A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster

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%137. Independence resolved on.%--Just one year had now passed since
the memorable fights at Concord and Lexington. During this year the
colonies had been solemnly protesting that they had no thought of
independence and desired nothing so much as reconciliation with the
King. But the King meantime had done things which prevented any
reconciliation:

1. He had issued a proclamation declaring the Americans to be rebels.

2. He had closed their ports and warned foreign nations not to trade
with them.

3. He had hired 17,000 Hessians[1] with whom to subdue them.

[Footnote 1: The Hessians were soldiers from Hesse and other small
German states.]

These things made further obedience to the King impossible, and May 15,
1776, Congress resolved that it was "necessary to suppress every kind of
authority under the crown," and asked the colonies to form governments
of their own and so become states.

On the 7th of June, Richard Henry Lee, acting under instructions from
Virginia, offered this resolution:

Resolved

That these United Colonies are, and of
right ought to be, free and independent states, that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown, and that all political connection between them
and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
totally dissolved.

Prompt action in so serious a matter was not to be expected, and
Congress put it off till July 1. Meanwhile Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were
appointed to write a declaration of independence and have it ready in
case it was wanted. As Jefferson happened to be the chairman of the
committee, the duty of writing the declaration was given to him. July
2, Congress passed Lee's resolution, and what had been the United
Colonies became free and independent states.

[Illustration: Campaigns of 1775-1776]

[Illustration: %The Pennsylvania Statehouse, or Independence Hall[1]]

[Footnote 1: From the _Columbian Magazine_ of July, 1787. The tower
faces the "Statehouse yard." The posts are along Chestnut Street. For
the history of the building, read F. M. Etting's _Independence Hall._]

%138. Independence declared.%--Independence having thus been decreed,
the next step was to announce the fact to the world. As Jefferson says
in the opening of his declaration, "When, in the course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another ... a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation." It was this "decent respect to the
opinions of mankind," therefore, which now led Congress, on July 4,
1776, to adopt the Declaration of Independence, and to send copies to
the states. Pennsylvania got her copy first, and at noon on July 8 it
was read to a vast crowd of citizens in the Statehouse yard.[1] When
the reading was finished, the people went off to pull down the royal
arms in the court room, while the great bell in the tower, the bell
which had been cast twenty-four years before with the prophetic words
upon its side, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof," rang out a joyful peal, for then were announced to
the world the new political truths, "that all men are created equal,"
and "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights," and "that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness."

[Footnote 1: The declaration was read from a wooden platform put up
there in 1769 to enable David Rittenhouse to observe a transit
of Venus.]

[Illustration: The royal arms]

%139. The Retreat up the Hudson.%--A few days later the Declaration
was read to the army at New York. The wisdom of Washington in going to
New York was soon manifest, for in July General Howe, with a British
army of 25,000 men, encamped on Staten Island. In August he crossed to
Long Island, and was making ready to besiege the army on Brooklyn
Heights, when, one dark and foggy night, Washington, leaving his camp
fires burning, crossed with his army to New York.

Howe followed, drove him foot by foot up the Hudson from New York to
White Plains; carried Fort Washington, on the New York shore, by storm
(November 16, 1776); and sent a force across the Hudson under cover of
darkness and storm to capture Fort Lee. But the British were detected in
the very nick of time, and the Americans, leaving their fires burning
and their tents standing, fled towards Newark, N. J.

%140. The Retreat across the Jerseys.%--Washington, meanwhile, had
gone from White Plains to Hackensack in New Jersey, leaving 7000 men
under Charles Lee in New York state at North Castle. These men he now
ordered Lee to bring over to Hackensack, but the jealous and mutinous
Lee refused to obey. This forced Washington to begin his famous retreat
across the Jerseys, going first to Newark, then to New Brunswick, then
to Trenton, and then over the Delaware into Pennsylvania, with the
British under Cornwallis in hot pursuit.

[Illustration]

%141. The Surprise at Trenton.%--Lee crossed the Hudson and went to
Morristown, where a just punishment for his disobedience speedily
overtook him. One night while he was at an inn outside of his lines,
some British dragoons made him a prisoner of war. The capture of Lee
left Sullivan in command, and by him the troops were hurried off to join
Washington. Thus reenforced, Washington turned on the enemy, and on
Christmas night in a blinding snowstorm he recrossed the Delaware,
marched nine miles to Trenton, surprised a force of Hessians, took 1000
prisoners, and went back to Pennsylvania.

