The American Revolution 1x5

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3. I have of late lost

4. a great many intimate friends.

5. The numbers of fine young men from 15 to 5 and 20

6. with loss of limbs hurts me beyond conception,

7. and I every day curse Columbus

8. and all the discoverers of this diabolical country.

9. In what manner the Parliament will act on this occasion

10. we cannot conceive.

11. Major John Bowater.

12. You cannot—I venture to say,

13. you cannot conquer America.

14. My lords, in 3 campaigns,

15. we have done nothing and suffered much.

16. You may swell every expense and every effort,

17. pile and accumulate every assistance

18. you can buy or borrow,

19. traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince

20. that sells and sends his subjects

21. to the shambles of a foreign country.

22. Your efforts are forever vain and impotent.

23. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman,

24. while a foreign troop was landed in my country,

25. I never would lay down my arms—

26. never, never, never.

27. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

28. Jane Kamensky: The American Revolution is,

29. on the one hand, an intensely local war,

30. and, on the other hand, a great global war.

31. As a global war, the American Revolution

32. continues the series of wars among empires

33. for the prize of North America.

34. Britain, Spain, France are all seeking

35. some form of victory or advantage...

36. but the beginning of 1778,

37. the rebellious United States' cause

38. is at the thread end

39. of its ability to continue to exist.

40. There comes a soldier,

41. his bare feet are seen through his worn-out shoes,

42. his legs nearly naked from the tattered remains

43. of an only pair of stockings,

44. his breeches not sufficient to cover his nakedness.

45. His whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and discouraged.

46. Dr. Albigence Waldo, surgeon, First Connecticut Infantry.

47. The weary Continentals whom George Washington led

48. into winter quarters at Valley Forge

49. in December of 1777,

50. were, a visitor, said, just "a skeleton of an army."

51. They'd been fighting and marching for months,

52. but many hadn't been paid since August.

53. Nearly 3,000 of them were officially unfit for duty.

54. Over the next 6 months, 2,500 soldiers would die,

55. mostly from typhus, typhoid, influenza, and dysentery.

56. Clothing was so scarce that when a man died,

57. what was left of his uniform was washed and carefully preserved

58. so that another member of his unit

59. might be at least a little warmer.

60. I am now convinced

61. that unless some great change takes place,

62. this army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other

63. of these things— starve, dissolve, or disperse

64. in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.

65. George Washington, headquarters at the Valley Forge.

66. Valley Forge took its name from an abandoned ironworks

67. that stood at the intersection of a small creek

68. and the Schuylkill River

69. some 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

70. Washington himself called it "a dreary kind of place,"

71. but he chose it because it was close enough to Philadelphia

72. to move quickly against British foragers

73. when they dared venture out of the city

74. and far enough from it to make surprise attacks unlikely.

75. Pennsylvania legislators complained

76. that instead of withdrawing to Valley Forge,

77. Washington should be about the business

78. of recapturing Philadelphia.

79. I can assure those gentlemen

80. that it is a much easier and less distressing thing

81. to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room

82. by a good fireside

83. than to occupy a cold, bleak hill

84. and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets.

85. It would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection

86. to every individual and to every spot of ground

87. in the whole of the United States.

88. Nothing is more my wish,

89. but this is not possible with our present force.

90. George Washington.

91. I'd experienced what I thought

92. sufficient of the hardships of military life the year before,

93. but we were now absolutely in danger of perishing,

94. and that too in the midst of a plentiful country.

95. Joseph Plumb Martin.

96. Private Joseph Plumb Martin had survived

97. the Battles of Long Island, Kips Bay,

98. the disaster at Germantown, and the siege of Fort Mifflin,

99. and he was still just 17.

100. Now huddled in tattered canvas tents at Valley Forge,

101. soldiers went for days with nothing to eat but fire cakes—

102. just flour and water baked on hot stones.

103. Several days went by when many soldiers had no food at all.

104. There was talk of mutiny.

105. Rick Atkinson: The apparatus of war supporting the army

106. has come unglued.

107. All of these support functions

108. that help keep an army thriving, keep it healthy,

109. have really begun to implode.

110. Congress, still in exile in York, Pennsylvania,

111. told Washington to commandeer food and fodder

112. from the surrounding countryside,

113. but he resisted,

114. worried it might turn civilians against the cause.

115. Instead, he tried to purchase everything his men needed,

116. but the steady depreciation of Continental currency

117. made that problematic.

118. William Hogeland: Nothing like the American Revolutionary War

119. had been fought.

120. No public project like it had been undertaken before,

121. and it was incredibly expensive.

122. What happens with a paper currency

123. if it isn't well-supported and isn't handled properly is,

124. it depreciates wildly against gold and silver.

125. It was useless as a currency,

126. and in that sense, the Congress went broke.

127. Stephen Conway: The British Army, on the contrary,

128. has lots of hard cash, and lots of Americans

129. who are not politically interested one way or the other

130. see opportunities for commercial benefit—

131. selling products,

132. selling goods and services to the British Army.

133. Washington's army was dwindling again.

134. Men simply went home.

135. Hundreds enlisted in Loyalist regiments.

136. Others joined roving outlaw bands

137. that looted isolated farmhouses.

138. Still others made their way to Philadelphia to surrender,

139. hoping they would be treated better as prisoners of war

140. than as soldiers at Valley Forge.

141. Washington's officers were leaving, too.

142. The number of resignations

143. in the Virginia Line is induced by officers

144. finding that every man who remains at home

145. is making a fortune whilst they are spending

146. what they have in the defense of their country.

147. Thomas Nelson.

148. Over the coming months,

149. more than 500 of Washington's officers would resign.

150. To add to his troubles, some members of Congress

151. and a handful of commanders had begun whispering

152. that he had proved himself weak and indecisive in battle.

153. If the Revolution were to succeed, some argued,

154. command of the Continental Army should pass to Horatio Gates,

155. who had recently accepted the surrender

156. of an entire British army at Saratoga.

157. I did not solicit this command,

158. but accepted it after much entreaty.

159. As soon as the public gets dissatisfied with my service,

160. I shall quit the helm with as much satisfaction

161. and retire to a private station with as much content

162. as ever the weariest pilgrim felt

163. upon his safe arrival in the Holy Land.

164. George Washington.

165. Until that moment came,

166. Washington would work tirelessly,

167. first to maintain, and then to improve his army.

168. Shelter came first.

169. He ordered the men to cut down trees,

170. dismantle farmers' outbuildings and fences,

171. and bang together row upon row of log huts,

172. perhaps 2,000 of them, each one 14 by 16 feet

173. and meant to house 12 men.

174. Valley Forge would for a time

175. be the fourth largest city in America—

176. 20,000 men, women, and children from all 13 states.

177. For many, English was not their native language.

178. They spoke German, Irish, Scots,

179. Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, French,

180. Mohican, Oneida, Wolof, Kikongo, and more.

181. Nearly 10% were African American,

182. most of whom served alongside whites in integrated regiments.

183. Some 60 men were enrolled in a brand-new all-Black company

184. belonging to the First Rhode Island Regiment.

185. The state legislature promised those who were enslaved

186. their freedom at war's end and pledged to pay compensation

187. to those whose property they had been.

188. Among the Native American soldiers and scouts

189. at Valley Forge were Tuscaroras, Oneidas, as well as Mohicans

190. and Wappingers from Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

191. The hundreds of women who lived among the soldiers

192. did the men's laundry, nursed the sick and wounded,

193. and cared for an unknown number of children.

194. When men went to war, they were gone

195. and so was whatever pay they were going to get,

196. and many women just could not survive on their own,

197. and so it was actually better for everybody

198. when women traveled with the armies.

199. Martha Washington joined her husband

200. at Valley Forge.

201. At least 8 servants— men and women, white and Black,

202. enslaved and free— lived alongside the Washingtons

203. in a stone house they rented from the family

204. of the mill owner who had built it.

205. 8 of General Washington's closest aides

206. were crowded in there, as well,

207. among them, two especially idealistic young officers

208. in their early 20s—

209. John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette.

210. Iris de Rode: As soon as Lafayette arrived,

211. he starts to look around and get inspired

212. by everything he sees, and he's young,

213. and he's excited to be in this new country

214. in what, to him, is the New World,

215. and he's going to explore and understand.

216. He really starts to believe in the cause

217. for equalities, for liberties.

218. John Laurens of South Carolina

219. was the son of Henry Laurens,

220. the current president of Congress

221. and one of the biggest slave traders in North America.

222. From Valley Forge, the young Laurens wrote to his father.

223. I would solicit you to seed me

224. a number of your able-bodied men slaves

225. instead of leaving me a fortune.

226. I would bring about a twofold good.

227. First, I would advance those who are unjustly deprived

228. of the rights of mankind,

229. and I would reinforce the defenders of liberty

230. with a number of gallant soldiers.

231. My dearest friend and father,

232. I hope that my plan for serving my country

233. and the oppressed Negro race will not appear to you

234. the chimera of a young mind, but a laudable sacrifice

235. of private interest to justice and the public good.

236. John Laurens.

237. Henry Laurens rejected his son's proposal.

238. Freeing some slaves, he said, would simply "render Slavery

239. more irksome to those who remained in it."

240. In February, the bad conditions at Valley Forge

241. grew still worse.

242. Some 1,000 soldiers would sicken and die that month.

243. I was called to relieve a soldier

244. thought to be dying.

245. He was an Indian, an excellent soldier.

246. He has fought for those very people

247. who disinherited his forefathers.

248. Having finished his pilgrimage,

249. he was discharged from the war of life and death.

250. His memory ought to be respected

251. more than those rich ones who supply the world

252. with nothing better than money and vice.

