THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Ex Lihris J. GREGG LAYNE O) % cJ;55^,^^^^.i^^W THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Volume III By SIR G. 0. TREVELYAN, Bart., O.M. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION In Six Volumes. Crov/n 8vo .... Net ;gi2.oo Separately, as follows : — THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Volume I., with Portrait and Map .... Net $2.00 Volume II., with Two Mapi Net $2.00 Volume III., with Map and Complete Index to Volumes I-III. Crown 8vo Net ^2.00 Volume IV., Saratoga and Brandywine, Valley Forge, England and France at War. Crown 8vo, with Three Maps and Index . . Net $2.00 GEORGE THE THIRD AND CHARLES FOX The Concluding Part of "The American Revolution." In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo. Cloth, gilt top. Volume I., with a Map Net $2.00 Volume II , with Map and Index to both Volumes Net $2.00 NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, BART, AUTHOR OF " THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY " AND " THE EARLY HISTORY OF CHARLES JAMES FOX " NEW EDITION Volume III LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE ©" 30TH SIREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTIA, AND MADRAS 1917 Copyright, 1903, by LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. CorVRIGHT, 1905, BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. First Edition (Part II. Vol. 2), printed June, 1903. Reprinted January, 1904. New Edition (Volume 3), revised and rearranged January, 1905 Reprinted, with revisions, September, 1907; May, 1908; Sep- tember, 1909, and January, 1915. New Edition, revised, April, 1917. Nortoonli y«88 J. B. Cushinp Co. — Berwick & Bmlth Co, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. -~ .^ ^.- ^ CONTENTS OF VOLUME III CHAPTER XXI The Forts on the Hudson Defeat of the Americans, and capture of Fort Washington Treatment of the Prisoners Washington's distress of mind Lord Cornwallis .... Capture of Fort Lee American Retreat through the Jerseys Washington crosses the Delaware . Miserable condition of his Army The Apathy of New Jersey Hessian Outrages .... Contrast between Howe and Wellington CHAPTER XXII Charles Lee's early history His attitude towards his brother officers . His disobedience to Washington's orders Lee and Colonel Reed .... Washington's self-control The Condition of Philadelphia Howe goes into winter quarters Lee and Harcourt . Sullivan joins Washington Colonel Knox and Colonel Glover Temper of the American soldiers FACE I S 9 12 13 17 18 21 23 27 29 36 41 45 49 54 56 59 63 67 71 73 78 80S131 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXIII Distribution of the Royal Army ; Rail and his brigade The Delaware river Washington's Intelligence Department . He resolves to take the offensive . Washington's plan of action .... Crossing the Delaware The state of things inside Trenton The Battle ....... Surrender of the Hessians .... Return of the Americans ; the losses of either party Reception of the news in Europe . Effect of the Battle on America Washington obtains supplies of men and money He re-crosses the Delaware into New Jersey . Cornwallis comes Southward in force Grave peril of the American Army ; Washington's flank march Princeton ....... Washington's march to Morristown Howe concentrates his Army and abandons the open country The increase to Washington's reputation and authority . He re-organises the Army 89 91 95 97 99 102 103 no I T2 118 124 128 129 133 138 139 142 144 CHAPTER XXIV Apprehensions entertained about the bearing of the American question on English Liberty Chatham ; Burke ; Horace Walpole The Jacobites ..... Count de Maltzan and Frederic the Great Feeling in France ..... The modern American view . The Duke of Richmond .... 148 153 155 157 159 161 162 Difficulty of ascertaining the condition of contemporary English opinion ........•• 163 CONTENTS Vll PAGE The London Press . . . . . . . . .165 Immunity enjoyed by the Opposition writers . . . .168 The King and the Newspapers 172 Powerful criticism upon the conduct of the war . . .176 The feeling in England towards the Revolutionary Generals . 178 Popular suspicion of Lord Bute's influence .... 181 English prejudice against the Scotch 184 CHAPTER XXV The City of London The Press for Seamen Feeling of business men in the City Opinion in Birmingham . Hon. Augustus Keppel and Sir Jeffrey Amherst Conway ........ Chatham and his son ..... Lord Effingham and Lord Frederic Cavendish Granville Sharp and John Cartvvright The growing unpopularity of the War 190 192 199 201 202 203 205 207 210 215 CHAPTER XXVI The talk of society ...... The Loyalist exiles ...... Samuel Curwen ...... Poverty of the refugees ; their regrets for home, and social discomfort ..... Their distress at the hostility between the two nations Anxiety about the future of England Contemporary Historians ; William Robertson David Hume; Edward Gibbon .... Mrs. Macaulay their 220 226 227 229 234 236 239 241 246 Viii CONTENTS PAGE Edmund Burke as the leading authority on the American Revolution 249 The pamphleteers : Dean Tucker ; Shebbeare . . . 