The effect of this victory was tremendous. At first the people could not
believe it, and, to convince them, the Hessians had to be marched
through the streets of Philadelphia, and one of their flags was sent to
Baltimore (whither Congress had fled from Philadelphia), and hung up in
the hall of Congress. When the people were convinced of the truth of the
report, their joy was unbounded; militia was hurried forward, the
Jerseymen gathered at Morristown, money was raised; the New England
troops, whose time of service was out, were persuaded to stay six weeks
longer, and, December 30, 1776, Washington again entered Trenton.

Meantime Cornwallis, who had heard of the capture of the Hessians, came
thundering down from New Brunswick with 8000 men and hemmed in the
Americans between his army and the Delaware. But on the night of January
2, 1777, Washington slipped away, passed around Cornwallis, hurried to
Princeton, and there, on the morning of January 3, put to rout three
regiments of British regulars. Cornwallis, who was not aware that the
Americans had left his front till he heard the firing in his rear, fell
back to New Brunswick, while Washington marched unmolested to
Morristown, where he spent the rest of the winter.

%142. The Capture of Philadelphia.%--Late in May, 1777, Washington
entered New York state. But Howe paid little attention to this movement,
for he had fully determined to attack and capture Philadelphia, and on
July 23 set sail from New York. As the fleet moved southward, its
progress was marked by signal fires along the Jersey coast, and the news
of its position was carried inland by messengers. At the end of a week
the fleet was off the entrance of Delaware Bay. But Lord Howe fearing to
sail up the river, the fleet went to sea and was lost to sight.
Washington, who had hurried southward to Philadelphia, was now at a loss
what to do, and was just about to go back to New York when he heard
that the British were coming up Chesapeake Bay, and at once marched to
Wilmington, Del.

[Illustration]

It was the 25th of August that Howe landed his men and began moving
toward Washington, who, lest the British should push by him, fell back
from Wilmington, to a place called Chadds Ford on the Brandywine, where,
on September 11, 1777, a battle was fought.[1] The Americans were
defeated and retreated in good order to Chester, and the next day
Washington entered Philadelphia. But public opinion demanded that
another battle should be fought before the city was given up, and after
a few days he recrossed the Schuylkill, and again faced the enemy. A
violent storm ruined the ammunition of both armies and prevented a
battle, and the Americans retreated across the Schuylkill at a point
farther up the stream.

[Footnote: 1 Among the wounded in this battle was a brilliant young
Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, who, early in 1777, came to America
and offered his services to Congress as a volunteer without pay.]

Congress, which had returned to Philadelphia from Baltimore, now fled to
Lancaster and later to York, Pa., and (September 26, 1777) Howe entered
Philadelphia in triumph. October 4, Washington attacked him at
Germantown, but was repulsed, and went into winter quarters at
Valley Forge.

[Illustration]

%143. New York invaded.%--Though Washington had been defeated in the
battles around Philadelphia, and had been forced to give that city to
the British, his campaign made it possible for the Americans to win
another glorious victory in the north. At the beginning of 1777 the
British had planned to conquer New York and so cut the Eastern States
off from the Middle States. To accomplish this, a great army under John
Burgoyne was to come up to Albany by way of Lake Champlain. Another,
under Colonel St. Leger, was to go up the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario
to Oswego and come down to Mohawk valley to Albany; while the third
army, under Howe, was to go up the Hudson from New York and meet
Burgoyne at Albany. True to this plan, Burgoyne came up Lake Champlain,
took Ticonderoga (July 5), and, driving General Schuyler before him,
reached Fort Edward late in July. There he heard that the Americans had
collected some supplies at Bennington, a little village in the
southwestern corner of Vermont, whither he sent 1000 men. But Colonel
John Stark met and utterly destroyed them on August 16. Meanwhile St.
Leger, as planned, had landed at Oswego, and on August 3 laid siege to
Fort Stanwix, which then stood on the site of the present city of Rome,
N.Y. On the 6th the garrison sallied forth, attacked a part of St.
Leger's camp, and carried off five British flags. These they hoisted
upside down on their ramparts, and high above them raised a new flag
which Congress had adopted in June, and which was then for the first
time flung to the breeze.