253. Dr. Albigence Waldo.

254. Desperate to feed his hungry men,

255. Washington now organized what was called the Great Forage,

256. more than 1,500 men in all,

257. to scour the countryside in eastern Pennsylvania,

258. western New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland,

259. seizing whatever they could find

260. and handing out promissory notes in exchange.

261. The militia and some regular troops on one side,

262. and Loyalist refugees with the Englishmen on the other,

263. were constantly roving about,

264. plundering and destroying everything

265. in a barbarous manner.

266. Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred

267. and abominable selfishness were met with.

268. Reverend Nils Collin.

269. Nils Collin was a Swedish missionary

270. sent to America to serve as rector

271. of the Swedish Church in Swedesboro, New Jersey.

272. Since he considered himself a subject of the Swedish monarch,

273. his conscience would not allow him to swear allegiance

274. to the British king or to ally himself with the Patriot cause.

275. He vowed to remain neutral,

276. but bands of American and British soldiers

277. and their sympathizers took turns occupying the town,

278. seizing livestock and provisions,

279. and punishing those who stood in their way.

280. Many members of the congregation

281. suffered injury in various ways by this frenzy.

282. Dr. Otto's house was burnt down by Loyalist refugees.

283. James Stillman lost most of his cattle.

284. Sutherland, a Scotchman, together with a young Swede,

285. Hendrickson, were taken to New York as prisoners.

286. On the opposite side, the militia pillaged the following—

287. Jacob and Anders Jones, who had traded with the English;

288. a sea captain, Jan Cox, whose beds were cut up

289. and his China, tea tables, and bureaus smashed.

290. From all this it is apparent

291. how terrible this civil war raged,

292. party hatred flamed in the hearts of my people.

293. Some would not go to church because the sight of their enemy

294. aroused the memory of the evils they had suffered.

295. Nils Collin.

296. Vincent Brown: Given the choice to fight for the Patriot cause

297. or join the British effort to suppress the Patriots,

298. most people stood to the side.

299. Most people tried to let it pass.

300. They tried to get out of the way.

301. It's common individuals,

302. ordinary individuals asking the question

303. that I think we all ask about politics every day—

304. "What does this have to do with me?"

305. Girls at the age of 12 and 13

306. require a mother's care.

307. A girl of 13, left without an advisor

308. and fancying herself a woman,

309. stands on a precipice that trembles beneath her.

310. Betsy Ambler.

311. Betsy Ambler and her younger sister Mary

312. spent that winter in Winchester, Virginia.

313. They were left with an aunt and uncle while their parents

314. and little sisters headed southeast to avoid the cold.

315. Betsy spent much of her time trying to win the attention

316. of "charming young..." Continental "officers."

317. "Here," she said, "was a fine field open for a romantic girl."

318. Early in the spring,

319. our good father returned.

320. And though he treated us himself as children,

321. he saw that we had been considered of an age

322. to attract too much attention.

323. Betsy Ambler.

324. The Ambler family would be reunited,

325. and they would be returning to Yorktown,

326. what Betsy called her "beloved birthplace."

327. Her father's finances had been hit hard by the war.

328. He and his two daughters had to make the long,

329. dusty trip home in a wagon, not a coach.

330. "We were rather ashamed of our cavalry," Betsy remembered.

331. The only possible good

332. from the entire change in our circumstances was that

333. we were made acquainted with the manner

334. and situation of our country,

335. which we otherwise should never have known.

336. We were forced to industry

337. and to endeavor by amiable and agreeable conduct

338. to make amends for the loss of fortune.

339. Betsy Ambler.

340. When the Amblers finally got to Yorktown,

341. they settled not

342. in "our former mansion," she recalled,

343. but in a much smaller house on the edge of town.

344. My imagination frequently recurs

345. to that enchanting spot situated on a little eminence

346. overlooking a smiling meadow, where a gentle stream

347. meandering round the sloping hill

348. was lost in one of the noblest rivers in our country.

349. Here, my sister and myself often wandered,

350. gathering wildflowers to adorn our hair,

351. till we almost fancied ourselves heroines.

352. Betsy Ambler.

353. Christopher Brown: Washington had this really interesting

354. quality of being able to project authority and confidence

355. and allowing that to spill out into others,

356. so that they acquired authority and confidence

357. by being in his orbit.

358. I think he had the effect of pulling out

359. some of the best in the people who were around him.

360. To provide his army

361. with the reliable logistical support it desperately needed,

362. Washington insisted that Congress appoint

363. as quartermaster general the officer he trusted most—

364. Nathanael Greene,

365. but Greene was a fighting general.

366. He knew there was more combat ahead

367. and wanted to be in on what he called "the mischief."

368. Greene says, nobody in history

369. has ever heard of a "quartermaster."

370. He doesn't want the job, but he takes the job.

371. Like Washington, he's got a brain

372. built for executive action,

373. and he's good at being the quartermaster.

374. Thanks to Nathanael Greene's

375. mastery of logistics and Washington's appeals

376. to state governors, by the end of March 1778,

377. herds of cattle and sheep were plodding toward Valley Forge

378. from several directions, along with wagon trains

379. filled with everything from barrels of nails

380. to brand-new uniforms and crates of bayonets and muskets.

381. Now that his men were better fed, clothed, and equipped

382. and their ranks were swelling as fresh recruits,

383. recalled regulars, and returning convalescents

384. all converged on Valley Forge,

385. Washington wanted every man in his newly reorganized army

386. to undergo formal military training

387. to end what he called the confusion that had too often

388. undercut its performance on the battlefield.

389. The man he picked to oversee that task

390. was a newcomer to America— Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard

391. August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben.

392. Never before or since have I had

393. such an impression of the ancient fabled God of War

394. as when I looked on the baron.

395. The trappings of his horse,

396. the enormous holsters of his pistols

397. all seemed to favor the idea.

398. He seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars.

399. Private Ashbel Green.

400. Steuben claimed to be a baron,

401. a lieutenant general in the Prussian Army,

402. and a close aide to Frederick the Great.

403. He really was a baron, though a penniless one,

404. and he had served in Frederick's headquarters

405. for a time, but his army career in Europe

406. had been cut short by an accusation

407. that he had taken familiarities with young boys.

408. In America, he said, he wanted to put

409. his "talents in the arts of war in the service of a republic."

410. Steuben was hot-tempered, and his English

411. was initially limited to a single word—"goddamn."

412. When some movement

413. or maneuver was not performed to his mind,

414. he began to swear in German, then in French,

415. and then in both languages together.

416. When he had exhausted his artillery of foreign oaths,

417. he would call to his aides,

418. "Come and swear for me in English.

419. These fellows won't do what I bid them."

420. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau.

421. Edward Lengel: Baron von Steuben is really a comical figure

422. when he arrives at camp.

423. The men make fun of him, but he is a man who you need

424. pulling the men together

425. and giving them a sense of common purpose.

426. After the men have drilled with him for a little while,

427. they stop laughing.

428. But for all his bluster,

429. Steuben grasped the character of the men he was to work with.

430. "The genius of this nation is not to be compared...

431. with the Prussians, Austrians or French,"

432. he wrote to an old friend back home.

433. "You say to your soldier, 'Do this,' and he does it,"

434. but here, "I am obliged to say,

435. "'This is the reason why you ought to do that,'

436. and then he does it."

437. Steuben taught the men to march

438. at a "common step" of 75 paces a minute

439. and a "quick step" of 120 paces,

440. to move in columns rather than straggle in single file,

441. to shift into battle line and back again when under fire,

442. to load and fire musket volleys more quickly,

443. and to become proficient with the bayonet,

444. the weapon that had once terrified them

445. when in British or Hessian hands.

446. As skills improved, so did morale.

447. By spring, the danger of mutiny had eased.

448. So had the mutterings about Washington's leadership.

449. He was, it was clear,

450. indispensable to the cause of liberty.

451. That year, a German-language almanac

452. published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,

453. would call Washington Des Landes Vater—

454. "the Country's Father."

455. He was the glue that held people together.

456. These 13 colonies had to come together,

457. and he was the person to do it.

458. We would not have had a country without him.

459. I don't know, actually. I mean, you know—

460. God, I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm not a huge fan

461. of "great man" theories of history

462. or explanations of history, but let's put it this way.

463. It's easy to see the American effort for independence

464. failing without Washington's leadership.

465. After midnight on April 23, 1778,

466. 31 sailors and Marines

467. from the 20-gun Continental Navy sloop "Ranger,"

468. tossing in the Irish Sea, climbed into two longboats

469. and began rowing toward the port of Whitehaven

470. on the western coast of England.

471. Their Scottish-born commander knew these waters well.

472. He'd begun his seafaring career there

473. as a 13-year-old apprentice seaman named John Paul Jr.

474. In the intervening years, he had sailed aboard slave ships,

475. risen to command merchant vessels,

476. and then, after killing a crewman, fled to America.

477. There, he changed his name to John Paul Jones

478. and volunteered to join the fledgling Continental Navy.

479. I resolved to make the greatest efforts

480. to bring to an end the barbarous ravages

481. to which the English turned in America

482. by making good fire in England of shipping.

483. John Paul Jones.

484. When Jones' men reached the Whitehaven wharf,

485. they found more than 200 vessels moored in its harbor.

486. As Jones worked to get a fire going

487. aboard a boat loaded with coal,

488. angry townspeople raced to the waterfront.

489. I stood between them and the ship of fire

490. with a pistol in my hand and ordered them to retire,

491. which they did with precipitation.

492. The flames had already caught the rigging

493. and begun to ascend the main mast.

494. It was time to retire.

495. John Paul Jones.

496. Jones and his men made it back to the Ranger

497. and sailed away.