253 Doctor Johnson ; •• Taxation no Tyranny " .... 256 John Wesley at first in favour of conciliating America . . 259 Appearance of the " Calm Address " 260 Wesley becomes the centre of a fierce Controversy . . . 264 CHAPTER XXVII The religious aspect of the American dispute .... 266 Ecclesiastical institutions in the Colonies .... 267 Evils and inconveniences arising to the English Church from the want of Episcopal supervision in America . . . 272 The Churches in the Northern provinces .... 275 The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 280 The Question of a Bishop in America: Jonathan Mayhew . 283 Part taken by the Whig clergy when the War broke out . . 289 The personal influence of the Ministers ..... 292 Episcopalian Clergymen ....... 296 Episcopalian laymen ; George Washington .... 302 Course adopted by the Virginian assembly .... 304 Religious equality everywhere established .... 306 John Wesley's Bishops 3°? Final Solution of the difficulties which had beset the Episcopal Church in America . _ 3'° CONTENTS IX APPENDICES I. Extracts from Colonel Markham's Journal II. An Imaginary Conversation . III. The English Church in Virginia . IV. Dean Tucker on American Bishops Index PAGE 316 319 At the end of the volume Map of the Northern part of New Jersey, and of New York and its Environs. NOTE The third volume of the " American Revolution " has been altered, and reprinted, as a consequence of the withdrawal of certain matter which, though not irrelevant, was somewhat in excess of the general scheme of the history. The four volumes of the ''American Revo- lution," and the two volumes of " George the Third and Charles Fox," are now in their final shape and will never again be retouched by their author, nor (he sincerely hopes) by anyone else after he himself has passed away. Those six volumes, as read together, tell the whole story, in America and in Europe, from the imposition of the Customs Duties by the British Parliament in June 1767, down to the fall of Lord North's Ministry in Marcli 1782. The story is complete ; it has been written with an honest desire to be fair and impartial ; it may be read with self-respect, and mutual respect, both by English- men and Americans ; and it throws a bright and striking light on the motives of the war in which all English-speaking peoples are henceforward fighting shoulder to shoulder. The descendants of the farmers who turned out to defend their country at Lexington and Bunker Hill, and the descendants of the adversaries who did their best to defeat them in honourable and chivalrous battle, are shocked and revolted by the cruel and high-handed theory that the alleged resistance in arms to the invader of certain Belgian civilians justified the devastation, the plunder, the torture, and the enslavement of Belgium. George Otto Trevelyan. Welcombe, Stratford -on- Avon, May, 1917. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION CHAPTER XXI FORT WASHINGTON. THROUGH THE JERSEYS. SUFFERINGS OF THE INHABITANTS The war was soon transported into the heart of New Jersey ; for the British Commander-in-Chief had very speedily, and very successfully, completed the business that detained him on the east shore of the Hudson river. Those arrangements which Washington had made, with the view of encountering all possible emer- gencies,^ were workmanlike, and might even be pro- nounced faultless, save and except in one important particular. Public attention in the States had been keenly interested by a scheme of defence for the pro- tection of the Hudson, — the great water highway of New York State. Four or five miles north of Haerlem in the island of Manhattan, at a point where the current was not more than a mile in breadth, a work called Fort Washington had been erected on a bluff that over- hung the river. On the opposite bank stood P'ort Lee ; and up-stream, on the safe side of these strongholds, the American authorities, with energy much inferior to Arnold's, had collected and armed a small flotilla. For further security, athwart the river and between the forts, a barricade had been constructed of which all good patriots spoke with pride and confidence under the imposing title of the "sunken chevaux-de-f rise ; " ' Washinrjton's disposition of his forces is shortly described on page 337 of the last vulunie. vol.. HI, B 2 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION although sceptics alleged that Washington's engineers had shirked the difficulty of extending it across that part of the channel where the current ran strongest. On the sixth of October three British men-of-war came up the Hudson with a southerly wind, under a smart, and not altogether ineffective, fire from the batteries. They sailed through, or over, or, (as was strongly sus- pected afterwards,) round, the chevaux-de-frise, without perceiving that any such obstacle existed; and, when they had reached the upper waters, they made very short work of the American naval preparations. They drove ashore, or captured, four