After this gentle snub he was torn between a desire to join General Greene in the South for the winter campaign and his wish to be near New York when a blow was struck there. With a curiosity that would have been unpardonable in a less intimate friend, he sought to find out his chief's plans on this score. Washington's answer was non-committal, but he pointed out that "your going to the Southern army, if you expect a command in this, will answer no valuable purpose"; and after this second gentle snub Lafayette gave up the idea of joining Greene. Then in February he was sent with a detachment of twelve hundred men to Virginia, where Arnold was destroying valuable supplies. His orders bade him travel fast, "not to suffer the detachment to be delayed for want of either provisions, forage, or wagons," and after he got to Virginia "to do no act whatever with Arnold that directly or by implication will screen him from the punishment due to his treason and desertion; which, if he should fall into your hands, you will execute in the most summary way." While in Virginia he was to co-operate with General von Steuben, who was in command of militia there; and if it should prove impossible to dislodge Arnold, Lafayette was to bring his men back to rejoin the main army.

He had his force at the Head of Elk, that inlet at the head of Chesapeake Bay which the English had already used, three days ahead of schedule time. His campaign lasted about a month, but came to nothing, because he did not have the co-operation of ships, and in that tangle of land and water control of Chesapeake Bay was as necessary to success as ammunition or fodder. The French had been asked to help, and twice sent ships from Newport to Chesapeake Bay, but in neither case were they useful to him. He did the best he could from day to day without them, and even pushed down the bay in a small boat far ahead of his men, hoping to establish connections; but the ships he saw were British instead of French. Then he took his men back again to the Head of Elk.

That his failure was not due to lack of persistence letters written by him to Gov. Thomas Jefferson, asking for transportation, for provisions, for boats, for wagons, for horses, and, if horses were not available, even for oxen to draw his guns, amply testify. That he had his usual resourcefulness at instant command was displayed at Annapolis on the northward journey when he found two small armed British vessels blocking his progress. He improvised a temporary navy of his own, armed two merchant sloops with cannon, manned them with volunteers, and drove the British away long enough to permit the rest of his force to go on.

Neither was his usual friendliness lacking. He snatched time to visit Mount Vernon and to call upon Washington's mother at Fredericksburg, but he made up for the time lost in these indulgences by riding at night to overtake his command.

XVII
PREPARING FOR THE LAST ACT

The British were beginning to be hard pressed in the South. The struggle had been long and disappointing, and burning and looting and the horrors of civil war had spread over a large area. Two Continental armies had been lost in rapid succession, and there had been months when one disaster seemed to follow upon another; but gradually the British were being driven away from their ships and bases of supply on the coast. The heat of summer had brought much sickness to their camps, and General Greene, next to Washington the most skilful of the Revolutionary generals, had perfected his "science of losing battles" to the point where his opponents might claim almost every engagement as a victory and yet the advantage remained with the Americans. Recently the British had lost a large part of their light troops. In March, 1781, Cornwallis decided to leave General Rawdon, with whom Lafayette had danced in London, to face Greene, while he himself went to Virginia, joined Benedict Arnold and General Phillips there, and returned with them to finish the conquest of the South. Washington learned of the plan and knew that if it succeeded General Greene might be crushed between two British forces. Arnold and Phillips must be kept busy in Virginia. Steuben was already on the ground; Anthony Wayne was ordered to hurry his Pennsylvanians to the rescue; and Lafayette, being near the point of danger, was turned back. He found new orders when he reached Head of Elk.

The scene was being set in Virginia, not in New York, for the last act of the Revolutionary War; but neither he nor his men realized this, and if Lafayette was disappointed, the men were almost in a state of panic. They began deserting in large numbers. "They like better a hundred lashes than a journey to the southward," their commander wrote. "As long as they had an expedition in view they were very well satisfied; but the idea of remaining in the Southern states appears to them intolerable, and they are amazingly averse to the people and climate." Most of them were New England born. He hastened to put many rivers between them and the land of their desire; and also tried an appeal to their pride. In an order of the day he stated that his force had been chosen to fight an enemy superior in numbers and to encounter many dangers. No man need desert, for their commander would not compel one of them to accompany him against his will. Whoever chose to do so might apply for a pass and be sent back to rejoin his former regiment. They were part of his beloved light infantry of the previous year, with all this implied of friendship and interest on both sides, and this appeal worked like a charm. Desertion went suddenly and completely out of fashion; nobody asked for a pass, and one poor fellow who was in danger of being sent back because he was lame hired a cart to be saved from this disgrace.