498. The next day,

499. they engaged a British warship, the "Drake,"

500. and after a battle that Jones remembered

501. as "warm, close, and obstinate," captured it and its crew

502. and brought it into the French port of Brest.

503. Jones understood his impact on British public opinion.

504. Mothers began warning their children to be good,

505. or the fearsome "Pirate" John Paul Jones would get them.

506. What was done is sufficient to show

507. that not all their boasted navy can protect their own coasts

508. and that the scenes of distress which they have occasioned

509. in America may soon be brought home to their own doors.

510. John Paul Jones.

511. What a miraculous change in the political world—

512. the government of France an advocate for liberty,

513. espousing the cause of Protestants,

514. and risking a war to secure their independence;

515. Britain at war with America, France in alliance with her.

516. These, my friend, are astonishing changes.

517. Elbridge Gerry.

518. It had taken nearly 3 months for word

519. of the new military alliance with France to reach Washington.

520. The French would be sending soldiers and the fleet.

521. His army would no longer be alone.

522. "This... great... glorious... news," he said,

523. "must put the independency of America

524. out of all manner of dispute."

525. Washington was eager now

526. to test his newly disciplined army against the enemy.

527. The enemy imagined Philadelphia

528. to be of more importance to us than it really was

529. and to that belief added the absurd idea

530. that the soul of all America was centered there

531. and would be conquered there.

532. Thomas Paine.

533. The British, German, and Loyalist troops

534. penned up in Philadelphia had had a hard winter, too.

535. They had subsisted on half-rations.

536. Wounded troops occupied every public building in town

537. except the State House,

538. where the Declaration of Independence had been signed,

539. which was crowded with Patriot prisoners.

540. 1777 had ended badly for the British.

541. General Burgoyne had surrendered an entire army at Saratoga.

542. General Howe might have occupied Philadelphia,

543. and his subordinates still held New York City and Newport,

544. but they controlled little else,

545. and now, with the French joining the war,

546. Britain would be required to defend

547. all its imperial holdings—

548. in India, Africa, Ireland, the Mediterranean

549. and the Caribbean, as well as in North America.

550. Kathleen DuVal: The French decide to enter the war,

551. and that changes everything for Britain.

552. Britain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next.

553. Suddenly, those 13 colonies that were rebelling

554. are kind of the small potatoes of the war.

555. They could lose their profitable plantation islands.

556. They could lose Jamaica.

557. The stakes are big in this war,

558. and the 13 colonies have become just a tiny corner of it.

559. Lord North, the British prime minister,

560. dispatched peace commissioners to America that spring,

561. armed with a series of concessions

562. aimed at ending the fighting,

563. everything the Americans had been demanding for years.

564. All they had to do was renounce independence.

565. What they're offering is basically terms

566. that would have been acceptable to the colonists

567. in 1774 or 1775.

568. Congress would not hear of it.

569. The very idea of dependence,

570. its president, Henry Laurens, said,

571. "is inadmissible."

572. British negotiators responded with a warning.

573. Americans could now expect far harsher treatment

574. than any they had yet received,

575. and they had appointed a new commander

576. to deliver that treatment.

577. On the 10th of May,

578. Sir Henry Clinton arrived at Philadelphia,

579. relieving Sir William Howe as commander in chief.

580. Captain Johann Ewald.

581. Henry Clinton is a formidable military officer.

582. He's had a lot of combat experience,

583. but he's a very, very difficult personality.

584. He's easily aggrieved.

585. He carries his grievances and grudges with him.

586. He will be the British commander in chief longer

587. than any other general in the American Revolution,

588. for 4 years.

589. General Henry Clinton, who had been fighting in America

590. since Bunker's Hill, had hoped to be relieved.

591. Instead, he would be asked to do at least as much

592. as his predecessor had been asked to do

593. and to do it with far fewer men.

594. His new orders were to send 8,000 of his soldiers

595. to protect British interests in Florida and the Caribbean.

596. He was to leave the rest of the New England

597. and Mid-Atlantic states in Patriot hands for the most part

598. and eventually mount seaborne assaults

599. on the 4 Southern Colonies.

600. Clinton concluded he first had to get his army

601. back to New York, which meant evacuating Philadelphia

602. that had been taken just 9 months earlier.

603. Most of his men, he decided, would have to march to New York.

604. He had too few ships to carry his entire army

605. as well as some 3,000 Loyalists

606. now eager to leave with him.

607. All of the loyal inhabitants

608. who had taken our protection lamented that they

609. now had to give up all their property.

610. Brave people who have rendered such good service to the King

611. are being left behind.

612. God alone knows what will happen to them.

613. Johann Ewald.

614. Maya Jasanoff: Philadelphia has its population turned inside out

615. a couple of different times in the Revolution.

616. New York City has its population turned around,

617. a kind of back-and-forth of Loyalist

618. and Patriot residents, depending on which army

619. is in charge, and when an army leaves,

620. the population that had come in order to live

621. under their protection have to sort of fumble

622. and figure out what it is that they're going to do next.

623. Philadelphia, June 18th.

624. This morning when we arose,

625. there was not one redcoat to be seen.

626. Colonel Gordon and some others had not been gone

627. a quarter of an hour before the Americans entered the city.

628. Elizabeth Drinker.

629. To act as military governor of Philadelphia,

630. George Washington selected General Benedict Arnold,

631. still suffering from war wounds so severe

632. that he could not mount a horse.

633. He was to restore order and preserve tranquility.

634. Philadelphia was now almost unrecognizable.

635. Retreating redcoats had looted homes,

636. desecrated churches, felled orchards for firewood,

637. and in the houses they had used as barracks,

638. cut holes in the floor to serve as privies.

639. Returning Patriot refugees were enraged

640. at what had been done to their city

641. and were eager to punish anyone

642. who had collaborated with the occupiers.

643. The homes and property of scores of accused Tories

644. would be confiscated.

645. 23 men were tried for treason.

646. Two Quakers were hanged.

647. Nathaniel Philbrick: Philadelphia was divided

648. between the Loyalists and the Patriots,

649. who were at each other's throats.

650. It would have required someone of great tact and sympathy

651. to keep the lid on this city.

652. That was not Arnold.

653. By June 18, 1778, most of Clinton's army

654. was in New Jersey and had begun its march toward New York,

655. some 90 miles away.

656. They moved in two great columns—

657. more than 18,000 soldiers,

658. nearly 2,000 noncombatants, 46 artillery pieces,

659. and 5,000 horses.

660. The next morning, George Washington led his army

661. out of Valley Forge for the first time in months

662. and began shadowing the British as they moved east,

663. looking for an opportunity to strike.

664. Washington has decided

665. that he is not going to directly intercept this column,

666. which is very strong.

667. He wants to nick at them and—and peck at them

668. from the rear and make life miserable for them

669. and watch for an opening.

670. Once again, New Jersey militia

671. made the British passage as painful as possible,

672. felling trees across the roads, destroying bridges,

673. flooding streams to make fording difficult,

674. and picking off individual soldiers by ambush.

675. The whole province was in arms,

676. following us with Washington's army,

677. constantly surrounding us on our marches and besieging our camps.

678. Each step cost human blood.

679. Johann Ewald.

680. The weather added to their misery—

681. heat that soared above 90 degrees,

682. sudden downpours that turned sandy roads into bogs,

683. followed by dense humidity, swarms of mosquitoes,

684. and still more heat.

685. 20 British soldiers died of heat exhaustion on a single day.

686. As many as 500 men are thought to have deserted

687. during the march, most of them Hessians,

688. blending into German-speaking communities nearby.

689. On the morning of June 24, 1778,

690. Americans otherwise disconnected

691. by the vastness of their continent

692. witnessed an otherworldly phenomenon

693. at roughly the same time as the moon eclipsed the sun.

694. Indians and Spanish colonists

695. in Mexico and Texas saw it first.

696. When it reached Spanish New Orleans and British Mobile,

697. the flags of empire flew in sudden darkness

698. for more than 4 minutes.

699. The total eclipse lasted even longer

700. for the Muscogee Creeks on the Chattahoochee River

701. and for the "Maroon" communities of self-emancipated

702. former slaves hidden in the Great Dismal Swamp.

703. When mid-morning darkness descended

704. on the Virginia capital at Williamsburg,

705. "Lightening buggs were seen as at Night."

706. The same darkness briefly enveloped Washington's army

707. as it followed the British into New Jersey.

708. "Had this happened upon such an occasion in "olden time,"

709. Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered,

710. "it would have been considered ominous,

711. either of good or bad fortune, but we took no notice of it."

712. Martin had been detached from his Connecticut regiment

713. and assigned to join fast-moving light infantry

714. with orders to follow the enemy closely enough

715. to capture stragglers and welcome deserters.

716. The day after the eclipse,

717. Clinton decided to head east towards Sandy Hook,

718. a Loyalist stronghold from which royal transports

719. could ferry his men to New York.

720. He merged his two divisions into one column,

721. and, he recalled, hoping that "Mr. Washington might possibly

722. be induced to commit himself" to battle,

723. the elite of my army between him

724. and my ... to defend it from insult."

725. He put General Charles Cornwallis

726. in charge of that force.

727. At Hopewell, Washington convened a council of war.

728. General Nathanael Greene, back in the field,

729. was eager for a fight.

730. If we suffer the enemy to pass

731. through the Jerseys without attempting anything upon them,

732. I think we shall ever regret it.

733. People expect something from us, and our strength demands it.

734. Nathanael Greene.

735. But most commanders urged caution.

736. Major General Charles Lee— Washington's second in command,

737. captured two years before and only recently exchanged—

738. was especially adamant in his opposition.