or five ships and galleys ; and they sank a sloop containing an ingenious machine for blowing up the British fleet. The inventor had designed his contrivance to act under water ; and under water it went, and to this hour it there remains. The joyous and elastic national temperament, which has done so much towards carrying America through many a crisis, discerned in this untoward event nothing worse than a presage of future triumphs. Congress desired General Washington, now that the British ships were entrapped above his forts, to take good care they never either got back again themselves, nor were reinforced from the main fleet which lay below. But, in plain truth, both before and afterwards. Lord Howe's captains made no account whatever of the perils which beset them in their passage up and down the river. An offi- cer who did not mind a few holes in his sails, and a very few casualties in his crew, so far as the safety of his vessel was concerned might travel the Hudson as securely as the Humber ; and much more securely than, without the aid of a good local pilot, he would have threaded the sand-banks of the Mersey. The maintenance, or abandonment, of the two American stations on the Hudson river was therefore a problem to be determined in no sense by naval, but exclusively by military, considerations. Nathanael Greene was entrusted with the care of both the places, which were garrisoned by near five thousand men, of FORT WASHINGTON 3 whom somewhat the larger part were at Fort Washing- ton. To keep that force cooped up on Manhattan Island, without any reasonable hope of escape in case of an attack which it was impossible successfully to resist, was an awful risk to run. Mount Washington, (as the general after whom it was named sometimes called it,) was not a fortress which, like Quebec, could only be captured by a regular siege, or reduced by famine. It was an open work, bordered on three sides by heights, and of small extent, which a few hours of shell-fire would render quite untenable. It was, indeed, surrounded by an exterior position partially fortified, and so strong by nature that one of General Howe's officers asserted that all the world could not have taken it from ten thousand Englishmen. 1 But that outer circuit of defence had a front of more than six miles ; Colonel Magaw, the American who was in charge on the spot, had barely the fourth of ten thousand men at his disposal ; and that force, while utterly inadequate to the task imposed upon it, was much larger than Washington could afford to throw away in order to comply with the behests, and save the self-respect, of Congress. The politicians, who sate at the Board of war in Phila- delphia, had planned the operations of that summer with the declared object of holding New York City, and barring the mouth of the Hudson river against a British fleet ; and the evacuation of Fort Washington would be, in their eyes, nothing short of an admission that their campaign had finally and totally failed. Congress, bent on keeping the place, proclaimed their opinion by a vote which was equivalent to a peremptory injunction ; and 1 "About noon a young officer, smartly dressed and well mounted, rode up with his horse in a foam, and, ]5ulling out his watch, observed that he had scarcely been an hour in coming from New York. He was a genuine, smooth-faced, fresh-coloured Englishman ; and from the elegance of his horse, and importance of his manner, I supposed him to be a person of family and consideration. ' Jiecket,' (said he, looking around him,) 'this is a damned strong piece of ground. Ten thousand of luir men would de- fend it against the world.' " Alemoirs of a Life chicjly passed in J'ennsyl- vunia ; chapter viii, B 2 4 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION that injunction Greene, for his part, was keenly desirous to obey. He was in love with Fort Washington. To blockade it effectively, (according to his computation,) would cost the hostile army a number of troops at least double what would suffice for the American garrison ; ^ and if, instead of an investment, the Enghsh preferred to try an assault by force, he bade them a hearty wel- come. For Howe was not the only general whose tac- tics were injuriously modified by a false analogy drawn from the recollections of Bunker's Hill. Nathanael Greene was still under an illusion that his countrymen, behind a breastwork, could inflict cruel punishment on an attacking force under all circumstances, and against any odds. His notion, (we are told,) was that, after slaughtering a host of the enemy, the Americans might methodically withdraw into the citadel of Fort Wash- ington : and then, provided each had killed his man, they might be snugly shipped across the Hudson, and rejoin their main army with flying colours.