more were at other stations, but most of them under inoculation. Sickness, want of food, defeat, the threefold superiority of the British in numbers and their incomparable superiority in appointments, made resistance impossible. A council of field officers all but unanimously advised retreat; Arnold, Antill, and Hazen, who were not present, were of the same mind. On the fourteenth the fleet with the British forces was coming up the river under full sail; when, an hour or a little more before their arrival, Sullivan, who was both brave and alert, broke up his camp, taking away with him everything, even to a spade. The guard at Berthier retreated by land, leaving nine boats behind.

At Chambly all the boats and baggage were brought over the rapids, except three heavy pieces of cannon. From Montreal, Arnold, with the knowledge of the commissioners of congress, had sent off merchandise taken from the inhabitants; when the enemy came within twelve miles, he crossed with three hundred men to La Prairie. All, that was left of the invading army met on the seventeenth at St. John's, half of them being sick, almost all destitute of clothing, and having no provisions except salt pork and flour. On the eighteenth the emaciated, half-naked men, languidly pursued by a column under Burgoyne, escaped to Isle-Aux-Noix.

On the day on which Sullivan halted at Isle-aux-Noix, Gates, who had been elected a major-general, was appointed to take command of the forces in Canada. Already at Albany the question arose, whether the command would revert to Schuyler the moment the army should be found south of the Canada line.

At Isle-aux-Noix the men fit for duty remained for eight days, till the invalids could be taken to Crown Point. They made the voyage in leaky boats which had no awnings, with no food but raw pork and hard bread or unbaked flour. A physician who was an eye-witness said: "At the sight of so much privation and distress, I wept till I had no more power to weep." Early in July the fragments of the army of Canada. reached Crown Point. Everything about them was infected with the pestilence. "I did not look into a tent or a hut," says Trumbull, "in which I did not find either a dead or dying

man.' 99 Of about five thousand men, housed under tents or rudely built sheds or huts of brush, exposed to the damp air of the night, full half were invalids; more than thirty new graves were made every day. In a little more than two months the northern army lost by desertion and death more than five thousand men.

The reduction of the southern colonies was to have been finished before that of Canada.

Martin, the governor of North Carolina, had repeatedly offered to raise a battalion from the Scottish Highlanders in that colony, and declared himself sure of the allegiance of the regulators, as of men weary of insurrection and scrupulous about their oaths. Again and again he importuned to be restored to his old rank in the army as lieutenant-colonel, promising the greatest consequences from such an appointment. He could not conceal that "the frenzy" had taken possession of all classes of men around him; yet he promised the ministry that with ten thousand stand of arms, to be sent immediately from England, with artillery, ammunition, money, some pairs of colors, a military commission for himself, and the aid of two regiments, he would force a connection with the interior and raise not the Highlanders alone, but the people of the upper country in such overwhelming numbers as to restore order in the two Carolinas, "hold Virginia in awe," and recover every colony south of Pennsylvania. In England his advice was listened to, except that rank in the army was refused him.

Making himself busy with the affairs of his neighbors, Martin wrote to the British ministry in midsummer 1775: "The people of South Carolina forget entirely their own weakness and are blustering treason; while Charleston, that is the head and heart of their boasted province, might be destroyed by a single frigate. In charity to them and in duty to my king and country, I give it as my sincere opinion that the rod of correction cannot be spared." A few weeks later, Lord William Campbell chimed in with him, reckoning up the many deadly perils by which they were environed: "the Indians;" "the disaffected back-country people;" their own social condition "where their slaves were five to one;" and the power of Britain from the sea.

Allured by these assurances, an expedition against the southern colonies was ordered, in October 1775, by the king himself, whose zeal and confidence were inflamed by letters which were constantly arriving. In the month in which the king took his resolution, Campbell, the governor of South Carolina, wrote in an official report: "Let it not be entirely forgot that the king has dominions in this part of America. What defence can they make? Three regiments, a proper detachment of artillery, with a couple of good frigates, some small craft, and a bombketch, would do the whole business here, and go a great way to reduce Georgia and North Carolina to a sense of their duty. Charleston is the fountain-head from whence all violence flows; stop that, and the rebellion in this part of the continent will soon be at an end."

