It is impossible to express too much respect or too deep regret for Major André. The fourteen general officers who had the painful task of Historians have rendered a detailed account of the treachery of Arnold. When, at his own request, the command of West Point was confided to him, he urged General Washington to inform him what means of information he possessed at New York. He made the same request to Lafayette, who accidentally had several upon his own account, and to the other officers who commanded near the enemy's lines. All these generals fortunately considered themselves bound by the promise of secrecy they had made, especially as several of the correspondents acted from a feeling of patriotism only. If Arnold had succeeded in discovering them, those unfortunate persons would have been ruined, and all means of communication cut off.
Arnold was very near receiving the letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Jameson in the presence of the commander-in-chief: he had turned aside, with Lafayette and Knox, to look at a redoubt; Hamilton pronouncing his sentence, the commander-in-chief, and the whole American army; were filled with sentiments of admiration and compassion for him. The conduct of the English in a preceding circumstance had been far from, being similar. Captain Hale, of Connecticut, a distinguished young man, beloved by his family and friends, had been taken on Long Island, under circumstances of the same kind as those that occasioned the death of Major André; but, instead of being treated with the like respect, to which Major André himself bore testimony, Captain Hale was insulted to the last moment of his life. "This is a fine death for a soldier!" said one of the English officers who were surrounding the cart of execution. "Sir," replied Hale lifting up his cap, "there is no death which would not be rendered noble in such a glorious cause." He calmly replaced his cap, and the fatal cart moving on, he died with the most perfect composure.
During the winter, there was a revolt in the Pennsylvanian line. Lafayette was at Philadelphia; the congress, and the executive power of the state, knowing his influence over the troops, induced him to proceed thither with General Saint Clair. They were received by the troops with marked respect, and they listened to their complaints, which were but too well grounded. General Wayne was in the midst of them, and had undertaken a negotiation in concert with the state of Pennsylvania. Lafayette had only, therefore, to repair to head quarters. The discontent of the Pennsylvanians was appeased by the measures of conciliation which had been already begun; but the same kind of revolt in a Jersey brigade was suppressed with more vigour by the general-in-chief, who, setting out with some battalions of Lafayette's light infantry, brought the mutineers to reason, and the generals, no longer restrained by the interference of the civil authority, re-established immediately that military discipline which was on the point of being lost.~{6}
(1781.) General Arnold was at Portsmouth in Virginia; Washington formed the project of combining with the French to attack him, and take the garrison. Lafayette set out from the head quarters with twelve hundred of the light infantry; he pretended to make an attack on Staten Island, and marching rapidly by Philadelphia to Head-of-Elk, he embarked with his men in some small boats, and arrived safely at Annapolis. He set out from thence in a canoe, with some officers, and, in spite of the English frigates that were stationed in the bay, he repaired to Williamsburg, to assemble the militia, whilst his detachment was still waiting for the escort which the French were to send him. Lafayette had already blockaded Portsmouth, and driven back the enemy's picquets, when the issue of the combat between Admiral Arbuthnot and M. Destouches, the commander of the French squadron, left the English complete masters of the Chesapeake. Lafayette could only then return to Annapolis, to re-conduct his detachment to the camp. He found himself blockaded by small English frigates, which were much too considerable in point of force for his boats; but having placed cannon on some merchant ships, and embarked troops in them, he, by that manoeuvre, made the English frigates retreat, and taking advantage of a favourable wind, he reached with his men the Head-of-Elk, where he received some very important despatches from General Washington: The enemy's plan of campaign was just at that time become known: Virginia was to be its object. General Phillips had left New York with a corps of troops to reinforce Arnold. The general wrote to Lafayette to go to the succour of Virginia. The task was not an easy one; the men whom he commanded had engaged themselves for a short expedition: they belonged to the northern states, which still retained strong prejudices as to the unhealthiness of the southern states; they had neither shirts nor shoes. Some Baltimore merchants lent Lafayette, on his bill, two thousand guineas, which sufficed to buy some linen. The ladies of Baltimore, whom he met with at a ball given in his honour when he passed through the town, undertook to make the shirts themselves. The young men of the same city formed themselves into a company of volunteer dragoons. His corps were beginning to desert. Lafayette issued an order, declaring that he was setting out for a difficult and dangerous expedition; that he hoped that the soldiers would not abandon him, but that whoever wished to go away might do so instantly; and he sent away two soldiers who had just been punished for some serious offences. From that hour all desertions ceased, and not one man would leave him: this feeling was so strong, that an under officer, who was prevented by a diseased leg from following the detachment, hired, at his own expense, a cart, rather than separate from it. This anecdote is honourable to the American troops, and deserves to become publicly known.
