The War of Independence Part 8

The Americans lost nearly 1000 men killed, wounded, and captured, besides their cannon and small arms; and this victory cost the British only 16 men killed and wounded. Augusta was reoccupied, the royal governor, Sir James Wright, was reinstated in office, and the machinery of government which had been in operation previous to 1776 was restored.

Lincoln now advanced upon Augusta, but Prevost foiled him by returning the offensive and marching upon Charleston. In order to protect that city, Lincoln was obliged to retrace his steps. It was now the middle of May, and little more was done till September, when D'Estaing returned from the West Indies. On the 23d Savannah was invested by the combined forces of Lincoln and D'Estaing, and the siege was vigorously carried on for a fortnight. Then the French admiral grew impatient. On the 9th of October a fierce a.s.sault was made, in which the allies were defeated with the loss of 1000 men, including the gallant Pulaski. The French fleet then departed, and the British could look upon Georgia as recovered.

[Sidenote: And capture Charleston, with Lincoln's army, May 12, 1780.]

It was South Carolina's turn next. Was.h.i.+ngton was obliged to weaken his own force by sending most of the southern troops to Lincoln's a.s.sistance. Sir Henry Clinton then withdrew the garrisons from his advanced posts on the Hudson, and also from Rhode Island, and was thus able to leave an adequate force in New York, while he himself set sail for Savannah, December 26, 1779, with a considerable army. After the British forces were united in Georgia, they amounted to more than 13,000 men, against whom Lincoln could bring but 7000. The fate of the American army shows us what would probably have happened in New York in 1776 if an ordinary general instead of Was.h.i.+ngton had been in command.

Lincoln allowed himself to be cooped up in Charleston, and after a siege of two months was obliged to surrender the city and his whole army on the 12th of May, 1780. This was the most serious disaster the Americans had suffered since the loss of Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. The das.h.i.+ng cavalry leader, Tarleton, soon cut to pieces whatever remnants of their army were left in South Carolina. Sir Henry Clinton returned in June to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis with 5000 men to carry on the work. The Tories, thus supported, got the upperhand in the interior of the state, which suffered from all the horrors of civil war. The American cause was sustained only by partisan leaders, of whom the most famous were Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter.

[Sidenote: Battle of Camden, Aug. 16, 1780.]

When the news of Lincoln's surrender reached the North, the emergency was felt to be desperate. A fresh army was raised, consisting of about 2000 superbly trained veterans of the Maryland and Delaware lines, under the Baron de Kalb, and such militia as could be raised in Virginia and North Carolina. The chief command was given to Gates, whose conduct from the start was a series of blunders. The most important strategic point in South Carolina was Camden, at the intersection of the princ.i.p.al roads from the coast to the mountains and from north to south. In marching upon this point Gates was met by Lord Cornwallis on the 16th of August and utterly routed. Kalb was mortally wounded at the head of the Maryland troops, who held their ground n.o.bly till overwhelmed by numbers; the Delaware men were cut to pieces; the militia were swept away in flight, and Gates with them. His northern laurels, as it was said, had changed into southern willows; and for the second time within three months an American army at the South had been annihilated.

This was, on the whole, the darkest moment of the war. For a moment in July there had been a glimmer of hopefulness when the Count de Rochambeau arrived with 6000 men who were landed on Rhode Island. The British fleet, however, soon came and blockaded them there, and again the hearts of the people were sickened with hope deferred. It seemed as if Lord George Germaine's policy of "tiring the Americans out" might be going to succeed after all. When the value of the Continental paper money now fell to zero, it was a fair indication that the people had pretty much lost all faith in Congress. In the army the cases of desertion to the British lines averaged about a hundred per month.

[Sidenote: Benedict Arnold's treason, July-Sept., 1780.]

This was a time when a man of bold and impulsive temperament, p.r.o.ne to cherish romantic schemes, smarting under an acc.u.mulation of injuries, and weak in moral principle, might easily take it into his head that the American cause was lost, and that he had better carve out a new career for himself, while wreaking vengeance on his enemies. Such seems to have been the case with Benedict Arnold. He had a great and well-earned reputation for skill and bravery. His military services up to the time of Burgoyne's surrender had been of priceless value, and he had always stood high in Was.h.i.+ngton's favour. But he had a genius for getting into quarrels, and there seem always to have been people who doubted his moral soundness. At the same time he had good reason to complain of the treatment which he received from Congress. The party hostile to Was.h.i.+ngton sometimes liked to strike at him in the persons of his favourite generals, and such admirable men as Greene and Morgan had to bear the brunt of this ill feeling. Early in 1777 five brigadier generals junior to Arnold in rank and vastly inferior to him in ability and reputation had been promoted over him to the grade of major-general.

