up XXXVIII. army to keep. The expected impression on the surround- CHAPTER ing country had not been made. There were in several of the states considerable bodies of disaffected persons; 1778. but no movements had taken place among them favorable to the invaders. Since the occupation of Philadel phia, Allen, of Pennsylvania, the same who had thrown his Continental commission of lieutenant colonel when independence was declared, Chalmers, who had great influence in Maryland, and Clifton, a leader among the Roman Catholics, had been commissioned as colonels; but their united efforts had raised less than a thousand recruits. Including those under Delancey, Skinner, and Sir John Johnson, there were now in the British service thirteen corps of Loyalists, amounting in the whole to three thousand six hundred men. Objects as they were of proscription and confiscation, the bitter hatred toward their countrymen felt by these refugees, and the predatory war which they carried on, tended not a little to embitter and inflame the contest. While Parliament was debating about conciliation, the states were called upon by Congress to fill up their battalions; or, if recruits could not be obtained, to supply their place by draughts of militia. Army auditors were appointed to settle all outstanding accounts; a new organization of the staff departments introduced more of order and accountability. Greene, a very favorite officer with Washington, was persuaded to accept the important place of quarter-master general; Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, of Connecticut, was appointed commissary general; the adjutant generalship, resigned by Pickering when he accepted a seat at the Board of War, was given to Colonel Scammel, of New Hampshire. Baron Steuben, a Prussian officer, an excellent disciplinarian, had lately tendered his services to Congress. Pres XXXVIII. CHAPTER ently appointed inspector, with the rank of major general, in place of the worthless Conway, he first introduced into 1778. the American army a uniform system of exercise and tacMay. tics. By a new organization, each battalion of foot was Jan. to consist, officers included, of five hundred and eightytwo men, arranged in nine companies; the battalions of horse and artillery to be a third smaller. This would have given for the Continental army a force of sixty thousand men and upward; but it never really amounted to half that number. In consideration of their large slave population, no troops were asked of South Carolina and Georgia except for local defense. Finding his command of the horse disagreeable to the native officers, Pulaski obtained leave to raise what he called a legion, an independent corps of two or three hundred men, part cavalry armed with lances, and part foot. Armand, a French officer of merit, was at the head of another similar corps. A third independent corps, composed wholly of cavalry, was raised by Henry Lee, a Virginian, already distinguished as a partisan officer. The new fortifications in the Highlands were zealously prosecuted, under the direction of Kosciusko, at whose suggestion the works at West Point were now first commenced. No attention had been paid by the states to the late recommendation of taxes; and Congress had no way of sustaining the army except by additional issues of paper money. A further loan of ten millions had been authorized; but that availed nothing, for the former loans were not yet half filled up. The empty treasury had to be replenished in January by a new issue of three millions in bills of credit. Two millions more were issued in February, two millions in March, six millions and a half in April, five millions in May, and as many more in June, making in the first half of the year an addition of twen XXXVIII. ty-three millions and a half to the already superabund- CHAPTER ant issue. A new impulse was thus given to the depreciation, which Congress and the states strove in vain to 1778. arrest. This depreciation had already produced a serious defalcation in the pay of the army, and many officers, seeing better prospects elsewhere, had thrown up their commissions. Washington was very unwilling thus to lose the assistance of tried officers, who had gone through an apprenticeship to the service; and, by earnest and repeated recommendations, he prevailed at length upon Congress, May. but not without very great difficulty, to promise half pay for seven years to all officers who should serve to the end of the war. To all soldiers who served to the end of the war, a gratuity of eighty dollars was promised. Washington had proposed for the officers half pay for life; the term of seven years was adopted as a compromise. Congress had a great horror of permanent military and half-pay establishments-a sentiment in which they sympathized with the country. Before any military movements had occurred beyond mere foraging expeditions, draughts of Lord North's conciliatory bills arrived in America, and were very busily April 15. circulated by the disaffected. Fearful of the effects which this new offer might produce, Congress ordered the bills to be published in the newspapers, and, along with them, the report of a committee of their body, criticising the proposed compromise with much keenness. port concluded with a resolution, unanimously adopted, denouncing as open and avowed enemies all who should attempt a separate treaty, and declaring that no conference should be held with any commissioners till the British armies were first withdrawn, or the independence of the United States acknowledged. This re CHAPTER Whatever might have been the effect, under other cir XXXVIII. cumstances, of Lord North's plan of conciliation, it was 1778. wholly counteracted by the arrival shortly after, and beMay fore accounts had reached America of the actual passage of the bills, of two treaties with France, brought out by a French frigate dispatched for that express purpose. Lord North no sooner had brought into Parliament his bills for conciliation, than Vergennes signified to the American commissioners his readiness to treat. The capture of Burgoyne's army, and, still more, the spirit exhibited, notwithstanding the loss of Philadelphia, in Washington's attack upon the British army at Germantown, had satisfied the French court that the Americans were strong and in earnest. The proposition of the French minister was eagerly met. Two treaties were Jan. 30. speedily signed: one, of friendship and commerce; the other, of defensive alliance, in case Great Britain should declare war against France. The great object of these treaties purported to be the mercantile and political independence of the United States. No peace was to be made till that object was attained, and then only by mutual consent. The contracting parties guaranteed to each other their respective possessions in America. The right was reserved for Spain to become a party to the alliance. The treaty of friendship and commerce being comMarch 13. municated to the British court, the displeasure of the king and his ministers was signified by the recall of the British embassador from Paris, amounting, in substance, to a declaration of war. These treaties, ratified by Congress as soon as receivMay 5. ed, were hailed every where throughout the United States with the greatest enthusiasm. That hereditary national hatred of France, which hitherto had pervaded America, XXXVIII. was now suddenly changed to respect, gratitude, and af- CHAPTER fection, though not without some remnants, and presently some occasional outbursts of the old feeling. These treaties, meanwhile, had given rise to very warm debates in the British Parliament. It seemed useless to the members of Lord Rockingham's party, who composed the bulk of the opposition, to stand out any longer against the independence of America. To protract the war, with France as a party to it, would involve an immense expenditure, while it could only serve to aggravate the quarrel, to embitter the Americans, and to bring them under the influence of France. Was it not wiser to make peace at once, and, abandoning all attempts at political authority, to secure as far as might be, and before they became further engaged in any new connections, the commerce and good-will of the late colonists? 1778. Propositions to that effect were brought forward in both houses of Parliament. In the upper house they encountered the warm opposition of Lord Chatham, who fell April 7. in a fainting fit, from which he never recovered, while protesting against the dismemberment of the empire. In the House of Commons the same ground was taken by Lord Shelburne, who presently became the acknowledged head of the parliamentary supporters of the late Earl of Chatham. The wise lesson of yielding in time is no less difficult for statesmen and for nations than for private individuals. To teach the British Parliament and people to yield to what was inevitable, more millions must be spent, more blood must flow! Having returned to England on his parole, and receiving from the ministry but a cool reception, Burgoyne appeared in his seat in the House of Commons, and denounced the inefficient conduct of the war. Complaining that his demands for men and supplies had not been met |