were in vain. The ruthless order was carried into effect. Colonel Hayne was hanged on the 4th of August, displaying, in his last moments, the serenity and fortitude of a martyred patriot.

The odium of this execution fell upon the whole British interest. Tories-and few States had a greater proportion than South Carolina-could not defend it, and it infuriated the whigs. Greene, from his camp on the Santee hills, issued an indignant proclamation, threatening vengeance and retaliation, and the excited feeling stimulated the army to active efforts. Making a circuitous march of seventy miles to cross the Wateree and Congaree rivers, the Americans, strengthened by Pickens, Henderson, and Marion, with their divisions, marched down the south side of the Congaree, towards the enemy. The British retired as Greene approached, and took up a position at Eutaw Springs, forty miles below, and about sixty miles north of Charleston. Here they made a stand, and the battle of Eutaw, by which the war in South Carolina was closed, was fought on the 8th of September.

The American army, two thousand strong, advanced early in the morning of that day, to attack the Sept. 8th. British in their camp. They moved in two linesthe first composed of the North and South Carolina militia, commanded by Marion and Pickens, and the second, of the regulars, commanded by General Sumner and Colonels Campbell and Williams. Lee, with his legion and the South Carolina State troops, covered the flanks, and Washington, with his cavalry, was a corps of reserve. The enemy received them in two lines, drawn up obliquely across the road, on the heights, and well defended by artillery. The Americans continued to fire and advance with intrepidity, against the discharge of the artillery, until the contending ranks met, almost hand to hand. Both sides fought firmly and resolutely. The order given by Williams and Campbell to the American regulars to charge with trailed arms, was promptly obeyed, and the attack bore down all before them. Lee, with his cavalry, turned the left flank, and Washington fell fiercely upon the right. The British line was broken and the new troops among them fled precipitately. The veteran corps received the assailants firmly, and an obstinate and most bloody struggle was maintained for some time, hand to hand, till, overpowered, the whole British force was

driven off the field. The Americans pursued hotly, and took five hundred prisoners. The battle appeared completely won, when the English regulars took post in a large brick house, and a picketted garden. Some of them rallied in some thick shrubbery. In these advantageous positions they made a resolute defence, and all efforts to dislodge them, even with the aid of six pieces of artillery, were in vain. The cavalry were repulsed at all points in their attempts to penetrate the garden and the wood, and Colonel Washington was wounded and taken prisoner. The fire from the house produced a dreadful carnage. The rest of the English had time to rally and advance, upon which General Greene, unwilling to repeat the desperate attack upon the posts thus firmly defended, drew off his army, and retired to the ground he had occupied in the morning. He carried with him his wounded and the prisoners. The British remained on the field, but, on the next evening, withdrew to Monk's Corner.

This battle was one of the most sanguinary fought during the Revolutionary war, considering the numbers engaged. On both sides, the most resolute valor was displayed. The ranks were for some time mingled together, and the officers fought hand to hand. The American loss was five hundred and fourteen killed, wounded, and missing; the British reported theirs at six hundred and ninety-three. General Greene estimated it much higher. Colonel Stuart, in retreating, left a thousand stand of arms upon the field.

The battle of Eutaw Springs closed the Revolutionary war in South Carolina. The British, after delaying awhile, retired to Charleston, abandoning the state to the mastery of the republicans, without further effort, except a few ravaging and plundering expeditions, which only injured individual property. Greene established posts to keep the enemy in check, and thenceforth the power of Great Britain was not acknowledged beyond Charleston Neck. Congress passed the highest encomiums upon the general and army who had won the battle of Eutaw, and, as a most fitting token of the estimate they placed on the genius and services of Greene, presented him, in the name of the nation, with one of the captured standards, and a gold medal struck in honor of the victory.

The conduct and issue of the campaign, of which that victory was the consummation, are justly esteemed among

the most brilliant in the military history of the war. The American general entered the State with a beaten, dispirited, and almost destitute army, and he found the country in the possession of a superior force, entrenched in a strong chain of well garrisoned and fortified posts. He broke through them,-captured them in detail, drove the detachments, one by one, before him, and, though several times foiled and repulsed in the field, found such resources in the energy of his character and the fertility of his genius, that he was always formidable when defeated, and persevered till he closed the campaign, by cooping up the enemy in a single city, and restoring three States to the American Union. Savannah and Charleston were the only foothold left to the British, who had, in April, been masters of Georgia and South Carolina, and held North Carolina at their mercy. Well did Nathaniel Greene, the Rhode Island blacksmith, merit the title which he received of the Liberator of the South.