739. Sending Americans against British regulars

740. would be "criminal," he said,

741. but when Washington decided to send forward

742. 4,500 troops anyway, Lee insisted

743. seniority required that he lead them.

744. If he weren't given command,

745. he said, he would be "disgraced."

746. Washington relented and ordered Lee

747. to follow Cornwallis' elite rearguard

748. and look for an opportunity to attack.

749. The British left their encampment

750. around Monmouth Court House well before dawn

751. on Sunday, June 28th.

752. By mid-morning, Lee's men had formed

753. west of the British line, trying piecemeal

754. to attack and dislodge Cornwallis' forces.

755. All their efforts proved futile.

756. As the Patriots struggled

757. in the increasingly brutal heat,

758. Clinton sent an entire division to reinforce Cornwallis.

759. More than 10,000 British, German,

760. and Loyalist troops counterattacked.

761. Things go south in a hurry for the Americans.

762. Lee loses control, and the next thing you know,

763. this American advance guard, the vanguard

764. that's supposed to be attacking, is fleeing.

765. They're confused.

766. They begin falling back, but then Washington appears.

767. The knowledge of his presence causes the retreat

768. to stop instantaneously without even having said a word.

769. Those who witnessed this moment said that it was like

770. a bolt of electricity shot through the forces

771. once they realized that Washington was there.

772. His presence stopped the retreat.

773. His fine appearance on horseback,

774. his calm courage gave him the air

775. best calculated to excite enthusiasm.

776. He rode all along the lines amid the shouts of the soldiers,

777. cheering them by his voice and example.

778. Marquis de Lafayette.

779. Washington gives some orders.

780. The men get back into line...

781. and they face down the British attack,

782. and they don't break.

783. Fire!

784. General Steuben's training had paid off.

785. The British launched a series of assaults.

786. General Henry Clinton himself led one of them, sword in hand.

787. Colonels Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr

788. both had horses shot out from under them,

789. but the Americans held.

790. Washington places his defenses in a way

791. that stops the British assault.

792. He's got good ground for his artillery.

793. He's hammering the British.

794. The artillery duel continued for two hours.

795. Infantry on both sides sought whatever cover they could.

796. With the thermometer at 96,

797. what could be done in a hot pine barren

798. loaded with everything that the poor soldier carries?

799. It breaks my heart that I was obliged

800. under those cruel circumstances to attempt it.

801. General Henry Clinton.

802. Finally, at around 3:45,

803. Clinton ordered a stop to the firing.

804. With his supply train now well on its way

805. towards Sandy Hook and safety,

806. he reluctantly began to withdraw his exhausted troops.

807. Washington's men were worn out, too.

808. The heat, Joseph Plumb Martin remembered,

809. was like "the mouth of ... oven."

810. It was generally understood the battle

811. was to be renewed at the dawn of day,

812. but at the dawn of day, I heard the shout of victory—

813. "The British are gone."

814. Dr. William Read.

815. The Battle of Monmouth had left

816. some 362 of Washington's men and 411 of Clinton's

817. dead, wounded, or missing.

818. Corpses, swollen and blackening in the heat,

819. sprawled everywhere.

820. Both sides claimed victory.

821. Clinton's column reached Sandy Hook

822. without serious interruption and embarked for Staten Island.

823. His objective was to get his army to New York,

824. and he had done so...

825. but when the fighting ended, Washington's men held the field.

826. "It is glorious for America,"

827. a New Jersey colonel wrote his wife.

828. At least one British officer admitted his army had endured

829. "a handsome flogging."

830. Although there would be fierce fighting and many skirmishes

831. in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states,

832. Monmouth would be the last major battle fought in the North

833. during the American Revolution...

834. and it would be more than 3 years before George Washington

835. would personally lead his troops into battle again.

836. Serena Zabin: What he learns over the course of the war

837. is that there are other ways to perform his leadership

838. that's not actually by doing something big and bold

839. but that waiting and holding back and containment

840. can also be a way of showing his strength.

841. Cruel as this war has been

842. and separated as I am on account of it

843. from the dearest connection in life,

844. I would not exchange my country for the wealth of the Indies,

845. or be any other than an American.

846. Abigail Adams.

847. Stacy Schiff: One of the great blessings here is how much time

848. John spends in Philadelphia with Abigail back in Massachusetts

849. because from that, we have really the most detailed,

850. richest correspondence of the Revolutionary years.

851. In the summer of 1778, Abigail and John Adams

852. were apart, as they almost always were during the war.

853. She was at their home in Braintree, Massachusetts,

854. managing the household,

855. and he was newly arrived in Paris,

856. sent by Congress to join Benjamin Franklin

857. and the American delegation to France.

858. There, on the Fourth of July, Adams and Franklin hosted

859. a modest celebration on the second anniversary

860. of American independence.

861. We had the honor of the company

862. of all the American gentlemen and ladies in and about Paris

863. with a few of the French gentlemen in the neighborhood.

864. They were not ministers of state, nor ambassadors,

865. nor princes, nor dukes,

866. nor peers, nor marquises,

867. nor cardinals, nor archbishops,

868. nor bishops.

869. John Adams.

870. Thousands of miles west of Paris in Philadelphia,

871. where the Continental Congress had just returned from exile,

872. General Benedict Arnold presided over a feast

873. and entertainment for the city's political,

874. military, and merchant leaders.

875. They were interrupted by what one of them called

876. "a crowd of the vulgar" outside

877. mocking the pretensions of the wealthy.

878. I think the American Revolution

879. creates an idea that there is no class in the United States,

880. that we, in our founding moment, decided to do away with that.

881. It's not true.

882. There have always been wide varieties

883. in wealth and power in the United States,

884. and there were more opportunities

885. in the colonies than there were in Europe,

886. but some of the opportunity,

887. some of the promise of the United States,

888. is built on slavery and taking Native land.

889. Late the same evening of July 4th,

890. in the heart of the continent, Virginia militia

891. under Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark

892. reached British-held Kaskaskia,

893. a mostly French-speaking village on the Mississippi River.

894. Ready!

895. In the dead of night,

896. Clark's men overwhelmed the town's defenses.

897. The next morning, he notified

898. the terrified townspeople that the King of France

899. had joined the Americans.

900. Clark guaranteed they would be free to practice

901. their Catholic faith, since all religions

902. would be tolerated in America,

903. provided they agreed to bow

904. to the authority of the United States.

905. It was a bloodless start to what would become

906. Clark's bloody campaign to conquer Indian country

907. east of the Mississippi.

908. The French fleet Washington had been waiting for

909. finally appeared off New York

910. in the week after Independence Day—

911. 12 ships of the line, 4 frigates,

912. and over 4,000 French marines, all commanded

913. by Vice Admiral Charles Henri, Comte d'Estaing,

914. a veteran of warfare against Britain in India and Sumatra.

915. De Rode: D'Estaing is a French aristocrat.

916. He considers himself quite superior

917. to these American "ragtag" army and is looking at them

918. and thinks, "How am I gonna work with these people?"

919. Because he thought, "I'm the French admiral.

920. I know what to do here, so they better listen to me."

921. Washington hoped a coordinated attack

922. with this new French force could trap Clinton

923. in New York, take back the city,

924. and, by so doing, persuade Britain

925. that further prosecution of the war was hopeless.

926. Because d'Estaing had convinced himself

927. that his heaviest ships would run aground

928. trying to enter New York Harbor, he decided to move

929. against the British garrison at Newport, Rhode Island, instead.

930. It was to be a coordinated assault

931. with American ground forces under General John Sullivan,

932. but neither commander spoke the other's language.

933. Sullivan, the son of Irish indentured servants,

934. loathed aristocrats like the French commander,

935. who, in turn, found Sullivan crude and inept.

936. It all went wrong.

937. Without informing the French, Sullivan advanced

938. a day earlier than had been planned.

939. When a British fleet appeared offshore,

940. d'Estaing sailed out to do battle...

941. but a howling storm scattered

942. and seriously damaged both fleets.

943. De Rode: 18th-century warfare is mainly based on the weather.

944. You could have no alternative.

945. If there is a big storm coming in,

946. you can't do anything besides getting just wiped away.

947. Admiral d'Estaing had to go for repairs in Boston.

948. The French, in essence,

949. leave the Americans in the lurch.

950. Sullivan is barely able to extract his forces

951. from what could have been a catastrophe.

952. The first joint French-American operation

953. had failed.

954. Once the repairs were finished in Boston,

955. d'Estaing would set sail for the French West Indies

956. without even bothering to tell Washington he was leaving.

957. French ships would be available to the Americans

958. only during the late summer and early fall,

959. when hurricanes threatened the Caribbean.

960. The American Revolution was important to France

961. only when its successes deepened Britain's failures

962. and Washington knew he could not win

963. the decisive battle without French help.

964. Anti-French feeling runs so high after this

965. that Lafayette said he never at any point in the war

966. felt that his life was at so much risk

967. as it was when he walked down the streets of Boston

968. after this catastrophe at Rhode Island.

969. He thought he was gonna be strung up.

970. I, with some of my comrades

971. who were in the Battle of White Plains in the year '76,

972. saw a number of the graves of those who fell in that battle.

973. Some of the bodies had been so slightly buried

974. that the dogs or hogs or both had dug them out of the ground.

975. Here were Hessian skulls.

976. Poor fellows!

977. They were left unburied in a foreign land.

978. They had perhaps as near and dear friends

979. to lament their sad destiny

980. as the Americans who laid buried near them.

981. They should have kept at home.

982. Joseph Plumb Martin.

983. By the fall of 1778,

984. Washington's army was arrayed in an arc

985. from Middlebrook, New Jersey, to Danbury, Connecticut.

986. He would remain within striking distance of New York City,

987. determined to recapture the place

988. he had been forced to abandon in 1776.

