowpens, and, marching all night, reached, without being discovered, the foot of King's Mountain on the afternoon of the next day. The spot on which the British were found was singularly well suited to the mode of fighting in which the backwoodsmen were adepts. King's Mountain proper is sixteen miles long, and in some places is high and steep. The southern end, however, where Ferguson was encamped, rises only about sixty feet. It was wooded, except on the summit, which partook of the nature of a plateau. The Americans, under their respective leaders, so timed their movements that Ferguson was surrounded almost before he knew it. The band led by Campbell seems to have made the first attack from the south. It was speedily driven back at the point of the bayonet, but re-formed at the foot of the hill and returned to the charge. Meantime Shelby was pressing on from the north. He, too, was driven back, when, re-forming his men, he also returned to the fight. These charges and countercharges were three times repeated. Cleveland, Sevier, and the rest did their work splendidly in their respective positions. The British, inspired by the example of their heroic leader, fought bravely and well; but their position was so perilous that their loss was double that of the assailants. Ferguson, while leading a charge, or perhaps while endeavoring to cut his way out, was killed. De Peyster, the second in command, showed the white flag, as was his duty, resistance being useless, but the firing did not cease for some time, even though the beaten Tories were suing for quarter. At that moment an attack was made from the rear by another band of British, who were probably returning from a foraging expedition. This new and sudden attack led to a renewal of the slaughter of the unresisting foe on the hill.

The neighborhood was bare of provisions, and the next morning the now half famished victors, with their no less hungry prisoners, made a hurried retreat towards the mountains. On the 13th the Americans arrived at a place then called Bickerstaff's Old Fields, about nine miles from the present hamlet of Rutherfordton. There they improvised a court, and sentenced thirty to forty of their prisoners to death. But after nine had been hanged, the remainder were reprieved or pardoned.

Such was the famous battle of King's Mountain in South Carolina. It changed to a great extent the whole course of the war in the Southern department, as it deprived Cornwallis of the only corps that he could afford to hazard for a long time out of supporting distance. As for Cornwallis, as soon as he heard of the disaster, instead of sending Tarleton in pursuit, he broke up from Charlotte, and retired as fast as he could to Wynnesborough, in South Carolina, midway between Camden and Ninety-Six, where he would be within supporting distance of either in case they were attacked. He was followed by Gates, who encamped at Charlotte, his light parties advancing even to Rugeley's.

Not long after his arrival at Wynnesborough, Cornwallis detached Tarleton, with a portion of the Legion, to disperse the band with which Marion awed the country between the Santee and Pedee rivers. Tarleton had now to deal with a soldier both bold and discreet. All his artifices were unavailing to entrap Marion, and he was recalled to go in pursuit of Sumter, who had encamped at Fishdam Ford, not far from the British headquarters. Meanwhile, Major Wemyss had attacked Sumter just before daybreak on the morning of November 11th. He approached the camp unchallenged at first, but he soon encountered a picket, which fired five shots before retiring. Two shots disabled Wemyss. His second in command, continuing the attack without a proper knowledge of the ground, was repulsed. Sumter, hearing of the approach of Tarleton, prudently withdrew from such a dangerous neighborhood, and had reached the ford of the Tyger, near Blackstocks, when Tarleton appeared. Unable to cross, he drew up his men on the side of a hill. Tarleton, rashly attacking with his advance, was beaten off with great loss. The British leader withdrew to his main body, and prepared to storm the hill the following morning; but in the night Sumter crossed the river, and once over his men dispersed in every direction. The American loss at these two actions was small, though a wound received at the Blackstocks kept Sumter from the field for several months.

From this time on the war in the Southern department assumed a new and brighter aspect, for on December 2, 1780, less than a month after the affair at the Blackstocks, Nathanael Greene arrived at Charlotte, and took command of the remnants of the gallant Continentals who had fought so splendidly at Camden. He was respectfully received by Gates, who retired to his Virginia farm.[1020]

The task that Greene had before him might well have appalled the boldest. Without food, without money or credit, almost without an army, he was expected to face the most enterprising commanders—Cornwallis, Rawdon, and Tarleton—that the British had on this continent, while they were at the head of a large and well-appointed army. But Greene was not the man to be easily disheartened. With the possible exception of Washington, the best soldier of high rank in the American army, he resembled his chief in being a careful observer of men. His judgment, too, with regard to all matters connected with war was excellent, and has seldom been surpassed. As a strategist he had no equal in the opposing army, while he possessed the rare power of being able to adapt his tactics to the army and to the country, although it has been claimed that credit has been given him for what really was the product of another mind.

Gates handed over to his successor an army which numbered on paper twenty-three hundred and seven men, including nine hundred and forty-nine Continentals. But so many were insufficiently clad and equipped that, to use the new commander's own words, "not more than eight hundred were present and fit for duty." Food was scarce, and the morale of the army was low. Greene sought a new camp on the eastern bank of the Pedee, opposite Cheraw Hill, where food was more abundant. There he subjected his men to a discipline to which they had long been strangers, while Morgan, with a strong detachment, threatened Cornwallis's other flank.

Morgan took with him four hundred of the Maryland line, under Lieutenant-Colonel J. E. Howard, two companies of Virginia militia, and about one hundred dragoons led by William Washington. To these were afterwards added more than five hundred militia from the Carolinas. Morgan advanced to Grindall's Ford on the Pacolet, near its confluence with Broad River. In this position he seriously menaced Ninety-Six and even Augusta itself. Cornwallis needed to dislodge him before he could advance far in his projected invasion of North Carolina. He therefore detached Tarleton, with his Legion and a strong infantry support, against Morgan, while he himself advanced with the main body along the upper road to North Carolina, thus placing himself on Morgan's line of retreat whenever that commander should be driven back. Learning of these movements, Morgan retired from Grindall's Ford, and moving with commendable speed on the night of January 16, 1781, encamped at the Cowpens. Tarleton was now close upon him, and, marching the greater part of the night, he discovered the Americans drawn up in line of battle on the morning of the 17th. The position which Morgan had chosen was in many respects a weak one. The country was well fitted for the use of cavalry, in which the British excelled, while the Broad River, flowing parallel to his rear, made retreat difficult if not impossible. Nor were the flanks protected in any manner.[1021] Hardly waiting for his line to be formed, and with his reserve too far in the rear, Tarleton dashed forward.[1022] A militia skirmish line was easily brushed aside, and the main body of militia, after firing a few rounds with terrible precision, also retreated. The Continentals, however, under their gallant leader, stood firm. But Howard's flank soon became enveloped. He ordered his flank company to change its front. Mistaking the order, the company fell back, and the whole line was ordered to retire upon the cavalry. The British, who had been joined by the reserve, thinking that the Americans were retreating, came on like a mob. Seeing this, Howard ordered the 1st Maryland to face about. They obeyed, and poured such an unexpected and murderous fire into the advancing foe that the British line paused, became panic-stricken, turned, and fled. In vain did Tarleton call upon his dragoons for a charge. His order was either not delivered or was misunderstood. Colonel Washington, on the other hand, advanced with a rush, and the day was won. Almost to a man the British infantry was either killed or captured. But they had fought well, and their loss, especially in officers, bears testimony to their splendid conduct on the field.[1023]

King's Mountain lost to Cornwallis his best corps of scouts. This disaster deprived him of his light infantry, whose presence during the forced marches now to come would have been of incalculable service. For this reason the affair at the Cowpens, while in reality only a fight between two small bodies of troops, in importance of results deserves to be ranked among the most important conflicts of the war. It was indeed, as has so often been said, "the Bennington of the South."

Cornwallis, when he had detached Tarleton to the defence of Ninety-Six, and later, when he had ordered him to push Morgan to the utmost, had expected to be able to get on Morgan's line of retreat, and thus drive him into the mountains, or at least prevent his rejoining Greene. But with Greene on his flank at the Cheraws, he had been afraid to move far from Camden before Leslie with the reinforcements could get out of Greene's reach. He was, therefore, no further advanced than Turkey Creek, twenty-five miles away, when the news of the disaster at the Cowpens reached him. On the 18th, Leslie, with two battalions of the Guards under O'Hara and the Hessian regiment of Bose, arrived. On the 19th the pursuit was begun, and on the 24th Cornwallis reached the crossing of the Little Catawba at Ramsour's Mill, only to learn that Morgan had crossed at the same place two days before. In fact, that enterprising leader, instead of being dazzled by the victory at the Cowpens, passed the Broad River on the evening of the day of action, and, pursuing his route toward the mountains, passed Ramsour's Mill on the 21st. With the bulk of his detachment he then sought a junction with the main body under Greene. Turning to the east, he crossed the Catawba at Sherrald's Ford on the 23d, and took post on the eastern bank. At this place he finally rid himself of his prisoners, sending them to Virginia under an escort of militia.

There can be little doubt of the chagrin Cornwallis experienced at the escape of Morgan. It prompted him to destroy what he thought was useless baggage, and to make another attempt to overtake the Americans. This burning of his train occupied two days, and, necessary as it may have seemed, the consequent lack of supplies led to the fearful suffering of his army after Guilford, and made his retreat to Wilmington a necessity. It was his first grave error in his struggle with Greene. On the 27th he put his troops in motion for the Catawba, but before he reached the fords a sudden rise of the river made the crossing an impossibility, and gave Morgan two days' respite. The delay was still more important in giving Greene time to reach the post of danger and take command of the detachment. The news of the victory at Cowpens had not reached the camp at the Cheraws until the 25th. Instantly divining the course that Cornwallis would pursue, Greene sent an express to Lee, who, as soon as he had joined, had been dispatched to coöperate with Marion in an attack on Georgetown, next to Charleston then the most important seaport in South Carolina. The attack failed for some reason that is not quite apparent; but Lee brought off his troops in safety, and rejoined Greene in time to render most important service. On the 29th, the main army, under command of General Huger, left the camp for Salisbury, where Greene hoped to be able to concentrate his entire force. On the 31st the Catawba began to subside. Putting their troops in motion, Greene and Morgan directed their steps toward Salisbury, where they arrived on February 2d. The Yadkin was crossed in safety the next day, though rising rapidly all the time; then sending orders to Huger to join him at Guilford Court-House, and not at Salisbury as formerly ordered, Greene once more breathed freely.

On the afternoon of the 1st, Cornwallis had also put his troops in motion. His design was to make a feint of crossing at Beattie's Ford while with the Guards he should pass the river at the less known Cowan's Ford. By some means, Davidson, who commanded the militia in that region, became cognizant of the design, and stationed himself at Cowan's with about four hundred men, where he expected to hold Cornwallis in check long enough to be of real service to the retiring Americans.

Shortly before daybreak Cornwallis reached the river, and saw the watch-fires on the opposite bank. Without a moment's hesitation the Guards rushed into the rapid stream. When about halfway across they were discovered, and a fire was opened upon them by the militia. But now occurred one of those accidents that so often in war defeat the best-laid plans. The ford, turning in mid-stream at an angle with the direct line, ran under a bank where the militia were waiting for the British; but when they arrived at the turning-point, instead of inclining to the right, the Guards—their guide having deserted through fear—kept straight on, and gained the bank with a loss of only sixty in killed, wounded, and missing. The militia retired, and although Tarleton was sent after them, they made good their retreat with a loss which would have been trifling but for a mortal wound under which the gallant Davidson fell. There were many hair-breadth escapes during this splendid charge. Cornwallis's horse was shot under him, but reached the bank before he fell. Leslie was carried down stream, and O'Hara's horse rolled over with his rider while in the water.

Pushing on with all speed possible in the wretched condition of the roads, Cornwallis's van, under O'Hara, reached the Yadkin at the Trading Ford a few hours after the Americans had crossed; but O'Hara, though he missed the soldiers, captured a train of wagons belonging to the country people who were flying with the army. Here again the forces of nature came to the assistance of the Americans, for the Yadkin rose so rapidly that it could not be forded, and Greene had carefully secured all the boats on the eastern bank.

Cornwallis now gave up all idea of preventing the union of the two wings of the opposing army, which, indeed, was effected soon after at Martinsville, near Guilford. The British commander decided to place himself between his opponents and the fords of the Dan, hoping thereby to prevent the Americans taking refuge in Virginia. Accordingly, on the 7th he crossed the Yadkin at the Shallow Ford. It was now a serious question with Greene to escape the new danger. The militia failing to come to his aid, he was obliged to protect his Continentals by a flight into Virginia. He determined to cross the Dan at Irwin's Ferry, and sent orders to have boats ready at that point. On the 10th the march was renewed. The light troops, united in one division, were placed under the command of O. H. Williams, with orders to delay the enemy as much as possible. By rapid marching the main army reached Irwin's Ferry and crossed on the 13th and 14th, before Williams and the rear-guard came in sight. The experience of this light division has been well told by Lee, whose Legion first measured sabres with Tarleton's men on the 12th. From that time the rear of the Americans and the advance of O'Hara were almost constantly in sight of each other. At every crossing or other suitable place Williams would draw his men out and thus compel the British to deploy; then, his object being accomplished, and the British delayed for a few minutes, the march would be resumed, and the two armies would soon be marching as one again. Cornwallis, conscious finally that his prey had escaped, turned back to Hillsborough, and, erecting the Royal Standard, called upon all loyal North Carolinians to rally to the aid of their royal master.

On the 18th, only four days after his escape, recruits had come in so rapidly that Greene detached Lee across the Dan to seek information, and to show the Tories that the Americans were by no means beaten. Lee had, in addition to his legion, two companies of the Maryland line. He was joined on the southern side of the river by Pickens with a considerable body of Carolina militia.

On the 23d Greene himself crossed the Dan with the main army, and sought the difficult country on the head-waters of the Haw, as the Cape Fear River is called in its upper course. Here again, as during the retreat, the light troops were put into the hands of Williams. The two divisions manœuvred with such precision that Cornwallis was held at arm's length, while militia and Continentals came into the American camp from all directions. The American commander saw that the time had now come to give way no more. He stationed himself on a hillside near Guilford, and awaited the approach of the British. The position which had attracted his attention during the retreat possessed a combination of rising ground, cleared spaces, and woods which could hardly be surpassed for the irregular formation that Greene, following the example set by Morgan at the Cowpens, deemed best suited to his troops.

To Cornwallis, the presence of Greene had been most disastrous. Strategy had failed to annihilate his opponent, and the offered battle, even on ground of the American general's own selection, was welcome to the British commander; and on the morning of the 15th of March, 1781, the trial came.

In his front line Greene put the North Carolina militia, their flanks resting in the woods, the centre being protected in some measure by a rail fence. Three hundred yards behind were posted the Virginia militia under Stevens and Lawson. Though militia in name, some of those under Stevens were veterans in reality. But, taught by his bitter experience at Camden, Stevens posted riflemen behind his line, with orders to shoot any who should run. The Virginians were entirely in the woods. Three to four hundred yards behind them, on the brow of a declivity, with open fields in their front, were the regulars. On the right was the Virginia brigade under Huger. Then, after an interval for the artillery under Singleton, came the Maryland brigade, commanded by Williams. The first regiment was led by Gunby, with Howard as lieutenant-colonel. This was the regiment which had aroused universal admiration by its splendid conduct at Camden and its wonderful subordination at the Cowpens, when a gallant charge converted a bloody check into a crushing disaster. The second Maryland regiment, commanded by Ford, was new to the service. It held the extreme left of the line. The regulars presented a convex front. Lee with the "Legion" and Campbell's riflemen from the backwoods acted as a corps of observation on the left, while Washington, with the regular cavalry and the remnant of the Delaware regiment under the heroic Kirkwood and Lynch's riflemen, protected the right flank.

As soon as Cornwallis found himself in the presence of his enemy, he deployed without reserves, except the British dragoons under Tarleton. The "Hessian" regiment of Bose and the 71st under Leslie, with the 1st battalion of the Guards in support, held the right; next came the 23d and 33d regiments under Webster, with the Grenadiers and the 2d battalion of the Guards under O'Hara in support; while the extreme left was occupied by the light infantry of the Guards and the Jägers. The artillery was on the road with Tarleton. As the line moved forward it first encountered the North Carolinians, who fired a volley, and perhaps more, before they broke. On the extreme right, however, Lee with his light troops held the regiment of Bose and the 1st battalion of the Guards in check. But the defection of the North Carolinians separated him from the rest of the army. The first line being broken, Webster rushed upon the Virginians. But the woods were so thick, and the defence of the Virginians so stout, that his loss at this point was very considerable. At length, Stevens having been wounded in the thigh, the Virginians retired and Webster advanced upon the Continentals. On his right was Leslie with the 71st. When the advancing line reached the front of the 1st Maryland, it was received with such a murderous fire that it stopped. The Marylanders then advanced with the bayonet, and the British gave way and retreated. It has been said by writers on both sides, that had Greene thrown forward another regiment at this moment the day would have been won. But this is by no means certain, as the events of the next few minutes were to show. For Leslie with the 71st and O'Hara with the Guards now came up and assailed the 2d Maryland with such fierceness that it broke and fled. But the 1st Maryland was not far off. Wheeling into line, it opposed the Guards until Washington charged and broke the British line. J. E. Howard—now in command, Gunby having been dismounted—then followed with the bayonet, and pressed the enemy so hard that re-formation was for the moment impossible. Cornwallis, seeing that the flight must be stopped at all hazards, ordered his artillery—posted on an eminence in the centre of the field—to open on the Marylanders through the ranks of his own men. In this way the pursuit was checked, though at terrible loss to the British.

