movement may not perhaps be agreeable to your troops. As to the first, report will exaggerate them, and there will be preserved the appearance of an army, which will, at least, have the effect of encouraging the desponding here; and, as to the other, you will doubtless represent to them, that in duty and gratitude, their service is due wherever the enemy may make the greatest impression, or seem to intend to do so."

NOTE-No. VIII.

In a postscript, it is stated, that an accurate return could not be obtained, but that from the best estimate he could form, the whole force in Jersey fit for duty was under three thousand; all of whom, except nine hundred and eighty-one, were militia, who stood engaged only until the last of that month. The continental troops under inoculation, including their attendants, amounted to about one thousand.

In a letter of the sixth of March to Governor Trumbull, calling on the state of Connecticut for two thousand militia to be marched to Peekskill, after complaining of the militia he had called from the southern states, who came and went as their own caprice might direct, he says, "I am persuaded, from the readiness with which you have ever complied with all my demands, that you will exert yourself in forwarding the aforementioned number of men, upon my bare request. But I hope you will be convinced of the necessity of the demand, when I tell you, in confidence, that after the 15th of this month, when the time of General Lincoln's militia expires, I shall be left with the remains of five Virginia regiments, not amounting to more than as many hundred men, and parts of two or three other continental battalions, all very weak. The remainder of the army will be composed of small parties of militia from this state and Pennsylvania, on whom little dependence can be put, as they come and go when they please. I have issued peremptory orders to every colonel in the regular service, to send in what men he has recruited, even if they amount to but one hundred to a regiment: if they would do this, it would make a considerable force upon the whole. The enemy must be ignorant of our numbers and situation, or they would never suffer us to remain unmolested; and I almost tax myself with imprudence in committing the secret to paper; not that I distrust you, of whose inviolable attachment I have had so many proofs; but for fear the letter should by any accident fall into other hands than those for which it is intended."

NOTE-No. IX.

Justice to the unfortunate demands, that an extract from the correspondence between Generals Burgoyne and Gates on this subject should be inserted.

The British general had complained of the harsh treatment experienced by the provincial prisoners taken at Bennington, and requested that a surgeon from his army should be permitted to visit the wounded; and that he might be allowed to furnish them with necessaries and attendants. "Duty and principle,” he added, “make me a public enemy to the Americans, who have taken up arms; but I seek to be a generous one; nor have I the shadow of resentment against any individual, who does not induce it by acts derogatory to those maxims, upon which all men of honour think alike." In answer to this letter, General Gates, who had just taken command of the American army, said, "that the savages of America should, in their warfare, mange and scalp the unhappy prisoners who fall into their hands is neither new nor extra

ordinary, but that the famous Lieutenant General Burgoyne, in whom the fine gentleman is united with the soldier and the scholar, should hire the savages of America to scalp Europeans, and the descendants of Europeans; nay more, that he should pay a price for each scalp so barbarously taken, is more than will be believed in Europe, until authenticated facts shall, in every gazette, confirm the truth of the horrid tale.

"Miss M'Crea, a young lady, lovely to the sight, of virtuous character, and amiable disposition, engaged to an officer of your army, was, with other women and children, taken out of a house near fort Edward, carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in a most shocking manner. Two parents with their six children, were all treated with the same inhumanity, while quietly resting in their once happy and peaceful dwelling. The miserable fate of Miss M'Crea was particularly aggravated, by being dressed to receive her promised husband; but met her murderer employed by you. Upwards of one hundred men, women and children, have perished by the hands of the ruffians to whom, it is asserted, you have paid the price of blood.”

To this part of his letter, General Burgoyne replied, "I have hesitated, sir, upon answering the other paragraphs of your letter. I disdain to justify myself against the rhapsodies of fiction and calumny, which from the first of this contest, it has been an unvaried American policy to propagate, but which no longer imposes on the world. I am induced to deviate from this general rule, in the present instance, lest my silence should be construed an acknowledgment of the truth of your allegations, and a pretence be thence taken for exercising future barbarities by the American troops.

