For the rest of the year 1779 the western settlements enjoyed peace; and the continuous flow of emigration through the mountains to Kentucky and the country on the Holston so strengthened them, that they were never again in danger of being broken up by any alliance of the savages with the British. The prowess of the people west of the Alleghanies, where negro slavery had not yet been introduced and every man was in the full possession of a wild but self-restrained liberty, fitted them for self-defence. In this year James Robertson, with a band of hunters, took possession of the surpassingly fertile country on the Cumberland river.

The regiment designed for the support of Clark had been diverted, and thus the British gained time to reinforce and fortify Detroit. But Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, gave instructions to occupy a station on the Mississippi, between the mouth of the Ohio and the parallel of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes; and, in the spring of 1780, Clark, choosing a strong and commanding situation five miles below the mouth of the Ohio, established Fort Jefferson as the watch on the father of rivers.

In the summer of 1778, news was received of the conquest of the British settlements on the lower Mississippi. James Willing of Philadelphia, a captain in the service of the United States, left that city with about twenty-seven men, who grew to be more than a hundred at Fort Pitt and on the rivers. On the evening of the nineteenth of February 1778, they arrived at the Natchez landing, and early the next morning sent out several parties, who almost at the same moment made the inhabitants prisoners of war on parole, hoisted the colors of the United States, and in their name took possession of the country. The British agents, who had taken part in stimulating the south-western savages to prowl on the American frontiers, escaped in terror and in haste.

The friendly planters, left unprotected and fearing the confiscation of their property, proposed terms of accommodation, which Willing readily accepted. On the twenty-first, they formally promised on their part in no way to give assistance to the enemies of America, and in return received the assurance of protection during their neutrality. From this agreement

were excepted all public officers of the crown of Great Britain. The property of British officers and non-residents was confiscated, and all the eastern side of the river was cleared of loyalists.

From Pittsburg and Kaskaskia to the Spanish boundary of Florida the United States in 1779 were alone in possession of the Ohio and the left bank of the Mississippi. Could Charles III. of Spain stop the onward wave of the backwoodsmen ? The legislature of Virginia put on record that "Colonel George Rogers Clark planned and executed the reduction of the British posts between the Ohio and Mississippi," and it granted "two hundred acres of land to every soldier in his corps." "The expedition," wrote Jefferson, "will have an important bearing ultimately in establishing our north-western boundary."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN. REFORMS IN VIRGINIA. PROGRESS OF THE WAR.

1779.

THE alliance with France gave to the United States a respite from active war; but the forced acceptance of irredeemable paper money as legal tender necessarily wrecked public credit and impaired private contracts and debts. The British officials had circulated counterfeits so widely that congress, in January 1779, was compelled to recall two separate emissions, each of five millions. The want of a central power paralyzed every effort at an organization of the strength of the collective states. Washington remained more than a month at Philadelphia in consultation with congress. Fort Niagara and Detroit, as well as New York city, were in the possession of Britain; yet all agreed that the country must confine itself to a defensive campaign.

Even a defensive campaign was attended with difficulties. To leave the officers, by the depreciation of the currency, even without means to provide themselves with decent clothes and subsistence, augured the reduction of the army to a shadow. Few of them were willing to remain on the existing establishment, and congress was averse to promising pensions to them or to their widows. To each of the rank and file who would agree to serve during the war a bounty of two hundred dollars, besides land and clothing, was offered; while those who had in former years enlisted for the war received a gratuity of one hundred dollars. Yet all would have been in vain but for the earnestness of the people.

Congress never had any power; now its authority was exhausted, and it could do nothing but appeal to the states. Tardily in March it voted that the infantry should consist of eighty battalions, of which eleven were assigned to Pennsylvania, as many to Virginia, and fifteen to Massachusetts. No state furnished its whole quota; Massachusetts more nearly than any other. In addition to the congressional bounty, New Jersey paid two hundred and fifty dollars to each of her recruits. Often in Massachusetts, sometimes in Virginia, levies were raised by draft.

Four years of hard service and of reflection had ripened in Washington the conviction of the need of a truly efficient general government. To James Warren, speaker of the house of representatives of Massachusetts, he made appeals for the subordination of every selfish interest to the good of what he called "our common country, America;" "our noble cause, the cause of mankind." To the men of Virginia he addressed himself more freely. To one of them he wrote: "Our affairs are come to a crisis; unanimity, disinterestedness, and perseverance in our national duty are the only means to avoid misfortunes." Before the end of March, in a letter "sent by a private hand," he drew the earnest thoughts of George Mason to the ruin that was coming upon the country from personal selfishness and provincial separatism: "I have seen without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which America has styled her gloomy ones; but I have beheld no day, since the commencement of hostilities, that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric we have been raising at the expense of so much time, blood, and treasure. Indeed, we seem to be verging so fast to destruction that I am filled with sensations to which I have been a stranger till within these three months. I cannot refrain lamenting in the most poignant terms, the fatal policy, too prevalent in most of the states, of employing their ablest men at home in posts of honor and profit till the great national interest is fixed upon a solid basis." He repeated the illustration which he had already used with Harrison, showing how completely he had thought out the proper relations of the union

to the states by adhering to the words in which he had formulated them: "To me it appears no unjust simile to compare the affairs of this great continent to the mechanism of a clock, each state representing some one or other of its smaller parts which they are endeavoring to put in fine order, without considering how useless and unavailing their labor is unless the great wheel or spring which is to set the whole in motion is also well attended to and kept in good order. As it is a fact, too notorious to be concealed, that congress is rent by party, no man who wishes well to the liberties of his country and desires to see its rights established can avoid crying out, Where are our men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their country? Let this voice, my dear sir, call upon you, Jefferson, and others. Do not, from a mistaken opinion, let our hitherto noble struggle end in ignominy. Believe me, when I tell you there is danger of it.” *

In May he wrote to another friend: "I never was, and much less reason have I now to be, afraid of the enemy's arms; but I have no scruples in declaring to you that I have never yet seen the time in which our affairs, in my opinion, were at as low an ebb as at the present; and, without a speedy and capital change, we shall not be able to call out the resources of the country."

Count d'Estaing was filled with the idea of a joint expedition of his fleet and the American troops "to give to the king of France Halifax and Newfoundland." + To consult on this subject, Gerard, in the first days of May, accepted an invitation from Washington to visit him in his camp. It was not possible for the United States to furnish a force sufficient to conquer and garrison Newfoundland; but on his return from the camp the minister wrote to Count Vergennes: "I have had many conversations with General Washington, some of which have continued for three hours. It is impossible for me briefly to communicate the fund of intelligence which I

* Washington to George Mason, Middlebrook, 27 March 1779. The text follows the copy I made from the draft which was carefully prepared by Washington with his own hand. The letter is cited in Marshall's Life of Washington, i., 291; and is printed from the papers of George Mason, in the Virginia Historical Register, v., 96. See above, p. 298.

Gerard to Vergennes, 6 May 1779.