Greene's hopes were soon dashed. The shattered lines of the enemy re-formed and returned to the conflict. Pressing heavily on the Virginia regulars, and reinforced by the 1st battalion of the Guards, which had disengaged itself from Lee, the whole American line was endangered. Greene, who wished to run no chances, and who probably did not know that Lee had once more connected himself with the main line, ordered a retreat. The artillery, the horses having been killed, was left on the ground, but otherwise the withdrawal was easily and skilfully effected.

Such was the battle of Guilford. Numerically, Greene was superior; but of good troops he had only a handful. When the two leaders summed up their losses, it became evident that a decisive blow had been struck at Cornwallis. The Americans lost seventy-nine killed and one hundred and eighty-four wounded, together with one thousand and forty-six missing. Of these last some may have been wounded, but by far the greater part were militiamen, who had returned to their homes. Cornwallis reported his own loss at ninety-three killed, and four hundred and thirteen wounded, and twenty-six missing—a most serious diminution of his force.

Cornwallis in his proclamation and letters maintained, however, that he had achieved a great triumph. It was his despatch to Germain which occasioned the well-known assertion of Charles James Fox that "another such victory would destroy the British army." Even before the fight it had been almost a necessity to open communications with the sea, as the army was suffering for want of the stores that had been destroyed at Ramsour's Mill. Believing the Cape Fear River navigable as far as Cross Creek, Cornwallis had sent Major Craig to seize Wilmington and to open navigation as far as possible, which he succeeded in doing to a point at a short distance above Wilmington. Leaving his wounded at the New Garden Quaker Meeting-house, near the battlefield, Cornwallis set out on the morning of the 18th for Wilmington, arriving there on April 7, 1781. Greene had pursued as soon as possible. But his ammunition, never very abundant, was now almost exhausted. Besides, food was very scarce in the district to be traversed, and Greene arrived at Ramsey's Mill only to find that Cornwallis had built a bridge over Deep River at that point and escaped, although Lee had pressed so hard on his rear that the bridge could not be destroyed. Here the pursuit ended; for the Virginia militia, now that their time was up, refused to serve longer. Though Cornwallis escaped, and though Greene had lost one of the best contested battles of the war, he had won the campaign. He was free once more to turn his attention toward relieving South Carolina of her military rulers. On April 6th, one day before Cornwallis arrived at Wilmington, the southward march began, Lee being detached to operate on the line of Rawdon's communications with Charleston.

Lee soon joined Marion, who was skulking in swamps between the Pedee and Santee, and, uniting forces, the two captured a fortified depot of Watson, the British officer scouring this region, and then endeavored to prevent his rejoining Rawdon.

On the 7th of April Greene had broken up from Ramsey's, and, taking the direct road, had encamped on Hobkirk's Hill, to the north of Camden, and about a mile and a half from the British works at that place. As Rawdon did not come out from his intrenchments, Greene on the 23d moved nearer. Anxious for Marion and Lee, and desirous of supporting some artillery which he detached to them, Greene moved to a position south of Camden. It appears, however, that on the 23d or 24th he decided to fall back. Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 24th he reëncamped on Hobkirk's Hill. During that night a renegade drummer-boy informed Rawdon of the position and number of the American force. He also said that Greene had neither artillery nor trains near at hand, although both were on the march to join him. It was a most propitious time to strike, and Rawdon determined to attempt a surprise the next morning.

Making a considerable detour to the right, he struck the American left almost unperceived. Greene had thrown out a strong picket in that direction, but the superiority of the British was so great that they drove in the guards and were upon the Americans before the formation was complete. That the attack was not a disaster was due to the prudence of Greene, who had encamped in order of battle. Perceiving that Rawdon's line was very short, Greene ordered Ford with the 2d Maryland to flank it on the right, and Campbell was told to do the same on the left. Gunby with the 1st Maryland, and Hawes with the Virginia regulars, were ordered to attack with the bayonet in front, while Washington with the cavalry was to get into the rear and take advantage of any opening that might offer. Unfortunately, neither Ford nor Campbell were able to put in their men before Rawdon, seeing his danger, brought up his reserves and extended his flank. This was owing partly to Ford being struck down in the beginning of the movement.

The defeat of Greene, however, was due to one of those accidents against which no foresight can provide. It seems that as the 1st Maryland was getting into position to charge, or perhaps as it was moving forward, Beattie, the captain of one of the leading companies, was shot. His men began firing, and fell into confusion. Then Gunby, instead of pushing his rear companies forward, as Greene always declared he should have done, ordered the regiment to form on the rear companies. The men retiring were seized with a panic, and the heroes of three battles broke. They were rallied soon after, but it was then too late. The whole line was compromised, and Greene ordered a retreat.

Though Greene was not surprised, the attack was most unexpected. This was owing in a great measure to the woods in his front, which permitted Rawdon to reach the picket line without discovery. Even then Greene fully expected victory, and had his men done their duty, as he had a perfect right to expect, this adventurous attempt of the young British commander would have resulted in his complete overthrow. Such was Greene's opinion, and such is the opinion of most American writers.[1024] Retiring first to Sanders Creek or Gum Swamp, the very spot Gates was trying to reach when he met Cornwallis, and later to Rugeley's Mill, Greene brought up his provisions and recruited the strength of his men. Though not beaten at Hobkirk's Hill, Greene was greatly discouraged. Especially distressing was the non-arrival of expected reinforcements. The terms of service of his best men were expiring, and he could see no source from which to draw recruits. His losses in the recent engagement had not been so great as those of his opponent; but Marion and Lee had been unable to prevent Watson from rejoining his chief. Still Greene did not lose heart. As soon as his men had recovered from fatigue he crossed the Wateree and posted himself at Twenty-five-Mile Creek, on the road from Camden to Fishing Creek and the Catawba settlements.

Watson reached Camden on May 7th. On the evening of the same day Rawdon moved out from his fortifications, and, crossing the Wateree, turned on Greene, intending to pass his flank and attack him from the rear. But Greene was too vigilant, for, learning of Rawdon's departure from Camden, he retired still higher up the river, first to Sandy's Creek and later to Colonel's Creek, the latter being nine miles from his former position. The position on the further bank of Colonel's Creek was very favorable to the party attacked. The light troops had been left in the front, as at Hobkirk's Hill. Coming upon them at Sandy's Creek, Rawdon mistook them for the main body, and their position seemed so strong that he did not feel willing to risk an attack. It was impossible for him to remain longer in Camden with Greene in such threatening attitude, especially as his line of communication with Charleston was in the hands of Lee and Marion. On the 10th, leaving his wounded who were unable to be moved at Camden, Rawdon evacuated that place, and marching to the east of the Santee, he crossed at Nelson's Ferry and took post at Monk's Corner, not more than thirty miles from Charleston.

One of the motives which had induced Rawdon to make this precipitate retreat was the hope of saving the garrison of Fort Motte, an important post on the Congaree, near its confluence with the Wateree. Lee and Marion had appeared before the place on the 8th. They had pushed the siege with vigor, but were so destitute of artillery and siege tools that it seemed the siege might be prolonged until the coming of Rawdon should enforce its abandonment. Happily it occurred to some one that the roof of Mrs. Motte's house, which stood in the middle of the inclosure, could be set on fire. It is related that Mrs. Motte herself furnished the bow and arrows with which this was accomplished. At any rate, soon after Rawdon's watch-fires were seen in the distance the house was on fire, the stockade untenable, and the garrison prisoners of war. Marion then separated from Lee, and, turning toward Charleston, compelled the enemy to look well to his communications.

When Rawdon evacuated Camden he sent orders to the commander at Fort Granby to retire to Charleston, and directed Cruger, at Ninety-Six, to join Brown at Augusta. Neither of these orders reached its destination. As soon as the post at Motte's had surrendered, Lee was ordered to Fort Granby. Proceeding with his usual celerity, he arrived before the place in the night of the 14th. His single piece of artillery opened on the fort as soon as the morning fog had dispersed. The garrison was completely taken by surprise. Time being of the utmost importance to Lee, the besieged were promised their baggage—in reality the property of plundered patriots—if they would immediately surrender. The terms were accepted, and Lee joined Pickens at Augusta.[1025]

Lee reached this place on the evening of the 21st of May. On his way he had captured a small stockade, containing, under a strong guard, valuable stores for the Indians. Augusta is, or rather was, situated on the southern bank of the Savannah River. Its defences consisted of a strong work, Fort Cornwallis, in the centre of the town. It was garrisoned by a force of regulars under Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, who had already once successfully defended the place. Not far from Fort Cornwallis was a smaller work, named after its defender Fort Grierson. While Lee watched the garrison of the larger fort, Pickens and Clarke advanced to the attack of Fort Grierson. Its defenders soon were compelled to leave their stronghold for the main fort. Their attempt to reach it was a vain one, as most of the garrison were captured or killed.[1026]

The attack on Fort Cornwallis was now pressed with vigor. As at Fort Watson, use was here made of an expedient, already tried in the campaign, of advancing a log pen or Mahem tower, on the top of which was mounted the besiegers' only piece of artillery, whence it was used with great effect. The defence was most gallant, the garrison often sallying, and even attempting to blow up a house in which a covering party of riflemen were to have been placed; but the explosion was premature. Everything being ready for an assault, the garrison capitulated after one of the most splendid defences of the war. Lee then went to the assistance of Greene, who was now conducting the siege of Ninety-Six.

The village of Ninety-Six was then situated near the Saluda River, about twenty-five miles from Augusta. For many years a post had been established there as a protection against the Indians. When the British overran the State, it was selected as a proper position for one of the exterior line of posts of which Camden was the most important, though the possession of Augusta gave to the British the command of upper Georgia. When Camden was evacuated, Ninety-Six became useless and should have been abandoned; but the messengers bearing Rawdon's orders to that effect were stopped by the Americans. When, therefore, Greene arrived before the place, on the 22d of May, he found it defended by Lieutenant-Colonel Cruger, with about 500 men, mainly New York loyalists. A stockade protected the rivulet which supplied the garrison with water, and their main fort, the "Star", had sixteen salient and reëntering angles. Greene was not strong enough completely to invest this fort, and he contented himself with an attempt to carry it by regular approaches.

This was Greene's first siege, and, unfortunately, he had no engineer of the requisite ability. Acting on the advice of Kosciusko, ground was broken at a distance of seventy paces from the "Star." The besieged soon sallied, destroyed the uncompleted works, and retired with trifling loss, taking with them the intrenching tools. The British were surprised at the temerity of the Americans in opening their trenches so near. The sally taught Greene a lesson, for he next opened a trench at a distance of four hundred paces, under the protection of a ravine. The work was now pushed with vigor, and, notwithstanding numerous sallies on the part of the garrison, by the morning of June 18th the third parallel was completed. The assailants were now within six feet of the ditch, while riflemen in a Mahem tower kept the besieged from their guns during the day.

Lee with the "Legion" had arrived from Augusta on the 3d, and had conducted operations against the stockade covering the watering-place with such vigor that it had been evacuated on the 17th. Four days more would have placed the garrison in the power of the besiegers. But it was not so to be. Rawdon, in Charleston, had received considerable reinforcements direct from Ireland, and early in June he pushed forward through the heat, and eluded Sumter.[1027] With Rawdon within a day's march, Greene must either take the fort by storm or abandon the siege. He decided on an assault,—probably more to satisfy the desires of his men than because he thought it was the best thing to be done. On the 18th, at noon, the attack was made in two columns, Greene not being willing to hazard his whole force in a general storm. On the extreme right, Lee, with "Legion" infantry and the remains of the gallant Delaware regiment, directed his efforts against the stockaded fort, which had already been abandoned, according to the British account of the siege. At all events, Lee had no trouble in carrying out his part of the work. But on the other flank the assault was not so successful. Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, with his Virginia regiment and with the 1st Maryland, formed the storming column. They advanced with great gallantry, but, though they gained the ditch, they could not effect a lodgment on the parapet. They were driven back with considerable loss by two parties of the besieged, which attacked them in the ditch on both flanks in such a way that the artillery and riflemen in the tower could not fire without injuring friend and foe alike. Greene called off his men, and Rawdon being within a few miles, he retired on the next morning to a safe place of retreat. In the end he retreated as far as Timm's Ordinary, between the Broad and Catawba rivers. Rawdon, his men worn down with their long march, could not overtake him, and finally halting on the banks of the Enroree, he turned back to Ninety-Six. That place being untenable with the means at his disposal, he divided his men into two parties. With one he regained the low country, resigning the command to Stuart on account of ill-health.[1028] Gathering the Tories of the neighborhood, Cruger escorted them to Charleston, while Greene led his army to the High Hills of the Santee, where he passed the heats of the summer.

At length, toward the end of August, Greene learned that Stuart was proposing to establish a fortified post at a strong and healthful position called Eutaw Springs. Greene determined to prevent this, and descending from his camp he made a wide detour to get across the river which separated the two armies; for although he was distant from Stuart only sixteen miles as a bird flies, the most practicable route was nearly seventy miles long. He crossed the Wateree at Camden, and, marching parallel to the river, crossed its affluent, the Congaree, at Howell's Ferry on the 28th and 29th. Proceeding by slow and easy marches, he reached Burden's plantation on the 7th of September. At that place Marion joined him, and preparations were made for an advance on the enemy the next day. Stuart at Eutaw seems to have been singularly negligent. He sent out but one patrol, which was captured by Lee. He would have been surprised had not two men deserted from the North Carolina regiment and given him warning. As it was, he had barely time to call in his foraging parties before Greene was upon him.

Stuart had with him about 2,300 men of all arms, Greene rather less. The British commander ranged his men in one line, the right being protected by Eutaw Creek, while the left was in the air, as the military term is. Greene advanced in two lines, the militia, under Marion, Pickens, and Malmady, being in the front. The right of the second line was held by Sumner with the North Carolina regulars. In the centre were the Virginia Continentals under Campbell, while on the left J. E. Howard and Hardman led the two Maryland regiments. To Lee, who had the advance during the march, was assigned the protection of the right flank, Henderson with a South Carolina brigade covering the left. The cavalry under Washington and the brave remnant of the Delaware regiment brought up the rear, and acted as a reserve.

Here at last there was no wavering among the militia, excepting those from North Carolina, who nevertheless fired several rounds before breaking. Under Marion and Pickens the rest fought splendidly. It is said that some of them fired no less than seventeen rounds before giving way; then Sumner advanced with the North Carolina regulars. At length they, too, were forced back; but the British following them with too great impetuosity, their own line became deranged. This was the opportunity for the men of Maryland and Virginia to retrieve the reputation lost at Guilford and Hobkirk's Hill, and splendidly they responded to the call. Rushing forward,—the Virginians alone disobeying orders so far as to fire,—the whole burst upon the enemy in front and swept him from the field. Unfortunately, their course led through the British camp, and they dispersed to plunder the abandoned tents. Now it happened that when the British fell back a party threw themselves into a strong brick house and an adjoining picketed garden; thence they delivered a withering fire upon the victors of a moment before. And more unfortunate still, when the "Legion" was ordered to charge the retiring foe, Lee could not be found, and the charge, being made without vigor, was a failure. On the right, too, the British had not retreated: they still occupied a flanking position, from which they could not be dislodged, even though Washington and all but two of his officers were killed or wounded in the attempt. All these things, coupled with the heat, compelled Greene to sound the retreat. Leaving such of the wounded as were within range of the brick house on the field, he retired to his camp at Burdell's, seven miles distant, that being the nearest point where a supply of good water could be obtained. Both commanders claimed the victory. It would be not unfair, perhaps, to call it a drawn battle. Neither party can be said to have retained possession of the field, as Stuart retreated with great precipitation from the vicinity on the night of the next day. Greene acknowledged a loss in Continentals alone of 408 in killed and wounded. The loss in militia has never been stated. It must have been considerable, as a portion of the militia fought with great obstinacy. According to the American accounts, the enemy lost in prisoners 500 men, including 70 wounded. But Stuart reported only 257 missing; his killed and wounded he gives at 433.

As soon as Greene ascertained the retreat of the enemy he followed with all speed; but Marion and Lee were too weak to prevent Stuart's receiving a reinforcement. Stuart finally halted at Monk's Corner, while Greene passed the Santee at Nelson's Ferry and retired to the High Hills.

Cornwallis at Wilmington had a difficult problem to solve. Should he go south to the relief of Rawdon, or north to the conquest of Virginia? Another campaign in North Carolina was plainly out of the question. The distances were so great and the country was so sparsely settled that it was a matter of great difficulty to move any considerable force there, even when unopposed. The recent campaign had fully demonstrated that a bold and enterprising leader with a handful of trained troops could seriously impair the usefulness of a royal army, even though he could not destroy it. The best base of operations for another campaign in South Carolina was Charleston, and the best way to get there was by water; but any such movement looked too much like a retreat to be seriously considered. Besides, Cornwallis did not believe that he could get to Camden in time to relieve Rawdon, as the place was not provisioned for a siege. On the other hand, a movement into Virginia offered many advantages. There the army would always be within easy march of the sea, and reinforcements could be brought from New York or sent thither with great ease. Then, too, it seemed to Cornwallis—and his supposition was probably correct—that with Virginia, the great storehouse of the Southern armies, once in his hands, the complete conquest of the Carolinas would be easy and certain. So impressed was he with this idea that he endeavored to induce Clinton to shift the headquarters of the army from the Hudson to the Chesapeake; but Clinton had other views, and New York remained the base of operations. Clinton even went further, and avowed his dislike of the whole plan of operations; but Cornwallis had the approval of Germain, and the northern movement was undertaken.

