US 2002.12 5362,4 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by GEORGE BANCROFT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: Presswork by John Wilson and Son. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. BY GEORGE BANCROFT. VOL. III. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON, & CO. C. IX $2.10 Lane Fund. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by GEORGE BANCROFT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. ONE volume more will complete the American revolution, including the negotiations for peace in 1782. For that volume the materials are collected and arranged, and it will be completed and published without any unnecessary delay. A single document only, but that a very important one, had been wanting; on my request for it through my friend John Bigelow, our minister at Paris, copies of it were ordered for me with the utmost courtesy and promptness by M. Drouyn de Lhuys. That volume will bring into the field in direct action Spain, France, and Great Britain, as well as the United States. I shall endeavor to treat them all with equal impartiality, and I do not doubt of finding a corresponding disposition in my countrymen. I hope to present in a just aspect those who rendered great services to the country, unmindful of any personal differences which may have grown up among them. Especially the documents respecting the preliminaries of peace of which I have acquired copies are so complete that I trust I may be able to disentangle the confusion which has grown out of judgments founded upon rumor and imperfect materials, and to set down with exactness the respective parts of all who were employed in the pacification, without impairing the merits of any one. In addition to very full collections relating to the war in the United States from the archives of England and of France, I have been most successful in obtaining masses of papers from Germany. In the time of the late king of Prussia I received permission to examine the archives of the department of foreign affairs at Berlin. I was unable to go there in person; but with the hearty coöperation of my friend Joseph A. Wright, our minister, I have yet obtained from that metropolis most important assistance, for which I am specially indebted to the prompt and efficient directions of Lieutenant-General von Moltke, the chief of the Prussian staff, the same who, by his part in the plan and execution of the last Prussian campaign in Bohemia, has taken his place among the world's greatest captains. The reports and letters sent over for the information of the Duke of Brunswick came during the period of revolution to be placed among the military archives of Prussia. Of all these which were of any historical value exact copies were made for me, including charts and plans of battles and military works. These papers are of inestimable importance, especially for the study of military operations in 1777. A very large collec tion of journals and correspondence had been made |