989. For months, his and Clinton's armies

990. had probed one another's lines.

991. On a single summer afternoon near Kingsbridge,

992. a Maryland patrol ambushed a German unit,

993. killing 6 and wounding 6 more,

994. and Loyalist cavalry ambushed and hacked to death

995. most of the Stockbridge Indians who had been

996. with Washington's army since 1775.

997. They "have fought and bled by our side," Washington said.

998. "We consider them as our friends and brothers."

999. On the great road

1000. from New York to Boston,

1001. not a single solitary traveler was visible

1002. from week to week or from month to month.

1003. The world was motionless and silent.

1004. Chaplain Timothy Dwight.

1005. Before the Revolution, Westchester County in New York

1006. had been one of the wealthiest in the colonies,

1007. but for nearly two years now, it had been

1008. a part of what was called the "Neutral Ground,"

1009. uncontrolled by either army

1010. but plundered by both again and again.

1011. Roving bands of lawless raiders prowled the countryside

1012. rustling livestock, extorting cash,

1013. looting and burning homes, raping women.

1014. This year has not been a very glorious one to America.

1015. Our enemies, however, have nothing to boast of

1016. since they have not gained one inch of territory more

1017. than they possessed a year ago

1018. and are at least Philadelphia out of pocket.

1019. What the winter may produce I know not.

1020. I wish it would give us peace but do not expect it.

1021. Abigail Adams.

1022. It's pretty clear the British

1023. are not gonna win the war in New England.

1024. They're not gonna get enough popular support,

1025. probably not gonna win the war

1026. in the Middle Atlantic region either.

1027. The great potential place

1028. where their relatively more reduced forces

1029. can have more leverage is the South,

1030. so the goal is just see what you can retain.

1031. You probably can't keep all of these 13 colonies.

1032. Maybe you can keep the most valuable of these colonies.

1033. The Southern Colonies are seen as an integrated part

1034. of an economic system that generates

1035. great power and wealth for Britain,

1036. so keeping the Southern Colonies

1037. with their ability to provision the West Indian islands,

1038. and particularly their plantation economies,

1039. is seen as a vital British interest,

1040. and that, more than anything else,

1041. is why the war shifts to the South from 1778.

1042. After General Clinton learned the French fleet

1043. had sailed away from Boston, he prepared for the invasion

1044. of the South that London had ordered him to undertake.

1045. Another reason that the British pursue

1046. a Southern strategy after Saratoga is that

1047. they assume that there are many more Loyalists in the South

1048. who will come to their aid.

1049. There was also, of course,

1050. the question of the enslaved population.

1051. A great majority of the inhabitants

1052. of North and South Carolina are loyal subjects.

1053. It is also well known that the principal resources

1054. for carrying on the rebellion are drawn from the labor

1055. of an incredible multitude of Negroes

1056. in the Southern Colonies.

1057. But the instant that the King's troops are put in motion

1058. in those colonies, these poor slaves

1059. would be ready to rise upon their rebel masters.

1060. Moses Kirkland.

1061. So the Southern Strategy was to recapture

1062. the Southern Colonies one by one,

1063. starting with Georgia, and move up the coast,

1064. and in each place, they hoped to put Loyalists in charge,

1065. and that way, the British Army could continue moving north.

1066. from New York, General Clinton sent

1067. a squadron south to try to capture Savannah,

1068. the capital of Georgia and its only city of any size.

1069. With the help

1070. of an African American river pilot named Sampson,

1071. the British fleet sailed up the Savannah River

1072. and began disembarking below the city

1073. at dawn on December 29, 1778.

1074. Some 700 Continental troops and 150 local militia were waiting.

1075. The British commander saw

1076. that a direct assault

1077. was certain to be bloody.

1078. Then Quamino Dolly, an elderly enslaved man,

1079. led part of the British force through a swamp

1080. that allowed them to get behind the startled Americans

1081. and open fire.

1082. The Patriots panicked.

1083. British troops chased them through the town.

1084. 83 Americans were killed and 30 more drowned

1085. trying to swim across the Yamacraw Creek.

1086. 453 surrendered.

1087. The British lost just 7 dead.

1088. Over the weeks that followed, The British captured Augusta

1089. and reimposed royal rule in Georgia.

1090. "I have," their commander boasted,

1091. "ripped one star and one stripe from the rebel flag."

1092. My disposition always active,

1093. I could not content myself at home

1094. while my fellow countrymen

1095. were fighting the battles of my country.

1096. John Greenwood.

1097. In January of 1779,

1098. the teenaged fifer John Greenwood

1099. decided to try something new.

1100. He would sign onto a Boston privateer,

1101. hoping both to strike more blows at the British

1102. and to make a fortune for himself.

1103. He chose the 18-gun, 130-man "Cumberland"

1104. because its commander was Captain John Manley,

1105. who had been the most successful sea raider

1106. in the Continental Navy for years

1107. and who was now a civilian only because there were

1108. too few naval vessels for him to have one to command.

1109. The Americans have no navy to speak of.

1110. Congress asks that 13 frigates be built.

1111. None of those frigates really get into action

1112. in a meaningful way.

1113. The British have 400 warships.

1114. What the Americans do have are privateers.

1115. Privateers made warfare a for-profit endeavor,

1116. and so you had countless sailors in New England

1117. and up and down the coast, volunteering

1118. to go out in privateers, take British vessels,

1119. and make them money from what they got from them.

1120. Profits from privateering attracted

1121. a host of Revolutionary leaders,

1122. including Generals Nathanael Greene,

1123. Henry Knox, and George Washington himself.

1124. Investors shared the profits from the sale of captured cargo

1125. with the officers and men who took them,

1126. like the crew of the "Cumberland,"

1127. John Greenwood's ship.

1128. Every ship had the right or took it

1129. to wear what kind of fancy flag the captain pleased.

1130. Captain Manley's flag was a very singular one,

1131. with a pine tree painted green and under the tree

1132. the representation of a large rattlesnake cut into 13 pieces,

1133. then in large black letters, "Join or Die."

1134. John Greenwood.

1135. Over the course of the Revolution,

1136. some 1,700 American privateers

1137. are thought to have prowled the seas,

1138. capturing nearly 2,000 British vessels.

1139. John Greenwood and the "Cumberland" set out

1140. for the Caribbean, the most profitable hunting ground.

1141. Americans had already seized so many British merchant ships

1142. that they had reduced the sugar trade by 2/3.

1143. The "Cumberland's" voyage went smoothly at first.

1144. They easily commandeered a British ship

1145. loaded with soldiers and wine.

1146. A few days later, they came within sight

1147. of the port of Bridgetown on the island of Barbados...

1148. but the next morning, a British Navy frigate called the "Pomona"

1149. bore down on them with 36 guns and a crew of 300.

1150. British cannonballs

1151. tore through the "Cumberland's" sails and rigging.

1152. One shot went "through and through" the hull,

1153. Greenwood remembered, causing the whole ship to shudder.

1154. There was nothing else to do but surrender.

1155. The Americans spent 5 grim months

1156. in the Bridgetown jail before they were exchanged.

1157. John Greenwood would serve on at least 4 more privateers

1158. before the Revolution ended.

1159. He was captured and imprisoned 3 more times

1160. and somehow survived it all.

1161. After the war, John Greenwood

1162. would become a prominent Manhattan dentist.

1163. His most celebrated patient was his old commander,

1164. George Washington, for whom he fashioned dentures

1165. of human and horse's teeth and ivory from a hippopotamus.

1166. You ask me,

1167. "Can the enemy continue to prosecute the war?"

1168. I answer, "Can we carry on the war much longer?"

1169. Certainly, no.

1170. The true point of light, then, in which to place

1171. and consider this matter is

1172. not simply whether Great Britain can carry on the war,

1173. but whose finances— theirs or ours—

1174. is most likely to fail.

1175. George Washington.

1176. General Washington spent the first 5 weeks of 1779

1177. in Philadelphia, summoned there by Congress.

1178. It was not a happy visit.

1179. "I never was much... afraid of the enemy's arms,"

1180. Washington wrote a friend,

1181. but he did fear that people were wearying of the war

1182. that had gone on for 4 years and still had no end in sight,

1183. and Congress seemed mired, he said,

1184. in "party disputes and personal quarrels."

1185. The value of Continental currency was melting

1186. "like snow before a hot sun," he complained,

1187. so that "a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase

1188. a wagon load of provisions."

1189. Christopher Brown: On both the North American side

1190. and on the British side, there is an exhaustion

1191. that is settling in and an economic reality for both—

1192. the American side, the question of coming up

1193. with the resources every year to be able to fight the war—

1194. uniforms, guns, paying the men,

1195. replacing the ones who die, replacing the ones who desert.

1196. Britain has the money,

1197. but it starts to look a little bit like a sunk-cost problem.

1198. "Are we going to continue to pour money

1199. into an effort when there's no end in view?"

1200. One of the critical ways by which

1201. the Revolutionary War was funded was debt.

1202. There were a number of ways to raise money,

1203. but the best ways were to borrow,

1204. so you had to go to lenders, largely a merchant class,

1205. but also planters and even some prosperous farmers.

1206. It was a bit of a risky speculation

1207. because getting paid back and getting your interest paid

1208. would depend upon winning this extremely unlikely war.

1209. Nonetheless, that was a pretty good way

1210. of raising money to fight the Revolution,

1211. and it created an entire class of American lenders

1212. with strong interests in creating

1213. a very strong government because that was the only way

1214. they could see themselves getting paid their interest.

1215. Shall we at last become the victims

1216. of our own abominable lust of gain?

