of the utter impossibility of prosecuting the war in this country without reinforcements. The revolutions fondly looked for by means of friends to the British government I must represent as visionary. The accession of friends, without we occupy the country they inhabit, is but the addition of unhappy exiles to the list of pensioned refugees. A glance at the returns of the army divided into garrisons and reduced by casualties on the one part, with the consideration of the task yet before us on the other, would renew the too just reflection that we are by some thousands too weak to subdue this formidable rebellion." Yet for the moment the only regiments sent to the United States were three to reinforce Lord Cornwallis.

Hopeless of success in honorable warfare, Clinton stooped to fraud and corruption. While Arnold held the command in Philadelphia, his extravagant mode of living tempted him to peculation and treasonable connections. In the course of the winter of 1778 to 1779 he was taken into the pay of Clinton, to whom he gave intelligence on every occasion; and toward the end of February 1779 he let it be known to the British commander-in-chief that he was desirous of exchanging the American service for that of Great Britain. His open preference for the friends of the English in Pennsylvania disgusted the patriots. The council of that state, after bearing with him for more than half a year, very justly desired his removal from the command; and, having early in 1779 given information of his conduct, against their intention they became his accusers. The court-martial, before which he was arraigned on charges that touched his honor and integrity, dealt with him leniently, and sentenced him only to be reprimanded by the commander-in-chief. The reprimand was marked with the greatest forbearance. The French minister, to whom Arnold applied for money, put aside his request and added wise and friendly advice.

The plot received the warmest encouragement from Lord George Germain, who, toward the end of September 1779, wrote to Clinton: "Next to the destruction of Washington's army, the gaining over officers of influence and reputation among the troops would be the speediest means of subduing the rebellion and restoring the tranquillity of America. Your

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commission authorizes you to avail yourself of such opportunities, and the expense will be cheerfully submitted to."

In 1780 the command at West Point needed to be changed. Acting in concert with the British general and supported by the New York delegation in congress, Arnold, pleading his wounds as an excuse for declining active service, solicited and obtained orders to that post which included all the American forts in the Highlands. Sir Henry Clinton entered with all his soul into the ignoble plot. A correspondence of two months ensued between him and Arnold, through Major John André, adjutant-general of the army in North America. On the thirtieth of August, Arnold, insisting that the advantages which he expected to gain for himself by his surrender were "by no means unreasonable" and requiring that his conditions should "be clearly understood," laid a plan for an interview at which a person "fully authorized" was to "close with" his proposals.

The rendezvous was given by him within the American lines, where Colonel Sheldon held the command; and that officer was instructed to expect the arrival "at his quarters of a person in New York to open a channel of intelligence." On the same day André, disguising his name, wrote to Sheldon from New York, by order of Clinton: "A flag will be sent to Dobb's Ferry on Monday next, the eleventh, at twelve o'clock. Let me entreat you, sir, to favor a matter which is of so private a nature that the public on neither side can be injured by it. I trust I shall not be detained, but I would rather risk that than neglect the business in question, or assume a mysterious character to carry on an innocent affair and get to your lines by stealth." To this degree did the British commander-inchief prostitute his word and a flag of truce. The letter of André being forwarded to Arnold, he "determined to go as far as Dobb's Ferry and meet the flag." As he was approaching the vessel in which André came up the river, the British guard-boats, whose officers were not in the secret, fired upon his barge and prevented the interview.

Clinton became more eager in the project, for of a sudden he gained an illustrious assistant. At the breaking out of the war between France and England, Sir George Rodney, a Brit

ish naval officer, chanced to be detained in Paris by debt; but the aged Marshal de Biron advanced him money to set himself free, and he hastened to England to ask employment of the king. He was devoted to no political party; he reverenced the memory of Chatham, and yet held the war against the United States to be just. A man of action, quick-sighted, great in power of execution, he was the very officer whom a wise government would employ, and whom by luck the British admiralty of that day, tired of the Keppels and the Palisers, the mutinous and the incompetent, put in command of the expedition that was to relieve Gibraltar and rule the seas of the West Indies. One of the king's younger sons served on board his fleet as midshipman. He took his squadron to sea on the twenty-ninth of December 1779. On the eighth of January 1780, he captured seven vessels of war and fifteen sail of merchant-men. On the sixteenth he encountered off Cape St. Vincent the Spanish squadron of Languara, very inferior to his own, and easily took or destroyed a great part of it. Having victualled the garrison of Gibraltar and relieved Minorca, on the thirteenth of February he set sail for the West Indies. At St. Lucia he received letters from his wife, saying: "Everybody is beyond measure delighted as well as astonished at your success;" from his daughter: "Everybody almost adores you, and every mouth is full of your praise; come back when you have done some more things in that part of the world you are in now."