On this occasion he had shown an excellent spirit, and when sent by Was.h.i.+ngton to the aid of Schuyler, he had signified his willingness to serve under St. Clair and Lincoln, two of the juniors who had been raised above him. Arnold was a warm friend to Schuyler, and perhaps did not take enough pains to conceal his poor opinion of Gates. Other officers in the northern army let it plainly be seen that they placed more confidence in Arnold than in Gates, and the result was a bitter quarrel between the two generals, echoes of which were probably afterwards heard in Congress.

If Arnold's wound on the field of Saratoga had been a mortal wound, he would have been ranked, among the military heroes of the Revolution, next to Was.h.i.+ngton and Greene. Perhaps, however, in a far worse sense than is commonly conveyed by the term, it proved to be his death-wound, for it led to his being placed in command of Philadelphia. He was a.s.signed to that position because his wounded leg made him unfit for active service. Congress had restored him to his relative rank, but now he soon got into trouble with the state government of Pennsylvania. It is not easy to determine how much ground there may have been for the charges brought against him early in 1779 by the state government. One of them concerned his personal honesty, the others were so trivial in character as to make the whole affair look somewhat like a case of persecution. They were twice investigated, once by a committee of Congress and once by a court-martial. On the serious charge, which affected his pecuniary integrity, he was acquitted; on two of the trivial charges, of imprudence in the use of some public wagons, and of carelessness in granting a pa.s.s for a s.h.i.+p, he was convicted and sentenced to be reprimanded. The language in which Was.h.i.+ngton couched the reprimand showed his feeling that Arnold was too harshly dealt with.

If the matter had stopped here, posterity would probably have shared Was.h.i.+ngton's feeling. But the government of Pennsylvania must have had stronger grounds for distrust of Arnold than it was able to put into the form of definite charges. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia he fell in love with a beautiful Tory lady, to whom he was presently married. He was thus thrown much into the society of Tories and was no doubt influenced by their views. He had for some time considered himself ill-treated, and at first thought of leaving the service and settling upon a grant of land in western New York. Then, as the charges against him were pressed and his anger increased, he seems to have dallied with the notion of going over to the British. At length in the early summer of 1780, after the reprimand, his treasonable purpose seems to have taken definite shape. As General Monk in 1660 decided that the only way to restore peace in England was to desert the cause of the Commonwealth and bring back Charles II., so Arnold seems now to have thought that the cause of American independence was ruined, and that the best prospect for a career for himself lay in deserting it and helping to bring back the rule of George III. In this period of general depression, when even the unconquerable Was.h.i.+ngton said "I have almost ceased to hope," one staggering blow would be very likely to end the struggle. There could be no heavier blow than the loss of the Hudson river, and with baseness almost incredible Arnold asked for the command of West Point, with the intention of betraying it into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton. The depth of his villainy on this occasion makes it probable that there were good grounds for the suspicions with which some people had for a long time regarded him, although Was.h.i.+ngton, by putting him in command of the most important position in the country, showed that his own confidence in him was unabated. The successful execution of the plot seemed to call for a personal interview between Arnold and Clinton's adjutant-general, Major John Andre, who was entrusted with the negotiation. Such a secret interview was extremely difficult to bring about, but it was effected on the 21st of September, 1780. After a marvellous chapter of accidents, Andre was captured just before reaching the British lines. But for his hasty and quite unnecessary confession that he was a British officer, which led to his being searched, the plot would in all probability have been successful. The papers found on his person, which left no room for doubt as to the nature of the black scheme, were sent to Was.h.i.+ngton; the princ.i.p.al traitor, forewarned just in the nick of time, escaped to the British at New York; and Major Andre was condemned as a spy and hanged on the 2d of October.

[Sidenote: Battle of King's Mountain, Oct. 7, 1780.]

