It was a good plan but failed because the Americans caught one of the three columns of British troops which was commanded by General Burgoyne and defeated it before it could join forces with either of the other two.

Burgoyne had started out from Canada in June, 1777, with about 8000 men. In his attempt to retreat from a difficult position he had got into, he was cut off and surrounded by the American forces numbering more than 20,000, under the command of General Gates. Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga in New York State on the 17th of October.

After the surrender of Burgoyne there transpired two events which proved to be of vital consequence in the winning of the American cause. France formed an alliance with the United States and Frederick the Great of Prussia, showed his friendliness by prohibiting any more Hessian troops from entering the military service of Great Britain.

These event operated to give the patriots renewed hope and to weaken the hand of the British Ministry, but greater still was the aid supplied by French arms in the successful termination of the struggle for independence.

A French fleet and a force of 4000 French soldiers arrived off New York in June, 1778.

A plan was formed to attack the British troops under General Clinton, in New York, but some of the French ships were of too deep draft to pass over the bar at the mouth of the Hudson River, and the project had to be abandoned.

The French sailed away to the West Indies, to threaten the British possessions there, and immediately 5000 of Clinton's men had to be withdrawn from the continent and sent to those islands.

The subsequent part performed by our French Allies at the siege of Yorktown needs no comment.

Battle of Camden. Outside the immediate theater of operation, the Americans, up to the fourth year of the war, had suffered few of the discomforts incident to hostile military occupation.

It mattered not much materially to the people of Virginia and the Carolinas, or. even to the New Englanders, how many months the war kept up, so long as it was confined to New Jersey.

Clinton believed that the way to make a rebellious people want peace was to make the war uncomfortable for all of them. That was the purpose of the "wearing out" policy he now adopted.

In pursuance of his plan, Clinton sent a raiding force to the coast of New England, and another to Delaware Bay during 1778. (Plate 1.) "In the autumn, he sent Colonel Campbell, with 3500 regulars, to Georgia, where he easily defeated the 1200 militia of the patriots, and took Savannah and Augusta. At the same time the British General Prevost entered Georgia from Florida; so Georgia was declared out of revolt." (Fisher.)

"In the hope of checking the British progress in the South, General Lincoln was sent to Charleston." But the local militia could render him no assistance and he was able to obtain only 2000 militia from North Carolina by the end of February, 1779. In September, 1779, Lincoln, with aid of the French fleet, laid siege to Savannah and assaulted it. He was repulsed with heavy loss. In December Clinton himself sailed from New York with 8000 men. He landed at Savannah, and getting some reinforcements from Prevost, marched against Charleston. Lincoln, who commanded Charleston, should have abandoned it and taken to the open country, but he collected all the troops he could and prepared to defend the town. There was very little fighting; Clinton laid siege and Lincoln surrendered the town, May 12, 1780, with 5500 prisoners and a great lot of ordnance and supplies.

"Cornwallis was left by Clinton in command of South Carolina, and, "there was now, for a long time, a frightful scene of anarchy and confusion; with the British and loyalists plundering, murdering, and confiscating; the patriots retaliating as best they could." It was at this time, during the summer of 1780, that the patriots, who would not take the oath of allegiance, and had retreated to the swamps and mountains

PLATE 4.-From the True History of the American Revolution by
Sydney George Fisher.

By special permission of the author and the publishers, J. B. Lippincott Co.

of the interior, maintained under Marion, Sumter, Pickens, and Williams, that partisan warfare which became so famous. Their attacking parties were as small as 20 and seldom over 100, but the suddenness of their appearance, the fury of their attack, and the swiftness and security of their flight were appalling to European troops." (Fisher.)

In June General Gates was appointed to take command of the patriot troops in the South. Upon arriving at Charlotte he found things in a deplorable condition; there was lack of arms, lack of everything, especially lack of funds.

Lord Rawdon was in command of the British garrison at Camden, which Gates decided to attack. Gates had the choice of two roads from Charlotte to Camden, one of which was a little longer than the other, but in every other respect better suited to the march. Against the advice of his officers, Gates took the shorter, apparently to reach his objective before it could be reinforced from Charleston.

Rawdon's command was much smaller than Gates' but he marched it out 15 miles to meet Gates, and posted it behind a creek blocking the way. At this point the two roads were about 10 miles apart. A skillful commander might have occupied Rawdon's attention in front, and made a turning movement by the other road; a bold commander might, with Gates' preponderance of numbers, have crossed the creek and carried the position by direct attack. Gates did neither; he wavered and hesitated for two days, then moved slowly across to the other road and took up a position at Claremont.

Meantime Cornwallis had arrived with reinforcements. The Americans, however, still outnumbered the British.. There were 3052 Americans, only 1400 of whom were regulars, to 2000 British. Gates, however, had not learned of the arrival of Cornwallis, and he detached 400 of his best Maryland regulars to join Sumter in cutting the British line of communications with Charleston.

