with fine satire: "My gentle lions, my humane bears, my tenderhearted hyenas, go forth! But I exhort you, as you are Christians and members of civilized society, to take care not to hurt any man, woman, or child!"

Clark was never able to muster sufficient strength to attack Detroit. On the other hand, the British failed to recover their lost posts. Congress caused some demonstrations to be made. against Detroit from Fort Pitt, and while never able to send out an effective expedition, checked the equally feeble British operations. Possession by the Americans was not mentioned in the peace negotiations, but may have been a silent factor in the decision of England to concede the demand for the Mississippi boundary. Of greater influence, probably, was the desire of the ministry to regain America's friendship.

THE WAR IN THE SOUTH

By the close of 1778 the British were preparing a new offensive, this time in the South. With the aid of the Loyalists they hoped to overrun the southern states and recover at least a part of the revolted territory. Savannah was taken before the year ended. Little headway was made in 1779, but with the coming of fresh troops under Clinton in 1780 the march of events became swift and dramatic. Clinton laid siege to Charleston, while Banastre Tarleton, colonel of dragoons, by dashing cavalry attacks kept all American forces at a distance. Charleston surrendered in May. The British were elated, and Clinton called confidently on "every good man" to join the King's forces in the effort to "reëstablish peace and good government." In August the chief American force in South Carolina, under Gates, to whom Burgoyne had surrendered, was badly defeated at Camden by inferior numbers. Gates, whose incapacity was by this time. patent, with the remnant of his army dared not stay his flight until he had put the safe distance of two hundred miles between himself and the foe. Then regaining a degree of courage he reported that he had "proceeded with all possible dispatch" to a point where he could reorganize his forces.

Events in the North added to the gloom. Clinton moved by sea from Charleston to New York, and Washington dared not

detach troops to aid the southern states lest he seize the Hudson Valley. Then came Arnold's treason. Arnold, the victim of factional malignancy, had suffered rebuke for certain trivial offenses. He nevertheless retained Washington's confidence ; but in the bitterness of his sense of injustice he abused this confidence by asking and receiving the command at West Point with the purpose of betraying this key to the valley to Clinton. When the plot was discovered, he fled to the enemy, returning in 1781 with British troops to share in the fighting in Virginia.

Southern Patriots were almost in despair after Camden; they fled to the mountains and swamps; but they kept up an irregular warfare under leaders like Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens. The British, moving with artillery and trains of baggage wagons, were hampered by unbridged streams, trackless forests, and bewildering mountains, while a few hundred farmers, accustomed to fighting from behind trees and rocks, could assemble hastily, without uniforms, baggage, or cannon, strike a blow, and as quickly disperse.

Such was the stroke delivered at King's Mountain, in October. Cornwallis, the victor of Camden, now preparing to conquer North Carolina, sent Major Patrick Ferguson to recruit Loyalists in the back counties. Not far away were the Whig pioneers of the upper Tennessee country. These, joining with their friends. east of the mountains, suddenly beset Ferguson's force and almost destroyed it.

The struggle between Patriots and Loyalists in the South in 1779 and 1780 was the most ruthless phase of the war. Loyalists taken with arms in their hands were treated, not as prisoners of war, but as traitors. The Loyalists retaliated whenever possible. The passionate hatred of former neighbors knew no bounds. Regular officers on both sides sought in vain to restrain their followers. After King's Mountain the victors executed several prisoners and spared not even the dead body of the opposing leader.

The check at King's Mountain delayed Cornwallis and gave the Whigs time to collect men and leaders for more vigorous resistance when he resumed his advance towards North Carolina in 1781. Nathanael Greene, by Washington's choice the successor of the incompetent Gates, was now in command in the

South, with Daniel Morgan as his chief subordinate. In January Morgan, attacked at Cowpens, showed himself more than a match for Tarleton. Then he joined Greene, and their combined forces fell back across North Carolina as Cornwallis advanced farther and farther from his base. When Greene thought Cornwallis sufficiently weakened, he turned upon him at Guilford Courthouse (March 15), and although beaten, inflicted such losses that Cornwallis retired to Wilmington on the coast.

This campaign showed the fundamental weakness of the British plans. Operating from the coast towns, each step forward necessitated the detachment of men to hold the country and cover communications. The forces available were never adequate for war on the scale attempted, and each advance sooner or later reached a point where the Americans were able to check it if not to inflict defeat. By the end of the summer of 1781 the enemy held only Charleston and Wilmington in the South.

The feebleness of England's efforts may not be understood unless one bears in mind her growing absorption in the European situation. In 1780 Russia, Denmark, and Sweden joined in an "Armed Neutrality League," menacing her with a general war unless she modified her practices towards neutral commerce. International law was still in a nebulous state, and the rights of neutrals were in dispute. England with her great navy made her own rules, much to the injury of other nations. The Dutch suffered from seizures of French goods on their carrying vessels, and contended that "free ships make free goods." On their part they harbored American war vessels and allowed their West Indian colonies to become the base for supplying the United States with munitions. These mutual injuries led to war between England and the Dutch Republic in 1781.

Thus by 1781 the formidable array of maritime states either actually at war or threatening war with Great Britain almost counterbalanced the sea power which was her chief reliance, and sea power was about to decide the war in America. "Nothing without naval supremacy," declared the Count de Rochambeau, as he embarked for the United States with new land forces. Washington recognized the same fact independently at about the same time. While he planned to attack Clinton in New York with the aid of Rochambeau's fresh army, his watchful eye, fol

lowing the campaign in the South, perceived the opportunity for the master stroke.

Greene was in South Carolina, and Cornwallis, now in Virginia, had been chasing the "boy," as he contemptuously called the Marquis de Lafayette, commanding the Americans there. It was the old game of futile pursuit, and ended with Cornwallis's retirement to Yorktown on the narrow strip of land between the James and York rivers. If Count de Grasse, the French Admiral in the West Indies, would bring his fleet to the Chesapeake, while Washington and Rochambeau came down from New York, Cornwallis would be caught in a trap.

De Grasse reached the Bay on August 30, in time to drive off the British fleet which sought to keep open egress for Cornwallis by water. The land forces closed in during September, and on October 19, six years and six months after the Battle of Lexington, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army. British dominion ended almost on the spot where it had begun in 1607.

THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

So far as the United States were concerned the failure of Cornwallis ended the war. English opinion would not support further efforts to subdue America, although its loss was greeted with lamentations as marking the extinction of the glory and greatness of the empire and the establishment of the "uncontrolled superiority" of France in Europe. George III declared that he would forsake England rather than acknowledge the independence of the colonies, but Lord North was forced to resign and the shaping of the American settlement passed from the hands of the stubborn monarch. A new ministry composed of men who had consistently advocated liberality towards America the Marquis of Rockingham, who proposed the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766; Burke, the advocate of conciliation; Charles James Fox, an outspoken sympathizer with the Americans; Shelburne, Franklin's friend of prerevolutionary days-faced the inevitability of a separation.

Since the French alliance of 1778 England had made several informal peace overtures, all based on the hope of restoring the status of America as a part of the empire. However favorable