We left Lafayette at Williamsburg, which, my readers will remember, is on the neck of land of which Fort Monroe forms the southeast corner: it is about twenty-six miles northwest of that post, and ten miles west of Yorktown. If they do not remember this, they had better learn it now,—for, on this second of April, the appearances are that they will need to know it before long. If any one of them does not care to look at a map, he may take my figure which called Chesapeake Bay the palm of the hand,—to which the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac Rivers are the four fingers. Lay down on the page your right hand, upon its back, with the fingers slightly apart. The thumb is a meridian which points north. The forefinger is the Potomac as far as Washington. The middle finger is the Rappahannock,—with Fredericksburg about the first joint. The ring-finger is York River, with Williamsburg and Yorktown just above and below the knuckle line. The little finger is the James River, as far as Richmond. Fort Monroe is at the parting of the last two fingers. We left Lafayette at Williamsburg, disappointed at the failure to entrap Arnold. He returned at once to Annapolis by water, and transported his troops back to the head of Chesapeake Bay,—expecting to return to New York, now that his mission had failed. But Washington had learned, meanwhile, that General Phillips had been sent from New York to reinforce Arnold,—and so Lafayette met orders at the head of the Chesapeake to return, take command in Virginia, and foil the English as he might. Wayne, in Pennsylvania, was to join him with eight hundred of the mutinous Pennsylvania line. Were they the grandfathers of the men who deserted before Bull's Run? They retrieved themselves at James Island afterwards,—as the Bull's Run Pennsylvanians did at Newbern the other day. "How Lafayette or Wayne can march without money or credit," wrote Washington to Laurens, "is more than I can tell," But he did his part, which was to command,—and they did theirs, which was to obey.
Lafayette did his part thus. His troops, twelve hundred light infantry, the best soldiers in the world, he said at the end of the summer, had left Peekskill for a short expedition only. They had no supplies for a summer campaign, and seemed likely to desert him. Lafayette issued a spirited order of the day, in which he took the tone of Henry V. before the Battle of Agincourt, and offered a pass back to the North River to any man who did not dare share with him the perils of the summer against a superior force. He also hanged one deserter whom he caught after this order, and pardoned another who was less to blame. By such varied means he so far "encouraged the rest" that he wholly stopped desertion. He crossed the Susquehanna on the 13th of April, was in Baltimore on the 18th, and it was here that the ladies gave him the ball where he said, "My soldiers have no shirts." He borrowed two thousand guineas on his own personal security, promising to pay at the end of two years, when the French law would make him master of his estates. He bought material with the money, made the Baltimore belles, who were not then Secessionists, make the shirts, and started on his forced march again, with his troops clothed and partly shod, on the 20th. He passed the hills where Washington stands, unconscious of the city that was to be there, and of the Long Bridge which shakes under McClellan's columns. He halted to buy shoes in Alexandria, which he reached in two days. He pressed on to Fredericksburg, and was at Richmond on the 29th. So that a light column can march in nine days from Baltimore to Richmond, though there be no railroad in working order.
This was the first march "Forward to Richmond" in history. For the moment, it saved the city and its magazines from General Phillips, who had reached Manchester, on the opposite side of James River. Phillips retired down the river, hoping to decoy Lafayette after him, on that neck of land, now, as then, a point so critical, between the James and York Rivers,—and then to return by his vessels on the first change of wind, get in Lafayette's rear, and shut him up there. But it was another general who was to be shut up on that neck. Phillips was called south to Petersburg, where, as we have seen, he died. "Will they not let me die in peace?"
Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg with his Southern troops, including Tarleton's horse, on the 20th of May. He then had nearly six thousand men under his orders. Lafayette had about thirty-two hundred, of whom only a few were cavalry, a volunteer body of Baltimore young gentlemen being the most of them. The Virginia gentry had hesitated about giving up their fine blood-horses to mount cavalry on. But Tarleton had no hesitation in stealing them for his troopers, nor Simcoe, his fellow-partisan, for his,—so that Cornwallis had the invaluable aid of two bodies of cavalry thus admirably mounted, against an enemy almost destitute. Both armies marched without tents, with the very lightest baggage. It purely a light-infantry campaign, excepting the dashing raids of Tarleton and Simcoe.
