not known. He may have thought that Rawdon with three thousand men could baffle Greene. Perhaps he realized the great difficulty of conquering and holding such a sparsely settled country as the Carolinas. We know that he deemed the conquest of the South impracticable as long as Virginia was in American hands. He, therefore, for these or other reasons, determined on the conquest of that commonwealth. There was a small British army there already, commanded by Phillips and the traitor Arnold. Cornwallis thought that by combining these troops with his own he would be stronger than any army the Americans could place in the field against him. Phillips died before Cornwallis reached Petersburg. The latter would have nothing to do with Arnold, and sent him back to New York. There was at that moment a small American army in Virginia, for Washington had sent Lafayette with one division of the Light Infantry to capture Arnold. The great advantages which the topography of Virginia offers to the defending army have been noted above, and will be described at length when we come to the campaigns of 1861-65. It is enough to say here that Cornwallis and Lafayette with their respective armies marched up into the country and then marched down to the seaboard again. Cornwallis went into summer-quarters at Portsmouth, and later, removed to Yorktown, which he strongly fortified, in obedience, as he thought, to Clinton's orders. Lafayette encamped some miles away near the junction of the Mattapony and Pamunkey Rivers; and this was the position. of affairs in September, 1781.

Lafayette and Cornwallis, 1781.

Siege of Yorktown, 1781.

The French alliance had produced few advantages to the Americans up to that time. It had necessitated the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British; but the attempts of D'Estaing, in conjunction with American armies, to capture Newport and Savannah had both ended in failure. In the summer of 1780 Rochambeau,

III.]

The Yorktown Campaign.

ΙΟΙ

with some six thousand excellent troops, had landed at Newport, which had previously been abandoned by the British. The fleet which brought him over had been immediately blockaded by a British squadron, and for a whole year the French army had remained idle at Newport to protect the shipping. Their presence there had been a source of great profit to the farmers of Southern New England, as they consumed large quantities of vegetables and provisions, paying therefor in specie. In the early summer of 1781, De Grasse, the French naval commander in the West Indies, sent word that he would sail northward with his whole fleet in July or August. Washington was anxious to use this force to capture New York; but De Grasse refused to cross the bar outside that harbour and suggested that some joint operation in Virginia might be possible. The capture of Cornwallis was therefore determined on. Masking their movements so completely that Clinton considered the siege of New York as begun, the allied armies marched past New York and through Philadelphia to the head of Chesapeake Bay, while the French fleet at Newport made good its escape and anchored in Chesapeake Bay without having met a British ship. Meantime De Grasse, sailing northward, entered the bay on the same day on which the allied armies approached the northern end of it. The British admiral in the West Indies was Sir George Rodney. He entertained a strong dislike to Clinton, and instead of following De Grasse with his whole fleet, he sent a small squadron under Hood to reinforce the British naval force at New York. The British and French fleets fought an indecisive action which obliged the British to return to New York for repairs — De Grasse returning to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. The control of the sea was thus for a few weeks in the hands of the allies. Besieged by more than double his own numbers and without hope of immediate succour, Cornwallis, on Oct. 17th, 1781, four years to a day from the surrender of Burgoyne, asked for terms of capitula

tion, and two days later the British army, some seven thousand strong, laid down its arms. This disaster brought about the fall of the North Ministry, and the recognition by Great Britain of the independence of the United States.

The Peace Negotiations, 1782-83.

