Just about the time that these French gentlemen, with Baron De Kalb, touched foot on American soil at Georgetown, South Carolina, an Englishman named Burgoyne, whose acquaintance we made at Bunker Hill, two years ago, came on shore at Quebec. Entering the Colonies by that favorite back-stairs, Lake Champlain, he turned the well-known and well-worn knob, Ticonderoga, and got himself and his attendants fairly inside the American door-yard. Advancing, he came to a small place called Stillwater, where he tripped his toe over a little hillock, called a breastwork, raised by Kosciusko, aided by that crack rifleman, Morgan, and pitched forward faint and weak from this unexpected accident. Still, his English robustness of strength and pluck was such as to make him quite confident of being able to reach, without difficulty, the wing of the house, called Albany, and thence gaining access to its centre, New York, where he expected to meet Sir William Howe, and with him to succeed in bringing back once more the spirited young American heiress to the selfish love of her late champion. But quite to his surprise he discovered before him, near Saratoga Springs, Gates through which he must pass in order to make any progress,—Gates so strong that, unless he could force their Polish locks, their American hinges, and solid, iron-riveted timbers, he must perish for want of food. The Gates were not passed; and October 17, 1777, he gave himself up, with 5,791 officers and men, and forty-six hundred muskets. Forty-two pieces of brass cannon also passed at that time to the Americans,—brass which gave them thenceforward more confidence and cheek. Much need, too, of it had they; for in the preceding two months, Washington, with thirteen thousand men, following Howe and Cornwallis southward, with a body of eighteen thousand men under their command, met them a few miles south of Philadelphia, on a little, dispirited stream called the Brandywine, and there drank the disagreeable dregs of a defeat, made even more distasteful by the fact that it was the first American drink which Lafayette and Pulaski had an opportunity of sipping in this country. Exceedingly nauseated by this drink, they all took another draught October 4th at Germantown; but this decoction proved equally unpalatable. It required all the beneficial effects of the Saratoga water to correct the disturbed action produced by the Brandywine and the Germantown potion.
The fury of George III. at the close of the campaign of 1777 was perfectly Hanoverian. He had been led to expect the speedy submission of the Colonies; but he had reluctantly discovered that early disasters had only stiffened the gristle of discontent into the bone of unconquerable resistance. His obstinacy, however, in prosecuting the war was met by equal firmness on the part of the Colonies in defending their rights. If, like one of his predecessors, who, irritated by the resistance of Scotland to his royal wishes, threatened to make that country a royal hunting-ground, George III. threatened to make a shooting-park of North America, the colonists, in the spirit of the Scottish nobleman who, in reply to the menace, answered, “In that case, may it please your Majesty, I must be home to uncouple the hounds,” were fully determined to muzzle the royal pack, and to increase their own war-dogs.
Parliament, however, curbed by the strong arm of popular sentiment, found it best to hold in check the royal passion and resentment. It even slipped from the leash, not the savage bloodhounds of strife, but three very sleek-looking house-pets, called Peace Commissioners, who came with nice little dainty titbits in their mouths, pardons and promises, to drop around the American door-yard.
Too late!—these royal poodles and King Charles spaniels. America had outgrown pets, petting, and even pantalettes. She had come of age, and deliberately made up her mind to leave the uncomfortable homestead and to do for herself. She had a good friend in France, who encouraged her independent notions, and who, on the 6th of February, 1778, told everybody—England, America, and the other nations—that she was ready to stand by the plucky Colonies. This declaration, usually termed a treaty of alliance and commerce, was received with great joy by America, and with keen resentment by England. Russia, always our friend from the first, clapped France on the back for her conduct, and the people of Europe, out of dislike to England, sided with the Colonies, and applauded their new friend.
The old rivals, England and France, again scowled, flushed up, and clinched.
During the rest of our Revolution French names are turned up by the wheel, which had so far run entirely on land, side by side with American. It was now at times to be put into water, and to dip its blades into an element which, troubled by navigation acts, had separated us from England, but which now, blessed by a treaty of amity, was to unite us to the country of Lafayette.
At the opening of the crocuses, in the spring of 1778, Lord Howe and his brother, the Admiral, were in the Quaker City, a city which, though mainly made up of the disciples of peace, wielded both pen and musket in favor of war for peace. A French fleet, commanded by Count d’Estaing, sailed from France to pen up in the Delaware the English brothers with their fleet and army; but these some Howe getting at once wind of this intention and into their own sails, contrived to escape to New York. Part of the British forces took the land route to New York, courageously braving the dangers incident to New Jersey travelling. A little accident befell them on the route, June 28th, about eighteen miles south of Philadelphia, at a small place then called Monmouth, where, colliding with Washington and the artillery train of which he was conductor, they lost three hundred men. The American loss was only seventy,—very trifling for a genuine American collision. It was in this battle that General Charles Lee became insubordinate, lost his reason, and was cast on the lee shore of patriotic duty,—a misfortune which, eighty-three years later, happened to another general of the same name.
The French fleet, finding on its arrival at Philadelphia, that the Howes had gone to New York, followed suit thitherward; but on reaching Sandy Hook, it was defeated in its intended action against them by an injunction raised by the New York bar, and so proceeded to that fashionable watering-place, Newport. Admiral Howe soon after took a notion to go to the same place, and, being reinforced by several ships, set out with his squadron. D’Estaing, intermitting his study of the “Round Tower,” “The Spouting Rock,” and “The Dumplings,” sailed out like a generous foe, to meet him half-way. The fleets, long in ogling sight, and loath to leave each other, were yet kept apart by those adverse winds and rough seas which sometimes in naval war, as in love, neither blow nor run smooth, and which, at least in this case,—as sometimes happens with lovers,—prevented an engagement.
In September, General Clinton, who had superseded Lord Howe, sent out two marauding expeditions, one to Buzzard’s Bay, which burnt seventy American ships roosting there on their anchors; the other against Little Egg Harbor, which took a considerable amount of stores laid there, over which much British cackling was had.
The massacre at Wyoming by Colonel John Butler and his Indian allies—only palliated by the plea that, while it cruelly put out of existence some three hundred settlers, it called into being the beautiful “Gertrude of Wyoming”—and the barbarities committed by another band of Tories and savages at Cherry Valley, raised the hair on the head of many in Europe as well as in America.