At 10 o'clock at night the two little armies advanced toward each other, each hoping to take the other by surprise. The result was the battle of Camden, August 17, 1780, on a narrow piece of ground with an impassable swamp on each side. (Plate 4.) Gates' North Carolina and Virginia militia threw down their arms and fled without firing a shot. "Within 15 minutes," says Fiske, "the whole American left became a mob of struggling men, smitten with mortal panic, and huddling like sheep in their wild flight, while Tarleton's (British) cavalry gave chase and cut them down by scores." The Maryland brigade behaved better; but it also was driven from the field. General Gates himself escaped to Hillsbore, riding 200 miles in four days.

To enable the student to appreciate the full significance of the fiasco of Camden, it should be stated that the American commander at Camden was the same General Gates whom the Continental Congress had appointed to succeed General Schuyler in command shortly before the events which terminated in Burgoyne's defeat in October, 1777, and that General Gates had secured that appointment "by underhand scheming."

Two significant facts are before us. At the battles of Bunker Hill and Harlem Heights the American forces, composed partly of regulars and partly of militia, behind breastworks, had withstood the direct assaults of the British regulars in an entirely creditable manner. At the battle of Camden, fought at 10 o'clock at night, in which the American and British forces were both moving, a portion of the American militia fled without firing a shot, precipitating the defeat of the American Army with great slaughter. The inference to be drawn from these instances, as to the usefulness of untrained and undisciplined troops for general military purposes, is very clear. Military history is so full of identical evidence that we need not hesitate to state that that inference has become an accepted conclusion.

In contrast with the results obtained by the employment of raw troops at the battle of Camden, another affair took place in the same year which further illustrates the principle which should govern in the employment of untrained troops: This was the battle between the American troops under Morgan, about 1000 men, and the British forces under Tarleton, 1100 strong. Morgan had taken up a position at a

place called the Cowpens, a sort of "round-up" place for cattle. Here he was attacked by Tarleton. We will quote the description of the battle verbatim from Fisher's True History of the American Revolution." Fiske's description is practically the same. (Plate 5.)

Morgan "placed himself with the river in his immediate rear, which, if he were defeated, would largely cut off his retreat; but he did this, he said, to prevent his militia running too soon. He then prepared a formation which seems to have been entirely original, the result of careful thought and thorough knowledge of his material.

"He placed the raw militia far in front to receive the first onset of the British and told them that he expected them to fire only two volleys at killing distance. After that they could run; and he showed them how to run around the left flank of the rest of his troops, and get behind the main body of them, where they could reform at their leisure and recover themselves.

"About 150 yards behind the militia, Morgan placed his picked troops on a slight hill; 150 further back he placed his cavalry, under Colonel Washington.

"Tarleton attacked, in his dashing, eager style, at sunrise. The militia received. him better than was expected, and retreated as they had been told. The British immediately spread out and rushed at the second line of Americans, intending to flank them (envelop them) on both sides. The second line avoided this movement by falling back to the position of the cavalry. At the same time the cavalry circled round and attacked the British right flank; and the militia, having been reformed, circled round the other side and attacked the British left. The second (American) line retreated no farther, but, after delivering their fire at 30 yards, charged the British."

Tarleton escaped, but he lost 230 killed and wounded, and 600 prisoners. Morgan's loss was 12 killed and 61 wounded, while he captured two cannon and other spoils including muskets, horses and two standards. It is related that the cannon were originally captured from Burgoyne and were recaptured by the British at Camden.

The fall of 1781 witnessed the closing scene of the Revolutionary War. Washington, with a force of 16,000 men, composed of American regulars and French troops, laid siege in the regular way to Yorktown. On the night of the 15th of October the British made an unsuccessful attempt to break their way out of the besieged town; on the 17th-the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrenderCornwallis had a white flag raised.

On the 19th he surrendered and 7247 Englishmen marched out to the old tune of "The World Turned Upside Down," and laid down their arms. (Fiske.)

This practically ended the Revolutionary War, though the treaty of peace was not signed until 1783.

During the siege of Yorktown, a powerful French fleet guarded the Chesapeake Bay, where it was attacked by the British West Indies fleet. After a fight of two hours, in which about 700 men were killed and wounded in the two fleets, the British ships withdrew.

After all is said, what single influence did most to compass the surrender of Cornwallis' army?

Had this surrender not taken place, and had the "wearing-out" policy of Clinton gone on, the war might have lasted several years longer, and-who knows but what we might still be British subjects?

SIXTH LESSON.

MILITARY POLICY AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE WAR OF 1812.

(Based upon "Military Policy of the United States" by Upton.)

In the last two lessons you have been given information which has enabled you to draw conclusions as to the lessons to be learned from the management of military affairs during the Revolutionary War. Before proceeding further it is desired to