[Illustration: Flag of the East India Company]

%144. Our National Flag.%--It was our national flag, the stars and
stripes, and was made of a piece of a blue jacket, some strips of a
white shirt, and some scraps of old red flannel.[1]

[Footnote 1: The flags used by the continental troops between 1775 and
1777 were of at least a dozen different patterns. A colored plate
showing most of them is given in Treble's _Our Flag_, p. 142. In 1776,
in January, Washington used one at Cambridge which seems to have been
suggested by the ensign of the East India Company. That of this company
was a combination of thirteen horizontal red and white stripes (seven
red and six white) and the red cross of St. George. That of Washington
was the same, with the British Union Jack substituted for the cross of
St. George. After the Declaration of Independence, the British Jack was
out of place on our flag; and in June, 1777, Congress adopted a union of
thirteen white stars in a circle, on a blue ground, in place of the
British Union. After Vermont and Kentucky were admitted, in 1791 and
1792, the stars and stripes were each increased to fifteen. In 1818, the
original number of stripes was restored, and since that time each new
state, when admitted, is represented by a star and not by a stripe.]

[Illustration: Flag of the United Colonies]

[Illustration: British Union Jack]

%145. Capture of Burgoyne.%--When Schuyler heard of the siege of
Fort Stanwix, he sent Benedict Arnold to relieve it, and St. Leger fled
to Oswego. Then was the time for the expedition from New York to have
hurried to Burgoyne's aid. But Howe and his army were then at sea. No
help was given to Burgoyne, who, after suffering defeats at Bemis
Heights (September 19) and at Stillwater (October 7), retreated to
Saratoga, where (October 17, 1777) he surrendered his army of 6000 men
to General Horatio Gates, whom Congress, to its shame, had just put in
the place of Schuyler. Gates deserves no credit for the capture. Arnold
and Daniel Morgan deserve it, and deserve much; for, judged by its
results, Saratoga was one of the great battles of the world. The results
of the surrender were four fold:

1. It saved New York state.
2. It destroyed the plan for the war.
3. It induced the King to offer us peace with representation in
Parliament, or anything else we wanted except independence.
4. It secured for us the aid of France.

[Illustration: %Flag of the United States, 1777%]

%146. Valley Forge.%--The winter at Valley Forge marks the darkest
period of the war. It was a season of discouragement, when mean spirits
grew bold. Some officers of the army formed a plot, called from one of
them the "Conway cabal," to displace Washington and put Gates in
command. The country people, tempted by British gold, sent their
provisions into Philadelphia and not to Valley Forge. There the
suffering of the half-clad, half-fed, ill-housed patriots surpasses
description.

But the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Then it was that an able
Prussian soldier, Baron Steuben, joined the army, turned the camp into a
school, drilled the soldiers, and made the army better than ever. Then
it was that France acknowledged our independence, and joined us in
the war.

%147. France acknowledges our Independence.%--In October, 1776,
Congress sent Benjamin Franklin to Paris to try to persuade the French
King to help us in the war. Till Burgoyne surrendered and Great Britain
offered peace, Franklin found all his efforts vain.[1] But now, when it
seemed likely that the states might again be brought under the British
crown, the French King promptly acknowledged us to be an independent
nation, made a treaty of alliance and a treaty of commerce (February 6,
1778), and soon had a fleet on its way to help us.

[Footnote 1: For an account of Franklin in France, see McMaster's _With
the Fathers_, pp. 253-270.]

%148. The British leave Philadelphia.%--Hearing of the approach of
the French fleet, Sir Henry Clinton, who in May had succeeded Howe in
command, left Philadelphia and hurried to the defense of New York.
Washington followed, and, coming up with the rear guard of the enemy at
Monmouth in New Jersey, fought a battle (June 28, 1778), and would have
gained a great victory had not the traitor, Charles Lee, been in
command.[2] Without any reason he suddenly ordered a retreat, which was
fortunately prevented from becoming a rout by Washington, who came on
the field in time to stop it.

[Footnote 2: After remaining a prisoner in the hands of the British from
December, 1776, to April, 1778, Lee had been exchanged for a
British officer.]

After the battle the British hurried on to New York, where Washington
partially surrounded them by stretching out his army from Morristown in
New Jersey to West Point on the Hudson.