Only five days after the execution of Andre an event occurred at the South which greatly relieved the prevailing gloom of the situation. It was the first of a series of victories which were soon to show that the darkness of 1780 was the darkness that comes before dawn. After his victory at Camden, Lord Cornwallis found it necessary to give his army some rest from the intense August heat. In September he advanced into North Carolina, boasting that he would soon conquer all the states south of the Susquehanna river. But his line of march now lay far inland, and the British armies were never able to accomplish much except in the neighbourhood of their s.h.i.+ps, where they could be reasonably sure of supplies. In traversing Mecklenburg county Cornwallis soon found himself in a very hostile and dangerous region, where there were no Tories to befriend him. One of his best partisan commanders, Major Ferguson, penetrated too far into the mountains. The backwoodsmen of Tennessee and Kentucky, the Carolinas, and western Virginia were aroused; and under their superb partisan leaders--Shelby, Sevier, Cleaveland, McDowell, Campbell, and Williams--gave chase to Ferguson, who took refuge upon what he deemed an impregnable position on the top of King's Mountain. On the 7th of October the backwoodsmen stormed the mountain, Ferguson was shot through the heart, 400 of his men were killed and wounded, and all the rest, 700 in number, surrendered at discretion. The Americans lost 28 killed and 60 wounded. There were some points in this battle, which remind one of the British defeat at Majuba Hill in southern Africa in 1881.

In the series of events which led to the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of King's Mountain played a part similar to that played by the battle of Bennington in the series of events which led to the surrender of Burgoyne. It was the enemy's first serious disaster, and its immediate result was to check his progress until the Americans could muster strength enough to overthrow him. The events, however, were much more complicated in Cornwallis's case, and took much longer to unfold themselves. Burgoyne surrendered within nine anxious weeks after Bennington; Cornwallis maintained himself, sometimes with fair hopes of final victory, for a whole year after King's Mountain.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: Greene takes command in South Carolina, Dec. 2, 1780.]

As soon as he heard the news of the disaster he fell back to Winnsborough, in South Carolina, and called for reinforcements. While they were arriving, the American army, recruited and reorganized since its crus.h.i.+ng defeat at Camden, advanced into Mecklenburg county.

Gates was superseded by Greene, who arrived upon the scene on the 2d of December. Under Greene were three Virginians of remarkable ability,--Daniel Morgan; William Was.h.i.+ngton, who was a distant cousin of the commander-in-chief; and Henry Lee, familiarly known as "Light-horse Harry," father of the great general, Robert Edward Lee. The little army numbered only 2000 men, but a considerable part of them were disciplined veterans fully a match for the British infantry.

In order to raise troops in Virginia to increase this little force, Steuben was sent down to that state. In order to interfere with such recruiting, and to make diversions in aid of Cornwallis, detachments from the British army were also sent by sea from New York to Virginia.

The first of these detachments, under General Leslie, had been obliged to keep on to South Carolina, to make good the loss inflicted upon Cornwallis at King's Mountain. To replace Leslie in Virginia, the traitor Arnold was sent down from New York. The presence of these subsidiary forces in Virginia was soon to influence in a decisive way the course of events.

[Sidenote: Battle of the Cowpens, Jan. 17, 1781.]

Greene, on reaching South Carolina, acted with boldness and originality.

He divided his little army into two bodies, one of which cooperated with Marion's partisans in the northeastern part of the state, and threatened Cornwallis's communications with the coast. The other body he sent under Morgan to the southwestward, to threaten the inland posts and their garrisons. Thus worried on both flanks, Cornwallis presently divided his own force, sending Tarleton with 1100 men, to dispose of Morgan. Tarleton came up with Morgan on the 17th of January, 1781, at a grazing-ground known as the Cowpens, not far from King's Mountain. The battle which ensued was well fought, and on Morgan's part it was a wonderful piece of tactics. With only 900 men in open field he surrounded and nearly annihilated a superior force. The British lost 230 in killed and wounded, 600 prisoners, and all their guns. Tarleton escaped with 270 men. The Americans lost 12 killed and 61 wounded.

[Sidenote: Battle of Guilford, March 15, 1781.]

The two battles, King's Mountain and the Cowpens, deprived Cornwallis of nearly all his light-armed troops, and he was just entering upon a game where swiftness was especially required. It was his object to intercept Morgan and defeat him before he could effect a junction with the other part of the American army. It was Greene's object to march the two parts of his army in converging directions northward across North Carolina and unite them in spite of Cornwallis. By moving in this direction Greene was always getting nearer to his reinforcements from Virginia, while Cornwallis was always getting further from his supports in South Carolina. It was brilliant strategy on Greene's part, and entirely successful. Cornwallis had to throw away a great deal of his baggage and otherwise weaken himself, but in spite of all he could do, he was outmarched. The two wings of the American army came together and were joined by the reinforcements; so that at Guilford Court House, on the 15th of March, Cornwallis found himself obliged to fight against heavy odds, two hundred miles from the coast and almost as far from the nearest point in South Carolina at which he could get support.

