cious, at once reported the capture to Arnold. This enabled Arnold to make his escape. André was tried by a military court, was found guilty of being a spy, and was hanged.

When news of Arnold's treason spread through the country, coming as it did at the heels of many southern disasters, it seemed for a time as if the patriot cause were doomed. Who could be trusted? How could the South be regained? Then, too, at this time, the paper money of Congress, the "continental bills of credit," ceased to have any value. A wagon-load of them would not buy a loaf of bread. It seemed as if all disasters had befallen the Americans at once. The year 1780 was the gloomiest in

American history.

But where defeat had been worst, there came victory. The tide was now turning. Five days after the death of André, a British force of some eleven hundred men, including many Tories, ventured too far into the mountains of North Carolina, and on the 7th of October was cut off by the "backwoodsmen of the Carolinas" at King's Mountain. Greatly encouraged, the patriots of the two states gathered together a third army, and many regiments from the north were joined with it, all under command of the second soldier of the Revolution, Nathaniel Greene. Under him was the famous cavalry officer Daniel Morgan, of Virginia, who had won great fame at Saratoga.

Chief of the British cavalry officers was Colonel Banastre Tarleton, whose exploits had made his name a terror in the South. At the Cowpens, on the 17th of January, 1781, Morgan, with nine hundred men met Tarleton with more than eleven hundred in open field. Tarleton at last escaped with two hundred and seventy men, leaving nearly as many dead or wounded, and six hundred prisoners. Of Morgan's men, sixty-one were wounded and twelve killed.

His ablest officer defeated, Cornwallis now started out to destroy Greene as he had destroyed Gates. But Greene was content to wear out the British army, as his own was not strong enough to risk a battle. Then began a masterly retreat, with Cornwallis close at his heels, and both generals maneuvering for the advantage of position. For two hundred miles the race ran on. Cornwallis wearying of the

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chase, fell back to Guilford Court House. Greene followed, and a battle was fought. Greene was defeated, but the British army was too exhausted to pursue him. Cornwallis was far from his supplies, and he now began a retreat toward Wilmington, North Carolina. Greene pursued him hotly. Believing that Cornwallis could be of little harm if left behind, Greene suddenly left him and turned toward Charleston and Savannah. Cornwallis turned north and took position at Petersburg, Virginia.

At Hobkirk's Hill, April 25, and at Eutaw Springs, September 8, 1781, Greene, though not victorious, was enabled to free the greater part of the Carolinas of British troops, so that Charleston was all that was left to them, and this because of their powerful fleet. Greene had succeeded in cutting off Cornwallis and his army from Charleston, and thus he maneuvered the enemy out of the state.

When Cornwallis reached Virginia, he found Benedict Arnold and a British force burning and plundering the tidewater country. Sending him back to New York, for he despised him, he joined Arnold's force to his own and began a campaign against Lafayette, who had been trying to get hold of Arnold. But orders came to Cornwallis to select some Virginia seaport town, to fortify it, and to make it his headquarters. He chose Yorktown, and by the 1st of August was strongly intrenched there with seven thousand men. Thus far in the war, a British army in a seaport town was thought to be safe from harm, because of the English fleet, but Count de Grasse had recently arrived with a French fleet.

On the 14th of August, 1781, Washington, whose headquarters were at West Point, was informed that the French fleet was sailing for the Chesapeake. He at once planned the campaign. His own army and the fleet should co-operate. The fleet would cut off Cornwallis by sea, the army would cut him off by land. Clinton half expected such a joint attack on himself at New York. Before he knew Washington's intention, the American army was at Philadelphia, on its way to Yorktown. Cornwallis urged Clinton to send him reinforcements. Instead, he sent Arnold to burn New London and other Connecticut towns

along the sound. But the ruse was too evident. Washington and the French fleet had started for Yorktown, and there they met and hemmed in the British army on every side.

Of the sixteen thousand men in the American army before Yorktown, four thousand were Frenchmen, commanded by Count Rochambeau. On the 19th of October, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered, but not in person, as he pleaded sickness. His sword was delivered by General O'Hara to General Lincoln, whom Washington designated to receive it. And the news swiftly went over the land, "Cornwallis has surrendered; independence is won.' When Lord North, the prime minister, heard the news, he could only exclaim, "It is all over.

But a year passed before a preliminary treaty of peace was signed,* and nearly two years before a final treaty was made. By the first, the boundaries of the United States were agreed on; by the second, all points of difference between the two countries were amicably settled. The treaty was negotiated at Versailles; was signed by Dr. Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, at Paris, and was ratified by Congress, January 14, 1784. Hostilities ceased soon after the surrender of Cornwallis, and within a year from the day of the preliminary treaty the last British soldier left the country. Evacuation day, November 25, 1783, was celebrated with great festivity in New York City, till within recent years.

Our original national boundaries were fixed by agreement with England, France, and Spain. As there had never been any surveys, or even maps or explorations, that showed the lines finally agreed to, they were arbitrarily laid down, each nation trying to get as much as possible for itself. In fact, the boundaries were only vaguely described; the exact location was to be determined later. As all later boundary treaties with England had their basis in the treaty of 1783, it may be said that by this treaty the Canadian line from the Lake of the Woods to Maine was as it is to-day. The Maine boundary was left unsettled. The Mississippi *November 30, 1782. September 3, 1783.

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was made our western boundary down to thirty-one degrees north latitude. From this point the line ran eastward along this parallel to the Appalachicola River. The remainder of the southern boundary coincides with the northern boundary of the state of Florida. The eastern boundary was the Atlantic shore.

The two Floridas were given to Spain as her share of the spoils. She had declared war against England in 1779, and at once sent an expedition from Louisiana into Florida and seized the whole peninsula. Spain also insisted on having all of King George's "Indian Country"—that is, the entire region between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. France favored this claim from the Ohio southward. Dr. Franklin and his colleagues secured the Mississippi as our western boundary by a secret treaty with the British commissioners. We owe the final terms to the firmness of our three commissioners.

As the result of the treaty, Spain was our neighbor on the west and south; England (Canada) on the north. The people of the United States were a new nation; they number about three and a quarter millions, and their country contained about eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles. Had our allies France and Spain prevailed, the area would not have been half as large.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LEAGUE OF STATES

1776-1787

The Revolution of 1776 was the uprising of the people of the colonies against the administration of government in the British Empire. Before the war the colonies were an integral part of the empire, and on a plane of civil equality among themselves. The Revolution knew no precedence among the colonies, and the people of no colony can be said to have had the priority in right of leadership in the war. The people acted as a unit. Separate and independent state revolt from British authority was unknown. Representation in the general assemblies was familiar to all the people, and when the time for concerted action came they followed the familiar course of choosing representatives to a continental congress as they had long been accustomed to choose representatives to their local assemblies, each of which had considered only the wants of the colony it represented. The Congress took into consideration the

general welfare of America.

To the first Continental Congress, which assembled in Philadelphia on the 5th of September, 1774, delegates came from all the colonies except Georgia, chosen, as we have seen, in some by the members of assembly, in some by a convention specially called by the electors in the colony, and in others by the provincial Congress. The persons so chosen described themselves in their acts as "The Delegates Appointed by the Good People of the Colonies," making no reference to the several states as independent or sovereign. This Congress was a convention of the whole people, and therefore national in character; but considered as a government it was temporary, revolutionary, experimental, and imperfect in organization.

The acts of this Congress were of national importance.