Clinton, however, had always looked with favor on desultory expeditions to Virginia, as they drew the attention of that State to her own defence, and therefore away from the defence of the Carolinas. As early as the spring of 1779, he had sent Matthews and Collier to the Chesapeake, with instructions to do as much damage to the Americans as possible; but beyond plundering Portsmouth and burning Suffolk they accomplished little, and returned to New York. The next year Leslie was detached in the same direction to effect a diversion in favor of Cornwallis's invasion of North Carolina. King's Mountain not only put an end to that invasion, but compelled Cornwallis to call Leslie to his aid. Leaving Portsmouth, which he had fortified, Leslie sailed for Charleston, and reached the front in season to take part in the campaign against Greene. On Leslie's withdrawal Clinton sent another expedition to Virginia to destroy military stores which had been collected for the supply of Greene. The command this time was given to Arnold, though, to guard against a new treason, dormant commissions were given to his chief officers, Lieutenant-Colonels Dundas and Simcoe. Arnold penetrated to Richmond without encountering much opposition. He destroyed nearly everything of value at that place, and then endeavored to seize some arms which had at one time been deposited at Westham. Failing in this, he descended the river to Portsmouth. The militia had now collected in considerable numbers. For this or for some other reason, Arnold kept within the fortifications of that place.

About this time Rochambeau had sent a few vessels to annoy the British in the Chesapeake; but, besides capturing the "Romulus",—a 44-gun ship,—they did little, and returned to Newport. Washington now proposed that the two armies should unite in an attempt to capture the traitor. To this end he detached Lafayette with the light infantry,—a picked corps of about twelve hundred men from the New England and New Jersey lines,—to act in unison with a force of the same size which Rochambeau detached from his army. Lafayette, for a time concealing his destination by a feigned attack on Staten Island, reached Annapolis in safety. Leaving his troops there, to be brought the rest of the way by the French fleet when it should arrive, Lafayette proceeded to Suffolk. He found Muhlenberg, with the militia, at that place, guarding the approaches to Portsmouth. But the French were not fortunate, since their departure from Newport was so long delayed that the fleet arrived off the Capes of the Chesapeake only to find Arbuthnot guarding the entrance. In the fight which followed, both sides claimed the victory. But all the advantages of victory were on the side of the British, as Destouches' ships were so badly cut up that he was obliged to return to Newport. Success now being improbable, Lafayette returned to his troops, and the march to the North was begun. At the Head of Elk new orders were found, directing him to return to the South and place himself under the orders of Greene. The cause of this radical change in plan was the reinforcement of two thousand men under Phillips which Clinton had sent to Virginia.

Phillips arrived on March 25, and took command. Towards the end of April, the British to the number of twenty-five hundred landed at City Point on the James River. Steuben, who was then at Petersburg, took up a strong position at Blandford, where the enemy found him on the morning of April 25. He was soon obliged to retreat. The enemy then marched to Petersburg, and destroyed a large amount of tobacco and other valuable property. The 27th saw them at Osborn's, where they captured, after some show of resistance, a fleet of merchant vessels.

When Phillips and Arnold arrived at Richmond they found that Lafayette was before them. The young Frenchman had reached Baltimore on the 17th of April. Purchasing on his own credit shoes and clothes suited to a Virginia summer, he made a forced march, and threw himself into Richmond twenty-four hours in advance of the British. Not wishing to attack him in such a strong position, Phillips retired down the river, followed by the Americans. On the 7th of the next month (May, 1781), the British commander received word from Cornwallis that he would join him at Petersburg. Suddenly ascending the river, he reoccupied that town on the night of the 9th. On the 13th Phillips died, and a week later Cornwallis arrived and assumed command, Arnold returning to New York.

Then followed a series of marches, the design of the British commander being to cut Lafayette off from Wayne, who was marching to his support. But Lafayette moved with too great celerity. Early in June the desired junction of the Americans was made near Raccoon Ford, on the Rapidan. Meantime, while Lafayette was out of reach, Cornwallis sent out two expeditions. The first, under Simcoe, operated against Steuben, at that time guarding the stores at the Point of Fork. The Prussian veteran, mistaking Simcoe's detachment for the main army, abandoned the stores and retired with great precipitation. The second expedition, led by Tarleton, was designed for the capture of the civil rulers of Virginia, but a Virginia Paul Revere warned them of their danger in time, and they made good their escape,—though it is said that Jefferson, then resting from the fatigues of the session at Monticello, had but five minutes to spare. But the raid, successful, or not, had no importance, although popular writers are wont to dwell upon it.

With Wayne and his Pennsylvanians, in addition to his own Light Infantry, Lafayette felt strong enough again to oppose the enemy in the field. By a well-executed movement through an unknown and long-disused road, the young marquis placed himself between Cornwallis and Albemarle Old Court House, whither the stores had been removed from Richmond. Cornwallis, instead of attacking him, retired down the James, Lafayette following at a distance of about twenty miles. On the 25th of June the British were at Williamsburg, the Americans being not far off, at Bottom's Bridge. While at Williamsburg, Cornwallis sent Simcoe to destroy some boats and stores which had been collected on the Chickahominy. Lafayette, on his part, detached Butler of the Pennsylvania line, with orders to attack Simcoe on his return. A partial engagement ensued at Spencer's Ordinary, which ended in Simcoe's being able to continue his retreat.

It can hardly be said that this retrograde movement on the part of the British was due to the presence of Lafayette, although his presence undoubtedly contributed toward making Cornwallis desirous of getting into communication with Clinton. It is probable, too, that Cornwallis hoped to be so strongly reinforced that the conquest of the State during the coming autumn would be assured. But Clinton, believing, from intercepted despatches, and from the movements of the Americans, that Washington was meditating an attack on New York, instead of complying with Cornwallis's desires, ordered him to send a portion of his own troops to New York.

The latter, therefore, retired to Portsmouth, where the embarkation could be easily effected. To Lafayette, the crossing of the James seemed to offer the chance of at least picking off a rear guard; but Cornwallis was attacked too soon, owing in part to the impetuosity of Wayne, and the onset came near being a disaster. In the end, however, Wayne succeeded in bringing off his men, though he lost two pieces of artillery. Cornwallis, fearing an ambuscade, did not push the pursuit. He then made his way to Portsmouth unmolested, while the Americans sought a healthy summer camp on Malvern Hill. Just at this moment, owing to the arrival of reinforcements in New York, Clinton decided to leave Cornwallis's force intact. Furthermore, he determined to establish a permanent base in the Chesapeake, and ordered Cornwallis to fortify a place, mentioning Old Point Comfort, where the navy could be sheltered. He also authorized him to take possession of some other post, as Yorktown, if he thought it necessary. Now Cornwallis seems to have regarded the fortifying of Yorktown as the only alternative, and the engineers and naval officers declaring Old Point Comfort unsuitable for a naval station, he seized York and Gloucester, and began the erection of the proper works. Clinton always asserted that he had no intention of ordering anything of the kind. But the weight of evidence seems to be in favor of Cornwallis. At all events, he took possession of Yorktown. As soon as his movements were discovered, Lafayette left his summer camp, and, taking a strong position in the fork of the Pamunkey and Mattapony rivers, sent out parties to watch the further movements of the enemy, Wayne being ordered toward the south, as if to the assistance of Greene. Such was the situation in Virginia when the French came to the aid of the Americans, and began the operations leading to the siege of Yorktown.

On the 1st and 2d of May, 1780, the Marquis of Rochambeau, with about five thousand men, left the roadstead of Brest. The transports were convoyed by a small fleet of seven ships of the line, under the command of the Chevalier de Ternay. Their progress was slow, and it was not until July 12th that the fleet anchored in Newport harbor.[1029] Batteries were immediately erected on shore to protect the shipping from the English fleet, which was under Arbuthnot. This admiral, hastening from Charleston, in company with Clinton, now bent his whole energy toward the destruction of the French fleet. But the British commanders, always on bad terms, quarrelled, and Washington threatening New York, while the New England militia rallied to the defence of their newly arrived allies, the attempt on Newport was abandoned. A naval blockade was kept up, however, and the French army was neutralized by a few ships of war. Thus they passed the remainder of 1780 and the first part of 1781.

On the 8th of May (1781) M. de Barras, successor to De Ternay, who had died in the preceding year,[1030] arrived at Boston. He brought news of the departure from Brest of a powerful fleet commanded by M. de Grasse. This French admiral had with him a small convoy with six hundred recruits for Rochambeau; but the bulk of his fleet was destined primarily for the West Indies. De Grasse had been directed, however, to come on the American coast in July or August, relieve the fleet at Newport, and for a limited period act in conjunction with the American and French armies. On May 21st a conference between Washington and the French commanders was held at Weathersfield, in Connecticut. It was there determined to make a united attack upon New York, provided De Grasse could coöperate. This was Washington's plan, though an expedition against the British in Virginia seems even then to have been proposed. Later a note from De Grasse arrived, asking where he should strike the American coast. Rochambeau replied that it would be best for him to look into the Chesapeake, and then, should no employment be found there, to proceed to New York. Rochambeau also inclosed the articles of the Weathersfield conference, hinting at the same time that De Grasse must be his own judge as to the practicability of crossing the New York bar with his ships. Finally he asked him to borrow for three months the brigade under St. Simon, which was destined to act in conjunction with the Spaniards.

On the 18th the advance of the French left Providence for the Hudson. Washington at this time was encamped at Peekskill. Ten days later, on June 28th, he determined to seize by surprise, if possible, the forts on the northern end of New York Island. The night of July 2d was selected for the enterprise, and the command of the advance was given to Lincoln; Lauzun, with the French Legion, making a forced march to his aid. But the scheme failed. The enemy attacked Lincoln, and Lauzun reached the scene of conflict too late to be of assistance. The troops were drawn off in safety, however, and retired to Dobbs Ferry, where they were joined by the French infantry on July 6th. While awaiting the arrival of the fleet, nothing was attempted beyond a reconnoissance in force of the northern defences of the island. It was this movement which induced Clinton to send for the Virginia troops.

On August 14th a letter from De Grasse arrived which put a new face on the whole war; for the French admiral announced that he should sail for the Chesapeake, with a view to carry out the scheme of Rochambeau for a united movement against Cornwallis. He added that his stay on the American coast would be short, and that he hoped the land forces would be ready to act with him.

There was now nothing to be done but to abandon the cherished project against New York, and to move all of the allied armies that could be spared from the vicinity of New York to the Chesapeake. Leaving Heath with four thousand men to garrison the forts on the Hudson, and suitable parties to guard against an irruption from Canada, Washington set out with the rest of the land forces for Williamsburg, by the way of Philadelphia, Head of Elk, and the Chesapeake. On the 19th the army crossed the Hudson at King's Ferry, and moved as though to attack Staten Island. This feint was so well managed that Clinton was completely deceived. On September 2d the Americans marched through Philadelphia, the French following on the 3d, 4th, and 5th. By the 8th the allied army was again united at the Head of Elk. The news of the arrival of De Grasse at the Capes of the Chesapeake had reached Washington on the 5th, and had been communicated to the troops on the following morning.[1031]

De Grasse, on his arrival at Lynnhaven Bay, just inside Cape Henry, had found an aide of Lafayette's, and soon the marquis arrived in person. As soon as possible the troops under St. Simon were landed at Jamestown Island, and Wayne was recalled from his southward march. These corps, with the light infantry and the Virginia militia, took up a strong position at Williamsburg, not more than twelve miles from Yorktown. Cornwallis reconnoitred the lines; but they were too strong to be attacked except at great risk. Confident in being relieved by Clinton and Graves, he retired to his fortifications.

Had Rodney done his full duty he would have followed De Grasse in his northward cruise. But pleading illness, he sent fourteen ships of the line, under Hood, to the assistance of Graves, and sailed himself for Europe.[1032] The event was most fortunate for the American cause, as the control of the sea for a brief period passed away from the British. It should be said that Rodney had written to Graves, warning him of his danger; but through a fortunate accident the letter never reached Graves, and the first he heard of the coming of De Grasse was on the arrival of Hood. That admiral on August 25th had looked into the Chesapeake on his way north; but the French had not yet arrived. Graves had already discovered that Barras had sailed from Newport with a siege train and tools, and the two admirals, conjecturing, therefore, that the destination of Barras was the Chesapeake, determined to seek him there and destroy him before the arrival of the main fleet. They reached Cape Henry on the 5th of September, and there they found, not Barras, as he had purposely taken a long, roundabout route to avoid them, but De Grasse. The English fleet numbered nineteen sail of the line, the French twenty-four, but fifteen hundred men were absent, engaged in landing the troops of St. Simon. Nevertheless, De Grasse slipped his cables and stood out to sea. The ensuing action was indecisive, but De Grasse accomplished his purpose, as the British were obliged to seek New York to refit. On his arrival back at Lynnhaven Bay he found Barras. There was now abundant transportation, and by the 26th of September the allied troops—Washington's, Rochambeau's, Lafayette's, and St. Simon's—were concentrated at Williamsburg.

Two days later, on the 28th, the allied army marched to Yorktown, and found Cornwallis occupying an intrenched camp outside the immediate defences of the town. On the 29th the lines were extended so as to envelop the place, the Americans taking the right, with their right flank resting on Wormley Creek. Cornwallis, seeing that he would be outflanked, withdrew to the inner defences, and on the morning of the 30th the besiegers took possession of the abandoned works.[1033]

On the night of the 5th and 6th of October the first parallel was opened, at a distance of between five and six hundred yards from the enemy's works. It extended from the river bank below the town to a deep ravine nearly opposite the centre of the besieged lines. A battery on the bank above the town opposed a battery of the enemy in that quarter, and also prevented the British fleet from enfilading the works. Guns were mounted and fire opened from this parallel on the afternoon of the 9th. The ground was singularly favorable to the construction of the approaches, and by the night of the 11th and 12th the works were in such a state of forwardness that the second parallel was begun, not more than three hundred yards from the British lines. On the extreme right, however, there were two redoubts, commanding this parallel, which on the night of the 14th and 15th were carried by storm,—the smaller one, on the right, by Lafayette's division, the advance being commanded by Alexander Hamilton; while the one further away from the river was stormed by a party of French infantry commanded by Colonel G. de Deux-Ponts, the Baron de Viomenil having command of the division. The loss on the American side was inconsiderable, but that of the French was severe, the redoubt carried by them being larger and much more strongly garrisoned. Before morning the two redoubts were included in the second parallel. Cornwallis, hoping for relief, determined to prolong the defence as long as possible. To this end, on the morning of the 16th, Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie led a determined but useless assault on two batteries at the French end of the trenches. Cornwallis next tried, on the night of the same day, to cut his way out by passing his men over to Gloucester Point; but a storm arose in the midst of the ferrying, and the enterprise, hazardous at best, was abandoned.

An assault becoming practicable, at ten o'clock of the morning of the 17th, four years since Burgoyne's surrender, a drummer-boy appeared on the parapet and beat a parley. Negotiations were begun, but, though pushed with the greatest energy by Washington, the final articles were not signed in the trenches until two days later, on the 19th. On that day, at noon, two redoubts were taken possession of by detachments from the French and American forces. At two in the afternoon the British army, with colors cased and drums beating "The World turned upside down", marched out and laid down their arms; O'Hara, in the absence of Cornwallis, making the formal surrender to Lincoln, Washington's representative.

At the beginning of the siege the British numbered not far from seven thousand men of all arms,—perhaps a few more. On the day of the capitulation, according to Cornwallis, little more than thirty-eight hundred were fit for duty, including the garrison at Gloucester Point. The allied army is usually given at sixteen thousand men,—nine thousand Americans, including thirty-five hundred militia. The French numbered probably more than seven thousand. The total British loss during the siege was five hundred and forty-one, including the missing. The allied loss, excluding the missing, was seventy-six Americans and one hundred and eighty French. It has been stated that, at the time of the surrender, there were about fourteen hundred unfit for duty in the allied camp. This great victory, due even more than most victories to chance, virtually ended the war. It remains only to describe the closing scenes in the South.

Greene's army had been so roughly handled at the Eutaws that it was the first of November before he felt strong enough again to take the field. He advanced first to Dorchester and the Round O. Then, reinforcements arriving from the troops set free by the surrender at Yorktown, he assumed a more vigorous offensive. He advanced to the eastern bank of the Edisto, between Jacksonborough, where the legislature was then assembling, and Charleston, still in the hands of the British. But if the Pennsylvanians were a welcome addition on account of their strength, they brought also a spirit of discontent. A plot was discovered to betray the army into the power of the enemy. A few examples were made and the attempted treason stamped out.

Greene now detached Wayne, with about five hundred men, to do what he could toward the recovery of the Georgia seaboard. On his approach the British retired to Savannah, burning everything that could not be removed. Wayne was too weak to attempt more than the blockade of the town. But on the 21st of May Lieutenant-Colonel Brown left the fortifications as if to attack the Americans. Placing himself between this party and the garrison, Wayne surprised Brown by a night attack, killing or dispersing the whole party. About a month later he was himself surprised by a large body of Creek Indians led by a British officer. Successful at first, the savages were finally beaten off, with the loss of their chief Escomaligo and a dozen braves. On the 11th of the next month, July, 1782, Savannah was evacuated, and the whole State once more came into the hands of the Americans.