^ Such, and so sanguine, were General Greene's antici- pations ; but, after all, Greene did not command the Continental army. The occasion was one on which Washington ought to have enforced • his own views against his mihtary subordinate, and his political superiors ; and concerning the nature of those views there exists no doubt at all. On the eighth of Novem- ber the Commander-in-Chief wrote to Greene that, inas- much as British vessels could not be prevented from passing up the stream, and British troops possessed all the surrounding country, no benefit could be expected from the retention of the fortress on Manhattan Island. "I am therefore incHned to think," (he continued,) " that it will not be prudent to hazard the men and stores at Mount Washington ; but, as you are on the spot, I leave it to you to give such orders as to evacu- ating Mount Washington as you may judge best, and so far revoking the order given to Colonel Magaw to 1 Greene to Washington ; Fort Lee, November 9, 1776. 2 Pennsylvanian Memoirs ; chapter vii. FORT WASHINGTON 5 defend it to the last." Having despatched those lines, — which indicated a confidence in Greene that for once was misplaced, and a diffidence of himself, — Washing- ton departed northwards on a visit to General Heath's quarters, and minutely examined the site for a new fortress near West Point. The orders which he left with Greene were, (to use his own epithet,) discretion- ary ; ^ and the person upon whom the chief blame for those calamities, which promptly supervened, should rest has been a theme of frequent controversy. All that can certainly be said on the matter is that two very good generals contrived between them to commit a very signal blunder ; and that Washington, as his rule was, insisted on assuming the responsibility for every- thing which went wrong under his auspices. On the fifteenth of November Howe sent his Adjutant General to demand the surrender of Fort Washington, and reminded Colonel Magaw that, when an intrench- ment had been carried by assault, it was difficult to prevent too free a use of the bayonet during the first moments of victory. Magaw returned an answer which Washington praised as a spirited refusal ; ^ but the de- fiant tone of the reply was in excess of what the sum- mons provoked, and most certainly beyond anything that the issue of the conflict justified. The American commandant interpreted the British general's humane and reasonable warning as a threat that the garrison would be massacred; and, with a glowing appeal to the justice of his cause, he proclaimed his intention of de- fending the post to the very last extremity. That ex- tremity was not far off. At noon on the next day, under cover of a heavy cannonade which had begun in the early morning, the British army stormed in from every quarter except the west. To the south in the direction of Haerlem, Lord Percy, on a horse which soon was twice wounded, led his command into action, and ' George Washington to John Augustine Washington ; Hackensac, November 19, 1776. 2 Washington to the President of Congress ; November 16, 1776. 6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION came into collision with an advanced party of the Ameri- cans, so isolated and exposed that there was an interval of two miles between them and their nearest supports. Into this gap Howe despatched three regiments of in- fantry in boats across the Haerlem river. The Forty- second Highlanders, who were the earliest on shore, swarmed up a steep path under a deadly lire, which laid low nearly a hundred men and officers ; beat off their immediate adversaries ; and, scouring fleetly over hill and dale, took Lord Percy's opponents in the rear, and se- cured then and there a considerable number of prisoners. One of those prisoners, who was a cool fellow, remarked on a circumstance which he noticed even in that moment of hurry and dismay. " Not less than ten guns were discharged with their muzzles towards us, within the distance of forty or fifty yards ; and some were let off within twenty. Luckily for us, it was not our riflemen to whom we were targets. I observed they took no aim, and the moment of presenting and firing was the same." ^ The Royal soldiers, however wild might be their shoot- ing, everywhere showed great alacrity in coming to close quarters with the enemy. General Mathew and Lord CornwalHs brought seven battahons over Haerlem creek in flat-bottomed boats ; made good their footing on the eastern shore of Manhattan Island ; and pressed stead- ily inland, losing men, and capturing positions. To the north of the fort the struggle was severe and bloody ; for there the Provincials were in some strength, and on ground exceptionally suited to their method of warfare. General Knyphausen and his Hessians advanced from King's Bridge in two columns ; waded through a deep marsh ; and climbed a precipitous rocky hill which rose behind it. The acclivity was so steep in places that the men had to pull themselves up by aid of the bushes. They were in heavy marching order ; and that, in the case of German infantry, was heavy indeed. A grena- dier went into action in a high cap, fronted with an im- ^ Pennsylvanian Memoirs ; chapter viii. FORT WASHINGTON y mense brass plate ; a very long-skirted coat ; a canteen which held a gallon ; and a sword of enormous size, that had never killed anything except the calf or pig of a Loyalist farmer. But beneath these absurd trappings there was, on this occasion, no lack of martial ardour. The generals themselves led the way, pulling down fences with their own hands ; and the private men never turned back, but went forwards and upwards wherever they could find a chance. At length they stood victorious on the top, in sorely diminished num- ber ; for between the foot and the summit, more than three hundred of them had been killed or wounded.