%149. Stony Point.%--In hope of drawing Washington away from New
York, Clinton in 1779 sent a marauding party to plunder and ravage the
farms and towns of Connecticut. But Washington soon brought it back by
dispatching Anthony Wayne to capture Stony Point, which he did (July,
1779) by one of the most brilliant assaults in military history.

%150. Indian Raids.%--That nothing might be wanting to make the
suffering of the patriots as severe as possible, the Indians were let
loose. Led by a Tory[1] named Butler, a band of whites and Indians of
the Seneca tribe of the Six Nations[2] marched from Fort Niagara to
Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, and there perpetrated one
of the most awful massacres in history. Another party, led by a son of
Butler, repeated the horrors of Wyoming in Cherry Valley, N.Y.

[Footnote 1: Not all the colonists desired independence. Those who
remained loyal to the King were called Tories.]

[Footnote 2: By this time the Five Nations had admitted the Tuscaroras
to their confederacy and had thus become the Six Nations.]

%151. George Rogers Clark%.--Meantime the British commander at
Detroit tried hard to stir up the Indians of the West to attack the
whole frontier at the same moment. Hearing of this, George Rogers Clark
of Virginia marched into the enemy's country, and in two fine campaigns
in 1778-1779 beat the British, and conquered the country from the Ohio
to the Great Lakes and from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi.

%152. Sullivan's Expedition%.--In 1779 it seemed so important to
punish the Indians for the Wyoming and Cherry Valley massacres that
General Sullivan with an army invaded the territory of the Six Nations,
in central New York, burned some forty Indian villages, and utterly
destroyed the Indian power in that state.

%153. The South invaded%.--For a year and more there had been a lull
in military operations on the part of the British. But they now began an
attack in a new quarter. Having failed to conquer New England in
1775-1776, having failed to conquer the Middle States in 1776-1777, they
sent an expedition against the South in December, 1778. Success attended
it. Savannah was captured, Georgia was conquered, and the royal governor
reinstated. Later, in 1779, General Lincoln, with a French fleet to help
him, attempted to recapture Savannah, but was driven off with dreadful
loss of life.

These successes in Georgia so greatly encouraged the British that in the
spring of 1780 Clinton led an expedition against South Carolina, and
(May 12) easily captured Charleston, with Lincoln and his army. By dint
of great exertions another army was quickly raised in North Carolina,
and the command given to Gates by Congress. He was utterly unfit for it,
and (August 16, 1780) was defeated and his army almost destroyed at
Camden by Lord Cornwallis. Never in the whole course of the war had the
American army suffered such a crushing defeat. All military resistance
in South Carolina was at an end, save such as was offered by gallant
bands of patriots led by Marion, Sumter, and Pickens.

%154. The Treason of Arnold.%--The outlook was now dark enough;
but it was made darker still by the treachery of Benedict Arnold. No
officer in the Revolutionary army was more trusted. His splendid march
through the wilderness to Quebec, his bravery in the attack on that
city, the skill and courage he displayed at Saratoga, had marked him
out as a man full of promise. But he lacked that moral courage without
which great abilities count for nothing. In 1778 he was put in command
of Philadelphia, and while there so abused his office that he was
sentenced to be reprimanded by Washington. This aroused a thirst for
revenge, and led him to form a scheme to give up the Hudson River to the
enemy. With this end in view, he asked Washington in July, 1780, for the
command of West Point, the great stronghold on the Hudson, obtained it,
and at once made arrangements to surrender it to Clinton. The British
agent in the negotiation was Major John Andre, who one day in September
met Arnold near Stony Point. But most happily, as he was going back to
New York, three Americans[1] stopped him near Tarrytown, searched him,
and in his stockings found some papers in the handwriting of Arnold.
News of the arrest of Andre reached Arnold in time to enable him to
escape to the British; he served with them till the end of the war, and
then sought a refuge in England. Andre was tried as a spy, found guilty,
and hanged.

[Footnote 1: The names of these men were Paulding, Williams, and Van
Wart.]

%155. Victory at Kings Mountain.%--After the defeat of Gates at
Camden, the British overran South Carolina, and in the course of their
marauding a band of 1100 Tories marched to Kings Mountain, on the border
line between the two Carolinas. There the hardy mountaineers attacked
them (Oct. 7, 1780) and killed, wounded, or captured the entire band.