In conformity to the reports of Martin and Campbell, a force equal to seven regiments was ordered to be in readiness. to sail from Cork early in December. "I am not apprised where they are going," thus Barrington, the secretary at war, expostulated with Dartmouth; "but, if there should be an idea of such a force marching up the country, I hope it will not be entertained. Allow me once more to remind you of the necessity there is in all military matters not to stir a step without full consultation of able military men, after giving them the most perfect knowledge of the whole matter under consideration, with all its circumstances." The warning had no influence, for the king would not consult those who were likely to disagree with him. The earl of Cornwallis, then in England, was to command the land forces of the expedition while on the way. From the army of Howe, Clinton, who was of the great family of the duke of Newcastle, was detached to reap the honor of restoring the two Carolinas to their allegiance.

Early in January 1776 the American commander-in-chief ascertained that Clinton was about to embark from Boston on a southern expedition. New York might be its object. Lee, whose claim to "the character of a military genius and the officer of experience" had not yet been disallowed, desired a separate command in New York. After consulting John Adams, who was then with the provincial convention at Watertown, and who pronounced the plan to be practicable, expe

dient and clearly authorized, Washington, uninformed of the measures already adopted, gave his consent; yet charging Lee to "keep always in view the declared intention of congress," and to communicate with the New York committee of safety, whose co-operation he himself solicited.

Lee, who had never commanded so much as one regiment before he entered the American army, on his way to New York persuaded the governor and council of Connecticut to place two regiments under him. Straightway usurping authority, he appointed Isaac Sears assistant adjutant-general with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The tidings that Lee, with nearly fifteen hundred men of Connecticut, was advancing upon New York without notice to its committee or its inhabitants, seemed to imply a menace. When its committee of safety wrote to request that the troops of Connecticut might not pass the border till the purpose of their coming should be explained, Lee made a jest of the letter. Both parties appealed to the general congress.

On the fourth, Lee entered the city of New York, just two hours after Clinton, attended by only two companies of infantry and a few Highlanders, anchored in its harbor. Troops from the Jerseys at the same time marched into town. A general consternation ensued; and, in spite of the dangers and sorrows attending a flight in winter, all the wagons that could be found were employed in removing women and children from the city, which for seven years to come was to know no peace. The opulent knew not where to find habitations; the poor, thrown upon the cold hands of exhausted charity in the interior towns, suffered from complicated wants.

Under the harmonizing influence of the continental committee, Lee and the New York committee held friendly conferences. Men and boys of all ages toiled with zeal to raise works of defence. To control the Sound, a fortification was raised at Hellgate; on a height west of Trinity church, a battery was erected fronting the North river; that part of the old fort which faced Broadway was torn down; Lee and Lord Stirling, crossing to Long Island, marked out the ground for an intrenched camp, extending from the Wallabout to Gowanus bay; the connection between Long Island and New

York was secured by a battery of forty guns at the foot of Wall street and another of twenty guns a little farther to the south. The ships-of-war without firing a gun removed to the bay, and Lee professed to repudiate a reconciliation with Britain unless "the whole ministry should be condignly punished, and the king beheaded or dethroned."

Clinton, who had but touched at New York, pledged his honor that for the present no more British troops were coming there, and on the eleventh "with his men and ships left the river." The seeming success of Lee drew toward him public confidence. John Adams, who had counselled his expedition to New York, wrote to him complacently "that a luckier or a happier one had never been projected;" and added: "We want you at New York; we want you at Cambridge; we want you in Virginia; but Canada seems of more importance, and therefore you are sent there. I wish you the laurels of Wolfe and Montgomery with a happier fate." "When I leave this place," so Lee wrote to Washington, the "provincial congress and inhabitants will relapse into their hysterics; the men-ofwar will return to their wharfs, and the first regiments from England will take quiet possession of the town." On the first of March, on the motion of Edward Rutledge, congress, after a warm contest, revoked its order to send Lee to Canada, and invested him with the command of the continental forces south of the Potomac. "As a Virginian, I rejoice at the change," wrote Washington, who had, however, already discovered that the officer so much courted was both "violent and fickle.” On the seventh he left New York, but not before a complete display of his turbulent temper. He arrested men at discretion. He deputed power to Sears to offer a test oath to a registered number of suspected persons, and, if they refused it, to send them to Connecticut as irreclaimable enemies. To the rebuke of the New York convention he answered: "When the enemy is at our door, forms must be dispensed with ;" and, on the eve of his departure, he gave Ward of Connecticut the sweeping order "to secure the whole body of professed tories on Long Island." The arbitrary orders were resented by the New York delegates as "a high encroachment upon the rights of the representatives of a free people," and were reversed by congress.

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