Lafayette (80 page)

6.
Ibid.

7.
Mémoires
, I:92.

8.
Ibid., I:93.

9.
Sparks,
Writings
, VII:50.

10.
L to James Bowdoin, Morristown, May 30, 1780, Idzerda, III:43.

11.
L to Samuel Adams, Head Quarters at Morristown, May 30, 1780, Idzerda, III:41–43.

12.
L to Joseph Reed, Head Quarters at Morristown, May 31, 1780, Idzerda, III:43–45.

13.
L to George Clinton, Morristown, May 31, 1780, Idzerda, III:45.

14.
L to Mrs. Reed, June 25, 1780, Gottschalk,
Lafayette and the Close of
. . . , 91.

15.
Washington to Rochambeau, July 16, 1780, Fitzpatrick,
Writings
, XIX:185–187.

16.
Mémoires
, I:123.

17.
Ibid., I:123–124.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Ibid., I:124–125.

20.
Ibid., I:125–126.

21.
Ibid., I:126.

22.
The number of troops in eighteenth-century military units differed from today’s units, with only 2,000 to 5,000 troops in an eighteenth-century division—the equivalent of today’s brigade and far below the 7,000 to 20,000 troops that make up the modern division.

23.
James Thacher,
A military journal during the American Revolutionary War
(Boston, 1823), 286–287, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette at the Close
. . . , 156–157.

24.
Ibid, I:93.

25.
Doniol, IV:404–407.

26.
L to Adrienne, near Fort Lee, October 7, 1780,
Mémoires
, I:128–129.

27.
Mémoires
, I:127.

28.
Ibid.

29.
Tower, II:166–168, from M. Ernouf, “Le Complot d’Arnold (1780), raconté par Lafayette,”
Revue de la Révolution
, Tome 5, Année 1885.

30.
John André’s remains were eventually returned to Britain and now lie in London’s Westminster Abbey.

31.
Mémoires
, I:129 and Idzerda, III:506.

1.
Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee (1756–1818) was born in Virginia and educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). He had already won a dramatic victory in August 1779, when his “legion” stormed and captured the British fort at Paulus Hook (now Jersey City), New Jersey. He joined Greene in the South Carolina campaign, before rejoining Lafayette in the siege of Yorktown. After the Revolutionary War, he served in the Virginia legislature and the Continental Congress before becoming a three-term governor of his native state. The father of Robert E. Lee, he wrote and delivered the famous Congressional eulogy in December 1799, after Washington’s death, calling his former commander in chief “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

2.
Marquis de Chastellux,
Travels in North America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782
(London, 1787, 2 vols.), II:12 ff., cited in Tower, II:182–183.

3.
L to Washington, October 30, 1780, Duer, 358–362.

4.
Washington to L, October 30, 1780, Duer, 362–363.

5.
Ironically, the end of the revolution saw American military leaders adopt a similar attitude toward snipers. Although each war saw their return to battle, the peace that followed invariably relegated them to the ranks of cowards who refused to “stand up and fight like men,” and few, except Sergeant Alvin York in World War I, ever received
battlefield decorations. Not until World War II, when massive forces of Japanese snipers forced the U.S. Army Infantry to retaliate with similar forces, were sniper scouts finally recognized universally for their heroism in action. Sniper scouts have remained an integral part of the infantry since then, playing essential roles in both Korea and Vietnam. The specific origin of the phrase “stand up and fight like a man” is unclear.

6.
Derived from the Spanish word
guerra
, or “war” (
guerrilla
= little war), the term did not appear until the Peninsular War (1808–1814) in Spain, when the British army applied the lessons learned in South Carolina to support an uprising by the Spanish and Portuguese against Napoléon’s forces in the Iberian Peninsula. But guerrilla warfare itself, if not its name, originated as an effective weapon of modern revolution with Nathanael Greene’s campaign in South Carolina, in which small, mobile forces used snipers and unconventional warfare to defeat a larger, more powerful conventional army. The campaign remains a focus of careful study and emulation for military leaders everywhere. Both China’s Mao Tse Tung and North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh were familiar with the South Carolina campaign and the tactics of Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan.