^ Their loss, (wrote one of their officers,) was far greater than that of the adversary, from the manner in which the rebels fought. They lay singly behind stone-walls, and boulders, and the trunks of trees which had been felled as obstacles ; they shot at long range, and with certainty ; and they ran away very fast as soon as they had discharged their weapons. The Germans, on the other hand, could not shoot a third so far ; and still less were they able to catch up their opponents when it came to running. ^ Nevertheless the Provincial skirmishers, with whatever agility they might retreat, very soon reached the further end of their course. By this time the Americans had been driven inwards, from far and near, over the whole circle of the battle. Breathless and disheartened, they poured into the fort, and hud- 1 According to one most competent and trustworthy observer, Knyp- hausen's people were even more heavily laden than with the ordinary bur- den of their regulation accoutrements. " Every jirivate," wrote Colonel Enoch Markham, " carried a fascine before him in one hand, while he scaled with the other. In some places only one man could get up at a time, who assisted the man in the rear with his vacant hand. The Hes- sians and Waldecks most deservedly received the highest praise for this action." Another English officer, (employing one of those not very rec- ondite classical allusions which, even in the less learned professions, were a mannerism of that day,) said that Hannibal, in his passage over the Alps, could not have met with ground more formidable than what fell to the lot of the Germans to assail. * Account by the Quartermaster of the Grenadier Battalion von Min- nigerode. 8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION died together behind ramparts which would become nothing better than the walls of a slaughter-house as soon as the British could bring up a single battery of howitzers. The affair in the commencement had re- sembled the escalade of the heights of Spicheren ; and it now assumed the complexion of a miniature Sedan. Colonel Magaw, as his superior officer ought long ere this to have anticipated, was forced to abandon all hope of cutting a path through the serried array of excellent troops by whom he was surrounded ; — even apart from the consideration that the breadth and depth of the •Hudson river in any case lay between him and safety. Nothing now remained for the Americans except an immediate and unconditional surrender. The garrison, — to the number of nearer three, than two, thousand, — marched out between the ranks of the regiments Rail and von Lossberg ; laid down their arms ; and gave up their white, and yellow, and light blue standards. Al- ready, on Long Island, the Germans had captured a flag of bright scarlet damask, inscribed with the motto " Liberty ; " a word which to all these high-born servants of Grand Dukes, and Landgraves, and Prince Electors, seemed wonderfully out of place upon military colours. And the visible disdain with which now, at Fort Wash- ington, the victors regarded the somewhat fantastic banners of a brand-new republic, was remembered when, after an interval of only six weeks, the same two Hes- sian regiments again took their share, — with the parts reversed, — in a very similar ceremony. Howe, hand- somely enough, renamed the fortress after the German commander, to whose soldiers it was generally admitted that the honours of the day had fallen. The ill fortune which pursued our foreign auxiliaries, on all subsequent occasions when they were called upon to act indepen- dently, was so persistent and so notorious, that the char- ity of history has made the very utmost of their behaviour at Fort Washington. When the report of their exploit reached Waldeck and Hesse Cassel, their respective Sovereigns felt a thrill of conscious honesty at the FORT WASHINGTON 9 thought that their royal brother of England had already got some value for his money. But, however joyful might be the sensations excited in the lesser capitals of Western Germany by the news that Germans had de- feated and captured Englishmen, pride and satisfaction were by no means universal in London. The glory ac- quired by Colonel Rail, (said Edmund Burke,) had no charms for him ; nor had he learned to delight at find- ing a Fort Knyphausen in the heart of the British do- minions. Except for prisoners, the loss of the Americans was small. Colonel Markham, who went carefully over the ground when the action was concluded, saw very few of their dead bodies. The British never had the inten- tion, — and in the heat of success did not feel the smallest inclination, — to end a gallant fight with a scene of butchery. A Pennsylvanian captain, who was taken early in the affair by the Forty-second Highlanders, published a HfeUke account of what happened on the sixteenth of November, and the days thereupon ensuing. It is an account which Englishmen may read with pleas- ure.