In the South there were several minor fights, in which now the British and now the Americans triumphed.  At the end of December, 1779, Clinton and Cornwallis with nearly eight thousand men went down to South Carolina intending to reduce that State to submission.  One of Washington’s lieutenants, General Lincoln, ill-advisedly thought that he could defend Charleston.  But as soon as the enemy were ready, they pressed upon him hard and he surrendered.  The year ended in gloom.  The British were virtually masters in the Carolinas and in Georgia.  The people of those States felt that they had been abandoned by the Congress and that they were cut off from relations with the Northern States.  The glamour of glory at sea which had brightened them all the year before had vanished.  John Paul Jones might win a striking sea-fight, but there was no navy, nor ships enough to transport troops down to the Southern waters where they might have turned the tide of battle on shore.  During the winter the British continued their marauding in the South.  For lack of troops Washington was obliged to stay in his quarters near New York and feel the irksomeness of inactivity.  General Nathanael Greene, a very energetic officer, next indeed to Washington himself in general estimation, commanded in the South.  At the Cowpens (January 17, 1781) one of his lieutenants—­Morgan, a guerilla leader—­killed or captured nearly all of Tarleton’s men, who formed a specially crack regiment.  A little later Washington marched southward to Virginia, hoping to cooeperate with the French fleet under Rochambeau and to capture Benedict Arnold, now a British Major-General, who was doing much damage in Virginia.  Arnold was too wary to be caught.  Cornwallis, the second in command of the British forces, pursued Lafayette up and down Virginia.  Clinton, the British Commander-in-Chief, began to feel nervous for the safety of New York and wished to detach some of his forces thither.  Cornwallis led his army into Yorktown and proceeded to fortify it, so that it might resist a siege.  Now at last Washington felt that he had the enemy’s army within his grasp.  Sixteen thousand American and French troops were brought down from the North to furnish the fighting arm he required.

Yorktown lay on the south shore of the York River, an estuary of Chesapeake Bay.  On the opposite side the little town of Gloucester projected into the river.  In Yorktown itself the English had thrown up two redoubts and had drawn some lines of wall.  The French kept up an unremitting cannonade, but it became evident that the redoubts must be taken in order to subdue the place.  Washington, much excited, took his place in the central battery along with Generals Knox and Lincoln and their staff.  Those about him recognized the peril he was in, and one of his adjutants called his attention to the fact that the place was much exposed.  “If you think so,” said he, “you are at liberty to step back.”  Shortly afterward a musket