Part 8 (2/2)

General Was.h.i.+ngton.

The news spread like wildfire. Wayne and his light infantry were the heroes of the hour.

Two days afterwards, Was.h.i.+ngton, with his chief officers, rode down to Stony Point and heard the whole story. The commander in chief shook hands with the men, and ”with joy that glowed in his countenance, here offered his thanks to Almighty G.o.d, that He had been our s.h.i.+eld and protector amidst the dangers we had been called to encounter.”

Was.h.i.+ngton did not, of course, intend to hold Stony Point, for the enemy could besiege it by land and by water. The prisoners, the cannon, and the supplies were carried away, and very little was left to the foe but the bare rock of their ”little Gibraltar.”

This exploit gave the Continental soldier greater confidence in himself. It proved to the British that the ”rebel” could use the bayonet with as much boldness and effect as the proudest grenadier.

The fight {89} was not a great affair in itself. Only fifteen Americans were killed and eighty-three wounded; of the British, sixty-three were killed and some seventy wounded.

As for Clinton, although he put on a bold face in the matter, and spoke of the event as an accident, he owned that he felt the blow keenly.

”Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton” was still master of the situation.

{90}

CHAPTER VII

THE DEFEAT OF THE RED DRAGOONS

If what the proverb tells us is true, that it is always darkest before dawn, the patriots of the South in 1780 must indeed have prayed for the light. Affairs had gone rapidly from bad to worse. Sir Henry Clinton had come again from New York, and in May of that year had captured Charleston with all of Lincoln's army.

Sir Henry went back to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis in command.

Was.h.i.+ngton desired to send his right-hand man, General Greene, to stem the tide of British success, but the Continental Congress chose to send General Gates.

In August, this weak general was utterly defeated in the battle of Camden, in South Carolina. How the bitter words of General Charles Lee, ”Beware lest your Northern laurels change to Southern willows,”

must have rung in his ears! Gates fled from Camden like the commonest coward in the army. Mounted on a fast horse, he did not stop until he reached Charlotte, seventy miles away.

No organized American force now held the field in the South, and the red dragoons easily overran Georgia and South Carolina. There seemed to be little left for {91} Cornwallis to do; for the three Southern colonies were for the time ground under the iron heel of the enemy.

Crus.h.i.+ng blows, however, only nerved the leaders, Sumter, Pickens, Marion, Davie, and others, to greater efforts. The insolence, the cruelty, and the tyranny of the British soldiers, and the bitter hatred of the Tories, had brought to the front a new cla.s.s of patriots. These men cared little about the original cause of the war, but the burning of their houses, the stealing of their cattle and their horses, and the brutal insulting of their wives and their daughters, aroused them to avenge their wrongs to the bitter end. And many were the skirmishes they brought about with the British.

Thirty days had now pa.s.sed since the battle of Camden, and Cornwallis on his return march had not yet reached the Old North State. It was still a long way to Virginia, and the road thither was beset with many dangers.

Meanwhile, the British commander had intrusted to two of his officers, Tarleton and Ferguson, the task of pillaging plantations, raising and drilling troops among the Tories, and breaking up the bands of armed patriots.

The brutal manner in which Tarleton and his men plundered, burned, and hanged does not concern this story.

Ferguson was the colonel of a regular regiment that had been recruited in this country, instead of in England. With his kind heart and his winning manner, he was bold {92} and brave, and always ready to take desperate chances in battle. He was noted for hard riding, night attacks, and swift movements with his troopers; and as a marksman he was unsurpa.s.sed. In short, Ferguson was just the leader to win the respect and the admiration of the Tories; and they eagerly enlisted in his service.

With a few regulars and a large force of loyalists, he pushed his victories to the foot of the mountains, in the western borders of the Carolinas. For the first time, he learned that over the high ranges in front of him were the homes of the men who had been causing him annoyance, and who were harboring those that had fled before his advance.

The proud young Briton now made the mistake of his life. He sent a prisoner, Samuel Phillips, over to the frontier settlements, to Colonel Isaac Shelby, with the insolent message that, if the ”backwater” men did not quit resisting the royal arms, he would march his army over the mountains, and would straightway lay waste their homes with fire and sword, and hang their leaders.

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