7.
Greene to L, December 29, 1780, Idzerda, III:274–276.

8.
Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743 for “ingenious and curious men” committed to establishing a national system of public education as essential to the success of democracy. Franklin remained president until his death in 1790, when Thomas Jefferson succeeded him to that office.

9.
Chastellux,
Travels
. . . , II:12 ff., in Tower, II:183.

10.
The capture of Laurens was particularly frightening for America and, of course, for the Laurens family. If the Americans won the war and the British recognized American independence, the British would have to treat Laurens as a prisoner of war and exchange him for a comparable British prisoner. If the British crushed the revolution, however, they had every intention of treating him as a rebel and hanging him for treason, as they would have done with every other American “founding father.”

11.
L to marquis de Castries, New Windsor, January 30, 1781, Idzerda, III:294–301.

12.
L to comte de Vergennes, New Windsor, January 30, 1781,
Mémoires
, I:135–138.

13.
L to Adrienne, New Windsor, February 2, 1781, Ibid., I:138–139.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Ibid.

16.
Ibid.

17.
John Buchanan,
The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 325.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Instructions from Washington to L, New Windsor, February 20, 1781, Idzerda, III:334–336.

20.
L to Washington, Williams Burg, March 26, 1781, Idzerda, III:417–418.

21.
Comte de Vergennes,
Mémoire
[memorandum] to Louis XVI, April 18, 1778, in Flassan, VI:140.

22.
L to Alexander Hamilton, April 10, 1781, Idzerda, IV:16.

23.
Washington to L, New Windsor, April 6, 1781, Duer, 395–396.

24.
L to Washington, Elk, April 10, 1781, Idzerda, IV:19–24.

25.
L to Chevalier de La Luzerne, Elk, April 10, 1781, Idzerda, IV:453–454.

26.
Ibid.

27.
George Washington to Noah Webster, July 14, 1788, Harlow Giles Unger,
Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), 149.

28.
Washington to L, New Windsor, April 11, 1781.

29.
L to Washington, Susquehanna Ferry, April 14, 1781, Idzerda, IV:30–32.

30.
Ibid.

31.
L to Washington, Baltimore, April 18, 1781, Duer, 403–406.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Mémoires
, Duer, 259–260.

34.
L to Washington, Baltimore, April 18, 1781, Duer, 403–406.

35.
Washington to L, New Windsor, May 5, 1781, Idzerda, IV:86.

36.
Doniol, IV:613.

1.
Mémoires
, I:93.

2.
Jefferson to von Steuben, March 10, 1781, Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1948), 346.

3.
Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
, 101.

4.
Jefferson to Lafayette, March 10, 1781, and May 14, 1781, Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
, 345 and 350.

5.
Mémoires
, Duer, 405n.

6.
L to Washington, Camp Wilton on Jas. River, May 17, 1781, Idzerda, IV:108–109.

7.
L to Greene, Camp Wilton on the James River, May 18, 1781, Idzerda, IV:110–114.

8.
Mémoires
, I:95–96.

9.
Washington to L, New Windsor, May 31, 1781, Tower, II:340.

10.
Tower, II:340.

11.
L to George Weedon, Wilton, May 15, 1781, Idzerda, IV:104–106.

12.
L to Anthony Wayne, Camp Wilton, May 15, 1781, Idzerda, IV:102–103.

13.
Anthony Wayne to L, Yorktown [Pennsylvania], May 20, 1781, Idzerda, IV:116–117.

14.
Von Steuben to L, Forks James River, May 30, 1781, Idzerda, IV:147.

15.
L to Washington, Richmond, May 24, 1781, Duer, 416–418.

16.
L to Hamilton, Richmond, May 23, 1781, Duer, 515–517.

17.
Washington to L, New Windsor, May 31, 1781, Idzerda, IV:153–156.

18.
Washington to L, New Windsor, June 4, 1781, Idzerda, IV:168.

19.
Rochambeau to de Grasse, June 11, 1781, Tower, II:399.

20.
Mémoires
, I:96.

21.
Cornwallis to Clinton, May 26, 1781, Tower, II:238.

22.
Mémoires
, I:97. [Gottschalk (
Lafayette and the Close
. . . , p. 431) claims never to have found the quotation during his search of “the several available collections of Cornwallis’ correspondence,” but he reports Sir Henry Clinton having written to Lord George Germain, English secretary of state for the colonies, on June 9, 1781, saying that Cornwallis had written that “the boy could not escape him.”]

