XXXIV.

CHAPTER With six thousand troops on board, which made its ap pearance off Newport, in Rhode Island. The possession 1776. of that town, the second in New England, would prove

a great annoyance to those states, while its harbor would afford a rendezvous for the British ships, essential almost for the occupancy of New York. The few troops staDec. 8. tioned there evacuated the town without attempting any defense; Commodore Hopkins, with several Continental cruisers and a number of privateers, escaped up the bay, and were blocked up at Providence. As soon as Washington heard of this invasion, he dispatched Spencer and Arnold to look after the defense of Rhode Island. Dec. 20. was soon after joined by Lee's division, which Sullivan, on succeeding to the command, had led across the Dela

ware.

He

The Howes, in their character of king's commissioners, had issued a new proclamation, calling upon all insurgents to disband, and upon all political bodies to relinquish their usurped authority, and allowing sixty days within which to make submission. The speedy triumph of the mother country seemed certain, and many persons, those especially of large property, including several who had taken an active part in the Revolution, hastened to make the required submission. Tucker, president of the late New Jersey Convention, which had sanctioned the Declaration of Independence, and formed the state Constitution, now abandoned his country's cause, and took a British protection. So did Allen and Galloway, late delegates from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress. For the ten days after the issue of the proclamation, two or three hundred persons came in every day to take the oaths.

The great body of the Quakers were known to be opposed to the war; and Putnam and Mifflin, dreading

XXXIV

the effects of the proclamation should the British cross CHAPTER the Delaware, strenuously recommended the removal of Congress. Their advice was adopted; and, leaving a 1776 committee behind, Congress adjourned to meet again at Dec. 12 Baltimore.

The elections under the new Constitution of Maryland were now going on. Thomas Johnson, a member of Congress and a stanch patriot, the same who had nominated Washington for commander-in-chief, was chosen governor. But in Maryland, as well as in Pennsylvania, the number of the disaffected was very considerable. The same feeling operated very strongly in Delaware. The Convention which framed a Constitution for that state recalled from Congress M'Kean and Rodney, the two delegates who had given the vote of Delaware for independence. Nor were the more ardent patriots very well satisfied with the choice presently made of John M'Kinley as president under the new Constitution.

Contrary to Washington's expectations, the British, content with having overrun the Jerseys, made no attempt to pass the Delaware, but established themselves in a line of cantonments at Trenton, Pennington, Bordentown, and Burlington. Other corps were quartered in the rear, at Princeton, Brunswick, and Elizabethtown.

While these important operations had been going on at the north, the western frontier of the Carolinas and Georgia had been visited by an Indian war. Stuart, the British superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern department, formerly commandant at Fort Loudon, and Cameron, his deputy, a resident in the Indian country, and connected by marriage with several of the chiefs, possessed great influence over the Cherokees. Shortly

CHAPTER after the attack on Charleston, and in co-operation with XXXIV. that enterprise, the Cherokees had been induced to com 1776. mence hostilities against the back settlers, now rapidly Oct. increasing. increasing. A strong force, collected in the Carolinas and Virginia, marched into the Cherokee country, dis persed the Indians, and destroyed the growing corn Cameron sought refuge at Pensacola. Reduced almost

to a state of starvation, humbled and subdued, the Cher 1777. okees presently submitted to a peace, by which they Jan. yielded up a large tract of territory, including the in

fant settlements on the Tennessee.

James Robertson,

the pioneer of those settlements, was appointed the joint Indian agent of Virginia and North Carolina.

The Legislature of Virginia divided the county of Fincastle, which hitherto had included all the southern settlements of that state west of the mountains, into the three new counties of Washington, Montgomery, and Kentucky. The Transylvanian settlers gave over, for the present, their plan of an independent community, and concluded to organize under the authority of Virginia The county of Kentucky included the whole present state of that name. Henderson's claim was presently quieted by granting to him and his associates two hundred thou sand acres of land at the mouth of Green River.

CHAPTER XXXV.

ENLISTMENT OF A PERMANENT ARMY. RECOVERY OF
THE JERSEYS. EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS. NAVAL
WARFARE. FOREIGN TRADE. NEGOTIATIONS ABROAD.

DECLINING CREDIT OF THE PAPER MONEY. STATE
GOVERNMENTS.

I the midst of that laborious and anxious campaign CHAPTER

XXXV.

resulting in the loss of New York and the retreat through
the Jerseys, Washington had been in constant correspond- 1776
ence with Congress respecting the enlistment and organ-

ization of a new army.
He had represented, in plain
and strong terms, the wastefulness, as well as the dan-
gerous uncertainty of the system of short enlistments
and militia drafts, and its total incompatibility with sys-
tem, order, and discipline. Numbers had not been want-
ing. First and last, during the year, Congress had in
the field forty-seven thousand Continentals, besides twen-
ty-seven thousand militia, a much more numerous force
than the States at any time afterward were able to mus-
ter. But numbers were nothing without discipline and
science, for want of which the Americans had been beaten
in almost every engagement.

"The government of an army," so Washington wrote to Congress, to be effective, must be a perfect despotism." To that the militia would not submit; and, when the two kinds of troops served together, the insubordination of the militia was communicated to the regulars, whose annual term of service expired almost before they had learned the duties of a soldier.

Abhor

CHAPTER rence of a standing army, to be quartered on the colo XXXV. nies, had precipitated the Revolution. In Congress and 1776. in the States there prevailed a just and reasonable dread

of despotic authority, and among those willing to serve as
soldiers a settled disinclination to enlist for long periods.
But, to continue the war, a standing army was absolutely
necessary.
A committee of Congress, sent to camp while
the American army still occupied Harlem Heights, on
York Island, had matured a plan for such an army, for
the most part in accordance with Washington's views.

All the hitherto scattered continental forces were to be embraced in one grand whole, to consist of eightyeight battalions, of seven hundred and fifty men eachbattalions being substituted for regiments, to get rid of the rank of colonel, which had occasioned difficulty about exchanges. Hazen's Canadian regiment was also to be kept up, to be recruited in any of the states, and hence known as "Congress's own." Massachusetts and Virginia were each to furnish fifteen battalions, Pennsylvania twelve, North Carolina nine, Connecticut eight, South Carolina six, New York and New Jersey four each, New Hampshire and Maryland three each, Rhode Island two, Delaware and Georgia each one. The men were to be enlisted for the war, and to be entitled, at the end of their service, to a land bounty of a hundred acres. Colonels were to have five hundred acres, and inferior officers an intermediate quantity corresponding to their rank. Twenty dollars bounty was to be given to each recruit. Such, however, was the difficulty in obtaining enlistments for the war, that an option was presently allowed of enlisting for three years; but these three year recruits. were to have no land. The states were to enlist their respective quotas, and to provide them with arms and clothing; but the expense of this operation, as well as