"By this motive, and upon this only, I condescend to inform you, that I would not be conscious of the acts you presume to impute to me, for the whole continent of America, though the wealth of worlds was in its bowels, and a paradise upon its surface.

"It has happened, that all my transactions with the Indian nations, last year and this, have been clearly heard, distinctly understood, accurately minuted, by very numerous, and in many parts, very unprejudiced persons. So immediately opposite to the truth is your assertion that I have paid a price for scalps, that one of the first regulations established by me at the great council in May, and repeated and enforced, and invariably adhered to since, was, that the Indians should receive compensation for prisoners, because it would prevent cruelty; and that not only such compensation should be withheld, but a strict account demanded for scalps. These pledges of conquest, for such you well know they will ever esteem them, were solemnly and peremptorily prohibited to be taken from the wounded, and even the dying, and the persons of aged men, women, children, and prisoners, were pronounced sacred, even in an assault.

"In regard to Miss M'Crea, her fall wanted not the tragic display you have laboured to give it, to make it as sincerely abhorred and lamented by me, as it can be by the tenderest of her friends. The fact was no premeditated barbarity. On the contrary, two chiefs who had brought her off for the purpose of security, not of violence to her person, disputed which should be her guard, and in a fit of savage passion in one, from whose hands she was snatched, the unhappy woman became the victim. Upon the first intelligence of this event, I obliged the Indians to deliver the murderer into my hands, and though to have punished him by our laws, or principles of justice, would have been perhaps unprecedented, he certainly should have suffered an ignominious death, had I not been convinced from my circumstances and observation, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that a pardon under the terms which I presented, and they accepted, would be more efficacious than an execution, to prevent similar mischiefs. "The above instance excepted, your intelligence respecting the cruelty of the Indians is false.

"You seem to threaten me with European publications, which affect me as little

as any other threats you could make; but in regard to American publications, whether your charge against me, which I acquit you of believing, was penned from a gazette, or for a gazette, I desire and demand of you, as a man of honour, that should it appear in print at all this answer may follow it."

war.

NOTE-No. X.

Lord Suffolk, secretary of state, contended for the employment of Indians, in the "Besides its policy and necessity," his lordship said, "that the measure was also allowable on principle, for that it was perfectly justifiable to use all the means that God and nature had put into our hands."

This moving the indignation of Lord Chatham, he suddenly rose, and gave full vent to his feelings in one of the most extraordinary bursts of eloquence that the pen of history has recorded: “I am astonished,” exclaimed his lordship, “shocked to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house or even this country. My lords, I did not intend to have encroached again on your attention, but I can not repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity. That God and nature had put into our hands! what ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain I know not, but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What, to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend and this most learned bench to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord, frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal thirsting for blood!—against whom?—Your protestant brethren-to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence of barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico, but we more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. My lords, I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration to purify their country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more, but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept

this night in my bed, nor reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abnorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles."

NOTE-No. XI.

The following are the letters which passed between the two generals on this subject Albany, December 18, 1777.

SIR,-I shall not attempt to describe what, as a private gentleman, I can not help feeling, on representing to my mind the disagreeable situation which confidential letters, when exposed to public inspection, may place an unsuspecting correspondent in; but, as a public officer, I conjure your excellency, to give me all the assistance you can, in tracing out the author of the infidelity, which put extracts from General Conway's letters to me into your hands. Those letters have been stealingly copied; but, which of them, when, or by whom, is to me, as yet, an unfathomable secret.