^ This was the first complete and crushing victory obtained by our troops since the commencement of a war which in their view was a rebellion. Military cus- tom had long ago established humane, and often ami- cable, relations between conquerors and vanquished in the vicissitudes of a struggle conducted on both sides by regular European armies ; but the notion that Amer- ican insurgents possessed a title to friendly treatment, 1 Valuable testimony to the authority of this narrative has recently been made public. In 1822 Colonel Cadvvaladcr, who had been second in command under Magaw, was requested by Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the Revolution, to write down his reminiscences of Fort Washington. The old man replied that, after forty-five years, his memory was dim. " I shall however," he said, " avail myself of a Statement, which I made in the year 181 1, at the Request of a Friend of mine, formerly a Captain in the 3rd Pennsylvania Battalion which I commanded in the War of the Revolution, who was writing a book entitled, ' Memoirs of a Life chiefly passed in Pennsylvania within the last Sixty Years.'" Colo- nel Cadwalader's letter was printed by the Historical Society of Pennsyl- vania in July 1901. 10 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION and fraternal hospitality, was very novel, and had never been statedly and officially recognised. On this point our officers had no specific orders to guide them. Each man acted in obedience to the dictates of his individual nature; and the result proved that there was plenty of right feeling, and honourable self-control, within the British ranks. The Pennsylvanian prisoners first came into the custody of a decent looking sergeant. He pro- tected them from a Hessian who cursed them in bad English, and himself bestowed on them a friendly ad- monition in very broad Scotch. " Young men," he said, " ye never should fight against your King." "The little bustle," (the author writes,) " produced by our surrender was scarcely over, when a British officer, apparently of high rank, rode up at full gallop, exxlaiming : ' What ! Taking prisoners ! Kill every man of them.' Although by this time there was none of that appearance of fe- rocity in the guard which would induce much fear that they would execute this command, I took off my hat saying: 'Sir, I put myself under your protection.' His manner was instantly softened. He met my salutation with an inclination of his body ; and, after a civil ques- tion or two, as if to make amends for his sanguinary mandate, he rode off towards the fort, to which he had enquired his way." That was the measure of British ferocity and im- placability. As the captives were passed on from one set of guardians to another, they sometimes got a surly or an insolent word ; and the subalterns of a smart Light Infantry regiment were moved to irrepressible mirth by the appearance and accent of an unrefined and untidy militia officer. But for the most part the prisoners met with reasonable civility, and very sub- stantial kindness. Soldiers brought them a constant supply of drinking-water, at great trouble to them- selves. Officers shared with them a small and pre- carious ration during that period of destitution which immediately succeeds a battle ; and sent them out gen- erous portions from the mess-tables when the tumbrels FORT WASHINGTON II had come up from the rear, and viands were again abundant. The gentleman to whose charge they were finally entrusted was of a singularly amiable and chival- rous character. Lieutenant Becket, (for that was his name,) was courteous himself ; and his example diffused an atmosphere of courtesy around him.^ No one within his hearing addressed the prisoners as " rebels ; " and, if he had occasion to distinguish in conversation between the belligerents, he invariably made use of the expres- sions "your people," and "our people." When the Americans were formed up on the road to New York, between two lines of British infantry : " Come, gentle- men," he said; "we are all soldiers. To the right face ! March ! " and he w^alked the first half mile on the flank of the column w'ith the air of a good-humoured comrade. At the end of their journey, as they drew near the city, they were encountered by a mob of dis- reputable women from the cantonments, who were enthusiastic and turbulent partisans of the cause which, after their fashion, they served. They crowded in upon the prisoners, calling out to know which of them was Washington, and assailing them with volleys of ribaldry ; until a disgusted, — and under the circumstances, a laud- ably plainspoken, — British colonel came to the rescue, and put the Amazons to rout.