CHAPTER XI V

THE

I'

N October, 1780, General Clinton had sent General Leslie into Virginia. Leslie occupied Portsmouth and Norfolk, but, after the affair at King's Mountain, he was sent to South Carolina. Clinton did not, however, give up the idea of isolating the South by the conquest of Virginia. In December, General Arnold

sailed from New York with sixteen hundred British

MAP OF OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA IN 1781

1 7 8 1 regulars, ascended the James River, and captured RichJanuary 5 mond. A great deal of private property was destroyed and part of the city was burned. Hearing that Steuben was at Petersburg, Arnold hastened back to save his line of retreat and to prepare for the defense of Portsmouth.

As early as the twentieth of February, 1781, congress assigned the task of capturing Arnold to Lafayette who was given a picked corps of twelve hundred men from the New England and New Jersey lines. Feigning an attack on Staten Island, Lafayette led his troops to the Head of Elk where he arrived on the third of March, three days ahead of schedule time. Thence his troops went by water to Annapolis. To coöperate with Lafayette, Washington proposed to Rochambeau that the French fleet that had been blockaded at Newport be sent to the Chesapeake and, with some of the ships, Des

touches tardily put to sea. At the Virginia capes, Destouches found Arbuthnot

and a British fleet. After the

engagement that took place, the French ships went back Newport

to

for repairs. Meanwhile, Lafayette had left his army at Annapolis and hurried on to Yorktown for a conference with Steuben, and to Suffolk where he found Muhlenberg with the Virginia militia. After the return of the French fleet, Lafayette hastened to Annapolis and thence

led his troops northward. At the Head of Elk he 1 7 8 1
received orders from Washington assigning him to the
command in Virginia, superseding
Steuben who, as usual, accepted
the order without question. At
Baltimore, Lafayette bought shoes
and cotton cloth, for which he
paid with drafts on the French
treasury personally endorsed by
himself; the women of Baltimore
made the cloth into shirts. Lafay-
ette gave the shoes and shirts to
his men and set out on a forced
march for Richmond where he
arrived on the twenty-ninth of
April.

Late in March, Major-general
William Phillips arrived in the
Chesapeake Bay with two thou-
sand British troops from New
York, took command at Ports-
mouth, and completed the fortifi-
cations that Arnold had begun.

Overshoes worn by Lafayette

Uniform of Lafayette's Light
Infantry

General
Phillips and
his Raid

(Drawn by Harry A. Ogden)
In April, he sailed up
the James River as
far as Burwell's Ferry
and thence marched
to Williamsburg
whence the militia April 20
fled. Lafayette was
then advancing on

Richmond, and Steuben, with about a thousand militia,
was at Petersburg. On the twenty-fourth, the British
army sailed to City Point and, on the twenty-fifth,
marched for Petersburg. After a skirmish at a hill east
of Blandford, now an eastern suburb of Petersburg,

Cornwallis

with Lafayette

Map of Phillips's Position at Petersburg

number of vessels were destroyed.

pursuing them." Four thousand hogsheads of tobacco and a On the twenty

seventh, Phillips marched to Chesterfield Court House and burned the barracks there; on the same day, Arnold marched to Osborne and burned some vessels. On the thirtieth, the British army marched to Manchester and destroyed twelve hundred hogsheads of tobacco. Across the river at Richmond was Lafayette with nine hundred men, helpless spectators of the conflagration. On the ninth of May, the British army returned to Petersburg to meet Cornwallis. Here Phillips was stricken with typhoid fever and, on the thirteenth of May, he died. Cornwallis arrived on the twentieth, and, in June, Arnold returned to New York much to the disappointment of the Americans who had hoped to take him; Jefferson had offered a reward of five thousand guineas for his capture. In the campaign, Arnold is said to have asked a captured captain: "What would be my fate, if I should be taken prisoner?" "They will cut off that shortened leg of yours wounded at Quebec and Saratoga, and bury it with all the honors of war, and then hang the rest of you on a gibbet," was the answer.

The arrival of Cornwallis brought the British army in and his Race Virginia up to more than five thousand men, double that of Lafayette who found himself, as he expressed it "not strong enough even to be beaten." When Cornwallis advanced against him, Lafayette abandoned Richmond

June 4