1217. Forbid it, heaven. Forbid it all.

1218. Our cause is noble.

1219. It is the cause of mankind,

1220. and the danger to it springs from ourselves.

1221. George Washington.

1222. When we took up the hatchet

1223. and struck the Virginians,

1224. our nation was alone and surrounded by them,

1225. and after we had lost some of our best warriors,

1226. we were forced to leave our towns,

1227. and now we live in the grass as you see us,

1228. but we are not yet conquered.

1229. Dragging Canoe.

1230. Colin Calloway: Indian Country is a mosaic

1231. of multiple Indigenous nations,

1232. each one of whom

1233. is pursuing its own interests

1234. and its own foreign policy.

1235. In the Ohio River Valley,

1236. the Delawares and their Shawnee allies

1237. had a long, contentious history

1238. with their expansionist neighbors.

1239. When the Revolution began,

1240. both nations struggled to stay out of it,

1241. but after Virginia militiamen violated a truce,

1242. most Shawnees sided with the British.

1243. In 1778, White Eyes, a Delaware war chief

1244. who leaned toward supporting the United States,

1245. went to Pittsburgh to negotiate with the Americans.

1246. The resulting Treaty of Fort Pitt

1247. seemed like a landmark agreement.

1248. Philip Deloria: The Fort Pitt Treaty

1249. is a really formal, legalistic document.

1250. An article near the end of the treaty says,

1251. "Oh, and by the way, when this is all over,

1252. "Indians can have a state like other states,

1253. and the Delaware"--this is the treaty with the Delaware—

1254. "the Delaware will be the head of the state,"

1255. and so it's making this very interesting promise

1256. of the possibility that Indian people could be

1257. part of the American republic.

1258. White Eyes was made

1259. a colonel in the Continental Army

1260. and accompanied an American expedition

1261. against the British at Fort Detroit...

1262. but somewhere along the way, Patriot militiamen killed him.

1263. With his death, the Americans had lost their best Indian ally

1264. in the Ohio Country,

1265. and the promise of the treaty was forgotten.

1266. In a council at Detroit, a delegation of Shawnees

1267. and Delawares promised the British that they

1268. would take up the tomahawk, "sharpen" it,

1269. "and strike against our Common Enemy."

1270. The British have been telling them all along,

1271. "Don't trust the Americans because the Americans

1272. are out to take your land and to kill you."

1273. I always knew they were for open war

1274. but never before could get

1275. a proper excuse for exterminating them.

1276. To excel them in barbarity is the only way to make war

1277. and gain a name among the Indians.

1278. The cries of the widows and the fatherless on the frontiers

1279. required their blood from my hands.

1280. George Rogers Clark.

1281. Michael Witgen: George Rogers Clark is

1282. an Indian fighter and an Indian hater.

1283. He imagines himself as sort of seeking justice

1284. for white settlers who've died on the frontier

1285. at the hands of Native people,

1286. and he imagines himself

1287. as sort of the avenging angel of these communities.

1288. There is, to be sure, lots of violence in this backcountry,

1289. in part because white settlers are squatting

1290. on Native territory.

1291. In February of 1779,

1292. Clark led his Virginians east from the Mississippi

1293. to take British outposts and destroy any Indians

1294. who dared support the enemy.

1295. His first target was Fort Vincennes

1296. on the Wabash River in what is now Indiana.

1297. There, he had 4 bound Indian captives lined up

1298. in full view of the fort and then hacked to death.

1299. Clark warned that if Vincennes did not surrender,

1300. all its defenders would suffer the same fate.

1301. The British commander gave up.

1302. Then Clark sent an ultimatum to any Indians

1303. tempted to make war on American settlers.

1304. I don't care whether you are

1305. for peace or war, as I glory in war.

1306. This is the last speech you may ever expect.

1307. The next thing will be the tomahawk,

1308. and you may expect in 4 moons to see your women and children

1309. given to the dogs to eat

1310. while those nations that have kept their words with me

1311. will flourish and grow

1312. like the willow trees on the riverbanks.

1313. George Rogers Clark.

1314. Your "Name Strikes Terror to both English

1315. and Indians," one of Clark's captains told him,

1316. but "if there's not a stop put to Killing Indian friends,

1317. we must Expect to have all foes."

1318. Clark would not listen.

1319. Native people from the Smoky Mountains

1320. to the Great Lakes were now coming together

1321. to forget former quarrels

1322. and unite against the United States.

1323. Most Native Americans recognize that

1324. the new United States represents

1325. an existential threat to them,

1326. their way of life, and their sovereignty,

1327. so it makes sense for Indian people—

1328. for most Indian people— to side with the British

1329. as the best bet to preserve their own independence

1330. and protect their land.

1331. By the spring of 1779, hundreds of people,

1332. Indians and settlers, had been killed in the West.

1333. There's a randomness to this, as well.

1334. "Those Indians killed some people over there,

1335. so we're gonna kill these Indians,"

1336. but they didn't have anything to do with it,

1337. so you never quite know who's gonna come after you,

1338. and you never know what the logic is,

1339. and there's, most of the time, not a logic about

1340. why kill that person and not kill this person,

1341. so it's very uncertain kind of terrain,

1342. and I think it breeds

1343. an intense kind of violence that happens here.

1344. A Shawnee boy named Tecumseh,

1345. one of the war's many refugees,

1346. would never forget the devastation

1347. that the American Revolution had brought to his country,

1348. but for him and his people,

1349. the Revolution was just one chapter

1350. in their struggle for independence.

1351. That war would rage on for decades.

1352. If the enemy have it in their power

1353. to press us hard this campaign,

1354. I know not what may be the consequence.

1355. George Washington.

1356. Like Washington,

1357. British General Clinton was stretched thin, too,

1358. and could only take small-scale actions.

1359. In May of 1779, he ordered raids

1360. in the Chesapeake Bay to destroy Virginia shipyards,

1361. dry docks, and tobacco warehouses.

1362. 17 ships were needed just to carry the loot back to New York.

1363. A few weeks later, he dispatched ships

1364. to sail up the Hudson and capture two forts—

1365. at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point.

1366. The ease with which those forts fell

1367. convinced Washington to strengthen fortifications

1368. 10 miles to the north

1369. at a narrow curve in the river called West Point.

1370. Washington believed West Point

1371. "the most important post in America."

1372. The Polish engineer Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko

1373. was given the task of designing a series

1374. of interlocking fortifications on both sides of the river.

1375. An enormous chain weighing 65 tons

1376. and covered by gun batteries at both ends

1377. had been installed to block hostile passage.

1378. In early July, Clinton ordered another expedition

1379. against the Patriot privateering

1380. that had taken such a toll on British shipping,

1381. burning Norwalk, Fairfield, and New Haven.

1382. It had been more than a year since the Battle of Monmouth.

1383. Washington remained eager to take back New York,

1384. but he didn't have the men or the ships.

1385. Still, he understood it would be damaging

1386. to his army's reputation if he did not strike back somewhere,

1387. so on the night of July 15th, he ordered General Anthony Wayne

1388. and a hand-picked force of 1,350 men

1389. to attack Stony Point on the Hudson.

1390. Under the cover of darkness, they took it.

1391. "The fort & garrison are ours," Wayne reported

1392. back to Washington at 2:00 in the morning.

1393. "Our officers & men behaved like men

1394. who were determined to be free."

1395. Meanwhile, when enslaved African Americans

1396. from New England to Georgia learned that summer

1397. that General Clinton had issued a proclamation

1398. promising "refuge" within the British Army to "any Negro"

1399. who was "the property of a Rebel," many of them

1400. began to see the British flag as a symbol of hope.

1401. Like Lord Dunmore before him, Clinton was no abolitionist.

1402. He decreed that any Black man captured while serving

1403. with the rebel army was to be sold as a slave,

1404. and the profit divided among his captors.

1405. The British commander's motives were exclusively military—

1406. to strip rebels of their human "property"

1407. and assemble a big workforce to support his army...

1408. but for many Black Americans, their war was about

1409. ending slavery for themselves, their children,

1410. and their children's children.

1411. Vincent Brown: We know that about 15,000 Black people

1412. actually joined the British or ran away to the British lines

1413. versus about 5,000 ultimately entering the Patriot cause,

1414. and that's because, for many of those enslaved people,

1415. the British represented freedom.

1416. The Patriots did not.

1417. That's a hard story to tell to Americans.

1418. Fire!

1419. In June 1779, King Carlos III of Spain

1420. joined France in the war against England.

1421. His goal was to recapture for his empire

1422. everything Spain had lost to Britain

1423. during the Seven Years' War and to add to it, as well,

1424. including Gibraltar, the British-held spit of land

1425. that controlled the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean.

1426. For the Spanish king, like the French king,

1427. the American Revolution was useful only to undercut Britain.

1428. Christopher Brown: This is not about

1429. securing American independence.

1430. This is about cutting Britain's economic commercial might

1431. down to size, but it's risky, though,

1432. especially for Spain, because Spain has a empire

1433. in the Americas that looks

1434. a little bit like Britain's North American empire

1435. only much larger and many, many, many more people.

1436. And so you encourage

1437. a colonial independence movement in the British Empire,

1438. who's to say your own people won't get the same idea?

1439. Given the sudden widening of the global war,

1440. the opposition in Parliament called upon King George

1441. to direct measures for restoring peace to America.

1442. He would not hear of it.

1443. The present contest with America

1444. I cannot help seeing as the most serious

1445. in which any country was ever engaged.

1446. Step by step, the demands of America have risen.

1447. Independence is their object.

1448. Should America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow.

1449. Ireland must soon be a separate state.

1450. Then this island would be reduced to itself

1451. and soon would be a poor island indeed.

1452. King George III.

1453. "London Morning Post."