The British government had decided upon the abandonment of all posts in America with the exception of New York. On August 7th, Leslie, then commanding in the South, announced in "after orders" that the evacuation of Charleston had been determined on. He also wrote to Greene, proposing a cessation of hostilities. The proposal was declined, Greene having no instructions on the point. Later Leslie again wrote, offering to pay for all rice and other provisions that might be brought into Charleston; but Greene, fearing that the rice was intended for use during a campaign against the French in the West Indies, again refused. Leslie then endeavored to seize the coveted articles by force. One of his foraging parties, commanded by Lieutenant Benjamin Thompson,—better known by his later title of Count Rumford,—surprised and dispersed Marion's brigade while its commander was absent attending a meeting of the legislature. The most serious loss through these desultory expeditions was in the death of the younger Laurens, who was killed during a useless skirmish at Combahee Ferry. This was the last action of the war in the South. On the 14th of December the British left Charleston, and three days later their last ship passed the bar and went to sea. The South was free.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE most complete contemporary account of the Southern campaign is David Ramsay's Revolution of South Carolina.[1034] This author, by birth a Pennsylvanian, removed to Charleston in 1773, and at once took a leading part in the management of the affairs of that town. During the stormy years of 1779-1780 he was a member of the governor's council, but went with the Charleston artillery company to the siege of Savannah. When Rutledge, with a portion of his council, left Charleston during the siege, Ramsay remained behind with Gadsden. He was, therefore, a prisoner during the greater portion of Gates's and Greene's campaigns. Ramsay was thus a prominent actor in many of the scenes described in his volumes, while his facilities for obtaining accurate information as to the rest were so excellent that his book may be regarded as an authority of the first importance. He retold the story in a condensed form in several other publications.

Moultrie[1035] was a prominent actor in the defence of his native State before the capitulation of Charleston. After that he resided with the other officers at Haddrell's Point until his exchange in 1781. At a later day he was present at the entry of the victorious army into Charleston. Whenever he speaks from his own observation, Moultrie may be trusted[1036]. But he seems to have been too ready to listen to exaggerated stories, and though we must believe that there was a foundation for his account of the sufferings of the Charleston prisoners, it should always be remembered that the charges were indignantly denied by the British officers in charge.

Henry Lee, of Virginia,—"Light-Horse" or "Legion Harry", as he was often called,—though not in the South prior to the days of the Cowpens, was so intimate with all the actors in the operations after the fall of Charleston, and enjoyed such advantages for acquiring information of earlier events, that as a source of information his book[1037] is of considerable value. As the work of an outspoken and generally impartial military critic of these campaigns, it has no equal. It should be borne in mind, however, that as to dates and minor details it needs the confirmation of contemporary documents.[1038] Like so many of the Revolutionary heroes, Lee in his later years became involved in unfortunate speculations, and a painful disease increased the distress of his last days.[1039] As an orator he fashioned phrases which have not yet lost their hold on the popular mind. As a writer he avoided the stilted sentences of his contemporaries, and his book may still be read with pleasure. Probably no one enjoyed the confidence of Greene to such an extent as Henry Lee.[1040]

Nathanael Greene came of good Rhode Island stock,[1041] and, like other prominent Rhode Islanders of his day, was a self-educated man. Fortunately for posterity, though not always for himself, Greene was a copious and candid letter-writer. His letters and fragments of letters, so far as they have been printed, are his best biography.[1042] He has not lacked biographers, however. First, in point of time, was Charles Caldwell, who put forth a worthless volume as early as 1819.[1043] William Gilmore Simms, the Carolina novelist, also tried his hand at the alluring theme, and his book, while possessing no claim to originality, has at least the merit of being interesting. The most formidable of these early biographies was the work of Judge Johnson, of Charleston. He enjoyed the best facilities, as the Greenes placed the family papers at his disposal. Many of these documents he printed at length, and as a repository his work has a value.[1044] In other respects it is worth very little. This is due mainly to the fact that in order to glorify his hero he belittled every other prominent character—with the exception of Marion.[1045] A formidable antagonist of Johnson was soon found in the person of Henry Lee, the son of Light-Horse Harry. He resented the slurs of Johnson, and even wrote a book[1046] to show the small reliance to be placed on the learned judge's military criticisms. As a review, the work of the younger Lee is interesting, but it is so one-sided as to be of little importance.

It is, however, to the labors of a descendant that the great leader owes much of the honor in which he is held. In various publications, from the little seven-page sketch in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History (vol. ii. p. 84) to the large three-volume biography,[1047] the grandson sought to spread the fame of the grandsire. Unfortunately, through these family works of love there runs the same spirit of adulation that so disfigured Johnson. A still greater drawback to the value of the largest work is the hesitation of the author in printing letters and documents not elsewhere in print.

In this respect the biographer of Greene's able lieutenant, Daniel Morgan, set a good example. In fact, Graham's Morgan[1048] is an excellent and generally trustworthy book. It is to be noted that Graham has cleared Morgan from the charge that he retired from the army after the Cowpens, through a treasonable fear that the Revolution would not be successful. Nor does the assertion that Morgan was chagrined at the treatment accorded him by Greene appear to be well founded.

But of all the Southern leaders, Marion was most fortunate in his biographers.[1049] It is true that Horry's work was largely written by Mason L. Weems, notorious for his so-called Life of Washington. Both Horry and James had a foundation for their narratives. The confidence reposed by Greene in his ablest leader of irregular troops is best seen in their letters printed by Gibbes in his Documentary History,[1050] which is composed mainly of the "Horry Papers", already used in Horry's memoir. Another partisan worthy of mention was Pickens. But of him only slight and unworthy sketches have been printed.[1051]

The only extended notice of Benjamin Lincoln is the biography by Francis Bowen in Sparks's collection.[1052] This book was not written in the calm judicial spirit that should characterize an historical work. Many of Lincoln's order-books have been preserved, and have been of material service in preparing the foregoing narrative. Though Lincoln's career was marked by no brilliant successes, his work was always well done, and demands a fuller recognition.[1053]

Little original material concerning the operations in Georgia has come to light. It is fortunate, therefore, that Hugh McCall overcame his physical infirmities to such an extent as to enable him to finish the second volume of his History of Georgia. This writer was an active cavalry leader in the defence of his native State. He also fought well on other fields. It should he said, however, that what he wrote of actions in which he did not take part should be received with caution. His work is the basis of all subsequent accounts of the war in Georgia.

Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvanians did good service in Virginia, and later in Georgia. But the life of Wayne remains to be written.[1054] His letters and reports are scattered here and there through the books. The best account of his career is the one printed by his son in the Casket, a magazine not to be found in every library.

The second volume of Wheeler's Sketches of North Carolina contains many articles by actors in the struggle. But they were mostly written long after the event, as, too, were those in the North Carolina University Magazine. They should not be relied upon unless confirmed.[1055] This is the more regrettable as there is very little original material in print relating to these North Carolina campaigns from a North Carolina point of view. The most labored defence of the "Old North State" is Caruthers' Incidents.[1056] Much of this work seems to be based on good material; but one should be especially careful to separate such portions from those founded on tradition, which must have misled Caruthers in several instances. Of the same general character are Johnson's Traditions;[1057] Logan's Upper Country of South Carolina; Foote's Sketches of Western North Carolina; and C. L. Hunter's Sketches of Western North Carolina (Raleigh, 1877). Such are the main sources of information from the American side so far as the campaigns in the Carolinas and Georgia are concerned. Let us now turn to Virginia.

On his way South, Greene left Steuben[1058] in Virginia to organize and push forward recruits as fast as possible. The gallant Prussian seems to have been ill-suited to the command of raw republican militia; but the American leaders in the State, Muhlenberg, Lawson, and Stevens, aided him as well as they could. It was not until the arrival of Lafayette with his Continentals from the Eastern States that much was done to oppose the enemy. The governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, showed a lamentable lack of energy during Arnold's and Cornwallis's invasions, though the word "imbecility", applied to his conduct by Howison, would seem to be undeserved.[1059] Of course, Jefferson's biographers have defended their hero from these charges,[1060] but Giradin's Continuation of Burk's Virginia,[1061] written in the neighborhood of Monticello, and apparently under Jeffersonian auspices, is the most extensive account of Jefferson's administration from his side.

It was not, however, until the publication of the Virginia State Papers[1062] that the truth concerning the campaigns preliminary to Yorktown could be ascertained. But these two volumes taken in connection with the Nelson Papers have thrown a new light on all these transactions.[1063]

Washington's Writings and Sparks's Correspondence of the Revolution contain much relating to all these operations, though Washington's Journal and his order-books are even more valuable for the Yorktown campaign. Of the commander of the auxiliary troops, the Marquis of Rochambeau, I have found little outside of his well-known Mémoires.[1064] For much of what we know concerning the movements of the French we are indebted to John Austin Stevens, a former editor of the Magazine of American History. His articles, as well as those by other hands, will be mentioned in the Notes.

The papers of the British commanders have been much better preserved. All official documents of popular interest and conducing to the glory of the nation were published, sometimes in full, sometimes in extract, in the governmental organ known as The London Gazette. Thence they were copied, in whole or in part, into the Remembrancer, Gentleman's Magazine, Scot's Magazine, Political Magazine, and often into that portion of the Annual Register known as "Principal Occurrences." Many of them, and many other papers of the greatest importance, were printed in the Parliamentary Register, or Debrett's Debates, as it is often called.

The Sackville Papers, forming the third appendix to the Ninth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts,[1065] contain much of very great value; but many of the most important papers therein printed have been accessible in other forms. Soon after the surrender at Yorktown, the House of Lords appointed a committee to inquire into the conduct of the Yorktown campaign. Later, upon their order, many of the letters and papers bearing on this event were printed. They may be found in the Parliamentary Register,[1066] while many were translated into French, and published in a small volume under the title of Correspondance du Lord G. Germain avec les Généraux Clinton, Cornwallis, etc. (Berne, 1782). Most of these documents, however, had been already printed in other places. The surrender induced Cornwallis[1067] and Clinton to lay upon the shoulders of each other the responsibility.[1068] The truth seems to be that neither was responsible, since the disaster was due, above all, to the arrival of De Grasse and the consequent transference of the control of the sea from the British to the Allies. For this neither Clinton nor Cornwallis was to blame. The quarrel led to the publication, however, of so many papers of the greatest importance that the historical student can hardly regret its occurrence.

Nor was Clinton on good terms with Mariot Arbuthnot, who had accused Clinton of permitting thievery to go on under his very eyes.[1069] Naturally this want of cordiality made coöperation very difficult. After Clinton's departure Cornwallis was the commander-in-chief in the South; but Colonel Nesbit Balfour, who commanded in the city of Charleston, made separate reports to Germain. He does not seem to have been possessed with a very sanguine disposition, and his reports therefore present a more accurate picture of affairs than do the despatches of Cornwallis himself.

Several of the British officers wrote formal accounts of their doings, the most notable of which is Tarleton's Campaigns.[1070] Portions of it are trustworthy, but in general the author placed his own services in such a favorable light that the true course of history is almost unrecognisable. Nevertheless, the book contains so many documents not elsewhere to be obtained, except at great labor, that it has a value. Tarleton's unjust discriminations and criticisms brought forth a most caustic review from the pen of Mackenzie,[1071] a Scotch officer, who served in a regiment which often accompanied the "Legion." Cornwallis, who had also been attacked by Tarleton, never replied to his criticisms in print; but he wrote to a "friend" (cf. letter dated Calcutta, Dec. 12, 1787, in the Cornwallis Corres., i. 59, note) that "Tarleton's is a most malicious and false attack; he knew and approved the reasons for several of the measures which he now blames. My not sending relief to Colonel Ferguson, although he was positively ordered to retire, was entirely owing to Tarleton himself: he pleaded weakness from the remains of a fever, and refused to make the attempt, although I used the most earnest entreaties." It should be noted, however, that this alleged refusal on Tarleton's part created no coolness at the time. Simcoe's narrative[1072] is even more egotistical than Tarleton's. But his details may be relied upon if one constantly remembers that events are related without any regard to their real importance. Captain, afterwards General, Graham served with Cornwallis in the 76th Highlanders through the most important portions of his North Carolina and Virginia campaigns. His Memoirs,[1073] therefore, though execrably edited so far as the American portion is concerned, should be consulted. Another book which partakes of the nature of an original source is the so-called Journal[1074] of R. Lamb, who served through the war, and his statements have a value. The only regimental history of much interest is Hamilton's Grenadier Guards,[1075] a corps which after Cowpens rendered good service, and this account of their achievements bears all the marks of originality. There are but few manuscripts of importance, written by British officers, accessible on this side of the ocean.[1076]

The most valuable history of the Revolution from a British pen is Gordon's well-known work. This author was assisted by Gates and Greene so far as the Southern campaigns were concerned. The volumes contain, moreover, many fragments of letters that have never seen the light in their entirety. Taken altogether, this work ranks with Ramsay as an authority of the very first importance. The only other important History of the American War from the English side is the work which bears the name of Charles Stedman on the title-page. Whoever the author of the text may have been, the writer of many of the notes in the part devoted to the war in the South was undoubtedly an on-looker. Still another work worthy of mention in this place, though mainly as the repository of documents, is Beatson's Memoirs. In addition there are numerous diaries, journals, etc. They relate mainly to but one battle or campaign, and will be mentioned in the following "Notes."

NOTES.

Savannah, 1778.[1077]—Campbell's formal report to Germain was first printed in The London Gazette for Feb. 20-23, 1779,—reprinted in Remembrancer, vii. 235; Hough's Siege of Savannah, Introduction, p. 7; Gentleman's Magazine, 1779, p. 177; and Dawson's Battles, i. 477. Major-General Augustine Prevost's report is in the Gazette for Feb. 23, 1779, and Remembrancer, vii. 243. It deals especially with his march from St. Augustine and capture of Sunbury.[1078] An American account of this latter event is in McCall's Georgia, ii. 176. Captain Hyde Parker[1079] reported to the Admiralty through the customary channel, and his report usually follows that of Prevost, as above. Howe seems to have presented no formal report, but Lincoln wrote to Washington (Corresp. Rev., ii. 244) early in the next year, describing the disaster. Howe's own side of the case, however, is fully set forth in the Proceedings of a General Court-Martial held at Philadelphia in the State of Penna. by order of his Excellency General Washington, Phila., 1782; reprinted in the New York Historical Society's Collections (1879, pp. 213-311), where will be found Howe's orders (Dec. 29th,[1080] p. 282) and statement (pp. 285-310). The court, presided over by Steuben, acquitted Howe on all the charges "with the highest honor." Nevertheless, the majority of writers have been unfavorable to Howe. See especially Moultrie's Memoirs, i. 244; Lee's Memoirs (2d edition), p. 40; Ramsay's Rev. in S. C., ii. 4. This last is a fairer view, and is followed by Gordon (American Revolution, iii. 212). See also Stedman, American War, ii. 66; McCall's Georgia, ii. 164, and C. C. Jones's Georgia, ii. 314. In this, the most recent history of Georgia, all the old statements are repeated.[1081]

An American description from a different point of view is the Account of the Capture of Mordecai Sheftall, Deputy Commissary of Issues to the Continental Troops for the State of Georgia, in White's Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 340. Sheftall also testified at the court-martial.[1082]

Minor Actions, 1779.—There is not much to be found as to Lincoln's doings before the siege of Savannah except his manuscript "order-books." Moultrie made an elaborate report of his encounter near Beaufort.[1083]

McCall was present at Kettle Creek, and his account[1084] of Boyd's overthrow has been generally followed by later writers. No official report of the affair has been found. The disaster at Brier Creek was much better chronicled. First comes Ashe's report to Lincoln (Moultrie, Memoirs, i. 323, and abridged in Dawson, Battles, i. 492). Lincoln wrote a good account of the affair (an extract of his letter in Dawson, as above), and the evidence given at the court-martial[1085] which tried Ashe is as full as can be desired.[1086] The British accounts do not differ essentially from these.[1087]

There is no lack of original material as to Prevost's unsuccessful attempt on Charleston,[1088] and Lincoln's attack on Stono. Moultrie made no formal report, but the documents and bits of journals scattered through his Memoirs (i. 412-506) may well take its place. Prevost's report of his attempt was dated June 12, 1779 (London Gazette, Sept. 21-25, 1779, reprinted in Remembrancer, viii. 302). His report as to Stono is in the Gazette, as above, and also in Remembrancer viii. 300. Lincoln's version of the latter affair is contained in a letter to Moultrie (Memoirs, i. 490, and Dawson, i. 501). Moultrie also printed other letters (cf. especially one from Colonel Grimkie in Memoirs, i. 495), and an interesting journal by an unknown hand is in Remembrancer (viii. 349). Capt. John Henry, who succeeded Parker, in his reports corroborated Prevost as to the offer of neutrality on the part of some one in Charleston (London Gazette, July 10-13, 1779, and Remembrancer viii. 183). Clinton also has something to say on the campaign in general in a report to Germain (Remembrancer, viii. 297).[1089]

Lincoln has been criticised for his march into Georgia, but the movement had the unanimous support of his generals. Cf. report of the council of war in Moultrie, i. 374. He supposed rightly, as we now know (cf. Prevost's report in Remembrancer, viii. 302), that the British commander's only object was to compel his return to South Carolina. Moultrie could have offered sufficient resistance if one half of his men had not deserted. Nevertheless, Lincoln was assailed in the Charleston papers, and complained bitterly of their unfairness. Cf. letter to Moultrie in Memoirs, i. 477. With regard to Rutledge's offer of neutrality, Professor Bowen has undoubtedly gone too far in describing it as "little short of treason."[1090] Still, if, as Rutledge's friends claim, the proposition was made merely to gain time, it was not made in good faith, and was therefore highly discreditable to the governor. But there is no evidence that the proposition was made in any such spirit, except the statement in Ramsay, which was copied by Gordon. The truth seems to be that Rutledge, greatly overestimating the numbers of the enemy, sought to save his native State from pillage. He yielded too easily to his fears. Moultrie takes no pains to conceal his disgust at the offer. The younger Laurens refused to have anything to do with the matter, while Gadsden and Ferguson, two members of the Council, voted against the proposal, and Edwards, another member, wept at the thought. Unfortunately, the minutes of the Council have been lost. Cf. Johnson, Reply to Bentalou and Sparks.[1091]

It is to be noted that, although there is no record of the actual presence of Indians at this siege, their absence was not due to any remissness on the part of Rutledge, who made every effort to persuade a band of "eighty Catawbas" to act with Moultrie. (Cf. the latter's Memoirs, i. pp. 397, 419, and 453.)