^ Lieutenant Becket informed his prisoners that he was forcibly struck with the poor condition of their ^ " Mr. Becket applied to a gentleman on horseback, who had super- intended the interment of the dead, to know whether he had met with the body of an officer in the uniform I wore, as I was anxious for the fate of a brother who was missing. With much delicacy, addressing himself to me, he replied; 'No, -Sir, we buried no one with linen fine enough to have been your brother.' . . . An officer, wrapped up in a camlet cloak, young, and of very pleasing address, who had been talking with Becket, came to me observing that the evening was very cool, and asked if such weather was usual with us at this season of the year. He expressed his hope that I had been well treated. 'As well as possible,' 1 replied, 'by some ; and as ill by others.' ' I am extremely sorry for it : ' he saitl ; ' but there are rascals in all services.' " In the British regiments there were not many such ; and those of no very deep dye. ^ Pennsylvanian Memoirs; chapter viii. 12 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION troops, the badness of their muskets, and the insuffi- ciency, in every respect, of their appointments ; and he remarked that a gentleman serving in their army required more than an ordinary degree of fortitude to take the field under such disadvantages. But everything is a matter of comparison ; and the garrison at Fort Washington bore less resemblance to a flock of indif- ferently armed and ill-clothed irregulars than any other equally large section of the Provincial forces. The American Commander-in-Chief acknowledged that he had lost his most carefully trained, and most expen- sively equipped, regiments ; a considerable proportion of his artillery; and some of the very best arms he had. He witnessed the depressing scene from a high bank at Fort Lee, on the opposite side of the Hudson river,! with keen self-reproach ; although he knew in his heart that the fault was not all his own. No plea of having acted under superior orders was put forward in the official report of the affair which he trans- mitted to the President of Congress : but a sense of personal wrong is indicated, — not angrily, and very sadly, — in a private letter to his brother. He there confessed that the hope of a successful termination to the campaign had been alive in his mind until Fort Washington fell. General Howe, (he said,) but for that unfortunate occurrence, would have had a poor tale to tell, and might have found it difficult to reconcile the people of England to the conquest of a few pitiful islands, none of which had ever been really defensible against a power whose fleet could at any moment surround, and render them unapproachable. " I solemnly protest," (Washington exclaimed,) "that a pecuniary reward of twenty thousand pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do ; and after all, perhaps, to lose my character; as it is impossible, under such a variety of distressing circumstances, to conduct matters agreeably to public expectation, or even to the expectation of those who employ me ; as they 1 General Heath's Memoirs; November i6, 1776. THROUGH THE JERSEYS 1 3 will not make proper allowances for the difficulties their own errors have occasioned." ^ Twenty thousand pounds a year would have made Washington just twice as rich as the then richest man in America ; but such a prize would have small tempta- tion to one who, (as he wrote in this very letter,) looked for no higher reward than to sit once more in the peace- able enjoyment of his own vine and fig tree, when the war should be over, and the country saved. That peace- ful hour was now indefinitely postponed ; and there was grave reason to doubt if it ever would arrive. The loss of Fort Washington, though not in itself a catastrophe, was one of those calamities which launched the weaker party on the downward road that almost inevitably leads to ruin; and, (to make the matter more serious,) that portion of the British army which headed the advance, was commanded by a general of a higher stamp than any whom the Americans had yet encountered. Lord Cornwallis was an English aristocrat of the finest type. Over a vast space of time, and in many lands, he served the State in war, in politics, in diplo- macy, and in high administration. Whether or not he was exceptionally clever was a question which he had never in his life considered ; any more than he would have asked himself if he was brave and honest. Nor did his countrymen come to any very definite conclusion as to the pre-eminence and rarity of his abilities. It was enough for them that he was a man of immense and varied experience ; careful and industrious ; modest in success and equable in adversity ; enlightened, tolerant, and humane ; contemptuous of money, and indifferent to the outward badges of honour.