Volume 12 of the Chronicles of America Series ∴ Allen Johnson, Editor Assistant Editors Gerhard R. Lomer Charles W. Jefferys Abraham Lincoln Edition New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1921 Copyright, 1921 by Yale University Press...

The author is aware of a certain audacity in undertaking, himself a Briton, to appear in a company of American writers on American history and above all to write on the subject of Washington. If excuse is needed it is to be found in the special interest of the career of Washington to a citizen of the British Commonwealth of Nations at the present time and in the urgency with which the editor and publishers declared that such an interpretation would not be unwelcome to Americans and pressed upon

Moving among the members of the second Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia in May, 1775, was one, and but one, military figure. George Washington alone attended the sittings in uniform. This colonel from Virginia, now in his forty-fourth year, was a great landholder, an owner of slaves, an Anglican churchman, an aristocrat, everything that stands in contrast with the type of a revolutionary radical. Yet from the first he had been an outspoken and uncompromising champion of the coloni

Washington was not a professional soldier, though he had seen the realities of war and had moved in military society. Perhaps it was an advantage that he had not received the rigid training of a regular, for he faced conditions which required an elastic mind. The force besieging Boston consisted at first chiefly of New England militia, with companies of minute-men, so called because of their supposed readiness to fight at a minute's notice. Washington had been told that he should find 20,000 men

Well-meaning people in England found it difficult to understand the intensity of feeling in America. Britain had piled up a huge debt in driving France from America. Landowners were paying in taxes no less than twenty per cent of their incomes from land. The people who had chiefly benefited by the humiliation of France were the colonists, now freed from hostile menace and secure for extension over a whole continent. Why should not they pay some share of the cost of their own security? Certain fa

Washington's success at Boston had one good effect. It destroyed Tory influence in that Puritan stronghold. New England was henceforth of a temper wholly revolutionary; and New England tradition holds that what its people think today other Americans think tomorrow. But, in the summer of this year 1776, though no serious foe was visible at any point in the revolted colonies, a menace haunted every one of them. The British had gone away by sea; by sea they would return. On land armies move slowly

Though the outlook for Washington was brightened by his success in New Jersey, it was still depressing enough. The British had taken New York, they could probably take Philadelphia when they liked, and no place near the seacoast was safe. According to the votes in Parliament, by the spring of 1777 Britain was to have an army of eighty-nine thousand men, of whom fifty-seven thousand were intended for colonial garrisons and for the prosecution of the war in America. These numbers were in fact neve

John Burgoyne , in a measure a soldier of fortune, was the younger son of an impoverished baronet, but he had married the daughter of the powerful Earl of Derby and was well known in London society as a man of fashion and also as a man of letters, whose plays had a certain vogue. His will, in which he describes himself as a humble Christian, who, in spite of many faults, had never forgotten God, shows that he was serious minded. He sat in the House of Commons for Preston and, though he used the

Washington had met defeat in every considerable battle at which he was personally present. His first appearance in military history, in the Ohio campaign against the French, twenty-two years before the Revolution, was marked by a defeat, the surrender of Fort Necessity. Again in the next year, when he fought to relieve the disaster to Braddock's army, defeat was his portion. Defeat had pursued him in the battles of the Revolution—before New York, at the Brandywine, at Germantown. The campaign ag

Washington badly needed aid from Europe, but there every important government was monarchical and it was not easy for a young republic, the child of revolution, to secure an ally. France tingled with joy at American victories and sorrowed at American reverses, but motives were mingled and perhaps hatred of England was stronger than love for liberty in America. The young La Fayette had a pure zeal, but he would not have fought for the liberty of colonists in Mexico as he did for those in Virginia

After 1778 there was no more decisive fighting in the North. The British plan was to hold New York and keep there a threatening force, but to make the South henceforth the central arena of the war. Accordingly, in 1779, they evacuated Rhode Island and left the magnificent harbor of Newport to be the chief base for the French fleet and army in America. They also drew in their posts on the Hudson and left Washington free to strengthen West Point and other defenses by which he was blocking the rive