Siege of Savannah, 1779.—The best account of this disastrous siege is the Journal, by an unknown hand, which Col. C. C. Jones has translated, with copious notes, in his Siege of Savannah in 1779 as described in two contemporaneous journals of French officers in the fleet of Count D'Estaing, Albany, 1874, pp. 9-52. The other journal, of which he there gives a partial translation, is the well-known Extrait du Journal d'un Officier de la Marine de l'escadre de M. le Comte D'Estaing, 1782.[1092] Still another French account is in the form of an official report,[1093] and may have been the report of the commander himself. This is by no means certain, though Soulés (Troublés, iii. 217), in speaking of the numbers given in this report, says: "Le Comte d'Estaing dit dans sa relation", etc. This was first printed in the Paris Gazette, and was reprinted in the English and American papers of the time.

Prevost made an elaborate report to Germain, under date of Savannah, Nov. 1, 1779. It was accompanied by translations of the correspondence between the commanders, and was first printed in The London Gazette, Dec. 21-25, 1779.[1094] Captain John Henry also reported through the usual channel. He viewed the siege from a point different from Prevost's, and his report is therefore of interest.[1095] Hough has also reprinted in his Savannah two "journals" from English sources.[1096] Mention must also be made of a valuable Memorandum of a very critical period in the Province of South Carolina, inclosed in a letter from J. H. Cruger to H. Cruger, etc., dated Savannah, Nov. 8, 1779, in Magazine of American History, 1878, p. 489.[1097]

Lincoln's report is very meagre (Hough, Savannah, 149). It should be supplemented by An Account of the Siege of Savannah furnished by an Officer engaged in the attack, Major Thomas Pinckney.[1098] Stevens, the Georgia historian, had access to Prevost's order-book, and he has printed in his Georgia (ii. 200, etc.) a few documents not otherwise accessible. Lincoln's order-book is still in existence, and his papers were used by Lee in his valuable account of the affair (Memoirs, i. 99). The orders for the assault have been printed.[1099]

Moultrie was not present during the siege, but he gives a graphic account of the assault (Memoirs, 33-43). It is curious to note his attempt to defend the militia from the charge of luke-warmness on the ground that they joined the army to witness the surrender of the British, not to take part in a bloody storm. Ramsay was present at the siege, and his account is good (Rev. in S. C., ii. 34. See also Gordon, iii. 325, and Stedman, ii. 121). Captain McCall was there, too, and his account (Georgia, ii. 240-283) may be regarded as an original authority. The local histories[1100] are sufficiently detailed for the general reader, and there are at least two good French accounts,[1101] while the German historians[1102] should not be neglected, as there was a "Hessian" regiment in the town.

D'Estaing has usually been represented as hurrying on board and sailing away just in time to avoid a predicted storm. So far was this from being the case, that, although the assault was made on the 9th of October, the French were in front of the town on the 19th and 29th of the same month. The bulk of the fleet was blown from the anchorage on the 26th, though the last frigates did not leave until the 2d of November.[1103] Historians ignoring these facts have too often praised the prescience of D'Estaing. The truth seems to be, that, being conscious of exceeding his instructions and impatient of delay, the French commander hazarded everything on an assault, and lost. The delay in getting away was due for the most part to the bad discipline which prevailed in the fleet.[1104]

This gallant defence made Prevost a major-general, though he enjoyed his honors for but a short time, as he died in 1786. Maitland, to whose timely succor so much was due, died on the 26th of October from a fever contracted, it was supposed, during his gallant march to the aid of the beleaguered town. Cf. Hough, Savannah, p. 110. The success of the defence was due mainly to the talents and energy of the engineer officer, Moncrieff, attached to Prevost's expedition. No one was more conscious of this than Prevost, who wrote of him in the warmest terms in his report to Germain.[1105]

The charge of Oct. 9th was fatal to two of the most romantic characters in our Revolutionary history, Jasper and Pulaski.[1106]

Charleston, 1780.—Lincoln presented no detailed report of his unsuccessful defence of Charleston, though a short note announcing the capitulation is in print. Lincoln asked for a court of inquiry into his conduct.[1107] But as no one doubted his integrity or capacity, no court was ever held. As to the siege itself, Moultrie has been the main reliance. His Memoirs (ii. pp. 65 et seq.) contain the official correspondence between the opposing commanders, and a diary or journal running from March 28th to May 12th, which bears all the marks of a contemporaneous document. Ramsay, too, was present at the defence, but his account (Rev. in S. C., ii. 45-62,—followed by Gordon, iii. 346) is very meagre.[1108]

On the British side, the descriptions in Tarleton (Campaigns, 4-23) and Stedman (American War, ii. 176-192) are interesting and detailed. So far as they relate to events outside of the immediate vicinity of the city, they are trustworthy; but neither of these officers was present at the siege itself.[1109] Of more importance than any contemporary account, with the possible exception of Moultrie's journal, is the report of Clinton to Germain. It is also in the form of a journal, and runs from March 29th to May 12th, and is printed as a part of The London Gazette Extra, issued on the 15th of June, 1780.[1110]

The correspondence between Clinton and Germain with regard to the planning of this campaign is in the Ninth Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission, App. iii. pp. 95, 98, etc.[1111] In this same appendix are three letters from Arbuthnot to Germain, giving interesting details. His official report was made to Mr. Stevens, secretary of the Admiralty, and was printed with Clinton's report. It is especially valuable with regard to the operations of the fleet. There is a critical account of the siege in Lee's Memoirs, i. 115-142, and the more popular descriptions are unusually good, especially those from German sources.[1112]

Minor Actions, 1780.—It is to be regretted that we have no official account of the disaster at the Waxhaws from the American commander. Tarleton's official report to Cornwallis was originally printed in The London Gazette Extra, July 5, 1780.[1113] The description of the affair in Dawson's Battles, i. 582, is based upon Adj. Bowyer's Particular Account of Colonel Buford's defeat. It differs materially from the account of the British commander.[1114]

Lee says that most of the wounded died of their wounds. This can hardly be true, as Muhlenberg in a letter to Washington (Muhlenberg's Muhlenberg, 368) says that the prisoners taken at the Waxhaws have nearly all returned. There are no plans of the battle, and it has been found impossible to make any estimate of the numbers engaged.[1115]

For the period between the Waxhaws and the disaster near Camden, the reports of Cornwallis are of value (Remembrancer, x. 261; Pol. Mag., i. 261, etc.); Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 128-145, has a fair account. The affair at Ramsour's Mill has not been given due prominence in the general histories. There is a good account of it in Caldwell's Greene, 123. But the description which has generally been followed is the one which General Joseph Graham—who was not present at the fight—printed in the Catawba Journal for Feb. 1, 1825.[1116]

Colonel Williams transmitted a report of the action at Musgrove's Mill to Gates (Remembrancer, xi. 87). But the best account of the affair is in Draper's King's Mountain, who (p. 122) gives a list of his authorities. See especially MCCall, Georgia, ii. 304-317; Jones, Georgia, ii. 452; and Amer. Whig Rev., new series, ii. 578.

Gates's Defeat near Camden, 1780.—The defeated general dated his official report at Hillsborough, Aug. 20, 1780 (Remembrancer, x. 335; Tarleton, 145; Sparks's Correspondence of the Revolution, iii. 66 and 76; Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 502, etc.). Cornwallis presented two reports bearing on the campaign. In the first—sometimes dated Aug. 20th, and sometimes Aug. 21st—he follows his movement to his arrival at Camden. The second—always dated the 21st—takes up the story at that point. They are both in the London Gazette Extra for October 9th, 1780.[1117]

I have found nothing official from Rawdon; but on Sept. 19th, 1780, he wrote to his mother, the Countess of Moira, describing the events preceding the battle. He speaks of the course taken by Gates as "the ruinous part which they, the Americans, actually did embrace", adding that De Kalb had advised Gates to cross Lynch's Creek and attack him there. This Rawdon learned from an aide to De Kalb[1118]—probably Du Buysson—who was taken with his chief.[1119]

Tarleton, too, was a participator in the action, and his account (Campaigns, 85-110), though written long after the event, is valuable. It begins with Cornwallis's arrival at Camden.

But the description of the campaign and battle which far outweighs all others, is the Narrative of the Campaign of 1780, by Colonel Otho Holland Williams, Adjutant-general,—printed as "Appendix B" to Johnson's Greene, vol. i. pp. 465-510, and copied thence into Simms's Greene, Appendix. There is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the story, though no one knows when Williams wrote it. Two of the American commander's aides wrote accounts. The more important is the letter from Thomas Pinckney to William Johnson, the biographer of Greene, dated Clermont, July, 1822, and therefore written long after the battle; but the author's recollections so exactly agree with the facts as now known that it is an account of the greatest value.[1120]

The other is Major McGill's letter to his father, written within eight miles of the scene of action.[1121]

McGill carried Gates's despatches to Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, and gave him an account of the battle, which formed part of a statement "of this unlucky affair, taken from letters from General Gates, General Stevens, and Governor Nash, and, as to some circumstances, from an officer [McGill] who was in the action."[1122]

Still another excellent narrative of the campaign is in A Journal of the Southern Expedition, 1780-83. By William Seymour (Penna. Mag. of Hist., vii. 286, 377), who was sergeant-major of the Delaware regiment. The journal begins at Petersburg, May 26, 1780, thus describing the whole movement.

There are numerous descriptions by persons who, though not actually present at the disaster, yet enjoyed exceptionally good advantages for obtaining correct information.[1123]

Of the earlier historians, Gordon (History, iii. 391 and 429) enjoyed the best advantages. He visited Gates in 1781 and used his papers. These MSS. had disappeared until a few years ago, when Dr. T. A. Emmet, whose grandfather was Gates's counsellor, found them in a garret. (Cf. Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 241.) A portion of this collection was printed in Ibid. v. 281; as to the value of those reserved I have been able to learn nothing. A large part of the papers printed consists merely of the orders issued during the campaign. The most important of these—technically termed "after-orders", giving the order for the movement which brought on the action—have been printed over and over again.[1124]

We have no detailed account of Sumter's attempt to injure the enemy, nor of his overthrow at Fishdam Ford, except that in Tarleton's Campaigns, 110-116. As may be imagined, Tarleton gave his own side of the case more than due prominence. Lee, in his Memoirs (i. 187), gives a good account. He adds that "Tarleton evinced a temerity which could not, if pursued, long escape exemplary chastisement." There is something in Stedman, ii. 211, and in Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 152. The accounts in the more popular books are so inaccurate that no mention of them is required.[1125]

Treatment of the Southern People by the British.—The well-known letters from Rawdon to Rugely have been widely printed.[1126]

With regard to the treatment of those captured at Savannah and Charleston, Southern writers do not seem to have strictly adhered to the truth. Those captured by Campbell were protected by no treaty of capitulation; and as to those taken at Charleston, the charges of Moultrie and others were always denied.[1127]

Isaac Hayne, at the time of the surrender of Charleston, was a colonel in a militia regiment, but, being in the country, he was not included in the capitulation. His wife and two children were ill with the small-pox, and it was impossible to take them to a place of refuge. He went to Charleston and offered to give his parole as a prisoner of war. He was told that he must take the oath of allegiance or be confined as a rebel. It was a hard position, and, thinking of his wife dying at home, he took the oath; not, however, until he had called Ramsay (Rev. in S. C.) to bear witness that he was forced to it by necessity. He retired to his farm, and lived there unmolested until the success of the American arms once more brought his friends around him. Then he was told by the British leaders that he must arm on the king's side or go to prison. He regarded this as a violation of his agreement, and enlisted under Pickens. He commanded a regiment of militia drawn from the neighborhood, and composed of men who believed with him that when protection was withdrawn the duty of allegiance went with it. Soon after this he captured, not many miles from Charleston, Williamson, a noted renegade, who was regarded by his former friends as the "Arnold of the South." On his way back Hayne was captured, taken to Charleston, and hanged.[1128] The fact that Greene and Marion (Gibbes, Doc. Hist., i. 125) both regarded it as calling for retaliation[1129] goes a great way towards showing that Rawdon and Balfour acted harshly and precipitately in the matter; but the case is an admirable example of the light in which Cornwallis—for Balfour tried to justify his conduct by a reference to the letter or order issued by Cornwallis after Camden—persisted in regarding those who fought for their country and their rights. It seems to me, however, that Cornwallis's position was a false one; and to assert, as Balfour asserted, that South Carolina was completely conquered in 1780, was to assert what was not true. Rawdon sailed for home soon after this affair. He was captured by the French, and did not reach London until after Yorktown. He was immediately assailed in the House of Peers by the Duke of Richmond for his share in this business. In reply he challenged the noble duke, and the upshot was that Richmond apologized.[1130] Many years later, Lee sent Rawdon a copy of his Memoirs, in which Hayne is warmly defended. Rawdon, then Earl of Moira, wrote a long letter (June 24, 1813) in reply, but his defence does not appear to be sound.[1131] It should be said, in justification of the light in which Hayne was regarded by the British officers at the time, that they believed he had taken a second oath to the king just before his capture in arms; but this does not appear to have been the case.[1132]

The most aggravated case of murder on the American side was the shooting of the Tory Col. Grierson after his surrender, near Augusta. The murder was committed in broad day, yet Pickens declared that the murderer was not known.[1133]

King's Mountain.—There is very little original material in print bearing on Clarke's siege of Augusta. McCall's narrative (Georgia, ii. 321) has been very generally followed. An anonymous account from a British source is in the Remembrancer, xi. 28.

Lyman C. Draper,[1134] in his King's Mountain and its Heroes, gives nearly all the important documents relating to that action. Unfortunately, as its title indicates, there is too much hero worship[1135] in the volume, and Draper's own account is based too largely on tradition to be wholly trustworthy, and is too diffuse and intricate. As a repository of documents, however, the volume is of the first importance. I shall attempt only a summary of the documents bearing on the movement.

Shelby wrote to his father five days after the fight (Draper, 302), and later, on October 26th, to Col. Arthur Campbell (Draper, 524). The statements in the first letter as to losses, etc., are strangely at variance with those contained in an official report signed by Campbell, Shelby, and Cleveland on October 20th.[1136] Col. William Campbell also wrote to Arthur Campbell on the same day (Draper, 526; Gibbes, p. 140, and elsewhere). Draper gives several other accounts, the most important being "Battle of King's Mountain", probably written by Robert Campbell, "an ensign in Dysart's corps" (Draper, 537, from MS. in possession of the Tenn. Hist. Soc.). Gen. Joseph Graham, who had no part in the fight, being still confined in the hospital from the wound received at the defence of Charlotte, wrote a description.[1137] David Campbell, in a letter (Foote's Sketches of Virginia, 2d series, p. 126) dated Montcalm, Dec. 1, 1851,[1138] defended his ancestor. Still other accounts are in Draper, many of them reprints; and a letter from Iredell to his wife, dated Granville, Oct. 8, 1780 (McRee's Iredell, i. 463), should not be overlooked.

The most interesting description of the campaign from the British side is in the Diary of Anthony Allaire, of Ferguson's corps.[1139] The chronology is useful in fixing dates, and his narrative of his treatment while in captivity and during his successful attempt to escape is very interesting. He is also supposed to have been the author of a letter written by "an officer from Charleston, Jan. 30", which is printed in Rivington's Royal Gazette of Feb. 14, 1781, and reprinted in Draper, 516.[1140]

There are two interesting letters from Rawdon, showing the extent of the disaffection to the royalist cause in the Carolinas.[1141]

Cornwallis seems to have presented no detailed report; at least, none has been printed, to my knowledge. There are allusions to the affair which show how deeply he was impressed by the coming of the men from beyond the mountains. The effect it had upon the plans of the British can be learned from a letter from Germain to Clinton, dated Jan. 3, 1781, in which he regrets that Ferguson's defeat compelled Cornwallis to require Leslie to quit the Chesapeake.[1142]

There is also an anonymous memoir of A Carolina Loyalist in the Revolutionary War in Chesney's Essays in Modern Military Biography (London, 1874, pp. 461-468), which contains something of interest.

