had been applauded in general orders; his daring proposal to attempt the fort at Paulus Hook, now Jersey City, obtained the approval of Washington. The place was strong, but was carelessly guarded. The party with Lee was undiscovered until, in the morning of the nineteenth of August, before day, they plunged into the canal, then deep from the rising tide. Entering the main work through a fire of musketry from block-houses, they captured the fort before the discharge of a single piece of artillery. After daybreak they withdrew, taking with them one hundred and fifty-nine prisoners.

Incited by the massacres of Wyoming and Cherry valley, congress, on the twenty-fifth of February, had directed Washington to protect the inland frontier and chastise the Seneca Indians. Of the two natural routes to their country, that of the Susquehannah was selected for three thousand men of the best continental troops, who were to rally at Wyoming, while one thousand or more of the men of New York were to move from the Mohawk river.

Before they could be ready, a party of five or six hundred men, led by Van Schaick and Willet, made a swift march of three days into the country of the Onondagas, and, without the loss of a man, destroyed their settlement.

The command of the great expedition, which Gates declined, devolved on Sullivan, to whom Washington in May gave repeatedly the instruction: "Move as light as possible even from the first onset. Reject every article that can be dispensed with; this is an extraordinary case, and requires extraordinary attention." Yet Sullivan made insatiable demands on the government of Pennsylvania, and wasted time in finding fault and writing strange theological essays. Meanwhile, British and Indian partisans near Fort Schuyler surprised and captured twenty-nine mowers. Savages under Macdonell laid waste the west bank of the Susquehannah, till "the Indians," by his own report, "were glutted with plunder, prisoners, and scalps." Thirty miles of a closely settled country were burnt. Brant and his crew consumed with fire all the settlement of Minisink, one fort excepted, and, from a party by whom they were pursued, took more than forty scalps and one prisoner.

The best part of the season was gone when Sullivan, on the

last of July, moved from Wyoming. His arrival at Tioga sent terror to the Indians. Several of their chiefs said to Colonel Bolton in council: "Why does not the great king, our father, assist us? Our villages will be cut off, and we can no longer fight his battles." On the twenty-second of August, the day after Sullivan was joined by New York troops under General James Clinton, he began the march up the Tioga into the heart of the Indian country. On the same day Little David, a Mohawk chief, delivered a message from himself and the Six Nations to Haldimand, then governor of Canada: "Brother! for these three years past the Six Nations have been running a race against fresh enemies, and are almost out of breath. Now we shall see whether you are our loving, strong brother, or whether you deceive us. Brother! we are still strong for the king of England, if you will show us that he is a man of his word, and that he will not abandon his brothers, the Six Nations."

The march into the country of the Senecas on the left extended to Genesee; on the right, detachments reached Cayuga lake. After destroying eighteen villages and their fields of corn, Sullivan returned to New Jersey. A small party from Fort Pitt, under command of Colonel Brodhead, broke up the towns of the Senecas upon the upper branch of the Alleghany. The manifest inability of Great Britain to protect the Six Nations taught them to desire neutrality.

In June the British general Maclean, who commanded in Nova Scotia, established a post of six hundred men at what is now Castine, on Penobscot bay. To dislodge the intruders, the Massachusetts legislature sent nineteen armed ships, sloops, and brigs; two of them continental vessels, the rest privateers or belonging to the state. The flotilla carried more than three hundred guns, and was attended by twenty-four transports, having on board nearly a thousand men. So large an American armament had never put to sea. spared no sacrifice to insure success. July the expedition gallantly effected their landing, but were too weak to carry the works of the British by storm, and, while a reinforcement was on the way, Sir George Collier on the fourteenth of August arrived in a sixty-four gun ship, at

The towns on the coast
On the twenty-eighth of

tended by five frigates. Two vessels of war fell into his hands; the rest and all the transports ran up the river, and were burnt by the men of the expedition, who made their escape through the woods. The British were left masters of the country east of the Penobscot.

Yet the result of the campaign at the north promised success to America. Clinton had evacuated Rhode Island, and all New England west of the Penobscot was free from an enemy. In New York the Six Nations had learned that the alliance with the English secured them gifts, but not protection. On the Hudson river the Americans recovered the use of King's ferry, and held all the country above it.