Virginia, in the mean time, was the theatre of important operations, all tending to the final issue of the war. Cornwallis, on his junction with the army of Phillips at Petersburg, on the 20th of May, subsequently strengthened from New York, commenced offensive operations to subdue Virginia. La Fayette, with his little army, was posted beyond the James river. Baron Steuben had not been able to join him, and the reinforcements, under Wayne, composed of the Pennsylvania militia, were not arrived. As Cornwallis advanced, La Fayette could do no more than watch him at a careful distance. Neither the celerity of movements, nor the military artifices of the British general, could draw the wary Frenchman into a battle with such odds. By a series of masterly manoeuvres, he disappointed all the efforts of Cornwallis to intercept him, and formed a junction with General Wayne at Raccoon Ford. In the interim, two detachments were sent out by the enemy against important places in possession of the Americans,-one under Colonel Simcoe, to seize a quantity of stores, which were at Point of Fork, at the confluence of Rivanna and Flavanna rivers, guarded by Baron Steuben, with four to five hundred new levies, and the other under Tarleton, to Charlotteville, to capture the governor and legislature of the State. Both succeeded in part. Steuben carried off his men and part of his stores in safety, the rest fell into the hands of the enemy

Tarleton reached Charlotteville with such despatch, that Governor Jefferson escaped with some difficulty. Several members of the House of Delegates were made prisoners, and stores to a considerable amount were destroyed. In these expeditions, all the stores and tobacco on the route were also destroyed; the granaries of private individuals were included in the general devastation, and immense quantities of private property laid waste.

The American stores deposited at Richmond had been removed for safety to Albemarle Court House. By the delays incident to the junction of La Fayette with Wayne, Cornwallis bad been enabled to get nearer to this depot than the American army. Both armies were anxious to push towards this point, and Cornwallis was sanguine in the belief that he should be able to intercept La Fayette, on the road by which the latter must march to reach Albemarle. He accordingly held back the detachments designed for the expedition, and waited for the Americans at Jefferson's plantation. La Fayette had the address to escape the toils. In the night he caused an old road, that had fallen into disuse, to be opened and cleared, and, on the next day, June the 18th, to the mortification of Cornwallis, the Americans were strongly interposed between him and the Court House. Unable to advance, he fell back upon Richmond. La Fayette followed him guardedly, and, having been reinforced by Baron Steuben and his levies, Colonel Clarke, with his riflemen, and the militia of the neighborhood, he made a show of inclination to give battle. Cornwallis took no advantage of the offer, but, after delaying a few days at Richmond, retired again towards the coast with his whole army, continuing, as he went, to destroy indiscriminately public and private property. More than two thousand hogsheads of tobacco alone were burnt in this march. He entered Williamsburg on the 25th June. There he remained until the 4th July; on that day, having received orders to take a position by which he could reinforce the Commander-in-chief at New York, then apprehending an attack upon that city by the combined forces of Washington and Rochambeau, he broke up his camp at Williamsburg and retired towards Portsmouth. Nothing but light skirmishings between the armies occurred at Williamsburg. On the march to Portsmouth, a smart action took place at the James river. La Fayette thought the main body of the enemy had crossed the river, and ad

July 8th.

vanced to attack the rearguard. He unexpectedly found himself engaged with the main body, and was obliged to draw off his men from the unequal contest with some loss. The river was crossed safely on the 9th, but, on examination, Portsmouth was pronounced not to be a proper station for the joint force, and, by the advice of engineers, Yorktown and Gloucester Point were selected as the best positions. After destroying the works at Portsmouth the whole British army moved to those stations, on Aug. 23d. the 23d of August, and Cornwallis applied himself to fortify them in the strongest manner. His immediate haste to reach the coast had been caused by an order from Sir Henry Clinton to send three thousand of his troops to New York,an order which was countermanded on his arrival there, an equal number of German troops having arrived in the mean time from Europe, to strengthen the army of Clinton. The army of Cornwallis, on entering Yorktown, consisted of from eight to nine thousand, principally veteran troops.

On intelligence of this disposition of the British force, La Fayette took post in the county of New Kent.

The adverse armies, so unequal in number and equipments, remained in this position for some weeks. In that interval military combinations were brought to bear together, by which the scale was made to predominate on the other side. Skill and fortune happily timed the arrival of the French fleet from the West Indies, the junction with it of the French fleet from Newport, and the successful issue of the manœuvres of Washington to deceive Clinton and prevent him from succoring Cornwallis, or obstructing the march of the American army from the Hudson to Virginia, so as to concentrate resistless armaments by sea and land at this point, and surround and capture this powerful and flourishing army.

These combinations were directed by the genius of Washington. The campaign in the North had originally been aimed at New York. All the military operations of Washington and Rochambeau tended to that point. The possession of the city was a great-prize, for which the American general was willing to risk much. The despatches brought from France by the Count de Barras, who had been appointed to succeed De Ternay as admiral, gave intelligence of the sailing of the Count de Grasse, with a large French squadron, destined, after performing a certain service in the