The thanks of both houses of parliament reached him at Barbados. In April and May, Rodney had twice or thrice encounters with the French fleet of Admiral Guichen, and with such success that in a grateful mood the British parlia ment thanked him once more. Yet he did not obtain a decided superiority in the West Indian seas, and he reported to the admiralty as the reason, that his flag had not been properly supported by some of his officers.

With indifference to neutral rights, he sent frigates to seize or destroy all American vessels in St. Eustatius. In June he received a check by a junction of the Spanish squadron under Solano with the French. But the two admirals could not agree how their forces should be employed. Contagious fever

attacked the Spaniards, and reached the French. Solano returned to Havana; Guichen, whose squadron was anxiously awaited in the North, sailed for France. Rodney alone, passing to the north and recapturing a ship from Charleston, anchored off Sandy Hook, where he vexed the weak Admiral Arbuthnot by taking command of the station of New York during his short stay. To the superiority of the British on land was now added the undisputed dominion of the water. In aid of the enterprise by which Sir Henry Clinton expected to bring the war to an immediate close, Rodney contributed his own rare powers; and harmony prevailed between the two branches of the service.

On the eighteenth of September, Washington crossed the North river on his way from head-quarters near Tappan to Hartford, where, attended by Lafayette and Hamilton, he was to hold his first interview with General Rochambeau. He was joined on the river by Arnold, who accompanied him as far as Peekskill, and endeavored, though in vain, to obtain his consent for the reception of an agent on pretended business relating to confiscated property.

Time pressed on. Besides, Sir George Rodney had only looked in upon New York, and would soon return to the West Indies. On the evening of the eighteenth, Arnold, giving information that Washington on the following Saturday night was expected to be his guest at West Point, proposed that André should immediately come up to the Vulture ship-ofwar, which rode at anchor just above Teller's Point in Haverstraw bay, promising on Wednesday evening "to send a person on board with a boat and a flag of truce."

This letter of Arnold reached Clinton on Tuesday evening, and he took his measures without delay. Troops were embarked on the Hudson river under the superintendence of Sir George Rodney, and the embarkation disguised by a rumor of an intended expedition into the Chesapeake.

On the morning of the twentieth the British adjutantgeneral prepared to carry out his orders. To diminish the dangers to which the service exposed him, "the commanderin-chief, before his departure, cautioned him not to change his dress, and not to take papers." At Dobb's Ferry he em

barked on the river, and, as the tide was favorable, reached the Vulture at about an hour after sunset, and declared to its captain "that he was ready to attend General Arnold's summons when and where he pleased."

"The night the flag was first expected he expressed much anxiety for its arrival," and, as it did not come, on the morning of the twenty-first he found a way to let Arnold know where he was. On the ensuing night Arnold sent Joshua Heth Smith, in a boat with muffled oars, off from the western shore of the Hudson to the Vulture. "The instant André learned that he was wanted, he started out of bed and discovered the greatest impatience to be gone. Nor did he in any instance betray the least doubt of his safety and success." The moon, which had just passed into the third quarter, shone in a clear sky when the boat pushed for the landing-place near the upper edge of the Haverstraw Mountains. It was very near the time for day to appear, when André, dressed in regimentals which a large blue cloak concealed, landed at the point of the Long Clove, where Arnold was waiting in the bushes to receive him. The general had brought with him a spare horse; and the two rode through the village of Haverstraw within the American lines to the house of Smith, which lay a few miles from the river. At the dawn of day the noise of artillery was heard. An American party had brought field-pieces to bear on the Vulture; and Arnold, as he looked out from the window, saw her compelled to shift her anchorage. The negotiations of the two parties continued for several hours. Clinton was in person to bring his army to the siege of Fort Defiance, which enclosed about seven acres of land. The garrison was to be so distributed as to destroy its efficiency. Arnold was to send immediately to Washington for aid, and to surrender the place in time for Sir Henry Clinton to make arrangements for surprising the reinforcement, which it was believed Washington would conduct in person. The promises to Arnold were indemnities in money and the rank of brigadier in the British service. The American general returned to his quarters. Late in the afternoon André, disguising himself by changing his dress for the garb of a citizen, provided with passes from Arnold and attended by Smith, set off by land for New York.