Lafayette felt his inferiority of force,—and as soon as Cornwallis joined, crossed back over James River at Osborn's (say the bottom of the little-finger nail on our extempore map). Cornwallis crossed at Westover, also marked now on the maps as Ruffin's, some twenty miles lower down the river. Lafayette felt the necessity of meeting Wayne, who was supposed to be coming from Pennsylvania; he therefore retraced his march of a few weeks before, followed by Cornwallis with his infantry;—the cavalry had been on more distant service. Cornwallis would have crushed Lafayette, if he had overtaken him; but Lafayette knew this as well as we do,—marched nearly up to Fredericksburg again,—protected it till its stores were removed,—and then, after five days' march more, westward, met Wayne with his eight hundred Pennsylvanians at Raccoon Ford (head of the middle finger on the hand-map). The reader has, in just such way, marched a knight across the chess-board to escort back a necessary pawn, to make desperate fight against some Cornwallis of a castle. Cornwallis passed through Hanover Court-House to Chesterfield Court-House, "stealing tobacco," in the whole to the amount of two thousand hogsheads,—then, satisfying himself that he could not prevent the junction of the knight and pawn, and that Hunter's iron-works, at Fredericksburg, which he had threatened, were not of so much import as the stores in the western part of the country, he turned south and west again, and awaited Lafayette's movements, threatening Albemarle County, just west of where we are beginning to get acquainted with Gordonsville,—a place then uncreated. Cornwallis was all along unwilling to engage in extensive operations till he should hear from Sir Henry Clinton, whom he knew he had insulted and offended. His detachments of horse had been sent, meanwhile, up the line of James River above Richmond. Tarleton penetrated as far as Charlottesville, marching seventy miles in twenty-four hours, hoping to take the Legislature by surprise. The story is, that he would have succeeded, but for his eagerness to get his breakfast on the last day. He had waited long for it,—and finally asked, in some heat, where it was. Dr. Walker, whose guest he had made himself, replied, that Tarleton's soldiers had already taken two of the breakfasts which had been prepared for him that morning, and suggested a guard for the security of the third.
While the third breakfast was being cooked, the legislators escaped. Jefferson was among them. Tarleton took seven, however, who told him that the country was tired of the war,—and that, if no treaty for a loan were made with France that summer, Congress would negotiate with England before winter. They were eighty-one years in advance of their time! Tarleton returned down the Rivanna River to its junction with the James, where he assisted Simcoe in driving out Baron Steuben, who with a few militia was trying to protect some arms there. Poor Steuben had but few to protect, nothing to protect them with, and lost them all. At this point the cavalry rejoined the main army under Cornwallis.
In all these movements of both parties, the character of the "laboring people," of which, as I have said, President Tyler spoke to me, was illustrated. These people swarmed to Cornwallis with information, with horses and supplies. They did not swell the ranks of the Virginia militia. "He took away thirty thousand of our slaves," says Mr. Jefferson. "Many of your negroes joined the enemy," says Lafayette to Washington; "the news did not trouble me much, for that sort of interests touch me very little." This is in the letter where he tells the General how his agent, Lund Washington, had been disgracefully treating with the invaders. This disposition of the "laboring people," away from the high-roads, indeed, as Mr. Tyler said, explains the difference between Southern and Northern Revolutionary campaigns. The English forces never marched a day's march inland in the Northern States, excepting the three marches of two days or three, when they came to Bennington, to Saratoga, and to Trenton,—three memorable stopping-places. But in a country where the "laboring people" did not bear arms, they went to and fro, for months, as they chose. The Southern militia was small in numbers, and not trustworthy. The troops whom Lafayette relied upon, "the best troops in the world, far superior, in equal numbers, to the English," were his two thousand Northern men of the Continental line. Lord Cornwallis reunited all his forces at Elk Island, about forty miles above Richmond on James River. His own head-quarters were at "Jefferson's Plantation." He proposed another blow, on the stores collected in Old Albemarle Court-House, behind the mountains; and on the 9th of June he ordered Tarleton to march thither at daybreak, but recalled the order. He seems to have preferred waiting till he could attack "the Marquis," as they all called Lafayette, to advantage, to