[The latest contribution to the story of the parts played by John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, and James Robertson in helping to work the discomfiture of the British in the Southern colonies is the Rear Guard of the Revolution by Edmund Kirke [J. R. Gilmore], N. Y., 1886. The author says "his materials were principally gathered from old settlers in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, one of whom was the son of a trusted friend of Sevier, Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey of Knoxville, the author of the Annals of Tennessee, who in his youth had known Sevier and Robertson, and who was nearly ninety years old when he was questioned by Gilmore."—Ed.]

Minor Actions, 1780.—The library of the Massachusetts Historical Society contains an original account of Weemys's unfortunate night attack on Sumter's camp at Fishdam Ford, from the pen of the British commander. It should not be followed too closely, as it was not written until many years of peace and poverty had clouded Weemys's judgment and memory. A more trustworthy description is in a letter from Sumter to Smallwood, written on the field of battle, Nov. 9, 1780 (Maryland Papers, p. 122). It is to be regretted that no letter of his relating to the affair at the Blackstocks has been preserved; for the British accounts are very confusing, Tarleton even claiming the victory (Campaigns, p. 178). This he did on the strength of a despatch from Cornwallis to Clinton, dated at Wynnesborough, Dec. 3, 1781.[1143] This, in its turn, as Mackenzie points out (Strictures, p. 71), was based—so far as it relates to the affair at the Blackstocks—on Tarleton's own report. In fact, Tarleton was beaten at that time. Mackenzie does not seem to have been present in person, but his account was based on the declarations of witnesses. It is the best description of the fight that we have, and has been followed by later writers, notably by Stedman (ii. 226-231). The only account that we have from an American source was written by Col. Samuel Hammond, who was present, as he was at the Cowpens (Johnson's Traditions, pp. 507, 522). It should not be too closely followed. There are a few reports and letters written by Cornwallis, and by Rawdon during his chief's illness, relating to this period, that should not be overlooked.[1144]

Greene's Campaign in General.—The standard authorities relating to Greene's campaign have already been mentioned.[1145] Lee was Greene's most trusted adviser, but there were others also deep in his confidence, such as Morgan, O. H. Williams,[1146] William Washington,[1147] Carrington,[1148] Howard,[1149] and W. R. Davie.[1150] Greene also utilized the services of the partisans Marion, Sumter, Pickens, and the rest. There is a noted passage bearing on the proper method of treating these men in one of Greene's letters to Morgan before the affair at the Cowpens. It seems that Morgan had complained of Sumter's order to his subordinates to obey no commands unless conveyed through him. Greene replied to Morgan: "As it is better to conciliate than aggravate matters, where everything depends so much upon voluntary principles, I wish you to take no notice of the matter, but endeavor to influence his conduct to give you all the aid in his power." It was by pursuing such a course that Greene secured the coöperation of all men in the South.

A good knowledge of the scene of operations is indispensable to a thorough understanding of Greene's remarkable campaigns. The general direction of the rivers should be especially noted, as upon it the success of a particular movement often turned.[1151]

The Cowpens.—Morgan's official report (Jan. 19) to Greene and Greene's instructions to Morgan (Charlotte, December 16, 1780) are in Graham, pp. 260, 467, while from that point and date the whole campaign can be traced by the letters printed by Graham.[1152]

A letter from Tarleton to Morgan dated on the 19th, two days after the battle, and relating to prisoners and wounded, is in The Charleston News and Courier. I have nowhere found a formal report by Tarleton. His description of the fight, at the time, is undoubtedly embodied in Cornwallis's report to Germain, dated Turkey Creek, Broad River, Jan. 18, 1781.[1153]

At a later day Tarleton wrote out an account (Campaigns, pp. 213-223). Seldom has a commander written a more unfair account of his defeat. Not merely that he is unjust to Morgan, but he is also very unjust to his own men. A much better description, by a British eye-witness, is Mackenzie's (Strictures, 95, followed by Stedman, Amer. War, ii. 316-325). Indeed, this last is in some respects the best account that we have. A narrative from "Colonel Samuel Hammond" (Johnson's Traditions, pp. 526-530) is not trustworthy.[1154]

The Retreat.—Our knowledge of the period from the Cowpens to the crossing of the Dan is based to a great extent upon the letters of the American leaders.[1155]

Cornwallis made a formal report to Germain, dated Guilford, March 17, 1781.[1156] Balfour in an independent report to Clinton (Remembrancer, xi. 330, and Polit. Mag., ii. 328), gave a somewhat similar account of the operations; but the most important document that has yet been printed is Cornwallis's Order-book, covering this period. It opens with an order of January 18, 1781, and runs with scarcely a break to March 20th. It was used by Graham in his preparation of the Life of Morgan, but was not generally accessible until some years later, when Caruthers printed it as the appendix to the second volume of his Incidents. Caruthers' own account of the movement (Incidents, pp. 13-67), although weighted with personal reminiscences, is still the best single narrative.[1157]

Tarleton's description (Campaigns, 222) of the march is far from satisfactory, and should be supplemented by that of the less partial Stedman (Amer. War, ii. 325) and Gordon (iv. 37).[1158]

The only action of this retreat that deserves special mention is the very gallant charge of the Guards at Cowan's Ford over the Catawba. It was especially creditable to the Grenadiers, and has received far less attention at the hands of American writers than it deserves. A good account is in Hamilton's Grenadier Guards, ii. 243,[1159] and Stedman has devoted considerable space to it. On the other hand, it should be said that the description in Tarleton cannot be reconciled with known facts, and deserves no credit.

The Guilford Campaign.—Lee's description of the overthrow of Pyle and his companions has been generally followed by historians. It is not entirely satisfactory (Memoirs, i. 306).[1160] Lee says that the action was begun by the Tories, and that he acted merely on the defensive. General Joseph Graham, who was on the field as a captain of militia, asserts the contrary.[1161]

As to the other operations leading up to the final action at Guilford Court-House, and as to that combat itself, the reports and other letters of the opposing commanders, Greene[1162] and Cornwallis,[1163] are all that can he desired.

The narratives of Lee (Memoirs, i. 338-376) and Tarleton (Campaigns, 269) are interesting, though neither saw much of the battle,—Tarleton being in reserve, and Lee's attention being fully occupied by the regiment of Bose. Wounds received at the Cowpens unfortunately prevented Mackenzie from speaking with authority of Tarleton's account of this battle.[1164]

The best account by a later writer is that in Caruthers (Incidents, 2d series, pp. 103-180); but, like all North Carolinians, he endeavors to excuse the early flight of the militia of that State, and his narrative is too largely founded on tradition.[1165]

Hobkirk's Hill.—The official reports serve us first: Greene's, full and precise,[1166] on the American side; and on the British, Rawdon's and those of the intermediate officers, till the accounts reached Germain.[1167]

Col. O. H. Williams also wrote an interesting account of the fight in a letter to "Elie" (his wife), dated Camp before Camden, April 27, 1781 (Potter's American Monthly, iv. 101, and Tiffany's Williams, p. 19). Still another of Greene's officers—Major William Pierce—in a letter (August 20) devoted considerable space to this indecisive engagement (Mag. Amer. Hist., vii. 431-435). A somewhat different description by a looker-on was written many years afterwards by Samuel Matthis, an inhabitant of the district. It is entitled: Account of the battle of Hobkirk's Hill as some call it, or Battle of Camden as called by others, tho' the ground on which it was fought is now (1810) called the Big Sand Hill above Camden (American Historical Record, ii. 103).

Whether Greene was or was not surprised is the only point about which there has been much dispute in recent years. Johnson (Greene, ii. 72) has effectually disposed of this question in Greene's favor; but it must be admitted that he was "very suddenly attacked", to use the words of Lee, who was not present at the battle, and who seems to have forgotten the exact relation of events of this campaign. The account of this affair in the lives of Greene by Johnson and Greene (iii. 241), as well as that in Marshall's Washington (iv. 510), is based upon an unpublished narrative by Colonel Davie, which is among the "Greene MSS."[1168]

The Capture of the Posts.—For the account of the capture of Fort Watson, Marion's report (April 23) to Greene has been the main reliance (Simms, Marion, p. 231; Pol. Mag., ii. 548; Remembrancer, xii. 127, etc.). Lee's narrative of this period (Memoirs, ii. 50) is detailed, but it was written too long after the war to be accurate. This is unfortunate, as we have no other account of the taking of Fort Motte (Memoirs, ii. 73) by an on-looker, unless we accept the letter sent by Greene to Congress as an original source. It is not known when Greene arrived at Fort Motte, which was at some time before the surrender.[1169]

At this time Marion became discouraged, and wrote to Greene that he contemplated retiring. These letters are in Gibbes, p. 67-69. Rawdon presented a report covering this period.[1170]

The siege of Augusta was much better chronicled, as with it McCall (Georgia, ii. 321) again becomes useful.[1171] Another description, though from what source is not stated, is in Johnson's Traditions, 354. Lee's account is in his Memoirs, ii. 81-95 and 100-118. The first part refers more especially to the capture of Fort Granby and of Fort Galphin, an outpost of Augusta. The official correspondence between Lee and Pickens on one side and Brown on the other has been printed over and over again.[1172]

Siege of Ninety-Six.—Cruger[1173] presented no formal report of his defence—so far as I know; but there is a good account of the siege in Mackenzie's Strictures, pp. 139-164, written by Lieutenant Hatton, of the New Jersey Loyalist Volunteers: cf. p. 129. Mackenzie himself is very severe on Tarleton's account (Campaigns, 495). Greene's very meagre report is dated Little River, June 20, 1781 (Caldwell's Greene; Pol. Mag., Tarleton, 498, etc.).[1174]

Rawdon's report of his successful attempt to relieve the garrison is in Remembrancer, xv. 9.[1175]

Neither Greene nor Lee (Memoirs, ii. 119) intimate that the stockaded fort was abandoned before Lee's assault, though the English authorities assert it. Nor does Greene allude to the gallant sally of the defenders of the "Star", which compelled the assailants to retire from the ditch, with great loss to themselves.[1176]

Eutaws.—I should place first Greene's official report, though it is not as full as could be desired.[1177]

Williams has left two accounts: the first is a letter, dated Fort Motte, Sept., 1781 (Tiffany's Williams, p. 22). The important paper, however, is entitled: Account furnished by Colonel Otho Williams, with additions by Cols. W. Hampton, Polk, Howard, and Watt (when written is not stated), in Gibbes (pp. 144-157). It is a long and detailed description of the battle by men who actually took part, but as it may have been written long after the event, too much reliance should not be placed upon it. Still another description of the campaign, though not of the battle, is contained in two letters from Major William Pierce to St. George Tucker (Mag. Amer. Hist., vii. 435). Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart presented a report to Cornwallis, which has been widely reprinted.[1178]

It differs from the American accounts in many particulars, especially as to the disorganization of his own troops, which very likely has been described in too glowing colors by American writers. Lee was present at the battle, but his description (Memoirs, ii. 276-301) of the contest is sometimes hard to reconcile with the accounts of his fellow-soldiers. Greene, according to Williams, was hardly satisfied with the conduct of that partisan leader, and Lee soon after retired from the army, ostensibly for other reasons. Neither Johnson (Greene, ii. 219) nor G. W. Greene (Greene, iii. 384) have added much to our knowledge of this action, and the same may be said of the other writers on the war.[1179]

Greene's Later Campaigns.—There are many letters of this period in the third volume of Sparks's Correspondence of the Revolution, and in Gibbes's Documentary History (1781-1782). Many of those in the latter are of merely local interest, a large number of them relating more especially to a quarrel between Horry and Mahem, Marion's two subordinates. Lee, too, after his return from Yorktown became discontented, and many letters which passed between him and his commander are printed by Gibbes. Much of Lee's uneasiness was doubtless due to the prominence which Greene awarded to Laurens. Leslie's letter proposing a cessation of hostilities was enclosed by Greene in a letter to the President of Congress (Remembrancer, xiv. 324). A truce not being acceded to, he demanded provisions (Remembrancer, xv. 28). This too being refused, he endeavored to seize them. One of the expeditions resulted in the death of Laurens.[1180] Gist made a report of this action, and there is a note from Greene to Washington.[1181] Benjamin Thomson,—afterwards Count Rumford,—at this time lieutenant-colonel in a regiment stationed near Charleston, wrote many letters in Jan., 1782, which have been printed by the Royal Commission on Hist. MSS. in their Ninth Report, Appendix, iii. p. 118.[1182]

An account of the march of the reinforcements sent south under St. Clair is in Harmer's Journal, while the "Journal" of Major Denny in Penna. Hist. Soc. Memoirs, vii. pp. 249 et seq., contains much of interest relating to the operations around Charleston.[1183] Mention should also be made of a series of letters from Major Pierce to St. George Tucker, bearing on this period, in Mag. Am. Hist. (1881), pp. 431-445, while there is an original account by Seymour in Penna. Mag., vii. 377. A British narrative of the same operations is in Political Mag., iv. 36-44.[1184]

There are several descriptions of the triumphant entry of the Americans into Charleston on the 14th of December, 1782; that by Horry in Charleston Year Book (1883) is perhaps the best.[1185] Of the contemporary historians, Gordon (vol. iv. 173-177, 298-305) has given the best account of this time.[1186] In the library of the Mass. Hist. Soc. there is a manuscript giving details of the emigration at the evacuations of Savannah and Charleston.[1187] It appears from this that no less than 13,271 of the former inhabitants of those States, including 8,676 blacks, left with the British army when it finally retired from the South.

The British in Virginia, 1779 and 1780.—Besides the documents mentioned in the Virginia Calendar of State Papers, there are full and detailed accounts by Mathews and Collier of their doings at Portsmouth and Suffolk.[1188] There is some account also of the naval portion of this expedition in Town's Detail of Some Particular Services performed in America, compiled from journals ... kept aboard the Ship Rainbow, New York, 1835, pp. 77-88.[1189]

Clinton's instructions to Leslie are in Clinton's Observations on Cornwallis, App., pp. 25, 27. There is little else bearing on this movement except a few letters from Steuben in Historical Mag., iv. 301, and Corres. of the Rev., iii. 203.[1190]

Arnold and Phillips in Virginia, 1781.—With regard to the first part of Arnold's raid into Virginia, we have several letters from him to Clinton.[1191] On the American side there are many interesting letters in the Maryland Papers (134-144), and in Muhlenberg's Muhlenberg, 404, etc. See also Ibid. 216-253, for a description of Gen. Muhlenberg's share in resisting these incursions. Steuben, as Greene's lieutenant, had the chief command in Virginia at the time, and Kapp in his Steuben (Amer. ed., p. 371 et seq.) has not failed to give him full credit for his courageous endeavors.[1192]

Lafayette and Cornwallis in Virginia.—Lafayette, during his campaign against Phillips, and afterwards against Cornwallis, was considered as under the command of Greene. He reported to Greene, and his reports may be found in the Remembrancer, (vol. xii.).[1193] He also kept up an incessant correspondence with Washington, and Sparks's Corres. of the Rev.[1194] should therefore be compared with the papers in Lafayette's Memoirs.[1195] A few reports and letters from Cornwallis at this time will be found in his Correspondence (i. 105 et seq.). Tarleton (Campaigns, 279) gives a good account of the march from Guilford to Wilmington and thence to Petersburg, from his point of view. Gen. Graham was at that time a captain in the 76th regiment, which, with the 80th, bore the brunt of the action at the crossing of the James. The account of the affair in his Memoirs (pp. 53-55) is one of the best we have. Simcoe, in his Journal (ed. 1787, pp. 146-177; Am. ed., pp. 209-250), has given a detailed description of the campaign. He has exaggerated his own services, but has atoned, in part, for this by giving a set of good plans of the rencounters which he tried to dignify into battles.[1196] Giradin (Continuation of Burk, iv. 490) has given the Jeffersonian version of the period.[1197]

This gallant struggle of Lafayette against great odds was very creditable to him and to his soldiers; but it had little or no influence on the final result. Nevertheless, it has attracted the attention of recent writers, and has brought out two good articles: one from the pen of Carrington (Mag. Am. Hist., vi. 340, with map), the other from a less known writer, Mr. Coleman (Ibid. vii. 201).[1198]

The Yorktown Campaign.—Clinton and Cornwallis, in their pamphlets on the conduct of the campaign, printed most of the important documents which passed between them and their superiors and subordinates. Others will be found in the documents printed by order of the Lords, and still others in the biographies of the different commanders. I shall point out only the most important. In a letter (Wilmington, April 18, 1781) Cornwallis explained the reasons for the Guilford campaign, gave an account of his later movements, and advocated a march into Virginia. On the 24th he wrote to Phillips that his situation at Wilmington was very distressing (Parl. Reg., xxv. 155, etc.). On the preceding day he had announced his determination to Germain to go north (Parl. Reg., xxv. 145; extracts in numerous places, among others in Tarleton, 325). But more valuable than these are two letters to Clinton written April 24th (Parl. Reg., xxv. 156; extracts in Cornwallis's Correspondence, i. 94; Cornwallis's Answer, p. 55; and in many other places). Clinton disapproved this movement from the outset. (Cf. letter, May 29th, in Clinton's Observations on Cornwallis, App. p. 99.) Cornwallis tried to justify his conduct in a letter dated Portsmouth, July 24th (Parl. Reg., xxv. 207, etc.). On the other hand, Germain was "well pleased to find Cornwallis's opinion entirely coincided" with his (Parl. Reg., xxv. 135). Cornwallis therefore went north without any misgivings.[1199]

On June 11th Clinton ordered Cornwallis to seek some defensive position (Parl. Reg., xxv. 160). Four days later he wrote that he should need some of Cornwallis's troops (Parl. Reg., xxv. 175, and Cornwallis's Answer, App. p. 112). This request he repeated on the 19th, and again on the 26th (Parl. Reg., xxv. 177, and Germain Corresp., 187). In this last he announced his purpose of marching on Philadelphia. On the 30th Cornwallis wrote one or two letters questioning the utility of the defensive post he was ordered to occupy (Parl. Reg., xxv. 169, and at greater length in Cornwallis's Answer, App. p. 118). In another letter, dated July 8th, he again questioned the utility of a defensive post. Clinton on his part, in two letters of July 8th and 11th, censured the Virginia commander for repassing the James, and ordered him to occupy Old Point Comfort (Parl. Reg., xxv. 171). Again, in another letter of the same date as the second of these, he reiterates his order to fortify a station in the Chesapeake for the protection of large ships. Admiral Graves also wrote to Cornwallis, urging him to seize and fortify Old Point Comfort (Cornwallis's Answer, App. p. 180). A board of officers was now sent to report on the practicability of holding Old Point Comfort as a station for line-of-battle ships. They reported (Parl. Reg., xxv. 182) that the proposed site was not suitable, and this decision Cornwallis communicated to Graves (Aug. 26th, in the App. to his Answer). He also wrote to Clinton on the next day somewhat bitterly in regard to his criticisms and orders (Corn. Corresp., i. 107). Thinking that his orders required him to fortify Yorktown, he repaired thither, though writing to O'Hara that the position was a bad one on account of the heat, etc. (Corn. Corresp., i. III.). Clinton also wrote three letters at about this time, which Cornwallis did not receive until after his surrender. The first and important one is in Parl. Reg., xxv. 182, while all three are in the Appendix to Cornwallis's Answer, pp. 237, 251, 257. Such are the most important documents bearing on the responsibility[1200] for the disaster at Yorktown.