Lafayette had conceived that the capital of Virginia would be the principal object of the enemy's attack. Richmond was filled with magazines; its pillage would have proved fatal to the cause. Lafayette marched thither with such rapidity, that when General Phillips, arriving before Richmond, learnt that Lafayette had arrived there the night before, he would not believe it. Having ascertained, however, the truth of the report, he dared not attack the heights of Richmond. Lafayette had a convoy to send to the southern states; he reconnoitred Petersburg carefully. This threatened attack assembled the English, and whilst the removing of cannon, and other preparations for an assault, amused them, the convoy was sent off rapidly with the munition and clothes which General Greene required. After the death of General Phillips, who died that same day, Arnold wrote, by a flag of truce, to Lafayette, who refused to receive his letter. He sent for the English officer, and, with many expressions of respect for the British army, told him that he could not consent to hold any correspondence with its present general. This refusal gave great pleasure to General Washington and the public, and placed Arnold in an awkward situation with his own army.
Lord Cornwallis, on entering Virginia by Carolina, got rid of all his equipage, and did the same also respecting the heavy baggage of the army under his orders. Lafayette placed himself under the same regimen, and, during the whole of that campaign, the two armies slept without any shelter, and only carried absolute necessaries with them. Upon that active and decisive conflict the issue of the war was to depend; for if the English, who bore all the force of the campaign on that point, became masters of Virginia, not only the army of Lafayette, but also that of Greene, who drew from thence all his resources,—and not only Virginia, but all the states south of the Chesapeake, would inevitably be lost. Thus the letters of the commander-in-chief, whilst telling Lafayette that he did not deceive himself as to the difficulties of the undertaking, merely requested him to prolong as much as possible the defence of the state. The result was far more successful than any person had dared to hope, at a period when all eyes and all thoughts were directed towards that one decisive point.
The military scene in Virginia was soon to become more interesting. General Greene had marched to the right, to attack the posts of South Carolina, whilst Lord Cornwallis was in North Carolina. Cornwallis allowed him to depart, and, marching also to the right, burnt his own equipage and tents, to be enabled to remove more easily; he then advanced rapidly towards Petersburg, and made Virginia the principal seat of war. General Washington wrote to Lafayette that he could send him no other reinforcement than eight hundred of the mutinous Pennsylvanians, who had been formed again into a corps on the side of Lancaster. Lord Cornwallis had obtained, and generally by the aid of negroes, the best horses in Virginia. His Tarleton front guard, mounted on race horses, stopped, like birds of prey, all they met with. The active corps of Cornwallis was composed of more than four thousand men, of which eight hundred were supplied with horses. The command was divided in the following manner: General Rochambeau remained at Rhode Island with his French corps; Washington commanded in person the American troops before New York; he summoned, some time after, the corps of Rochambeau to join him. That French lieutenant-general was under his orders the same as the American major-generals, for when Lafayette asked for the succour of troops, he took care to stipulate, in the most positive manner, that it was to be placed entirely under Washington's orders. The Americans were to have the right side; the American officer, when rank and age were equal, was to command the French officer. Lafayette had wished to give the rising republic all the advantages and all the consequence of the greatest and longest established powers. Washington had sent, the preceding year, General Greene to command in the southern states; Virginia was nominally comprised in that command, and had not yet become the theatre of war, but the distance between the operations of Carolina and those of Virginia was so great, and the communications were so difficult, that it was impossible for Greene to direct what was passing in Virginia. Lafayette took, therefore, the chief command, corresponding in a direct manner with General Washington, and occasionally with the congress. But he wished that Greene should retain his title of supremacy, and he only sent to the head quarters copies of General Greene's letters, who was his intimate friend, in the same way that both he and Greene had always been on the most intimate footing with General Washington. During the whole of this campaign the most perfect harmony always subsisted between the generals, and contributed much to the success of the enterprise.
