opening of our great conflict, the first dash of our arms had carried all before it. The British army and its favorite generals, Gage, Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne, were penned up in Boston with bitter memories of Lexington and Concord, then driven forth to find a shelter in Halifax. Lord Dunmore was expelled from Norfolk and took refuge on his fleet. Ticonderoga, Crown Point, St. Johns, and Montreal had been taken in rapid succession, and Quebec alone had escaped. From Canada to Virginia we had made a clean sweep.

But a change came. Just before our Independence was declared, the last of our troops were driven out of Canada, in the strong but true language of the day, "disgraced, defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, undisciplined." The day before that Declaration was read to the army on Broadway, Howe landed on Staten Island the first detachment of twenty-six thousand troops. Then followed the disastrous battle of Long Island, the evacuation of New York, the reverse of White Plains, the surrender of forts Lee and Washington, the chase of our army through the Jerseys, and the capture of Charles Lee, the second in command. and then the idol of the army, just as he was writing to Gates a profane attack upon his chief. And before our great general retreated grimly southward, conspired against by his leading officers, distrusted even by John Adams for his "Fabian policy," chafed by the internal. jealousies of his army, and baffled of every plan by the incessant changes of his troops, there came, like some Job's message, tidings from the north, that our fleet of

fifteen sail on Lake Champlain was exterminated, Crown Point burned and abandoned, and our northern army cooped up in its last stronghold at Ticonderoga. Washington indeed kept merry Christmas with the Hessians at Trenton, and paid his New Year's compliments to the British at Princeton. These two flashes alone flickered over the somber scene.

The flush and ardor of transient conflicts had now given way to the tug and strain of protracted war. And what a war! Often destitute of tents, blankets, medicines, good clothing, and wholesome food; short of arms and ammunition; without money or credit; I might almost say, long without an army. For by short enlistments our troops continually melted away, sometimes in the presence of the foe. And short enlistments were growing difficult; for in these sparse, new, and poor settlements, how could the men be spared from their homes? The camp, too, was as fatal as the battlefield. It was invaded by camp fever and dysentery and steadily beleaguered by the smallpox. At one time in '76, Schuyler in three months had lost half of his ten thousand men by death and desertion, and two fifths of the remainder were on the sick-list.

Each northern state carried special burdens. Vermont was engaged in the long and gallant strife for state rights and individual ownership of the soil. New York was overrun with royalists, of whom numbers had been sent to the New England states for safe-keeping two hundred at one time in the jails and houses of New Hampshire. The state of New Hampshire, so

intensely patriotic that only seven hundred and seventythree out of her whole population had, whether from conscientious or political scruples, refused to sign the pledge to resist the foe "with arms, at the risque of our lives and fortunes," was yet distracted with the magnitude and multitude of her efforts. I may not weary you with the long recital. Enough that when a state's militia enrolment extends from the age of fifteen up to fifty, and her "alarm list" to sixty-five; and when at length orders are given to draft one half even of that alarm list, we may be sure that the strain has reached her vital forces.

The outlook, also, in these earlier months of the year was forbidding. A powerful fleet lay southward at the center of motion ready to strike at any part of our vast coast line. The way was well-nigh clear for an early invasion from the north. Canadian sympathies were lost. The Indian tribes, that six months before had refused to mingle in this "quarrel," as they phrased it, "between two brothers of one blood," were listening to the enemy. Franklin was waiting in vain at the French Court for a recognition of our country.

And now the plot was deepening. Burgoyne in London laid before King George, in February, a plan to close the war. Howe had sent across the ocean a still larger scheme, which "would strike terror through the country" and "break down all resistance to his majesty's troops." Both agreed in this, that one army should move up the Hudson, another descend from the north and meet it at Albany. They would thus cut the

rebel serpent in twain, and separately crush its New England head and its Southern body.1

The scheme was a good one. It might have adjourned our liberties for fifty years. Who marred that plot? In England, King George and Lord George Germain; in America, John Burgoyne and Charles Lee. The dull king had a way of meddling in detail with all the business of his great empire. In the British Museum you can read, in his own handwriting, his comments on the plan of Burgoyne, restricting his forces, withholding all discretionary power, and requiring him simply "to join Howe at Albany."2 But that equally positive orders were not issued to Howe we may thank Lord George Germain. The Minister called at his office. The dispatch, all written, was not "fair-copied." So Germain hurried off heedlessly to the country. The unsigned dispatch was pigeonholed, and was found again after the surrender at Saratoga.3

There have been worse commanders and not many more polished gentlemen of his style than John Burgoyne. "A man of wit, fashion, and honor," says Macaulay. He eloped with Lord Derby's daughter, and was forgiven by the family. He wrote elaborate letters, genteel comedies, and flaming proclamations. "The charm of his manner," it was said, "neither man

1 Lord Howe proposed to open the campaign of the Southern army, with 35,000 men in three army corps; one to cover New Jersey; one to act on the side of Rhode Island with a view to reducing Boston; the third to move up the North River to Albany and there join the army of the North.

2

* Fonblanque's Political and Military Episodes, pp. 484 and 487.

3 Ibid. p. 236.

nor woman could resist." That was left for the Green Mountain Boys. He wore on his finger a diamond ring given him by the king of Portugal for his gallant dash at Valencia d'Alcantara, and Burgoyne's Light Horse was the favored regiment that George the Third loved often to review. He was a brave officer, a good colonel, and a moderate general. It is useless to extol him greatly as a commander. He did three things that are not done by great commanders. He needlessly underrated his enemy, he lost his best opportunity, and, in the last resort, he declined the responsibility which would have abandoned an expedition and saved an army. Give him credit for a good plan. Another man should have executed the plan. That man was Sir Guy Carleton, his last year's commander, and the governor of Canada. He knew the country, understood the people, and controlled the preparations. Cautious, as well as peaceful, he was all the more formidable because he was wise, conciliatory, and humane.

But in the high councils of heaven and the small arithmetic of King George it was ordered otherwise. Burgoyne was followed by the sanguine hopes of the British nation. Lord North looked for the "speedy quelling of the rebellion." Trading Manchester had subscribed for two regiments to conquer a market. The country gentlemen were loudly loyal. The opposition. in the Commons was well-nigh silenced. Bishops and clergy breathed out war; the staid pulpits of the Establishment rung with exhortations to smite the rebels, and even the heart of the humane king became ossified