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.

A

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. 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.

VOL. IV.-25

After the termination of the seven years' war nearly every one of the Highland regiment, alike soldiers and officers, settled on grants of land in America. Many of the inhabitants of northwestern Scotland, especially of the clans of Macdonald and Macleod, listened to overtures from those who had obtained concessions of vast domains and migrated to middle Carolina. Those who went first reported favorably of the sunny clime, where every man might have land of his own; and from the isles of Rasay and Skye whole neighborhoods followed, sweetening their change of abode by carrying with them their costume and opinions, their Celtic language and

songs.

Distinguished above all was Allan Macdonald of Kingsborough, and his wife Flora Macdonald who in 1746 had rescued Prince Charles Edward from his pursuers. They removed to North Carolina in 1774, and made their new home in the west of Cumberland county. She was now about fiftyfive, mother of many children, of middle stature, soft features,

uncommonly mild and gentle manners and elegant presence." Her husband was aged, but still with hair jet black, of a stately figure, and a countenance that expressed intelligence and steadfastness. On the third of July 1775, he came down to Fort Johnston and concerted with Martin how to raise a battalion of "the good and faithful Highlanders.”

Clinton on his way south called on Lord Dunmore in Virginia, and remained there ten days. When Lord Dunmore learned from him that Cape Fear river was the place appointed for the meeting of the seven regiments from Ireland, he broke out into angry complaints that no heed had been paid to his representations, his sufferings, and his efforts; that Virginia, "the first on the continent for riches, power, and extent," was neglected, and the preference given to "a poor, insignificant colony," where there were no pilots, nor a harbor that could admit half the fleet, and where the army, should it land, must wade for many miles through a sandy pine barren before it could reach the inhabited part of the country.

Martin, who was daily expecting the British army, made haste to prepare a proclamation which was to beat down all opposition. "His unwearied, persevering agent," Alexander

Maclean, brought written assurances from the principal persons to whom he had been directed to apply, that between two and three thousand men, of whom about half were well armed, would take the field at the governor's summons. Under this encouragement a commission was made out on the tenth of January 1776, authorizing Allan Macdonald of Kingsborough, with eight other Scots of Cumberland and Anson, and seventeen persons who resided in a belt of counties in middle Carolina and in Rowan, to raise and array and, by the fifteenth of February, march all the king's loyal subjects in a body to Brunswick, on Cape Fear river, opposite to Wilmington. Donald Macdonald, then in his sixty-fifth year, was to command the army; next him in rank came Donald Macleod.

A meeting of the newly commissioned officers was summoned for the fifth of February at Cross creek, or, as it is now called, Fayetteville. At the appointed time all the Scots appeared, and four only of the rest. The trustworthy Scots, who promised no more than seven hundred men, advised to await the arrival of the British troops; the other royalists, boasting that they could array five thousand of whom five hundred they said were already imbodied, prevailed in their demand for an immediate rising.

Collecting the Highlanders and remnants of the old regulators, Donald Macdonald, on the eighteenth, began his march, and at evening encamped on the Cape Fear river, four miles below Fayetteville. On that same day Moore, who at the first menace of danger took the field at the head of his regiment and then lay in an intrenched camp at Rockfish, was joined by Lillington with one hundred and fifty minute-men from Wilmington, by Kenon with two hundred of the Duplin militia, and by Ashe with about a hundred volunteer rangers; so that his number was increased to eleven hundred.

On the nineteenth, Macdonald sent Martin's proclamation into the American camp, calling on Moore and his troops to join the king's standard, or to be considered as enemies. Moore, in his instant reply, besought Macdonald not to array the deluded people under his command against men who were resolved to hazard everything in defence of the liberties of mankind. Macdonald promptly rejoined: "As a soldier in his