[Footnote 2:  After remaining a prisoner in the hands of the British from December, 1776, to April, 1778, Lee had been exchanged for a British officer.]

After the battle the British hurried on to New York, where Washington partially surrounded them by stretching out his army from Morristown in New Jersey to West Point on the Hudson.

%149.  Stony Point.%—­In hope of drawing Washington away from New York, Clinton in 1779 sent a marauding party to plunder and ravage the farms and towns of Connecticut.  But Washington soon brought it back by dispatching Anthony Wayne to capture Stony Point, which he did (July, 1779) by one of the most brilliant assaults in military history.

%150.  Indian Raids.%—­That nothing might be wanting to make the suffering of the patriots as severe as possible, the Indians were let loose.  Led by a Tory[1] named Butler, a band of whites and Indians of the Seneca tribe of the Six Nations[2] marched from Fort Niagara to Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, and there perpetrated one of the most awful massacres in history.  Another party, led by a son of Butler, repeated the horrors of Wyoming in Cherry Valley, N.Y.

[Footnote 1:  Not all the colonists desired independence.  Those who remained loyal to the King were called Tories.]

[Footnote 2:  By this time the Five Nations had admitted the Tuscaroras to their confederacy and had thus become the Six Nations.]

%151.  George Rogers Clark%.—­Meantime the British commander at Detroit tried hard to stir up the Indians of the West to attack the whole frontier at the same moment.  Hearing of this, George Rogers Clark of Virginia marched into the enemy’s country, and in two fine campaigns in 1778-1779 beat the British, and conquered the country from the Ohio to the Great Lakes and from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi.

%152.  Sullivan’s Expedition%.—­In 1779 it seemed so important to punish the Indians for the Wyoming and Cherry Valley massacres that General Sullivan with an army invaded the territory of the Six Nations, in central New York, burned some forty Indian villages, and utterly destroyed the Indian power in that state.

%153.  The South invaded%.—­For a year and more there had been a lull in military operations on the part of the British.  But they now began an attack in a new quarter.  Having failed to conquer New England in 1775-1776, having failed to conquer the Middle States in 1776-1777, they sent an expedition against the South in December, 1778.  Success attended it.  Savannah was captured, Georgia was conquered, and the royal governor reinstated.  Later, in 1779, General Lincoln, with a French fleet to help him, attempted to recapture Savannah, but was driven off with dreadful loss of life.