Volume Ii Part 11 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait, holding a spear.]
General Sullivan.
This heroic foreigner had been sent hither by Choiseul before the Revolution to report to the French minister on American affairs, and at the outbreak of war had at great cost cast in his lot with our fathers.
Sent south to aid Lincoln, he arrived only in time to be utilized by Gates. De Kalb was the hero of Camden. Wounded and his horse shot from under him, on foot he led his stanch division in a charge which drove Rawdon's men and took fifty prisoners. Believing his side victorious he would not yield, though literally ridden down by Cornwallis' dragoons, till his wounds exhausted him. Two-fifths of his n.o.ble division fell with him.
The whole army was pursued for miles and completely scattered. Arms, knapsacks, broken wagons, dead horses strewed the line of retreat. The Americans lost 900 killed and as many more prisoners. The British loss was less than 500. Gates, who had been literally borne off the field by the panic-stricken militia, rode in all haste two hundred miles north to Hillsborough, N. C, where he tried to organize a new army.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
General Lincoln.
The gloom created at the North by this defeat was deepened by the startling news that Benedict Arnold, the hero of Saratoga, had turned traitor. Smarting under a reprimand from Was.h.i.+ngton for misconduct, Arnold agreed with Clinton to surrender West Point. The plot was discovered by the capture of Clinton's agent, Major Andre, who was hung as a spy. Arnold escaped to the British lines.
There was now no organized American force in the Carolinas, and Cornwallis began a triumphant march northward. The brave mountaineers of North Carolina and Virginia rose in arms. October 7th, 1,000 riflemen fell upon a detachment of 1,100 British, strongly posted on King's Mountain, N. C, and after a sharp struggle killed and wounded about 400, and took the rest prisoners. In this battle fell one of the Tory ancestors of the since distinguished American De Peyster family.
The King's Mountain victory filled the patriots with new hope and zeal, and kept the loyalists from rising to support the British. Cornwallis marched south again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Several men camped in a swamp.]
General Marion in Camp.
Gates was now removed and General Nathaniel Greene placed in charge of the Southern department. Greene was one of the most splendid figures in the Revolution. Son of a Rhode Island Quaker, bred a blacksmith, ill-educated save-by private study, which in mathematics, history, and law he had carried far, he was in 1770 elected to the legislature of his colony. Zeal to fight England for colonial liberty lost him his place in the Friends' Society. Heading Rhode Island's contingent to join Was.h.i.+ngton before Boston at the first shock of Revolutionary arms, he was soon made brigadier, the initial step in his rapid promotion.
Showing himself an accomplished fighter at Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, Monmouth, and the battle of Rhode Island, and a first-rate organizer as quartermaster-general of the army, he had long been Was.h.i.+ngton's right-hand man; and his superior now sent him south with high hopes and ringing words of recommendation to the army and people there.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Marquis de Lafayette.
[1781]
Greene's plan of campaign was the reverse of Gates's. He meant to hara.s.s and hinder the enemy at every step, avoiding pitched battles. January 17, 1781, a portion of his army, about 1,000 strong, under the famous General Daniel Morgan, of Virginia, another hero of Saratoga, was attacked at Cowpens, S. C., by an equal number of British under the das.h.i.+ng Tarleton. The British, riddled by a terrible cross-fire from Morgan's unerring riflemen, followed up by a bayonet charge, fled, and were for twenty-four miles pursued by cavalry. The American loss was trifling. Tarleton lost 300 in killed and wounded, and 500 prisoners, besides 100 horses, 35 wagons, and 800 muskets.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Benedict Arnold.
Cornwallis began a second march northward. Greene's force was too weak to risk a battle. His soldiers were poorly clad, and most of them were without tents or shoes. He therefore skillfully retreated across North Carolina, chased by Cornwallis. Twice the rivers, rising suddenly after Greene had crossed, checked his pursuers. But on March 15th, re-enforced to about 4,000, the Quaker general offered battle to Cornwallis at Guilford Court-House, N. C. He drew up his forces on a wooded hill in three lines one behind the other. The first line, consisting of raw North Carolina militia, fled before the British bayonet charge, hardly firing a shot. The Virginia brigade const.i.tuting the second line made a brave resistance, but was soon driven back. On swept the British columns, flushed with victory, against the third line. Here Greek met Greek. The Continentals stood their ground like the veterans they were.
After a long and b.l.o.o.d.y fight the British were driven back. The fugitives, however, presently rallied under cover of theartillery, when Greene, fearing to risk more, withdrew from the field. The British lost 500; the Americans, 400, besides a large part of the militia, who dispersed to their homes. Cornwallis, with his ”victorious but ruined army,” retreated to the southern part of the State. The last of April he forsook Carolina, and marched into Virginia with 1,400 men.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Several men in a rowboat, one holding a white flag.]
Arnold's Escape.
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