risking any considerable division in the mountains. And as he lay, the road by which he supposed Lafayette must come down from Raccoon Ford to protect Albemarle would expose him to a flank attack as he passed the head of Byrd's River. It was at this time, that, in a despatch which was intercepted, he wrote, "The boy cannot escape me." Lafayette tells the story with great gusto. "The boy" found a mountain-road which crossed farther west than that which he was expected to march upon. It had been long disused, but he pressed through it,—and at Burwell's Ordinary, in a neighborhood where our troops will find villages with the promising names of Union Town and Everettsville, he formed, on the 12th and 13th, in a strong position between Cornwallis and the coveted magazines. Cornwallis affected to suppose that the stores had been withdrawn; but, as he had given up Fredericksburg that he might destroy these very stores, Lafayette had good reason to congratulate himself that he had foiled him in the two special objects of the campaign, and had reduced him to the business which he did not like, of "stealing tobacco." For whatever reason, Cornwallis did not press his enterprise. With a force so formidable and a leader so enterprising before him, he did not care to entangle himself in the passes of the Blue Ridge. We shall know from General Banks's column, by the time this paper is printed, what are the facilities they afford for cover to an enemy. Leaving the Albemarle stores, therefore, and the road to Greene behind the mountains, he retraced his steps down the valley of the James River, and, passing Richmond, descended as low as Williamsburg, the point from which we have been tracing Lafayette's movements.
Lafayette followed him with delight, not to say amazement. "The enemy is so obliging as to withdraw before us," he writes,—and probably, to the end of his life, he did not fully understand why Lord Cornwallis did so. Their forces were numerically about equal, each commanding now rather more than five thousand men. But of Lafayette's only fifty were cavalry, a very important arm in that campaign, while Cornwallis had now eight hundred men mounted on the blood horses of Virginia. It was not true, as Lafayette thought possible, that the English exaggerated his force. It appears from Tarleton's memoirs that they estimated it very precisely. But we now know from Cornwallis's letters, that he had promised Clinton to be at Williamsburg on the 26th of June, ready for any operations he might then and there propose. He hoped that Clinton would largely reinforce him, so that his favorite scheme of "solid operations in Virginia" might be carried on. At all events, he had promised to have his army at Williamsburg to join any force which Clinton might send to him. To make this imagined junction, which never took place, he began his retreat. Lafayette again offered him battle; but Cornwallis did not accept the opportunity, and on the 25th of June he arrived at Williamsburg. Lafayette was always one day's march behind him, and encamped at last at Tyre's Plantation, one day beyond Williamsburg, which may become famous again in a few days. Colonel Butler, of Pennsylvania, with his riflemen, attacked Colonel Simcoe, of the English corps of refugees, at the Fords of the Chickahominy, about six miles west of Williamsburg. We shall be hearing of these fords again.
At Williamsburg poor Cornwallis met his fate. He had, perhaps, been dreading the arrival of his despatches from Clinton, through all the month he had been in Virginia. At last they came. Clinton was sorry he was there, expressed his regret that Cornwallis did not favor his plan for marching on Philadelphia, gave him carte blanche for Baltimore or Delaware,—but, instead of reinforcing him, asked for two thousand men, if he could spare them. The letter is, on the whole, a manly letter, from a superior to an inferior, who had social rank higher than himself, and more of the confidence of their Government. It gives Cornwallis great latitude; but it does not "abandon New York and bring our whole force into Virginia," which was Cornwallis's pet plan.
His Lordship behaved ill,—and, in a pet, threw away the British empire in America. He sulked, to speak simply. He took the sullen policy of literal obedience to orders, though he knew he should "break his owners." He marched at once, crossed James River at Jamestown, where Lafayette attacked his rear,—and, if his Lordship had been in fighting humor, would have got well beaten for his pains,—withdrew to Portsmouth, and put on vessels the two thousand men asked for by Sir Henry. Just then new despatches came from Clinton, who had received later news, and who was always trying to humor this spoiled child. He told him to keep all his men in Virginia, where he would take command himself as soon as the hot season was over. The "solid operations" were to begin. Very unstable they proved, even in the beginning!