Cornwallis's official report to Clinton (Yorktown, Oct. 20, 1781) was forwarded by Clinton to Germain on Nov. 15, 1781.[1201] The two commanders kept up a constant correspondence during the siege, and from their letters the details may be gathered. These are all printed in the Appendix to the Parliamentary Register and in numerous other places.

As soon as it was known at New York that Cornwallis was besieged by such superior numbers, every effort was made to relieve him.[1202] The fleet had been so badly cut up during the recent encounter with De Grasse that Graves refused to venture again to sea before extensive repairs had been completed. Consequently, when the relieving fleet arrived off the capes of the Chesapeake the capitulation of Yorktown had been signed. The letters and reports relating to this abortive endeavor will be found in the Parl. Reg., xxv. pp. 190-200. There seems to be no reason to blame Clinton or Graves for this delay.[1203]

The correspondence between the opposing commanders as to the surrender has been often printed, as have the articles.[1204] As late as Oct. 19th Clinton wrote to some one in England giving an account of the operations leading to the siege.[1205] On Oct. 29th Clinton wrote to Germain the first official news concerning the surrender. This letter (London Gazette, Nov. 24-27, 1781, and Remembrancer, xiii. 33) is marked as received on Nov. 27th; but Wraxall, in a well-known passage, says that the first official news of the surrender was received on the 25th.[1206]

The Ninth Rep. of the Hist. MSS. Commission (App. iii. pp. 112-114) contains four letters from "G. Damer" to Lord George Germain, relating to the Virginia campaigns from Phillips's expedition to the end. These letters are of exceeding value and interest. They bear out the assertion so often made in the preceding narrative as to the great want of harmony which prevailed in the higher ranks of the British forces in this country.

Washington's official report[1207] announcing the surrender (Remembrancer, xiii. 60, and innumerable other places) is of far less importance than his order-book and his journal (May to Nov., 1781), which last is in the State Department at Washington (T. F. Dwight in Mag. Am. Hist., vi. 81). The portion on this campaign is in Ibid. (vol. vi. pp. 108-125; vii. 122-133).

Portions of his orderly-books, extending, with breaks, from June 19, 1781, to April 30, 1782, were printed in the Amer. Hist. Record (iii.; on the siege itself, pp. 403, 457-462). The orderly-books were reprinted at Philadelphia in 1865,[1208] while two orders of Sept. 15th and 25th, not included, are in the Penna. Hist. Mag. (1881), and in Johnston's Yorktown, 199. Many other important journals and orderly-books on the American side are preserved.[1209]

On the French side we have several contemporary accounts. First of all I should place an anonymous journal which has been attributed to Rochambeau.[1210] The Diary of a French Officer, 1781 (March 26 to Nov. 18, 1781), presumed to be the work of Baron Cromot-Dubourg, an aide to Rochambeau, was brought to light by Mr. Balch (Mag. Am. Hist., vii. 295), and is printed in Ibid. iv. 205, from an unpublished MS. then in the possession of Mr. C. Fiske Harris,[1211] of Providence, R. I.[1212] In some respects this is the most valuable paper of this class that we have. Still another important diary is the Journal of Claude Blanchard, Commissary of the French Auxiliary Army sent to the United States during the American Revolution, 1780-1783. Translated from the French MS. by William Duane, and edited by Thomas Balch (Albany, 1876, pp. 92-184 especially including the march back to Boston).[1213]

In 1879 Mr. J. A. Stevens printed in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. a series of letters from Count Fersen to his father, occasionally inclosing a bit of journal, a great deal of which relates to the operations before and after Yorktown, and it is in all respects a very valuable contribution. The greater part of Deux-Pont's Campaigns[1214] relates to this period, while the Journal of an Officer (pp. 148-164) and portions of the diaries kept by the naval officers refer to the same campaign.

The French accounts of the assaults on the redoubts are in the above. Hamilton's report to Lafayette is in Remembrancer, xiii. 61, while Lafayette's report to Washington is in Corresp. of the Rev., iii. 425.[1215]

There are good accounts of this campaign in the standard books.[1216] Of the more recent works, Henry P. Johnston's Yorktown[1217] stands first, though it was written with an evident bias. J. H. Patton[1218] also produced a small volume. Giradin's Continuation of Burk (iv. 519) contains a one-sided description; and the lives of any of the Revolutionary worthies[1219] devote a considerable space to the campaign. Among these is the Life of Muhlenberg by his son (268-276), in which an unfounded claim is advanced for the sire that he commanded the storming party led by Hamilton. The more popular books also have detailed accounts,[1220] while the subject has been repeatedly treated by orators, notably by Robert C. Winthrop.[1221]

EDITORIAL NOTES ON EVENTS IN THE NORTH, 1779-1781.

While the events followed in the preceding chapter were all tending, both by Washington's victory and Greene's defeats, to a discouragement of the English necessary to induce the British government to desire a peace, the succession of events in the North had hardly any interdependence, and of themselves conduced but little to the same end. The campaigns of Sullivan in 1778 and 1779, the dismal failure of the Massachusetts expedition to Penobscot in 1779, and the plot of Arnold, are considered in other chapters. A brief commentary upon the other transactions of this period here follows. The spring of 1779 was not an encouraging one for the cause. Washington had kept his main army during the winter at Middlebrook (Irving, iii.; Greene's Greene, ii. 160), and he was now resolved on a defensive campaign (Bancroft, x. ch. 9). He gave his views to Congress (Sparks, vi. 158); but that body inspired little confidence. It did something to increase the efficiency of the army in creating an inspector-general (Journals, iii. 202); but its internal bickerings were sadly discouraging (Greene's Hist. View; Bancroft, x. 208; Greene's Greene, ii. 170, 175; John Adams's Works, i. 292). The legislators were powerless to regulate prices as they wished, and riots were in progress at their very doors (Reed's Reed, ii. ch. 6). They sent A circular letter to their constituents, and urged enlistments in an address (May 26th; Niles's Principles, etc., 1876, p. 405); while Gouverneur Morris prepared for them some Observations on the American Revolution, published according to a Resolution of Congress, by their Committee for the Consideration of those who are desirous of comparing the Conduct of the Opposed Parties, and the several Consequences which have flowed from it (Phila., 1779). (Cf. Sparks's Gouv. Morris, and the letter of Thomas Paine, Hist. Mag., i. 20.)

The British in New York were as inactive as Washington was. We get pictures of the life of the fortified town in the Memoirs of the Baroness Riedesel; Duncan's Royal Artillery, ii. ch. 28; Montresor's account in N. Y. City Manual, 1870, p. 884,—also see that for 1863; Gen. Pattison's letters in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1875; Memoirs of General Samuel Graham.

Heath was commanding east of the Hudson (Memoirs), and Gen. McDougall at West Point, which had been fortified the previous year (Sparks, v. 224, 282, 311; Ruttenber, Obstructions, 115; Lossing, Field-Book, ii. 132; Journal of Capt. Page in Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., iv., v.) There is among the Moses Greenleaf MSS. (Mass. Hist. Soc.) an orderly-book beginning at West Point, Jan. 1, 1779, and ending at Morristown, Dec. 12, 1779.

There is annexed a sketch from the Hessian Plan des opérations dans l'Amérique septentrionale depuis 12 Aoûst, 1776, jusqu'à 1779. The broken lines mark the roads. Cf. The Country west of the Hudson, occupied by the American army under Washington, from a MS. map drawn for Lord Stirling in 1779, given in Evans's Memoir of Kosciuszko (1883), etc.

Early in July (2d) there was an affair between Tarleton and Col. Sheldon at Poundridge in Westchester (Tarleton's Memoirs; Mag. Amer. Hist., iii. 685). Washington, as the season advanced, kept to the Highlands, and an attempt to draw him down was made by Clinton in dispatching Tryon with a marauding force to invade Connecticut by water. Tryon's instructions, July 2d, are in Charles H. Townshend's British Invasion of New Haven and Connecticut, with some account of the burning of Fairfield and Norwalk. They did not contemplate the destruction of houses; and Johnston, in his Observations on Judge Jones (p. 59), controverts that Tory chronicler who charged such intent upon Clinton. Cf. Hinman, Hist. Coll. of Conn., 607; Stuart's Jona. Trumbull, ch. 37; Chauncey Goodrich in New Haven Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 27; Moore's Diary, ii. 180; Ithiel Town's Particular Services, etc., p. 90; Gen. Parsons's letters in Hildreth's Pioneer Settlers of Ohio, 537; Dawson, i. 507; Hist. Mag., ii. 88; Lossing, i. 424; Sparks, Corresp. of Rev. i. 315; Leonard Bacon's oration on the Centennial; and addresses of E. E. Rankin and Samuel Osgood in the Centennial Commemoration of the burning of Fairfield (New York, 1879). Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., iii. 103; Diplom. Corresp., ii. 253; iii. 99.

There is an address of Admiral Collier and Gen. Tryon, July 4th, to the inhabitants of Connecticut. Tryon subsequently published an Address of Maj.-Gen. Tryon, written in consequence of his late expedition into Connecticut (Sabin, xiii. 53, 495). Trumbull feared another invasion in the autumn (Hist. Mag. ii. 10).

The posts at Stony Point and Verplanck's had been begun as outposts of West Point, and to protect King's Ferry, the crossing below the Highlands. Before the works were finished the British had captured them, in June (Sparks's Washington, vi. 292). Washington planned a surprise of the British garrison, and the two annexed sketches, furnished to him by Gen. Heath, seem to have been prepared in anticipation of the movement.

The first, "Stoney Point", is from a pen-and-ink sketch, indorsed "From Genl. Heath, letter 3d July, 1779", which is among the Sparks maps in Cornell University library, and carries the following Key: 1, the capital work on the highest part of the point, commanding the out-flêches, which is conformed to the broken eminence it is built on; 2, 3, 4, 5, flêches built on so many little eminences, each with one embrasure; but in the principal work (1) the number of embrasures is uncertain, being covered by the works and the declivity of the hill. Two rows of abatis (× × ×) cross the point from water to water. The other plan, marked "Verplanck's Point", is sketched from a pen-and-ink drawing in the same collection, also indorsed "From Gen^l. Heath, letter 3d July, 1779", and bears this Key: 1, Fort de la Fayette, with block-house and barbette battery; 2, board huts in form of tents; 3, American barbette; 4, British tents, about one regiment; 5, 6, two new flêches by the Britons; 7, block-house on a stony hill, with a redoubt. The abatis is marked × × ×.

The lead of the movement was entrusted to Wayne. His instructions, in Washington's handwriting, are given in Dawson, in fac-simile (p. 18). His orders are dated July 15 (Niles, Principles, 1876, p. 495; Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., v. 7). Wayne's first report of his successful attack to Washington is given in fac-simile in Armstrong's Wayne, Dawson, and Lossing (ii. 179); and his longer account of the next day is in Sparks's Washington, vi. 537; and in Ibid. vi. 298, is Washington's report to Congress. H. B. Dawson's Assault on Stony Point (Morrisania, 1863) is an elaborate monograph. H. P. Johnston has a special paper in Harper's Monthly lix. 233 (July, 1879), and J. W. De Peyster another in the N. Y. Mail, July 15, 1879, while a controversy of Johnston and De Peyster is in the Monmouth Inquirer. "Who led the forlorn hope at Stony Point?" is discussed in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., Oct., 1885, p. 357. Cf. Armstrong's Wayne; Dawson's Battles; Moore's Diary, ii. 192; Penna. Archives, vii.; Marshall's Washington, iv. ch. 2; Irving's Washington, iii. 465; Hull's Rev. Services, ch. 16; Reed's Reed, ii. 110; Kapp's Steuben, ch. 11; Hamilton's Republic, i. 443; acc. of Col. Febiger in Mag. Amer. Hist., March, 1881; Duncan's Royal Artillery, 3d ed., ii. 353; Pattison in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1875, p. 95; and Gen. Joseph Hawley's Centennial Address, July 16, 1879. The British later reoccupied the post (Sparks's Corresp. of Rev., ii. 328).

The chief map of the attack is a Plan of the Surprise of Stoney Point, 15 July, 1779, from surveys of Wm. Simpson, Lt. 17th Regt. and D. Campbell, Lt. 42d Regt., by John Hills, Lt. 23d Regt., London, Faden, March 1, 1784. There is a fac-simile in the N. Y. Calendar of Hist. MSS., p. 347, and in Dawson. It needs the following Key: 1, Two companies of the 17th regiment. 2, Ditto. 3, Sixty of the loyal Americans. 4, Two grenadier companies of the 17th regiment. 5, A detachment of the royal artillery. A, Ruins of a block-house erected and destroyed by the Americans. B, A temporary magazine. C, One 24 and one 18 pounder, ship guns. D, Ditto. E, One iron 12-pounder. F, One 8-inch-howitzer. G, One brass 12-pounder. H, One short brass 12-pounder. I, One long brass 12-pounder. Cf. plans in Hull's Revolutionary Services, ch. 16; Sparks's Washington, vi. 304; Guizot's Washington, Atlas; Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 175. The medals given to Wayne, De Fleury, and Stewart are described in Loubat. (Cf. Lossing, ii. 180, 181.) A rude view of the capture in Bickerstaff's (Boston) Almanac, 1780, is reproduced in Mag. Amer. Hist., xvi. 592.

A few weeks later (Aug. 19), Major Henry Lee emulated Wayne in a sudden attack on Paulus Hook (Jersey City). We have reports on both sides. That of the British, General Pattison's, is in Duncan's Royal Artillery, ii. 355, and his letter to Townshend in N. Y. Hist. Coll., 1875, p. 79. On the American side we have accounts in Sparks's Washington, vi. 317, 326, 332-336, 376; Lowell (Hessians, 228) says that R. E. Lee's statement (in H. Lee's Memoirs) that Paulus Hook was captured by a stratagem is not borne out by Marshall (Washington, iv. 87) or by the German accounts (Ewald, ii. 295). Cf. Moore's Diary, ii. 206; Irving's Washington, iii. 475; Dawson's Battles; Quincy's Shaw, 65; Reed's Reed, ii. 125; Duer's Stirling, 204; Bancroft, x. 229; J. W. De Peyster in N. Y. Mail, Aug. 18, 1879; and S. A. Green in Hist. Mag., Dec., 1868 (2d ser., iv. 264). George H. Farrier prepared a Memorial of the centennial celebration of the battle of Paulus Hook, Aug. 19th, 1879 (Jersey City, 1879), which has an appendix of documents.

Loubat and Farrier give an account of the medal presented to Lee.

The annexed sketch, "Paulus Hook", is from a draft of an original Hessian map in the library at Cassel, furnished by Mr. Edward J. Lowell (cf. his Hessians, p. 228), with the following Key: A, Covering force of the attacking Americans. B, Line of attack on the block-houses (1, 2, 3) and fort (C), which mounted seven six-pounders, which were not used. D, Barracks in which one hundred and ten prisoners were taken. E, Work occupied by a Hessian captain, one officer and twenty-five men, possessed at the time the Americans retired, at daybreak. (Cf. plan in Lossing, ii. 828.) Farrier gives a plan from an original in the library of Congress.