During 1778 and 1779 French effort had failed. Now France resolved to do something decisive. She never sent across the sea the eight thousand men promised to La Fayette but by the spring of 1780 about this number were gathered at Brest to find that transport was inadequate. The leader was a French noble, the Comte de Rochambeau, an old campaigner, now in his fifty-fifth year, who had fought against England before in the Seven Years' War and had then been opposed by Clinton, Cornwallis, and Lord

The critical stroke of the war was near. In the South, after General Greene superseded Gates in the command, the tide of war began to turn. Cornwallis now had to fight a better general than Gates. Greene arrived at Charlotte, North Carolina, in December. He found an army badly equipped, wretchedly clothed, and confronted by a greatly superior force. He had, however, some excellent officers, and he did not scorn, as Gates, with the stiff military traditions of a regular soldier, had scorned, the

In Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America , vol. VI (1889), and in Larned (editor), Literature of American History , pp. 111-152 (1902), the authorities are critically estimated. There are excellent classified lists in Van Tyne, The American Revolution (1905), vol. V of Hart (editor), The American Nation , and in Avery, History of the United States , vol. V, pp. 422-432, and vol. VI, pp. 445-471 (1908-09). The notes in Channing, A History of the United States , vol. III (1913), are us

Washington's own writings are necessary to an understanding of his character. Sparks, The Life and Writings of George Washington , 2 vols. (completed 1855), has been superseded by Ford, The Writings of George Washington , 14 vols. (completed 1898). The general reader will probably put aside the older biographies of Washington by Marshall, Irving, and Sparks for more recent Lives such as those by Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Paul Leicester Ford. Haworth, George Washington, Farmer (1915)

For the state of opinion in England, the contemporary Annual Register , and the writings and speeches of men of the time like Burke, Fox, Horace Walpole, and Dr. Samuel Johnson. The King's attitude is found in Donne, Correspondence of George III with Lord North, 1768-83 , 2 vols. (1867). Stirling, Coke of Norfolk and his Friends , 2 vols. (1908), gives the outlook of a Whig magnate; Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne , 2 vols. (1912), the Whig policy. Curwen's Journals and Letters,

The three campaigns—New York, Philadelphia, and the Hudson—are covered by C. F. Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic (1911), which makes severe strictures on Washington's strategy; H. P. Johnston's “Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn,” in the Long Island Historical Society's Memoirs , and Battle of Harlem Heights (1897); Carrington, Battles of the American Revolution (1904); Stryker, The Battles of Trenton and Princeton (1898); Lucas, History of Canada (1909). Fonblanque's John Burg

On Washington at Valley Forge, Oliver, Life of Alexander Hamilton (1906); Charlemagne Tower, The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution , 2 vols. (1895); Greene, Life of Nathanael Greene (1893); Brooks, Henry Knox (1900); Graham, Life of General Daniel Morgan (1856); Kapp, Life of Steuben (1859); Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold (1880). On the army Bolton and Hatch as cited; Mahan gives a lucid account of naval effort. Barrow, Richard, Earl Howe (1838) is a dull account of a remarkable

Fortescue, as cited, gives excellent plans. Other useful books are McCrady, History of South Carolina in the Revolution (1901); Draper, King's Mountain and its Heroes (1881); Simms, Life of Marion (1844). Ross (editor), The Cornwallis Correspondence , 3 vols. (1859), and Tarleton, History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America (1787), give the point of view of British leaders. On the West, Thwaites, How George Rogers Clark won the Northwest (1903); and on th

For the exploits of John Paul Jones and of the American navy, Mrs. De Koven's The Life and Letters of John Paul Jones , 2 vols. (1913), Don C. Seitz's Paul Jones , and G. W. Allen's A Naval History of the American Revolution , 2 vols. (1913), should be consulted. Jusserand's With Americans of Past and Present Days (1917) contains a chapter on “Rochambeau and the French in America” ; Johnston's The Yorktown Campaign (1881) is a full account; Wraxall, Historical Memoirs of my own Time (1815, repri

This document was transcribed from the Abraham Lincoln Edition of Volume 12 of the Chronicles of America series, but more closely matches the Textbook Edition . The Abraham Lincoln edition has eight pages of photos and two maps depicting the northern and southern campaigns of The Revolutionary War. The Textbook Edition of The Chronicles of America series omits the illustrations available in the Abraham Lincoln Edition . The illustrations have not been scanned in, so consider this book the equiva