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 1778] Last efforts at conciliation. 217 material for a factious agitation, which, with a man less resolute and self-reliant and more susceptible of personal jealousy than Washington, might have had disastrous results. Indeed it might have seemed at the time as if all that had been won on the Hudson was to be thrown away elsewhere. After the engagement at Germantown, Washington established himself in winter quarters at Valley Forge, some fifteen miles from Philadelphia. Washington was no grumbler and no rhetorician, but in a letter to the President of Congress he describes his soldiers as " naked and distressed on a cold bleak hill," " sleeping under frost and snow without clothes or blankets." Meanwhile Howe had occupied Philadelphia. There his officers lived in sloth and dissipation; and when in May, 1778, he was superseded by a better soldier in Clinton, he was honoured by the solemn buffoonery of a sham tournament, in which Andre, not long afterwards the victim of a strange and tragic fate, took a conspicuous part. Early in 1778 North made a further attempt at conciliation. He introduced into Parliament and carried two bills. One repealed the tea-tax, and declared that no duty should be imposed on any colony except for purposes of trade regulation, and that the proceeds of any duty so levied should be disposed of by the assembly of the colony in which the money was raised. The other Act appointed commissioners to negotiate, with authority to proclaim a cessation of hostilities, to grant pardons, and to suspend all Acts of Parliament passed since 1763. But when the commissioners laid these proposals before Congress, that body at once barred the way to negotiation by requiring an acknowledg- ment of American Independence as a first preliminary. The total failure of this attempt, followed as it immediately was by the declara- tion of the French alliance, put an end to any possibility of a peaceful settlement ; and the only effect of the negotiation was to beget a feeling of discouragement among the colonial supporters of Great Britain. From the beginning to the end of the war, the military policy of Great Britain was marked by a total absence of definiteness and con- tinuity. Clinton's first step was to transfer his army from Philadelphia to New York. Had Washington been of the same temper as the British generals, there is little doubt that Clinton would have been suffered to carry out his march unmolested. Washington's lack of resources often drove him into what his detractors called a "Fabian" policy, but he never lost sight of the truth that the best defensive policy is often one of attack. On June 18, 1778, Clinton quitted Philadelphia. Washington hung on his line of march, harassing him with his advanced detachment. On June 28, near Monmouth Court House, Clinton turned on his pursuers. Lee, who was in command of the American advanced guard, avoided an engagement; and, when Washington with the main body of his army arrived, Clinton resumed his march, and reached New York without further molestation. Lee's CH. VII.