There is not one officer in my suite, or amongst those who have a free access to me upon whom I could, with the least justification to myself, fix the suspicion; and yet, my uneasiness may deprive me of the usefulness of the worthiest men. It is, I believe, in your excellency's power to do me, and the United States, a very important service, by detecting a wretch who may betray me, and capitally injure the very operations under your immediate direction. For this reason, sir, I beg your excellency will favour me with the proofs you can procure to that effect. But, the crime being, eventually so important, that the least loss of time may be attended with the worst consequences; and, it being unknown to me whether the letter came to you from a member of congress, or from an officer, I shall have the honour of transmitting a copy of this to the president, that congress may, in concert with your excellency, obtain, as soon as possible, a discovery which so deeply affects the safety of the states. Crimes of that magnitude ought not to remain unpunished.

I have the honour to be,
Sir,

With the greatest respect,

Your excellency's most numble
and most obedient servant,

His excellency General Washington.

HORATIO GATES.

Valley Forge, January 4, 1778.

SIR,-Your letter of the 18th ultimo, came to my hands a few days ago, and to my great surprise informed me, that a copy of it had been sent to congress, for what reason, I find myself unable to account; but, as some end doubtless was intended to be answered by it, I am laid under the disagreeable necessity of returning my answer through the same channel, lest any member of that honourable body should harbour an unfavourable suspicion of my having practised some indiscreet means to come at the contents of the confidential letters between you and General Conway.

I am to inform you then, that **********, on his way to congress in the month of October last, fell in with Lord Stirling at Reading: and, not in confidence that I ever understood, informed his aid-de-camp, Major M' Williams, that General Conway had written thus to you, "heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counsellors* would have ruined it." Lord Stirling, from motives of

friendship, transmitted the account with this remark. "The enclosed was communicated by ********** to Major M'Williams; such wicked duplicity of conduct I shall always think it my duty to detect."

In consequence of this information, and without having any thing more in view, than merely to show that gentleman that I was not unapprised of his intriguing disposition, I wrote him a letter in these words.

"Sir, a letter which I received last night contained the following paragraph.

"In a letter from General Conway to General Gates, he says, heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it. I am, sir, &c."

Neither the letter, nor the information which occasioned it, was ever, directly, or indirectly, communicated by me to a single officer in this army (out of my own family) excepting the Marquis de Lafayette, who having been spoken to on the subject, by General Conway, applied for, and saw, under injunctions of secrecy, the letter which contained this information; so desirous was I of concealing every matter that could, in its consequences, give the smallest interruption to the tranquillity of this army, or afford a gleam of hope to the enemy by dissensions therein.

Thus, sir, with an openness and candour, which I hope will ever characterize and mark my conduct, have I complied with your request. The only concern I feel upon the occasion, finding how matters stand, is, that in doing this, I have necessarily been obliged to name a gentleman, who, I am persuaded, (although I never exchanged a word with him upon the subject) thought he was rather doing an act of justice, than committing an act of infidelity; and sure I am, that, until Lord Stirling's letter came to my hands, I never knew that General Conway, (whom I viewed in the light of a stranger to you) was a correspondent of yours, much less did I suspect that I was the subject of your confidential letters. Pardon me then for adding, that, so far from conceiving that the safety of the states can be affected, or in the smallest degree injured, by a discovery of this kind, or that I should be called upon in such solemn terms to point out the author, that I considered the information as coming from yourself, and given with a friendly view to forewarn, and consequently forearm me, against a secret enemy, or in other words, a dangerous incendiary, in which character sooner or later, this country will know General Conway. But, in this, as well as other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken. I am, sir,

Your most obedient servant,

To Major General Gates.

GEO: WASHINGTON.

NOTE-No. XII.

During the existence of this faction, an attempt appears to have been made to alienate the affections of the leading political personages in the states from the commander-in-chief. The following letters exhibit a very unsuccessful effort of this sort, which was made on Governor Henry, of Virginia, by a gentleman not supposed to be a member of congress from that state.

Williamsburgh, February 20, 1778. Dear Sir,—You will no doubt be surprised at seeing the enclosed letter, in which the encomiums bestowed on me are as undeserved, as the censures aimed at you are unjust. I am sorry there should be one man who counts himself my friend, who is not yours.