^ What a consular of ^ Washington to the President of Congress ; General Greene's Quarters, November 16, 1776. To John Augustine Washington ; Hackensac, No- vemlier 19, 1776. - When, in the war against Tippoo Sahib, he took the field as Gov- ernor-fjeneral, Cornwallis found occasion to spend, from his own resources, near thirty thousand pounds in eigliteen months; and yet he gave up his claim to not much less than lifly ihuunand puuiuls of pri/.e mom-y, which 14 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION old Rome, in Rome's greatest days, is traditionally supposed to have been, that Cornwallis actually was. Throughout the whole of his long career he presented, first to" his own, and then to a younger, generation, a liv- ing and most attractive example of antique and single- minded patriotism. In the House of Lords he had consistently opposed all schemes for the taxation and coercion of the colonists ; but, when they flew to arms, and he was called upon to fight against them, Corn- waUis held that, as a soldier, he was not at liberty to disobey the order. If he had been Governor-General of New England during the years that Sir Guy Carleton was Governor of Canada, it is, humanly speaking, almost certain that there would have been no American rebel- lion. If, after hostilities broke out, he had been Com- mander-in-Chief instead of Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clinton, it is quite certain that British strategy would have been far less halting and desultory. The energy and enterprise, which subsequently marked his two campaigns in the CaroHnas, revived the dying credit of our national generalship ; and military students may still draw valuable lessons from the counter-operations which were planned with solid ability, and conducted with manly pertinacity, by Cornwallis on the one side, and by Nathanael Greene on the other. England's crowning misfortune in the American war will always be connected with the memory of Lord Cornwallis. And yet, when Yorktown fell, the respon- sibility for its loss was attributed, and rightly attributed, not to the general who capitulated, but to the Com- he left to be distributed among the troops. There is a hearty letter from CornwaUis to his son on the subject of the Garter, which was bestowed on the Governor-General soon after his arrival at Calcutta. " I can assure you upon my honour," he wrote, " that I neither asked for it nor wished for it. The reasonable object of ambition to a man is to have his name transmitted to posterity for eminent services rendered to his country and mankind. Nobody asks or cares whether Hampden, Marlborough, Pel- ham, or Wolfe were Knights of the Garter." When, in obedience to the mandate of the King, Cornwallis opposed P'ox's East India Bill, he insisted on resigning the Constableship of the Tower, so that no man might sus- pect him of having voted with the Court in order to keep an office. THROUGH THE JERSEYS 1 5 mander-in-Chief at New York who had failed to support him, and to the First Lord of the Admiralty, whose scandalous mismanagement had resulted in the paralysis of our fleet at that moment of time when, and on the very spot where, the fortune of our empire was at stake. Sir Henry Clinton was recalled. In the House of Commons a very narrow majority indeed saved Lord Sandwich from a motion for inquiry into his adminis- tration of the Navy during the year 1781 ; and that motion, if successful, was to have been followed by an impeachment. But Parhament showed no incHnation to bring Lord CornwalHs to account ; all parties united in a strong desire as soon as possible to re-employ him ;^ and, after no long while, the Governor-Generalship of our East- ern possessions was forced upon his reluctant acceptance. There he played a famous part ; and, (although some fea- tures of his internal poHcy have been gravely questioned,) his probity and public spirit communicated to the Govern- ment of India that high and pure tone which, to the abiding honour of the British name, it has ever since retained. In 1798 he quelled the rebellion, and defeated a French invasion, in Ireland. With a courage all his own, and an authority which no man else could have exercised, he discountenanced, and greatly mitigated, the severities demanded and practised by the dominant party in that unhappy island. As plenipotentiary in Paris he negotiated the Peace of Amiens ; and at the last, an old broken man, in his country's need and in quiet sub- mission to her call, he sailed once more for India to die. 1 Very striking testimony to the esteem in which Cornwallis was held, subsequently to his misfortune at Yorktown, comes from two exactly opposite quarters. Soon after he landed in England, while he was still a prisoner on parole, the approbation and conlldence of George the Third were conveyed to him in a most generous Utter, written throughout by the royal hand. A year later Charles Fox referred to Lord Cornwallis in the House of Commons, at a time when the two old friends had become polili- cal opponents. The name of such a man, (said the orator,) might make Parliament consent to the voting of very extensive powers in a C.overnor- General of India; but he was certain that nothing 1-ut llic great character of that n.jlilc L