23.
L to Washington, Richmond, May 24, 1781, Duer, 416–418.

24.
Lasteyrie, 75.

25.
Mémoires
, I:96.

26.
L to Anthony Wayne, Forks of the Chickahominy, May 27, 1781, Tower, II:321–322.

27.
Ibid., Gold Mine Creek, Southana [South Anna] River, May 29, 1781, Idzerda, IV:141–142.

28.
The letter is, apparently, lost, but Lafayette refers to it in his replies to Greene.

29.
Bowers, 279.

30.
The French occupation of many German-speaking areas east of France created a tendency among some German noblemen to Frenchify their names.

31.
L to Washington, Camp, June 28, 1781, Duer, 418–420.

32.
Mémoires
, Duer, 435n. ff.

33.
Sparks,
Life
, 334.

34.
Tower, II:347.

35.
L to Washington, July 20, 1781, Duer, 421–422.

36.
Ibid.

37.
Abbé Claude Robin [chaplain to Comte de Rochambeau],
Nouveau voyage dans l’Amérique septentrionale en l’année 1781, etc
. (Philadelphia and Paris, 1782), 71–72, in Gottschalk
, Lafayette and the Close
. . . , 271.

38.
Wayne to Washington, July 8, 1781, Gottschalk,
Lafayette and the Close
. . . , 266.

39.
L to Greene, Ambler’s Plantation opposite James Island, July 8, 1781, Idzerda, IV:236–239.

40.
Washington to L, Peekskill, New York, June 29, 1781, Idzerda, IV:219–220.

41.
Washington to L, July 30, 1781, Sparks,
Life
, 337.

42.
Tower, II:370.

43.
L to Washington, Malvan Hill, July 20, 1781, Duer, 421–422.

44.
Duer, 428n–429n.

45.
L to Washington, Ambler’s Plantation, July 20, 1781, Duer, 422–423.

46.
Ibid., 423–424.

47.
Ibid., August 6, 1781, 425–426.

48.
L to Washington, Forks of York River, August 21, 1781, Duer, 427–430.

49.
L to Adrienne, Camp, between the branches of the York River, August 24, 1781,
Mémoires
, I:154–155.

50.
L to Washington, Malvan Hill, July 31, 1781, Duer, 425.

51.
Ibid.

52.
L to Washington, Mattapony River, August 24, 1781, Idzerda, IV:349–351.

53.
Tower, II:431.

54.
Ibid.

55.
Mémoires
, I:98.

56.
Ibid., I:136n. ff.

57.
Washington to L, Philadelphia, September 7, 1781, Idzerda, IV:390–391.

58.
Tower, II:447.

59.
Mémoires
, I:99.

60.
Ibid., 451.

61.
Ibid., 454.

62.
Ibid., 456.

63.
Henry Lee,
Memoirs of the war in the southern department of the United States
(Philadelphia, 1812, 2 vols.), II:361.

64.
L to comte de Maurepas, Camp near York, October 20, 1781, Duer, 445.

1.
L to Adrienne, on board
La Ville de Paris
, October 22, 1781.

2.
Comte de Vergennes to L, Versailles, December 1, 1781, Idzerda, 487–488.

3.
Marquis de Ségur to L, December 5, 1781,
Mémoires
, I:160.

4.
Ibid.

5.
Washington to L, Mount Vernon, November 15, 1781.

6.
Gottschalk,
Lafayette and the Close
. . . , 336, from
Atlantic
[magazine], I (1824), 400.

7.
L to Samuel Cooper, Camp York, Virginia, October 26, 1781, Idzerda, IV:429–432.

8.
Tower, II:462–463.

9.
Congress to king of France, November 29, 1781, Wharton, IV:858.

10.
L to John Hanson, President of Congress, November 25, 1781, Gottschalk,
Lafayette and the Close
. . . , 339.