1454. John Paul Jones resembles a Jack o' Lantern

1455. to mislead our mariners and terrify our coasts.

1456. He's no sooner seen than lost.

1457. John Paul Jones was now in command of another ship—

1458. a slow, battered French merchant vessel.

1459. He fitted it out with 40 old French guns,

1460. gathered a 320-man crew from 8 different countries,

1461. and renamed it the "Bonhomme Richard"

1462. after the French version of Benjamin Franklin's

1463. "Poor Richard's Almanack."

1464. In August, the "Richard" and several smaller warships

1465. sailed all the way around the British Isles

1466. in search of merchant prizes.

1467. Jones took 17 ships, captured 100 British sailors,

1468. and locked them up below his decks.

1469. Late in the afternoon on September 23rd,

1470. just off the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head,

1471. Jones caught up with a convoy of some 40 British supply ships.

1472. He signaled his squadron to form a line of battle.

1473. When they failed to respond, the "Bonhomme Richard" alone

1474. engaged the "Serapis,"

1475. the larger of the two Royal Navy escort ships.

1476. Commanded by Richard Pearson, a veteran sailor,

1477. the British vessel was a fast, new 44-gun frigate.

1478. As the battle began, hundreds of English villagers

1479. lined the cliffs, hoping to see

1480. a British man-of-war destroy the dreaded rebel

1481. they called "Pirate Jones."

1482. A British broadside caused cannon

1483. on the "Richard's" lower gun deck to explode, killing men

1484. and putting the rest of the battery out of action.

1485. At one point, the "Serapis" rammed the "Richard."

1486. Their rigging became entangled,

1487. and before the British ship could break free,

1488. Jones ordered his men to throw grappling hooks,

1489. locking the two ships together gunport to gunport.

1490. Their crews fired into each other at point-blank range.

1491. The "Bonhomme Richard" took the worst of it—

1492. half the crew dead or wounded,

1493. fires raging everywhere,

1494. decks slippery with blood,

1495. seawater rushing in through holes blasted in the hull—

1496. but then a sailor high in the "Richard's" rigging

1497. managed to lob a grenade

1498. down the main hatchway of the British ship.

1499. It set off explosions

1500. from one end of the "Serapis" to the other.

1501. Half its crew were dead or wounded.

1502. Captain Pearson surrendered.

1503. Jones clambered aboard the British warship

1504. and sailed it into neutral Dutch waters.

1505. The "Bonhomme Richard" sank the next day.

1506. In Paris, John Paul Jones was hailed as a hero.

1507. He met Louis XVI

1508. and his queen, Marie Antoinette,

1509. and when he heard that George III

1510. had knighted Captain Pearson for fighting so valiantly,

1511. Jones was unimpressed.

1512. "Should I have the good fortune to fall in with him again,"

1513. he said, "I'll make him a lord."

1514. We do not mean to let the enemy

1515. penetrate into our country, for we well know

1516. that as far as they set their foot,

1517. they will claim the country is conquered.

1518. Old Smoke.

1519. Jennifer Kreisberg:

1520. Back in the summer of 1777,

1521. the British and their Mohawk and Seneca allies had prevailed

1522. over their enemies in their ambush near Oriskany Creek.

1523. Over the months that followed, New York and Pennsylvania

1524. saw raid after raid, skirmish after skirmish.

1525. Patriots drove Loyalists from their homes.

1526. Loyalists and their Indian allies burned settlements

1527. at Cherry Valley and in the Wyoming Valley.

1528. Hundreds died on both sides.

1529. It has gotten to the point where Washington

1530. is under intense pressure from Congress,

1531. from the state of New York, from the state of Pennsylvania,

1532. to do something about it,

1533. and because the war has kind of gone fallow in the North

1534. after Monmouth, he agrees that he will put together

1535. a punitive expedition against the Indians

1536. led by one of his major generals, John Sullivan,

1537. to drive them away from the frontier.

1538. One of the things that I think is always

1539. on Washington's mind during this war is the end of the war,

1540. so Washington basically realizes,

1541. "We're gonna win independence because France is in the war,

1542. "Spain's in the war, and we need to make sure

1543. "that we can present a legitimate

1544. and robust claim to western land."

1545. One of the foundational truths of American history

1546. is that this is a nation built on Indian land,

1547. and Washington would not dispute that,

1548. I think, for a minute.

1549. Washington's orders to General Sullivan

1550. in May of 1779 had been clear and uncompromising.

1551. The immediate objects

1552. are the total destruction

1553. and devastation of their settlements

1554. and the capture of as many prisoners

1555. of every age and sex as possible.

1556. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground

1557. and prevent their planting more

1558. that the country may not merely be overrun,

1559. but destroyed.

1560. You will not by any means listen to any overture for peace

1561. before the total ruin of their settlements is affected.

1562. George Washington.

1563. The Continental Army invaded from 3 sides.

1564. In early August,

1565. Colonel Daniel Brodhead led 600 men northward

1566. from Fort Pitt to destroy the Seneca villages

1567. along the upper Allegheny River.

1568. Sullivan and 3 Continental brigades started north

1569. along the Susquehanna,

1570. while another moved west

1571. from the Mohawk Valley.

1572. At the end of the month their combined forces—

1573. 4,500 men—began marching north.

1574. They don't find destitute villages

1575. or scattered villages of savage people.

1576. They find what, to them, are undoubtedly

1577. easily recognizable prosperous villages.

1578. They're cedar-planked buildings, multiple-story buildings,

1579. often with chimneys, often with glass windows.

1580. These people have material wealth

1581. that they've accumulated over the years,

1582. and they have houses that look like something

1583. that people on the Eastern Seaboard would inhabit.

1584. On August 29th,

1585. some 600 Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas, Delawares,

1586. and Loyalists tried to halt the invasion and were defeated.

1587. We sent out a small party

1588. to look for some of the dead Indians.

1589. They found them and skinned two of them

1590. from their hips down for boot legs—

1591. one pair for the major, the other for myself.

1592. Lieutenant William Barton.

1593. Our brigade destroyed

1594. about 150 acres of the best corn that I ever saw—

1595. some of the stalks grew 16 feet high—

1596. besides great quantities of beans, potatoes, pumpkins,

1597. cucumbers, squash, and watermelons,

1598. and the enemy looking at us from the hills.

1599. Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty.

1600. There is something so cruel

1601. in destroying the habitations of any people,

1602. however mean they may be,

1603. that I might say the prospect hurts my feelings.

1604. Dr. Jabez Campfield.

1605. When some soldiers asked General Sullivan

1606. if he wouldn't at least spare fruit orchards

1607. that had taken years to grow, he refused.

1608. "The Indians," he said, "shall see that there is malice enough

1609. "in our hearts to destroy everything

1610. that contributes to their support."

1611. The Sullivan expedition ends up mapping New York

1612. for future settlement.

1613. Everybody kind of moves through New York

1614. and says, "Wow. These apple orchards are so great,

1615. "these cornfields are so fantastic,

1616. I'm coming back here at the end of this," right?

1617. And so in many ways, it is not only a military campaign.

1618. It's a scouting expedition for future settlement.

1619. The troops torched village after village—

1620. Catherine's Town, Appletown,

1621. Cayuga Town, Kanadaseaga,

1622. Canandaigua, Honeoye.

1623. By then, Sullivan was within miles of Little Beard's Town,

1624. which he had been told was the grand capital of Indian Country.

1625. Little Beard's Town was the home of Mary Jemison,

1626. who had been adopted years earlier by Senecas

1627. after her Irish parents had been killed during a raid.

1628. He was about to march to our town

1629. when our Indians resolved to give him battle on the way.

1630. They sent all the women and children into the woods.

1631. And then, well-armed, they set out

1632. to face the conquering enemy.

1633. Mary Jemison.

1634. A scouting party of 26 Continentals,

1635. guided by an Oneida scout

1636. and commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Boyd,

1637. was advancing ahead of the main column on September 13th,

1638. when they stumbled into a Seneca and Loyalist ambush.

1639. 16 men were encircled. 14 were killed and scalped.

1640. Boyd and another man were captured.

1641. The next day,

1642. Sullivan's main army reached Little Beard's Town.

1643. On entering the town, we found the body

1644. of Lieutenant Boyd and another rifleman

1645. in a most terrible, mangled condition.

1646. They was both stripped naked

1647. and their heads cut off.

1648. Erkuries Beatty.

1649. Sullivan's men buried

1650. what was left of their companions,

1651. looted and burned all 128 dwellings

1652. in Little Beard's Town,

1653. and then spent 8 hours methodically uprooting

1654. and destroying crops.

1655. By the end, Sullivan reported to Washington

1656. that his army had burned a total of 40 towns.

1657. Farther to the west,

1658. Colonel Brodhead had destroyed 10 more.

1659. Most of the Seneca refugees made their way

1660. to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario,

1661. where some 5,000 men, women, and children

1662. belonging to a host of nations huddled together in muddy camps.

1663. We of the Six Nations have been

1664. much cast down by the great loss we have sustained.

1665. But yet we do not despair.

1666. We are determined to persevere in the cause we have engaged in.

1667. We hope to be able to survive the winter,

1668. and then we mean once more to meet our enemies

1669. and see whether we are to live or die.

1670. And if such is the will of the Great Spirit,

1671. we will leave our bones

1672. with those of the rest of our brethren,

1673. rather than evacuate our country

1674. or give our enemies room to say we fled from them.

1675. Twethorechte.

1676. The damage Patriot campaigns did to Seneca, Cayuga,

1677. Onondaga, and Mohawk homelands was profound and permanent.

1678. Some Haudenosaunee would come to call George Washington

1679. "the Town Destroyer"

1680. and would remember the American Revolution

1681. as "the Whirlwind."