The winter set in early and with unwonted severity. Before the middle of December, and long before the army could build their log huts, the snow lay two feet deep in New Jersey, where the troops were cantoned; so that they saved themselves with difficulty from freezing by keeping up large fires. Continental money was valued at no more than thirty for one, and even at that rate the country people took it unwillingly. There could be no regularity in supplies. Sometimes the army was five or six days together without bread; at other times as many without meat; and once or twice two or three days without either. But such was the efficiency of the magistrates of New Jersey, such the good disposition of its people, that, when requisitions were made by the commander-in-chief on its several counties, they were punctually complied with, and in some counties exceeded. For many of the soldiers the term of service expired with the year; and shorter enlistments, by which several states attempted to fill their quotas, were fatal to compactness and stability. Massachusetts offered a bounty of five hundred dollars to each of those who would enlist for three years or the war, and found few to accept the offer. The Americans wanted men and wanted money, but could not be subdued. An incalculable strength lay in reserve in the energy of the states and of each individual citizen; and neither congress nor people harbored a doubt of their ultimate triumph.

Thomas Pownall, a member of parliament, who, from long civil service in various parts of the United States, knew them

thoroughly well, published in England a memorial about them addressed to the sovereigns of Europe:

"The system of establishing colonies in various climates to create a monopoly of the peculiar product of their labor is at end. The spirit of commerce hath become predominant. A great and powerful empire, founded in nature and growing into an independent organized being, has taken its equal station with the nations upon earth. I see the sun rising in the west. The independence of America is fixed as fate; she is mistress of her own fortune; knows that she is so; and will establish her own system and constitution and change the system of Europe.

"In this New World growth is founded in the civilizing activity of the human race. We see all the inhabitants not only free, but allowing an universal naturalization. In a country like this, where every man has the full and free exertion of his powers, an unabated application and a perpetual struggle sharpen the wits and give constant training to the mind. In this wilderness of woods the settlers try experiments, and the advantages of their discoveries are their own. One sees them laboring after the plough, as though they had not an idea beyond the ground they dwell upon; yet is their mind all the while enlarging its powers, and their spirit rises as their improvements advance. This is no fancy drawing of what may be; it is an exact portrait of what actually exists. Many a real philosopher, a politician, a warrior, emerge out of this wilderness, as the seed rises out of the ground where it hath lain buried for its season.

"In agriculture, in mechanic handicrafts, the New World hath been led to many improvements of implements, tools, and machines, leading experience by the hand to many a new invention. The settlers find fragments of time in which they make most of the articles of personal wear and household use for home consumption. Here no laws frame conditions on which a man is to exercise this or that trade. Here are no oppressing, obstructing, dead-doing laws. The moment that the progress of civilization is ripe for it, manufactures will grow and increase with an astonishing exuberancy.

"The same ingenuity is exerted in ship-building; their

commerce hath been striking deep root. The nature of the coast and of the winds renders marine navigation a perpetually moving intercourse; and the nature of the rivers renders. inland navigation but a further process of that communion; all which becomes, as it were, a one vital principle of life, extended through a one organized being, one nation. Will that most enterprising spirit be stopped at Cape Horn, or not pass the Cape of Good Hope? Before long they will be found trading in the South Sea, in the Spice Islands, and in China.

"This fostering happiness in North America doth produce progressive population. They have increased nearly the double in eighteen years. By constant intercommunion, America will every day approach nearer and nearer to Europe. Unless the great potentates of Europe can station cherubim at every avenue with a flaming sword that turns every way, to prevent man's quitting this Old World, multitudes of their people, many of the most useful, enterprising spirits, will emigrate to the new one. Much of the active property will go there also.

"The new empire of America is like a giant ready to run its course. The fostering care with which the rival powers of Europe will nurse it insures its establishment beyond all doubt or danger."

So prophesied Pownall to the English world and to Europe in the first month of 1780. Since the issue of the war is to proceed in a great part from the influence of European powers, it behooves us now to study the manner of their intervention.