Lafayette, after having saved the magazines of Richmond, hastened to have them evacuated; he had taken his station at Osborn, and wrote to General Washington that he would remain there, as long as his weakest point, which was the left, should not be threatened with an attack. Lord Cornwallis did not fail soon to perceive the weakness of that point, and Lafayette retreated with his little corps, which, including recruits and the militia, did not exceed two thousand five hundred men. The richest young men of Virginia and Maryland had come to join him as volunteer dragoons, and from their intelligence, as well as from the superiority of their horses, they had been of essential service to him. The Americans retreated in such a manner that the front guard of the enemy arrived on the spot just as they had quitted it, and, without running any risk themselves, they retarded as much as possible its progress. Wayne was advancing with the reinforcement of Pennsylvanians. Lafayette made all his calculations so as to be able to effect a junction with that corps, without being prevented from covering the military magazines of the southern states, which were at the foot of the mountains on the height of Fluvana. But the Pennsylvanians had delayed their movements, and Lafayette was thus obliged to make a choice. He went to rejoin his reinforcement at Raccoon-Ford, and hastened, by forced marches, to come into contact with Lord Cornwallis, who had had time to make one detachment at Charlottesville, and another at the James River Fork. The first had dispersed the Virginian assembly; the second had done no material injury; but the principal blow was to be struck: Lord Cornwallis was established in a good position, within one march of the magazines, when Lafayette arrived close to him on a road leading towards those magazines. It was necessary for him to pass before the English army, presenting them his flank, and exposing himself to a certain defeat: he fortunately found out a shorter road which had remained for a long time undiscovered, which he repaired during the night; and the next day, to the great surprise of the English general, he was established in an impregnable station, between the English and the magazines, whose loss must have occasioned that of the whole southern army, of whom they were the sole resource; for there was a road behind the mountains that the English never intercepted, and by which the wants of General Greene's army were supplied. Lord Cornwallis, when he commenced the pursuit of Lafayette, had written a letter, which was intercepted, in which he made use of this expression: The boy cannot escape me. He flattered himself with terminating, by that one blow, the war in the whole southern part of the United States, for it would have been easy for him afterwards to take possession of Baltimore, and march towards Philadelphia. He beheld in this manner the failure of the principal part of his plan, and retreated towards Richmond, whilst Lafayette, who had been joined in his new station by a corps of riflemen, as well as by some militia, received notice beforehand to proceed forward on a certain day, and followed, step by step, the English general, without, however, risking an engagement with a force so superior to his own. His corps gradually increased. Lord Cornwallis thought proper to evacuate Richmond; Lafayette followed him, and ordered Colonel Butler to attack his rear guard near Williamsburg. Some manoeuvre took place on that side, of which the principal object on Lafayette's part was, to convince Lord Cornwallis that his force was more considerable than it was in reality. The English evacuated Williamsburg, and passed over James River to James Island. A warm action took place between the English army and the advance guard, whom Lafayette had ordered to the attack whilst they were crossing the river. Lord Cornwallis had stationed the first troops on the other side, to give the appearance as if the greatest number of the troops had already passed over the river. Although all were unanimous in asserting that this was the case, Lafayette himself suspected the deception, and quitted his detachment to make observations upon a tongue of land, from whence he could more easily view the passage of the enemy. During that time, a piece of cannon, exposed, doubtless, intentionally, tempted General Wayne, a brave and very enterprising officer.
Lafayette found, on his return, the advance guard engaged in action with a very superior force; he withdrew it, however (after a short but extremely warm conflict), in good order, and without receiving a check. The report was spread that he had had a horse killed under him, but it was merely the one that was led by his side.~{7}
The English army pursued its route to Portsmouth; it then returned by water to take its station at Yorktown and Gloucester, upon the York River. A garrison still remained at Portsmouth. Lafayette made some demonstrations of attack, and that garrison united itself to the body of the army at Yorktown.