1682. In the late summer of 1779, both George Washington

1683. and British General Henry Clinton believed

1684. that the long-awaited all-out American assault

1685. on British-occupied New York City

1686. could finally be just weeks away.

1687. Each had learned that the French fleet

1688. was sailing back north from the West Indies.

1689. Neither was sure where it was headed.

1690. Clinton ordered all British troops to withdraw

1691. from occupied Newport to strengthen New York's defenses.

1692. Washington readied plans for a siege of the city

1693. and called upon 5 neighboring states

1694. to provide him with more militia,

1695. but French Admiral d'Estaing never came.

1696. Instead, he appeared at the mouth of the Savannah River

1697. with 32 warships to join forces with southern Patriots

1698. who had already retaken Augusta

1699. and were eager to recapture the rest of Georgia.

1700. Aboard were 4,000 French troops,

1701. including 750 "free men of color,"

1702. Black and mixed-race troops

1703. from what would one day be called Haiti.

1704. While d'Estaing waited for his American allies

1705. to join the siege, he surrounded Savannah with heavy artillery

1706. and demanded its surrender.

1707. The outnumbered British refused, stalling for time

1708. until reinforcements of their own could reach the city.

1709. As they braced for an attack, redcoats and Loyalist troops

1710. and scores of Savannah's free and enslaved residents

1711. had time to complete two defensive lines around the city.

1712. After Continentals and Patriot militiamen

1713. arrived from Charleston,

1714. d'Estaing led a direct assault on October 9th.

1715. Some Americans became mired in a rice field.

1716. French troops in white uniforms proved easy targets.

1717. British guns sent grapeshot, nails, and chunks of iron

1718. tearing through the attackers.

1719. The ditch, a British officer remembered,

1720. was chock full of their dead.

1721. De Rode: For the French-American alliance,

1722. it is quite the defeat.

1723. People do lose their trust in the availabilities

1724. of the French to help the Americans.

1725. They were very happy to have signed an alliance with them,

1726. but the first campaigns, plural, completely failed.

1727. D'Estaing, who had been wounded twice,

1728. sailed away to France.

1729. The American commander General Benjamin Lincoln

1730. limped back to Patriot-controlled Charleston.

1731. You know the importance of Charleston.

1732. It is the bond that binds 3 states

1733. to the authority of Congress.

1734. If the enemy possessed themselves of this town,

1735. there will be no living for honest Patriots.

1736. David Ramsay.

1737. The winter of 1779-1780,

1738. probably the harshest winter in North America

1739. in the 18th century.

1740. New York Harbor froze over solidly.

1741. You could drag cannon

1742. from the tip of Manhattan Island to Staten Island.

1743. You could cross the Hudson River on foot,

1744. and the winter was all the worse

1745. in Upstate New York for the Indians.

1746. That winter was the most severe

1747. that I have witnessed since my remembrance.

1748. The snow fell about 5 feet deep and remained so.

1749. Almost all the game upon which we depended

1750. perished and reduced us almost to starvation.

1751. Mary Jemison.

1752. For General Washington and most of his army

1753. at winter quarters in and around Morristown, New Jersey,

1754. the temperature rarely rose above zero.

1755. It was "cold enough to cut a man in two,"

1756. Joseph Plumb Martin remembered.

1757. Joseph Ellis: The winter in New Jersey at Morristown

1758. was worse than Valley Forge.

1759. The enthusiasm for the war had begun to wane years before,

1760. and it continued to wane each year.

1761. We were absolutely literally starved.

1762. I did not put a single morsel into my mouth for 4 days

1763. except a little black birch bark.

1764. I saw several of the men roast their old shoes and eat them,

1765. and I was afterwards informed that some of the officers

1766. killed and ate a favorite little dog

1767. that belonged to one of them.

1768. Joseph Plumb Martin.

1769. To add to their misery,

1770. the men of Joseph Plumb Martin's 8th Connecticut Regiment

1771. had not been paid for months.

1772. By spring, they had had enough.

1773. The men now saw no other alternative

1774. but to starve to death or break up the army.

1775. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon.

1776. They were truly patriotic.

1777. They loved their country,

1778. and they had already suffered everything short of death

1779. in its cause.

1780. What was to be done?

1781. The 4th and 8th Connecticut Regiments

1782. planned to desert.

1783. When a colonel tried to talk them out of it,

1784. someone stabbed him with a bayonet.

1785. A Pennsylvania regiment was rushed in to surround them,

1786. and its colonel managed to talk the men into staying on.

1787. In the end, Martin wrote, "We were unwilling to desert

1788. "the cause of our country when in distress.

1789. We knew her cause involved our own."

1790. This is the most important hour

1791. Britain ever knew.

1792. If we lose it, we shall never see such another.

1793. Henry Clinton.

1794. It had now been 21 months

1795. since General Clinton was ordered to take the Carolinas.

1796. On the day after Christmas 1779,

1797. leaving enough of a force behind to defend New York,

1798. Clinton finally sailed south for Charleston.

1799. Every farthing of the wealth in South Carolina

1800. is built on the back of slavery.

1801. That's one of the reasons why South Carolina

1802. and the other Southern states have robust militias.

1803. It is not to repel foreign invaders.

1804. It's to suppress potential slave insurrections.

1805. Charleston was one of the largest cities

1806. in the United States, home to 12,000 people,

1807. half of them enslaved.

1808. If it could be captured, the British believed,

1809. a Loyalist majority in the Carolinas

1810. would rally to the Crown.

1811. Charleston has resisted British attacks before.

1812. There's a sense of confidence that it'll be able

1813. to resist British attacks again.

1814. Americans are almost delusional about it.

1815. They don't look the facts in the face

1816. of how vulnerable Charleston really is.

1817. The geography is impossible.

1818. Charleston is really out on a limb.

1819. The British are gonna cut this place off,

1820. and they're gonna capture it.

1821. Congress, instead of recognizing this fact,

1822. they keep sending more and more men to defend Charleston.

1823. They send the best that the Continental Army has.

1824. It's a mistake.

1825. Some 30 miles southwest of the city

1826. on February 11, 1780, Clinton began landing his troops.

1827. As the British army marched toward Charleston,

1828. first hundreds, then thousands

1829. of enslaved men, women, and children

1830. fled their plantations to join them.

1831. It would be more than a month before Clinton's forces

1832. could form a line a mile and a half north

1833. of the rebel fortifications and begin a European-style siege.

1834. More British troops from New York and Savannah

1835. would swell the British army to more than 10,000,

1836. roughly twice as large as the force

1837. with which Patriot General Benjamin Lincoln

1838. hoped somehow to defend the city.

1839. Desperate for reinforcements,

1840. Lincoln suggested arming enslaved men and was told no.

1841. Whites feared giving weapons to Black people,

1842. and, besides, slave owners did not want their property

1843. killed or maimed in battle.

1844. Militia from the backcountry were also reluctant

1845. to come to the crowded city.

1846. They feared smallpox and were unmoved by the plight

1847. of planters and merchants whose wealth and political power

1848. they had long resented.

1849. On April 1, 1780, the British began constructing

1850. the first of a series of parallels,

1851. sequential support trenches that would allow them

1852. to inch closer and closer to the city.

1853. A week later, British warships forced their way

1854. into Charleston Harbor and took command of it.

1855. General Clinton called upon the rebels to surrender

1856. in order to save the town and its people

1857. from what he called "havock and desolation."

1858. General Lincoln refused.

1859. Fire!

1860. The British opened fire.

1861. The Americans fired back.

1862. Fire!

1863. The guns would continue day and night

1864. for a month.

1865. As each blasted at the other,

1866. the British parallels

1867. moved closer to the American lines—

1868. 800 yards...

1869. 450 yards...

1870. 250.

1871. There was no escape.

1872. General Lincoln asked that his surrendering men

1873. be granted the usual honors of war,

1874. but General Clinton refused:

1875. Rebels deserved no such honors.

1876. When Charleston falls, it's a body blow

1877. to the Revolution and to the American cause.

1878. It's a humiliation because we've lost not only Charleston,

1879. but we've lost some of the best troops that we have,

1880. and the British in their surrender terms

1881. really drive home that humiliation.

1882. It was the worst defeat suffered by the Patriots

1883. during the Revolution.

1884. An entire army was captured,

1885. 5,618 men by Clinton's count,

1886. including Benjamin Lincoln and 6 other generals,

1887. along with more than 300 cannon,

1888. 376 barrels of gunpowder,

1889. and 5,916 muskets.

1890. Hundreds of South Carolinians streamed into the occupied city

1891. from the countryside,

1892. eager now to swear allegiance to the Crown.

1893. To Lord Germain—

1894. With the greatest pleasure, I report to your Lordship

1895. that the inhabitants from every quarter declare

1896. their allegiance to the King, and offer their services in arms

1897. in support of his government.

1898. In many instances, they have brought prisoners,

1899. their former oppressors or leaders,

1900. and I may venture to assert that there are few men

1901. in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners

1902. or in arms with us.

1903. Henry Clinton.

1904. General Clinton and 4,000 troops

1905. returned to New York, leaving General Charles Cornwallis

1906. in command of the southern theater.

1907. A few more such victories, British commanders believed,

1908. and the Loyalty to the Crown

1909. of all the Southern Colonies would be reconfirmed.

1910. "The English lion," a German officer wrote,

1911. "has awakened from his sleep."

1912. Unless Congress is vested with powers

1913. competent to the great purposes of war, our cause is lost.

1914. We can no longer drudge on in the old way.

1915. I see one head gradually changing into 13.

1916. I see one army branching into thirteen—

1917. and am fearful of the consequences of it.

1918. George Washington.