The king was now forced to summon the opposition to office and to confide the government to the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord Shelburne, Mr Charles James Fox and their followers who had opposed his policy in regard to both America and England. Shelburne and Fox, the two Secretaries of State, were the most important men in the new cabinet, managing home and colonial and foreign affairs respectively. Shelburne was a man of fair abilities but he was burdened with an unfortunate reputation for trickery and double-dealing. Of the many acts of bad faith with which he was charged, none was more serious than the "pious fraud " he was said to have committed against Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and father of his colleague Charles James Fox. Shelburne and Dr Franklin had been good friends before the war, and the former, sincerely desirous of bringing hostilities with America to a speedy termination, sent a messenger to Paris to inquire of Franklin upon what terms the Americans would consent to a cessation of hostilities. This matter coming to the ears of Fox greatly incensed him, for he deemed the negotiations with the United States as an independent nation to be within his province as Foreign Secretary. Shelburne maintained, on the contrary, that as independence would be granted in the treaty the conduct of the negotiations belonged to him. Fox seized the opportunity afforded by Rockingham's death in July, 1782, to resign in company with Mr Burke and his other friends. Shelburne then became Prime Minister and the negotiations proceeded without causing any more friction in the cabinet. At Paris, affairs did not go so smoothly. The three American Commissioners, who conducted this negotiation, were Dr Franklin,

III.

1.]

The Peace Negotiations, 1782-83.

103

At

John Adams, and John Jay. The last named was especially accredited to Spain. While at Madrid, he became convinced that the Bourbon governments were desirous of continuing the war in the interests of Spain, hoping, among other things, to recover Gibraltar. He also discovered that they were anxious to restrict the limits of the United States with a view to keeping the new republic as far removed from Spain's American possessions as possible. He thus suspected the good faith of France. Franklin, however, believed in the good intentions of the French government toward the United States, and pointed out that the instructions to the Commissioners required them to take no important step without the knowledge of that government. The treaty of alliance also forbade either party to make a separate peace with Great Britain. In addition, Jay insisted that the British government must negotiate with the Americans as representatives of an independent power. this juncture, the British authorities placed in Jay's hands what purported to be a letter from Barbé-Marbois, Secretary of the French legation at Philadelphia, to his government, protesting against the Americans continuing to enjoy the rights to the fisheries which they had enjoyed as colonists. Jay sent an Englishman then in Paris to warn Shelburne of the machinations of the French government. At that moment there seems to have been an agent of Vergennes at London who had been sent to communicate to the British government the views of the Bourbon powers. Shelburne saw that now, if ever, was the time to conclude a separate treaty with the United States, and he waived all questions of form. At this juncture John Adams arrived in Paris from Holland, where he had been negotiating a loan. He agreed with Jay, and the two forming a majority of the Commission, they voted to break their instructions and to come to an agreement with England without the knowledge of France. The preliminary articles, which should form a definitive treaty whenever a general settlement

should be made, were signed on November 30th, 1782, the definitive treaty not being concluded until some nine months later, September 3rd, 1783.

The Treaty of 1783.

According to the American view, the Treaty of 1783 was in the nature of a partition of the British Empire. It followed from this, that the articles which extended the limits of the new nation to the Mississippi, defined them on the north, and gave rights to the "fisheries" having once gone into operation could not be annulled by a subsequent war. The intention of the negotiators was undoubtedly to give to the United States the territory of the English colonies as it was understood to exist before the late acquisitions from France and Spain, limited, however, by the Mississippi on the West in accordance with the treaty of 1763. The northern limit was the southern limit of Canada, as laid down in the Proclamation of 1763; and the southern limit was the northern boundary of the Floridas, according to the same proclamation. These several boundaries were described in the treaty with as much distinctness as was possible in the existing state of geographical knowledge. So imperfect was that knowledge that the last dispute arising under this instrument was not settled until sixty years later. Other provisions of the treaty gave rise to similar difficulties. Actual debts contracted before the war were to be considered as binding, but, as there was no central supreme court in the United States except for prize cases, this provision was not enforced before the establishment of the government under the new Constitution. It was provided also that Congress should recommend to the several States the restoration of property confiscated from the Loyalists. The "recommendation" of Congress was duly made and proved to be entirely ineffective: the States paid no attention to it and Parliament was obliged to care for the Royalists. Another clause obliged the British to evacuate all posts within the limits of the