XXXV. northern department also. Schuyler complained that the CHAPTER officer at the head of it had been discharged without consulting him; but Congress pronounced his letter disre- 1777. spectful, and required an apology. Morgan subsequently procured an inquiry into his conduct by a committee of Congress, and was honorably acquitted. Sterling, Mifflin, St. Clair, Stephen, and Lincoln were Feb. 19. commissioned as major generals-Lincoln, taken from the ranks of the Massachusetts militia, which he had twice led to Washington's assistance, was promoted over the heads of all the brigadiers. Arnold, whose conduct while in command at Montreal, and the unsettled accounts of whose Canada expedition had left some shade on his character, complained loudly of being overlooked on this occasion. Eighteen new brigadiers were also commissioned: Poor, of New Hampshire; Glover, Patterson, Varnum, and Learned, of Massachusetts; Huntingdon, of Connecticut; George Clinton, of New York; Wayne, De Haas, Cadwallader, Hand, and Reed, of Pennsylvania; Weedon, Muhlenburg, Woodford, and Scott, of Virginia; Nash, of North Carolina; and Conway, an Irishman by birth, but a Frenchman by education, an officer of thirty years standing in the French army, but whose merit was not equal to his pretensions. The army was now well supplied with general officers, but state claims and political influence had more to do with some of these appointments than considerations of merit or the good of the service. Each state claimed a number of general officers, proportioned to its quota of troops. Four regiments of horse were enlisted under Colonels Bland, Baylor, Sheldon, and Moylan. Cadwallader and Reed, to whom the command of the horse was offered, both declined their appointments. The office of adjutant general, vacant by the resignation of Reed, who had made XXXV. 1777. CHAPTER himself very obnoxious to the Eastern troops, was given to Timothy Pickering, a colonel of the Massachusetts line. The quarter-master's department, at the head of which Mifflin still remained, was regulated and organized by the appointment of assistant quarter-masters, wagon masters, and commissaries of forage, all of whom were required to make monthly returns. Congress also undertook to regulate the commissary department by dividing its duties between a commissary of purchases and a commissary of issues, and by assuming the appointment of the principal subordinate officers. Insisting upon the selection and entire control of all the officers employed in his department as absolutely necessary to insure uniformity and obedience, Joseph Trumbull, the late commissary general, resigned; nor was the new system found to work so well as Congress had hoped. In the course of the war the British had taken near five thousand prisoners, the Americans about three thousand. At first all exchanges had been refused, on the ground that the Americans were rebels; but, after Howe's arrival at New York, he had opened a negotiation on the subject. A good deal of obstruction occurred from the refusal of Congress to fulfill Arnold's stipulation at the Cedars; but, finally, a cartel was arranged, and a partial exchange effected. As the Americans had no prisoner of equal rank with Lee, they offered in exchange for him, in the terms of the cartel, six Hessian field officers taken at Trenton. Though Howe did not choose to take the responsibility of bringing Lee to a trial, he claimed him, nevertheless, as a deserter from the British army, and refused the exchange. Congress ordered the six Hessians, together with Lieutenant-colonel Campbell, a British officer who had been taken at Boston, to be committed to close prison, XXXV. to suffer whatever extremities might be inflicted on Lee. CHAPTER Howe presently received orders to send Lee to England for trial; but he delayed to do so, being apprehensive of 1777. the effect upon the German officers of the awkward predicament of the six Hessians. In consequence of his representations on that subject, he was subsequently instructed to treat Lee as a prisoner of war. Another controversy presently arose. The Americans taken at Long Island and Fort Washington, and confined in New York, had suffered extremely during the winter from want of the necessaries of life. Howe earnestly disclaimed all knowledge of any ill treatment; but he seems to have left the custody of the prisoners to the New York Tories, from whom they received little mercy. Many died; and of those sent out for exchange in the spring, a large part were feeble and emaciated. Washington refused to send back, in return, an equal number of well-fed, healthy Hessians and British, and he justified that refusal in an able correspondence with General Howe. These disputes interrupted for some time the progress of exchange, which Congress, indeed, was very little anxious to expedite. Every prisoner sent into New York was a recruit to the British army, while those received in return were men whose term of service had expired. This consideration of policy had more weight than pity for the suffering prisoners, whose protracted detention was, however, none the less ascribed to the impracticability and obstinacy of the British commander. Elias Boudinot, a citizen of New Jersey, of Huguenot descent, and presently a member of Congress from that state, was appointed commissary for prisoners. In subordination to the Marine Committee, two navy boards had been established, to whom the executive CHAPTER functions of that department had been chiefly comXXXV. mitted, one for the Eastern, the other for the Middle 1777. States. Of the thirteen frigates ordered by Congress, several had been finished and equipped; and the additional construction of three seventy-fours, five large frigates, and one or two smaller vessels, was presently authorized. But these building operations were soon suspended by want of money, and the high price of labor and naval stores. The officers of the national vessels, of which several had been purchased, besides those ordered to be built, were not very competent, and few of them met with much success. Hopkins, with his squadron, was blocked up at Providence. Privateering, principally from New England, had been entered upon with great zeal, and the scarcity occasioned by the interruption of regular commerce had been partially supplied by the success of the cruisers. The homeward-bound British vessels from the West Indies, deeply laden, and passing for a great distance along the American coast, offered rich and tempting prizes. In the first year of this naval warfare, near three hundred and fifty British vessels had been captured, worth, with their cargoes, five millions of dollars. Since the resolution of Congress on the subject of commerce, a new foreign trade had been opened to America. Shipments of tobacco and other staples were made. to France, Spain, and Holland, sometimes direct, but principally by way of the West Indies; and, through the same channel, supplies of manufactured goods were received. An indirect commerce was also kept up with the British West Indies; St. Eustatius, a little Dutch island of the Caribbee group, possessing a fine harbor, and enjoying the privileges of a free port, soon became a great mart for this traffic. This trade, however, was not carried on without great risks. A large number of CHAPTER XXXV. American vessels, principally laden with lumber and provisions, fell into the hands of British cruisers, and 1777. served in some measure to relieve the necessities of the British islands, reduced to great distress by the nonintercourse and the war. According to Edwards, the historian of the West Indies, this interruption of accustomed supplies occasioned in Jamaica alone the starvation of not less than fifteen thousand negroes. The necessity of a national flag being felt, especially in the marine service, Congress presently adopted the happy June 14. idea of the stars and stripes, a star and a stripe for each of the thirteen states. Still smarting under the loss of their late North American empire, and anxious to share in the American trade, the French, both the court and the merchants, saw with delight the British colonies rising in arms against the mother country; in spite of the remonstrances of the British embassador, American privateers found no difficulty in selling their prizes in French ports; armed vessels, to sail under American commissions, were even allowed to be secretly fitted out. Shortly after the breaking out of hostilities, in consequence of representations made by Arthur Lee to the French embassador at London, Vergennes, the French minister for foreign affairs, had sent M. Beaumarchais, well known at Paris as a courtier, a dramatist, and a political intriguer, to concert measures with Lee for remitting to America arms and military stores to the value of a million of livres, about $200,000. The French court was not yet prepared for an open breach with England, and, to cover up this transaction, and to give it a mercantile appearance, these arms were to be remitted by Beaumarchais under the fictitious mercantile firm of |