The battle of Guilford was admirably managed by both commanders and stubbornly fought by the troops. At nightfall the British held the field, with the loss of nearly one third of their number, and the Americans were repulsed. But Cornwallis could not stay in such a place, and could not afford to risk another battle. There was nothing for him to do but retreat to Wilmington, the nearest point on the coast. There he stopped and pondered.

[Sidenote: Cornwallis retreats into Virginia.]

His own force was sadly depleted, but he knew that Arnold in Virginia was being heavily reinforced from New York. The only safe course seemed to march northward and join in the operations in Virginia; then afterwards to return southward. This course Cornwallis pursued, arriving at Petersburg and taking command of the troops there on the 20th of May.

[Sidenote: Greene takes Camden, May 10, 1781.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Eutaw Springs, Sept. 8, 1781.]

Meanwhile Greene, after pursuing Cornwallis for about fifty miles from Guilford, faced about and marched with all speed upon Camden, a hundred and sixty miles distant. Whatever his adversary might do, he was now going to seize the great prize of the campaign, and break the enemy's hold upon South Carolina. Lord Rawdon held Camden. Greene stopped at Hobkirk's Hill, two miles to the north, and sent Marion and Lee to take Fort Watson, and thus cut the enemy's communications with the coast. On April 23 Fort Watson surrendered; on the 25th Rawdon defeated Greene at Hobkirk's Hill, but as his communications were cut, the victory did him no good. He was obliged to retreat toward the coast, and Greene took Camden on the 10th of May. Having thus obtained the commanding point, Greene went on until he had reduced every one of the inland posts. At last on the 8th of September he fought an obstinate battle at Eutaw Springs, in which both sides claimed the victory. The facts were that he drove the British from their first position, but they rallied upon a second position from which he failed to drive them. Here, however, as always after one of Greene's battles, it was the enemy who retreated and he who pursued. His strategy never failed. After Eutaw Springs the British remained shut up in Charleston under cover of their s.h.i.+ps, and the American government was reestablished over South Carolina. Among all the campaigns in history that have been conducted with small armies, there have been few, if any, more brilliant than Greene's.

[Sidenote: Lafayette and Cornwallis in Virginia, May-Sept., 1718.]

There was something especially piquant in the way in which after Guilford he left Cornwallis to himself. It reminds one of a chess-player who first gets the queen off the board, where she can do no harm, and then wins the game against the smaller pieces. As for Cornwallis, when he reached Petersburg, May 20, he found himself at the head of 5000 men.

Arnold had just been recalled to New York, and Lafayette, who had been sent down to oppose him, was at Richmond with 3000 men. A campaign of nine weeks ensued, in the first part of which Cornwallis tried to catch Lafayette and bring him to battle. The general movement was from Richmond up to Fredericksburg, then over toward Charlottesville, then back to the James river, then down the north bank of the river. But during the last part the tables were turned, and it was Lafayette, reinforced by Wayne and Steuben, that pursued Cornwallis on his retreat to the coast. At the end of July the British general reached Yorktown, where he was reinforced and waited with 7000 men.

[Sidenote: Was.h.i.+ngton's masterly movement.]

We may now change our simile, and liken Cornwallis to a ball between two bats. The first bat, which had knocked him up into Virginia, was Greene; the second, which sent him quite out of the game, was Was.h.i.+ngton. The remarkable movement which the latter general now proceeded to execute would have been impossible without French cooperation. A French fleet of overwhelming power, under the Count de Gra.s.se, was approaching Chesapeake bay. Was.h.i.+ngton, in readiness for it, had first moved Rochambeau's army from Rhode Island across Connecticut to the Hudson river. Then, as soon as all the elements of the situation were disclosed, he left part of his force in position on the Hudson, and in a superb march led the rest down to Virginia. Sir Henry Clinton at New York was completely hoodwinked. He feared that the real aim of the French fleet was New York, in which case it would be natural that an American land-force should meet it at Staten island. Now a glance at the map of New Jersey will show that Was.h.i.+ngton's army, starting from West Point, could march more than half the way toward Philadelphia and still be supposed to be aiming at Staten island. Was.h.i.+ngton was a master hand for secrecy. When his movement was first disclosed, his own generals, as well as Sir Henry Clinton, took it for granted that Staten island was the point aimed at. It was not until he had pa.s.sed Philadelphia that Clinton began to surmise that he might be going down to Virginia.

