While in his camp at the Round O, General Greene was informed that large reinforcements from Ireland and from New York were expected by the army in Charleston. This intelligence excited the more alarm, because the term of service for which the levies from Virginia were engaged was about expiring, and no adequate measures had been taken for supplying their places. It proved untrue; but such was its impression, that the general addressed a letter to the governors of South Carolina, in which, after taking a serious view of the state of his army, he recommended that it should be recruited from the slaves. The governor thought the proposition of sufficient importance to be laid before the legislature, which was soon afterwards convened; but the measure was not adopted.
On the fourth of January, General St. Clair, who conducted the reinforcement from the north, arrived in camp, and, five days afterward, General Wayne,[8] with his brigade, and the remnant of the third regiment of dragoons, commanded by Colonel White, was detached over the Savannah for the recovery of Georgia.
General Greene crossed the Edisto and took post six miles in advance of Jacksonborough, on the road leading to Charleston, for the purpose of covering the state legislature, which assembled at that place on the eighteenth. Thus was civil government re-established in South Carolina, and that state restored to the union.
It is impossible to review this active and interesting campaign without feeling that much is due to General Greene; and that he amply justified the favourable opinion of the Commander-in-chief. He found the country completely conquered, and defended by a regular army estimated at four thousand men. The inhabitants were so divided, as to leave it doubtful to which side the majority was attached. At no time did the effective continental force which he could bring into the field, amount to two thousand men; and of these a considerable part were raw troops. Yet he could keep the field without being forced into action; and by a course of judicious movement, and of hardy enterprise, in which invincible constancy was displayed, and in which courage was happily tempered with prudence, he recovered the southern states. It is a singular fact, well worthy of notice, which marks impressively the soundness of his judgment, that although he never gained a decisive victory, he obtained, to a considerable extent, even when defeated, the object for which he fought.
A just portion of the praise deserved by these achievements, is unquestionably due to the troops he commanded. These real patriots bore every hardship and privation[9] with a degree of patience and constancy which can not be sufficiently admired. And never was a general better supported by his inferior officers. Not shackled by men who, without merit, held stations of high rank obtained by political influence, he commanded young men of equal spirit and intelligence, formed under the eye of Washington, and trained in the school furnished in the severe service of the north, to all the hardships and dangers of war.
A peculiar importance was given to these successes in the south by the opinion that a pacific temper was finding its way into the cabinets of the belligerent powers of Europe. The communications from the court of Versailles rendered it probable that negotiations for peace would take place in the course of the ensuing winter; and dark hints had been given on the part of Great Britain to the minister of his most Christian Majesty, that all the American states could not reasonably expect to become independent, as several of them were subdued. Referring to the precedent of the low countries, it was observed that of the seventeen provinces originally united against the Spanish crown, only seven obtained their independence.
Additional motives for exertion were furnished by other communications from the French monarch. These were that, after the present campaign, no farther pecuniary or military aids were to be expected from France. The situation of affairs in Europe would, it was said, demand all the exertions which that nation was capable of making; and the forces of his most Christian Majesty might render as much real service to the common cause elsewhere as in America.[10]
CHAPTER II.
Preparations for another campaign.... Proceedings in the Parliament of Great Britain.... Conciliatory conduct of General Carleton.... Transactions in the south.... Negotiations for peace.... Preliminary and eventual articles agreed upon between the United States and Great Britain.... Discontents of the American army.... Peace.... Mutiny of a part of the Pennsylvania line.... Evacuation of New York.... General Washington resigns his commission and retires to Mount Vernon.