[Map: %CAMPAIGNS IN THE SOUTH 1778-1781%]

%156. Victory at the Cowpens%.--Meantime a third army was raised for
use in the South and placed under the command of Nathanael Greene, than
whom there was no abler general in the American army. With Greene was
Daniel Morgan, who had distinguished himself at Saratoga, and by him a
British force under Tarleton was attacked January 17, 1781, at a place
called the Cowpens, and not only defeated, but almost destroyed.

Enraged at these reverses, Cornwallis took the field and hurried to
attack Greene, who, too weak to fight him, began a masterly retreat of
200 miles across Carolina to Guilford Courthouse, where he turned about
and fought. He was defeated, but Cornwallis was unable to go further,
and retreated to Wilmington, N.C., with Greene in hot pursuit. Leaving
the enemy at Wilmington, Greene went back to South Carolina, and by
September, 1781, had driven the British into Charleston and Savannah.

Cornwallis, as soon as Greene left him, hurried to Petersburg, Va. A
British force during the winter and spring had been plundering and
ravaging in Virginia, under the traitor Arnold. Cornwallis took command
of this, sent Arnold to New York, and had begun a campaign against
Lafayette, when orders reached him to seize and fortify some
Virginian seaport.

%157. Surrender of Cornwallis.%--Thus instructed, Cornwallis selected
Yorktown, and began to fortify it strongly. This was early in August,
1781. On the 14th Washington heard with delight that a French fleet was
on its way to the Chesapeake, and at once decided to hurry to Virginia,
and surround Cornwallis by land while the French cut him off by sea.
Preparations were made with such secrecy and haste that Washington had
reached Philadelphia while Clinton supposed he was about to attack New
York. Clinton then sent Arnold on a raid into Connecticut to burn New
London, in the hope of forcing Washington to return. But Washington kept
straight on, hemmed Cornwallis in by land and sea, and October 19, 1781,
forced the British general to surrender.

%158. The War on the Sea.%--The first step towards the foundation of
an American navy was taken on October 13, 1775. Congress, hearing that
two British ships laden with powder and guns were on their way from
England to Quebec, ordered two swift sailing vessels to be fitted out
for the purpose of capturing them. Two months later Congress ordered
thirteen cruisers to be built, and named the officers to command them.

Meantime some merchant ships were purchased and collected at
Philadelphia, from which city, one morning in January, 1776, a fleet of
eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul
Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk
flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this
motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever hoisted on an
American man-of-war.

Ice in the Delaware kept the fleet in the river till the middle of
February, when it went to sea, sailed southward to New Providence in the
Bahamas, captured the town, brought off the governor, some powder and
cannon, and after taking several prizes got safely back to New London.

Soon after the squadron had left the Delaware, the _Lexington_, Captain
John Barry in command, while cruising off the Virginia coast, fell in
with the _Edward_, a British vessel, and after a spirited action
captured her. This was the first prize brought in by a commissioned
officer of the American navy.[1]

[Footnote 1: John Barry was a native of Ireland; he came to America at
thirteen, entered the merchant marine, and at twenty-five was captain of
a ship. At the opening of the war Barry offered his services to
Congress, and in February, 1776, was put in command of the _Lexington_.
After his victory he was transferred to the twenty-eight-gun frigate
_Effingham_, and in 1777 (while blockaded in the Delaware) with
twenty-seven men in four boats captured and destroyed a ten-gun schooner
and four transports. When the British captured Philadelphia, Barry took
the _Effingham_ up the river; but she was burned by the enemy. In 1778,
in command of the thirty-two-gun frigate _Raleigh_, he sailed from
Boston, fell in with two British frigates, and after a fight was forced
to run ashore in Penobscot Bay. Barry and his crew escaped, and in 1781
carried Laurens to France in the frigate _Alliance_. On the way out he
took a privateer, and while cruising on the way home captured the
_Atalanta_ and the _Trepassey_ after a hard fight. As Barry brought in
the first capture by a commissioned officer of the United States navy,
so he fought the last action of the war in 1782; but the enemy escaped.
When the navy was reorganized in 1794, Barry was made senior captain,
with the title of Commodore. In 1798 he commanded the frigate _United
States_ in the war with France. He died in 1803.]

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