When this fact at length dawned upon the British commander, he made a futile attempt at a diversion by sending Benedict Arnold to attack New London. It was as weak as the act of a drowning man who catches at a straw. Arnold's expedition, cruel and useless as it was, crowned his infamy. A sad plight for a man of his power! If he had only had more strength of character, he might now have been marching with his old friend Was.h.i.+ngton to victory. With this wretched affair at New London, the brilliant and wicked Benedict Arnold disappears from American history. He died in London, in 1801, a broken-hearted and penitent man, as his grandchildren tell us, praying G.o.d with his last breath to forgive his awful crime.

[Sidenote: Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Oct. 19, 1781.]

Was.h.i.+ngton's march was so swift and so cunningly planned that nothing could check it. On the 26th of September the situation was complete.

Was.h.i.+ngton had added his force to that of Lafayette, so that 16,000 men blockaded Cornwallis upon the Yorktown peninsula. The great French fleet, commanding the waters about Chesapeake bay, closed in behind and prevented escape. It was a very unusual thing for the French thus to get control of the water and defy the British on their own element. It was Was.h.i.+ngton's unwearied vigilance that, after waiting long for such a chance, had seized it without a moment's delay. As soon as Cornwallis was thus caught between a hostile army and a hostile fleet, the problem was solved. On the 19th of October the British army surrendered.

Was.h.i.+ngton presently marched his army back to the Hudson and made his headquarters at Newburgh.

[Sidenote: Overthrow of George III.'s political schemes, May, 1784.]

When Lord North at his office in London heard the dismal news, he walked up and down the room, wringing his hands and crying, "O G.o.d, it is all over!" Yorktown was indeed decisive. In the course of the winter the British lost Georgia. The embers of Indian warfare still smouldered on the border, but the great War for Independence was really at an end. The king's friends had for some time been losing strength in England, and Yorktown completed their defeat. In March, 1782, Lord North's ministry resigned. A succession of short-lived ministries followed; first, Lord Rockingham's, until July, 1782; then Lord Shelburne's, until February, 1783; then, after five weeks without a government, there came into power the strange Coalition between Fox and North, from April to December.

During these two years the king was trying to intrigue with one interest against another so as to maintain his own personal government. With this end in view he tried the bold experiment of dismissing the Coalition and making the young William Pitt prime minister, without a majority in Parliament. After a fierce const.i.tutional struggle, which lasted all winter, Pitt dissolved Parliament, and in the new election in May, 1784, obtained the greatest majority ever given to an English minister. But the victory was Pitt's and the people's, not the king's. This election of 1784 overthrew all the cherished plans of George III. in pursuance of which he had driven the American colonies into rebellion. It established cabinet government more firmly than ever, so that for the next seventeen years the real ruler of Great Britain was William Pitt.

CHAPTER VIII.

BIRTH OF THE NATION.

[Sidenote: The treaty of peace, 1782-83.]

The year 1782 was marked by great victories for the British in the West Indies and at Gibraltar. But they did not alter the situation in America. The treaty of peace by which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States was made under Lord Shelburne's ministry in the autumn of 1782, and adopted and signed by the Coalition on the 3d of September, 1783. The negotiations were carried on at Paris by Franklin, Jay, and John Adams, on the part of the Americans; and they won a diplomatic victory in securing for the United States the country between the Alleghany mountains and the Mississippi river. This was done against the wishes of the French government, which did not wish to see the United States become too powerful. At the same time Spain recovered Minorca and the Floridas. France got very little except the satisfaction of having helped in diminis.h.i.+ng the British empire.

[Sidenote: Troubles with the army, 1781-83.]

The return of peace did not bring contentment to the Americans. Because Congress had no means of raising a revenue or enforcing its decrees, it was unable to make itself respected either at home or abroad. For want of pay the army became very troublesome. In January, 1781, there had been a mutiny of Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops which at one moment looked very serious. In the spring of 1782 some of the officers, disgusted with the want of efficiency in the government, seem to have entertained a scheme for making Was.h.i.+ngton king; but Was.h.i.+ngton met the suggestion with a stern rebuke. In March, 1783, inflammatory appeals were made to the officers at the headquarters of the army at Newburgh.

It seems to have been intended that the army should overawe Congress and seize upon the government until the delinquent states should contribute the money needed for satisfying the soldiers and other public creditors.

Gates either originated this scheme or willingly lent himself to it, but an eloquent speech from Was.h.i.+ngton prevailed upon the officers to reject and condemn it.