In Virginia, meanwhile, during these long midsummer days, while Washington was waiting and planning, Cornwallis had been going up and down, harrying, burning, and plundering.  His cavalry had scattered the legislature, and driven Governor Jefferson in headlong flight over the hills, while property to the value of more than three millions had been destroyed.  Lafayette, sent by Washington to maintain the American cause, had been too weak to act decisively, but he had been true to his general’s teaching, and, refusing battle, had hung upon the flanks of the British and harassed and checked them.  Joined by Wayne, he had fought an unsuccessful engagement at Green Springs, but brought off his army, and with steady pertinacity followed the enemy to the coast, gathering strength as he moved.  Now, when all was at last ready, Washington began to draw his net about Cornwallis, whom he had been keenly watching during the victorious marauding of the summer.  On the news of the coming of the French fleet, he wrote to Lafayette to be prepared to join him when he reached Virginia, to retain Wayne, who intended to join Greene, and to stop Cornwallis at all hazards, if he attempted to go southward.

Cornwallis, however, had no intention of moving.  He had seen the peril of his position, and had wished to withdraw to Charleston; but the ministry, highly pleased with his performances, wished him to remain on the Chesapeake, and decisive orders came to him to take a permanent post in that region.  Clinton, moreover, was jealous of Cornwallis, and, impressed and deceived by Washington’s movements, he not only sent no reinforcements, but detained three thousand Hessians, who had lately arrived.  Cornwallis, therefore, had no choice, and with much writing for aid, and some protesting, he obeyed his orders, planted himself at Yorktown and Gloucester, and proceeded to fortify, while Lafayette kept close watch upon him.  Cornwallis was a good soldier and a clever man, suffering, as Burgoyne did, from a stupid ministry and a dull and jealous commander-in-chief.  Thus hampered and burdened, he was ready to fall a victim to the operations of a really great general, whom his official superiors in England undervalued and despised.

August 17, as soon as he had set his own machinery in motion, Washington wrote to De Grasse to meet him in the Chesapeake.  He was working now more anxiously and earnestly than at any time in the Revolution, not merely because he felt that success depended on the blow, but because he descried a new and alarming danger.  He had perceived it in June, and the idea pursued him until all was over, and kept recurring in his letters during this strained and eager summer.  To Washington’s eyes, watching campaigns and government at home and the politics of Europe abroad, the signs of exhaustion, of mediation, and of coming peace across the Atlantic were plainly visible.  If peace should come as things then were, America would get independence, and be shorn of many of her