at Saratoga; and the same thing had happened to him again and again.  His close friendship with Washington caused the latter’s enemies to do him all the harm they could, and Arnold, disgusted at his country’s ingratitude, gradually drifted into Tory sentiments.  He married the daughter of a Tory, associated largely with Tories during a winter at Philadelphia, and at last resolved to end the war, as he thought, in favor of England by delivering the line of the Hudson to the British.  The result of this would be to divide the colonies in two and to render effective co-operation almost impossible.

So he sought and obtained command of West Point in order to carry out this purpose, began his preparations, and had all his plans laid, when the merest accident revealed the plot to Washington.  Arnold escaped by fleeing to a British man-of-war in the river, and after a short service against his country, marked by a raid along the Virginia shore, he sailed for England, where his last years were spent in poverty and embittered by remorse.  His last great act of treachery blotted out the brilliant achievements which had gone before, and his name lives only as that of the most infamous traitor in American history.

Of the great names which come down to us from the Revolution, the one which seems most admirable after that of Washington himself is that of Nathanael Greene, not so much because of his military skill, although that was of the highest order, as because of his pure patriotism, his lack of selfishness, and his utter devotion to the cause for which he fought.  He was with Washington at Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth, and did much to save the army of the battle of the Brandywine.  After Gates’s terrible defeat at Camden, he was put in command of the army of the South, and conducted the most brilliant campaign of the war, defeating the notorious Sir Guy Tarleton, and forcing Cornwallis north into Virginia, where he was to be entrapped at Yorktown, and ending the war which had devastated the South by capturing Charleston.  After Washington, he was perhaps the greatest general the war produced; certainly he was the purest patriot, and his name should never be forgotten by a grateful country.

Linked forever with Greene in the annals of southern warfare, are three men—­Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and “Light Horse Harry” Lee—­three true knights and Christian gentlemen, worthy of all honor.  The first of these, indeed, may fairly be called the Bayard of American history, the cavalier without fear and without reproach.  Born in South Carolina in 1732, he had seen some service in the Cherokee war, and at once, upon news of the fight at Lexington, raised a regiment and played an important part in driving the British from Charleston in 1776—­a victory so decisive that the southern states were freed from attack for over two years.