The winter of 1779-80 was an exceptionally severe one in the North (Jones's N. Y., i. 320; Greene's Greene, ii. 184; Leake's Lamb; Almon's Remembrancer, ix.) After Clinton had gone South to attack Charleston, Knyphausen was left in command in New York (Eld's journal in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 73; Eugene Lawrence on life in N. Y. in Hist. Mag., i. 37; Jones's N. Y. during the Rev., vol. ii.).

Washington was encamped at Morristown, New Jersey. Views of his headquarters are in Lamb's Homes of America; Appleton's Journal, xii. 129; Lossing's Field-Book, i. 309, and his M. and M. Washington, 191. (Cf. Poole's Index, p. 873; Harper's Mag., xviii. 289; Mag. of Amer. Hist., iii. 89, 118.) Letters of Washington, while in Morristown, in addition to those given in Sparks, are in Mag. Amer. Hist., iii. 496. Orderly-books are in N. Y. Hist. Soc. cabinet and in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xvii. 48.

The trials and deprivations of the army were so great that Washington did not dare take advantage of an ice-bridge formed across the Hudson, for an attack on New York, though the British feared that he might. There were varying councils on this point in the American camp (Duer's Stirling, ch. viii.). The British apprehension (Feb., 1780) is shown in Duncan's Royal Artillery, ii. 359; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1875, pp. 147, 152. The difficulties in the American camp are followed in Irving's Washington, iv. ch. 1 and 4; Thacher's Mil. Journal; J. F. Tuttle in Hist. Mag., June, 1871, and Harper's Mag., Feb., 1859. A lack of money in the paymasters' chests caused dissatisfaction, which grew into an insurrection. The British, seeking to increase the trouble, marched into New Jersey, under General Matthews, but they were driven back, and waited on the coast till Clinton, returning from Carolina, reinforced them, when they again advanced. Washington, meanwhile, suspecting an incursion up the Hudson, had gone thither with a large part of his troops, leaving Greene at Morristown. Greene met the British and defeated them at Springfield, when they returned to New York. The progress of these events can be followed. On the American side, Greene's Greene, ii., and his letters in Sparks's Washington, vii. 75, 506; Gordon, iii. 368; Marshall's Washington; Sedgwick's Livingston; Bancroft, x. ch. 18; Irving's Washington, iv. 6; Carrington, 502; Lossing, i. 322; in histories of N. Jersey; Atkinson's Newark, 104; Hatfield's Elizabeth, ch. 22; Mag. Amer. Hist., iii. 211, 490. On the British side, Moore's Diary, ii. 285; Simcoe's Queen's Rangers; in letters in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1875, p. 458. George Mathew, of the Coldstream Guards, wrote an account (Hist. Mag., i. 103,—App., 1857), and some details are in the Court Martial of Col. Cosmo Gordon (London, 1783). For maps, John Hill's, published by Faden, 1784, is the principal one. Cf. Carrington; Lossing's Field-Book, i. 322; and the map of Elizabethport Point (1775-1783) by E. L. Meyer, published in 1879.

What is known as the affair of Bull's Ferry (July 21, 1780) was an unsuccessful attempt by Wayne upon a block-house garrisoned by Tories. (Cf. Mag. Amer. Hist., v. 161; Armstrong's Wayne; Sparks's Washington, vii. 116; and his Corresp. of Rev., iii. 34, 37; Sargent's André, 234.) André wrote on this misadventure of Wayne the well-known doggerel verses called The Cow-Chace, part of Wayne's project having been to gather cattle. The verses appeared in three numbers of Rivington's Gazette (New York, Aug. 16, 30, Sept. 23, 1780; Menzies, $23), and were republished by Rivington separately, 1780 (J. A. Rice's sale, $265), and also in Philadelphia, 1780. The book was reprinted at London with notes in 1781; at New York in 1789 (Morrell's Catal., $36); at London in 1799, with Dunlap's tragedy of André (Menzies, 61, $23); at Albany in 1866, edited by F. B. Hough; at Cincinnati in 1869. André seems to have made several copies of the MS. Sargent prints it from one of these. Another belonged to Dr. W. B. Sprague, and Lossing printed from this (Field-Book, ii. 878; Two Spies, 68). It will also be found in Moore's Songs and Ballads, 299; J. A. Spencer's United States, vol. ii. etc.

The summer was barren of military interest. Steuben was trying to reorganize the army (Kapp's Steuben, ch. 12-15). The low condition of the army is shown in Washington's letters (Sparks, vii. 156; Corresp. of Rev., iii. 15; Mag. Amer. Hist., Aug., 1879). Washington issued a circular letter on the army's distress (New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 870; cf. Journals of Congress, iii. 469). The British intercepted some mournful letters, and printed them (Political Mag., ii. 73).

In August there was a gathering of delegates from the New England States at Boston, "to advise the most vigorous prosecution of the war, and provide for the reception of our French allies." The Proceedings of this meeting have been edited from the original MS. by F. B. Hough (Albany, 1867). In November a convention of the Northern States at Hartford sought methods of furnishing men and supplies (Mag. Amer. Hist., Oct., 1882, viii. 688; and Clinton's knowledge of it in Ibid. x. 411).

Hope revived with the prospect of the arrival of Rochambeau and the French, in July, 1780 (Heath's Memoirs, 243; Corresp. of Rev., iii. 12). The first communications of Washington and Rochambeau are in Sparks's Washington, vii. 110, and App. 4, with an account of Lafayette's conference with the French. Rochambeau's instructions are in Ibid. vii. 493. The letters of Rochambeau and Lafayette are in the Sparks MSS., lxxxv.

The English fleet blockaded the French in Newport harbor. The Political Mag., 1780, has a map showing the blockade of the French admiral Ternay by Arbuthnot. Letters of the English admiral are in the Hist. MSS. Com. Report IX., App. iii. p. 106.

On the occupation of Newport by the French, see Mason's Newport; Newport Hist. Mag., ii. 41; iii. 177; Stone's French Allies, 256; Lippincott's Mag., xxvi. 351; Drake's Nooks and Corners of the N. E. Coast; Harper's Mag., lix. 497. The correspondence of Rochambeau and the Rhode Island authorities is in the R. I. Col. Rec., ix. There is a diary of a French officer in Mag. Amer. Hist., iv. 209; and Fersen's letters are in Ibid. iii. 300, 369, 437.

Several maps of Newport and vicinity are given in the Mag. Amer. Hist., like the plan of the town by Blaskowitz; the Defences of Newport, 1781, from a MS. French chart; and the Scene of Operations before Newport, 1781, from a MS. survey by Robert Erskine, geographer to the American army, of which the original is in the cabinet of the N. Y. Hist. Society.

There are among the Rochambeau maps several plans of Newport and its neighborhood, including no. 38, Plan de Rhodes Isle et position de l'armée française à Newport, measuring 5 x 3 inches, colored and showing roads, fences, forts, and the fleet in the harbor; no. 39, Plan de la ville, port, et rade de Newport, avec une partie de Rhode Island, occupée par l'armée française, evidently by the same draftsman as the preceding, dated 1780, colored, measuring 24 x 30 inches, showing forts, Gen. Sullivan's old camp, the old line of the English, etc.; no. 41, a plan, 8 x 15 inches, called Quatre positions de la flotte française et position de la flotte anglaise; no. 42, evidently by Montresor, colored, measuring 4 x 3 inches, dated 1780, called Plan de la position de l'armée française au tour de Newport, et du mouillage de l'escadre dans la rade de cette ville. Le Rouge published a map of this title in Paris, in 1783. Cf. map in Political Mag., i. 692.

On the French participation in the war we have Rochambeau, Mémoires, with an English translation by Wright, and the Troubles of Soulés, which is supposed to have been inspired by Rochambeau. Cf. Walsh's Amer. Register, ii. The other French contemporary accounts are the Mémoires of Count Ségur and the Duc de Lauzun; the Travels of Abbé Robin and of Chastellux, of which there is an English translation by George Greive (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1869); the Journals of Deux-Ponts, edited by S. A. Green, and of Claude Blanchard. (Cf. Revue militaire française, and Tuckerman's America and her Commentators.) The later French accounts in general are Leboucher's Hist. de la guerre de l'indépendance des Etats-Unis; Balch's Les français en Amérique (1872), Chotteau's Les français, etc. A comprehensive later American account is E. M. Stone's Our French Allies. Cf. Lossing in Harper's Mag., xlii. 753.

Counter attacks of Clinton on Newport and of Washington and Rochambeau on New York were prevented by untoward circumstances (Sparks's Washington, vii. 130, 137, 171, with App. 6; Jones's New York during the Rev., i. 358; Mémoires of Rochambeau).

In September, 1780, Washington had an interview with Rochambeau at Hartford to devise further operations, but the plot of Arnold disconcerted all measures (E. M. Stone, 281; Irving's Washington; J. C. Hamilton's Republic, ii. 49). Alexander Hamilton had drawn up a plan of combined operations.

In October there was an unsuccessful expedition to Staten Island (Life of Pickering, i. ch. 17; R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 257; Hist. Mag., i. 104).

Washington was now in camp at Totowa and Preakness, in New Jersey. There are a map and view of his headquarters in Mag. Amer. Hist., Aug., 1879. Cf. orderly-book in 2 Penna. Archives, xi., and Journal of Capt. Joseph McClellan in Ibid.

The Pennsylvania line was at Morristown, under Wayne, and in January, being without pay and supplies, they revolted, and marched towards Philadelphia to claim redress of Congress. The New Jersey line was similarly affected. Prompt and judicious measures quelled the mutiny, but not till some emissaries, whom Clinton had sent to increase the trouble, had been hanged by the insurrectionists. Original sources: Wayne's letters to Washington, in the Corresp. of Rev., iii. 192; Sparks's Washington, vii. 348, with App. x.; proposal of a Committee of Sergeants, with Wayne's comments, in the Sparks MSS., xxxix. p. 100 (also no. liv. 5); documents in Penna. Archives, viii. 698, 701, 704, and ix.; second series, xi.; Colonial Records, xii. 624; Hazard's Register, ii. 160; St. Clair Papers, i. 108, 532; Bland Papers, ii. Cf. also Marshall's Washington, iv. 393; Irving's, iv. 195; Hamilton's Hamilton, i. 323, and Works, ii. 147; Amory's Sullivan, 181; Madison Papers, i. 77; Reed's Reed, ii. ch. 14. Clinton's report is in Almon's Remembrancer, xi. 148. The information reaching the British camp is in Clinton's Secret intelligence, in Mag. Amer. Hist., x. 328, 331, 418, 497; an account of the hanging of the British emissaries is in the Hist. of First Troop of Philad. City Cavalry, p. 28.

Washington and Rochambeau had held a conference at Weathersfield, Conn. (May 22, 1781), to arrange for a plan of combined action (Sparks's Washington, viii. 517, for their views respecting the safety of Newport, meanwhile). The conference was held at the Webb House (Mag. Amer. Hist., June, 1880). The French army then moved by way of Providence to the Hudson, and there is among the Rochambeau maps in the library of Congress a plan of their route, with key, giving their twelve encampments on the way (nos. 42 (bis), 43, 44). Marche de l'armée française de Providence à la Rivière du Nord, 1782. In the Mag. Amer. Hist. (iv. 299) there is a map of the Route of the French from Providence to King's Ferry, following a MS. attached to a diary of a French officer.

Rochambeau established his headquarters at the Odell House, in Westchester (Stone, French Allies, 394; C. A. Campbell in Mag. Amer. Hist., iv. 46). On June 12th, the two commanders held a council of war at New Windsor (Mag. Amer. Hist., iii. 102). Clinton's secret journal shows how well the British commander was informed of what was going on (Ibid. xii. 73, etc., 162, etc.). Beside the correspondence of Washington at this time, in Sparks, there are other letters in Ibid. iv. and v. Washington's first attempt to act in union with the French was in the proposed attack on the forts on New York Island. (Cf. Washington's journal in Ibid. vi. 117; xi. 535.) There is among the Lincoln Papers (Sparks MSS., xii.) a "memorandum to regulate the movements of the allied army on the night of the 31st of July, 1781." J. A. Stevens follows the operations of the combined armies at this time (Mag. Amer. Hist., iv., Jan., 1880). He gives a map of the attempt at King's Bridge, July 3, 1781. There is among the Rochambeau maps an excellent draft, about thirty inches wide by fifteen high, showing New York with Long Island, with the French camp as high up as Tarrytown, called Position du camp de l'armée combinée de Phillipsbourg du 6 Juillet au 19 Août, 1781. Stevens gives a fac-simile of this, and also a map of the environs of New York between the Sound and the Hudson, called Surveys in New York and Connecticut States for his Excellency, Gen. Washington, by Robert Erskine, Anno 1778, W. Scull delin.,—a MS. plan in the New York Hist. Soc. library (Proc., 1845, p. 56), where is also a MS. Chart of the Harbour of New York, with a map of the Country bordering upon the Sound, and extending to the Connecticut, with the names of the principal places laid down thereon, by Robert Erskine, 1779 (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1848, p. 188). The Rochambeau maps contain other evidences of the activity at this time of the French topographical engineers; as, for instance, a plan (no. 29) done in ink and color, measuring ten inches wide by twelve high, and not very exact, called Reconnaisance Juillet, 1781, ouvrages [de] Morrisania, Isle de New York, by Montresor and Buchanan, and a second (12 x 15 inches) which gives the works at Frog's Point (no. 30), and adds to the title "Plan d'une batterie de Long Island." Another (no. 32), called Reconnaisance des ouvrages du nord de l'Isle New York, 22-23 Juillet, 1781, measures twelve inches wide by fifteen high, apparently the work of Montresor, and shows Fort Washington, Laurel Hill, etc. It was Washington's purpose at this time to make Clinton expect an attack on New York (Sparks's Washington, viii. 54, 130, 517; Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., 2d series, i. 327). Clinton has recorded his reason why he did not venture to attack Washington in July and August, while the Americans were encamped at King's Bridge (New York City during the Rev., New York, 1861, pp. 177-184). By August 14th, the coöperation of the French fleet being assured, Washington decided to march to Virginia (Mag. Amer. Hist., vii.; also xi. 343; Diplom. Corresp., xi. 417). He said the main cause of his coming to this decision was the failure of the New England States to supply men (Mag. Amer. Hist., vi. 125). Washington's headquarters at this time were in the Livingston mansion (Lossing, ii. 195).

The question of Washington having been made a marshal of France has caused some discussion. Hist. Mag., ii., iii.; E. M. Stone's French Allies, 373; Balch, Les Français en Amérique, 122.

While Washington marched towards Virginia, the marauding expedition which Clinton had sent under Arnold, along the Connecticut coast, failed to divert him from his purpose, as the British commander had hoped it would. The attack fell upon New London and Groton, early in September. Trumbull's letter to Washington is in the Corresp. of Rev., iii. 403. Cf. Stuart's Trumbull, ch. 45; Arnold's account in the Polit. Mag., ii. 666; Sparks's Arnold, and Arnold's Arnold; "Sir Henry Clinton and the burning of New London", in Mag. Amer. Hist., March, 1883, p. 187. There are contemporary accounts in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., x. 127 (1856); Niles's Principles (1876), p. 143; Moore's Diary, ii. 479; and in the Narrative of Jonathan Rathbun, with accurate accounts of the capture of Groton fort, the massacre that followed, and the sacking and burning of New London, Sept. 6, 1781, by the British forces, by Rufus Avery and Stephen Hempstead, with an appendix (1810).

The principal monograph is William W. Harris's Battle of Groton heights: a collection of narratives, official reports, records, etc., of the storming of Fort Griswold, the massacre of its garrison and the burning of New London by British troops. With introd. and notes; rev. and enl. with additional notes, by Charles Allyn (New London, 1882). The original issue was in 1870. The perfected edition is enriched with many documentary proofs.

There have been other anniversary addresses: Tuttle's at Fort Griswold (1821); W. F. Brainerd's (1825); Griswold's in commemoration of Col. Ledyard (1826), who was run through by his own sword after he had surrendered it; R. C. Winthrop's (1853) in his Addresses (1852-1867, p. 84); Leonard W. Bacon's, with an historical sketch by J. J. Copp, in the Battle of Groton Heights (1879).

The local authorities are Hollister's and other histories of Connecticut; Caulkins' New London, ch. 32; Hinman's Hist. Collections; L. W Champney's "Memories of New London" in Harper's Mag., lx. (Dec., 1879), p. 62, with views in Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 43, 46.

A paper by C. B. Todd on the massacre (Mag. Amer. Hist., vii. 161) has an account of Ledyard and his family, with views of his house in Hartford and the monument on Groton Heights (cf. Harris and Allyn, p. 179), and a list of the slain. Gov. Trumbull made a report on the losses inflicted at New London and Groton, Sept. 6, 1781, which, with affidavits respecting the conduct of the enemy, are in the State Dept. at Washington.

There are critical accounts in Dawson's Battles and in Carrington's Battles. The latter has a plan. A map of Mass., Rhode Island, and Connecticut, showing the geographical relations, is in Polit. Mag., iii. 171.

A MS. "Sketch of New London and Groton, with the attacks made on Forts Trumbull and Griswold by the British troops, under the command of Brig.-Gen. Arnold, Sept. 6, 1781", is among the Faden maps (no. 98) in the library of Congress, together with a separate ink drawing of Fort Griswold (no. 99),—both of which are engraved in Harris and Allyn.

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