ed on sir Henry Clinton; general Howe having returned to England: and general Lincoln was appointed to the command of the American southern' army. Governor Tryon and sir George Collyer made an incursion into Connecticut, and burnt the towns of Fairfield and Norwalk; from the latter place certificates were transmitted to general Washington, in which persons of veracity bore witness on oath to various acts of brutality, rapine, and cruelty, committed on aged persons, women, and prisoners. The elder citizens of the United States, who had grown up with habits of attachment to the British nation, felt the keenest sensations of regret, when they contrasted the year 1759 with 1779. The former was their glory, when in the days of their youth they were disposed to boast of the honours of their common country, but the latter filled them with distress. The one ennobled the British name with the conquest of Montreal, Quebec, and the whole province of Canada; the other was remarkable only for burning magazines, store-houses, dock-yards, and towns, and for the distress of a defenceless peasantry. The American arms were crowned with success in an attack upon Stoney-Point, which was surprised and taken by general Wayne, in the night of the 15th of July. Five hundred men were made prisoners, with little loss on either side.A party of British forces attempted this summer to build a fort on Penobscot river, for the purpose of cutting timber in the neighbouring forests. A plan was laid by the Massachussetts to dislodge them, and a considerable fleet collected for the purpose; but it failed of success, and the whole marine 2A3 force force fell into the hands of the British, except some vessels which were burnt by the Americans themselves. In the month of October, general Lincoln and count d'Estaign made an assault upon Savannah; but they were repulsed with considerable loss. In this action, the celebrated Polish count Pulaski, who had acquired the reputation of a brave soldier, was mortally wounded. Thus ended the campaign of 1779, without any thing decisive on either side. It is remarkable for the feeble exertions of the Americans. Accidental causes, which had previously excited their activity, had in a great measure ceased to have influence.An enthusiasm for liberty made them comparatively disregard property, and brave all danger, in the first years of the war. Their success in 1777, made them active and vigorous. The flattering prospects inspired by the alliance with France in 1778, banished all fears of the success of the revolution; but the failure of every scheme of co-operation, produced a despondency of mind unfavour able to great exertions. Expecting too much from their allies, they were less prepared to prosecute the war from their own resources, than they would have been if d'Estaign had not touched on their coast. Their army was reduced in numbers, and badly clothed. In the first years of the war, the mercantile character was lost in the military spirit of the times; but in the progress of it, the inhabitants, cooling in their enthusiasm, gradually returned to their former habits of lucrative business. This made a distinction between the army and the citizens, which was unfriendly to military exertions. While several events tended to the embarrassment of Great Britain, and indirectly to the establish establishment of independence, a variety of internal causes relaxed the exertions of the Americans, and, for a time, made it doubtful whether they would ultimately be independent citizens or conquered subjects. Among these, the daily depreciation of their paper money held a distinguished preeminence; but on this subject the limits of our volume will not allow us to enlarge. When the English colonies were planted in North America, the country was inhabited by numerous tribes of Indians, whose numbers had, from a variety of causes, been continually lessening. Of those that remained the Americans were not unmindful: they had appointed commissioners to cultivate their friendship, and to persuade them to take no part in the contest. All the exertions of congress were insufficient for the security of the western frontiers. In almost every period of the war a great majority of the Indians had taken part with Great Britain against the Americans. The intercourse with these tribes had, for several years prior to the American war, been exclusively committed to John Stuart, an officer of the crown and devoted to the royal interest. By his means almost incredible devastation was committed at different periods of the contest. A particular detail of the destruction of property, of the distress of great numbers who escaped only by fleeing into the woods, where they subsisted without covering, on the pontaneous productions of the earth, and of the barbarous murders which were committed on persons of all ages, and each sex, would be sufficient to freeze every breast with horror. In several expeditions which had been carried on against the Indians, ample vengeance had been taken on some of them; but these partial suc cesses cesses produced no lasting benefit. The few who es caped had it in their power to make thousands miserable. For the permanent security of the frontier inhabitants, it was resolved to carry a decisive expedition into the Indian country. A considerable body of continental troops was selected for the purpose, and put under the command of general Sullivan. The Indians who form the confederacy of the six nations called the Mohawks, were the objects of this expedition. They inhabit that immense and fertile tract of country which lies between New England, the Middle States, and the province of Canada. Sullivan marched into their country, and burnt and destroyed all the provisions and settlements that fell in their way. A. D. On the opening of the next campaign, the British troops left Rhode Island. An 1780. expedition, under general Clinton and lord Cornwallis, was undertaken against Charleston, in South Carolina which, after a close siege of six weeks, was surrendered to the British commander; and general Lincoln and the whole garrison were made prisoners. This was the first instance in which the Americans had attempted to defend a town.The unsuccessful event, with its consequences, demonstrated the policy of sacrificing the towns of the Union, in preference to endangering the whole, by risking too much for their defence. General Gates was now appointed to the command of the southern department, and another army collected. In August, lord Cornwallis attacked the American troops at Camden, in South Carolina, and routed them with considerable loss. He afterwards marched through the southern states, and supposed that he had entirely subdued them. The same summer the British troops made fre quent quent incursions from New York into the Jerseys, ravaging and plundering the country. A large body, commanded by general Kniphausen, landed in June, at Elizabeth Point, and proceeded into the country. These were much harrassed in their progress by colonel Dayton, and the troops under his command. At Connecticut Farms they burnt a considerable part of the village. In this neighbourhood lived Mr. Caldwell, an eminent presbyterian clergyman, whose exertions in defence of his country had rendered him particularly obnoxious to the British. Mrs. Caldwell, seeing the enemy advancing, retired with her housekeeper, a child of three years old, an infant of eight months, and a little maid, to a room secured on all sides by stone walls, except at a window opposite the enemy. Unsuspicious of danger, while she was sitting on her bed, holding one child by the hand, with the infant at her breast, a British soldier shot her dead, who had evidently come to the unguarded part of the house, with a design to perpetrate the horrid deed. Her husband shortly after shared the same fate. The campaign of this year passed away in successive disappointments and distresses. The country seemed exhausted, and the continental currency expiring: the army, in want of every article of food and clothing, brooding over its calamities. While these disasters were openly menacing the American cause, treachery was silently undermining it. General Arnold engaged, for a stipulated sum, to betray into the hands of the British an important post. He had been among the first to take arms against Great Britain, and to widen the breach between the parent state and the colonies. His distinguished talents and exemplary courage had procured him every honour that a grateful country |