Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/243

A.D.1779.] crossed from Mohawk to Lake Oswego, dammed the lake, and so raised its level, that by again breaking the dam, they made a temporary flood, on which their boats descended the north-east branch of the Susquehanna, and thus joined Sullivan's troops. This junction, however, was not effected before Brandt had taken and burnt the village of Minisink, near the north-west corner of West Jersey, and surprised, by an ambush, a detachment of militia sent to chastise him, and nearly exterminated the whole of them.

At length, on the 22nd of August, Sullivan's army, amounting to five thousand men, advanced up the Chemung branch of the Susquehanna. At Newtown, near Elmira, they fell in with a mingled force of Indians and tories, under the command of Brandt, the Butlers, and Johnson, whom they defeated, and then proceeded to lay waste the Indian settlements. They cut down the ancient Indian orchards, destroyed great quantities of corn, and burned down eighteen villages, composed chiefly of framed houses. Sullivan continued so long engaged in this work of devastation, that he could not attack Fort Niagara. Simultaneously, an expedition from Pittsburg ascended the Alleghany, and destroyed the villages and orchards of the Indians on that river. But these ravages only incited the Indians to more deadly ones on the white settlements in other quarters; and though congress passed a vote approving of Sullivan's operations, the murmurs of the ravaged white population soon awoke them to a different mood. Washington complained that his proceedings had been checked by the large detachment thus withdrawn, for no good result, for Sullivan's expedition; and Sullivan himself complained of the insufficiency of means placed at his disposal. He offered to resign his commission on the plea of ill health, and congress readily acquiesced; though his friends sought to make it a short release from active service rather than resignation. He soon after became a member of congress for New Hampshire.



During the whole of this time nothing could be more melancholy than the whole condition of the United States. Congress, elated by the French alliance, had imagined that they had little to do but to sit still and see the French play the game for them. They fondly believed that England would find enough to do to defend its own shores and its West Indian Islands from their Gallican neighbours, little dreaming that those neighbours were on the very verge of bankruptcy. But, so far, all these fairy hopes had been rudely disappointed. The depreciation of the currency still went on. Twenty to one was the very most that the United States' paper would represent against gold or silver. In many cases it had fallen to one-thirtieth, and even to one-hundredth of its nominal value. In the State of Maryland, in December of this year, an English officer paid his bill at an inn. In English gold it amounted only to four guineas and a half, but it stood nominally, as calculated in state paper, at seven hundred and thirty-one pounds! This officer, major Anbury, has printed the bill at large in his Travels.

Washington describes, in a letter to a friend, the dreadful depreciation. "Without some new measures," he says, "what funds can stand the present expenses of the army? What officer can bear the weight of prices that every necessary article is now got to? A rat—in the shape of a horse—is not to be bought at this time for less than two hundred pounds, nor a saddle under thirty or forty pounds; boots twenty pounds, and shoes and other articles in like proportion. How is it possible, therefore, for officers to stand this without an increase of pay?" He adds that flour is from five to fifteen pounds a hundredweight; nay, from ten to thirty pounds, and beef and everything else in proportion; that a wagon-load of money could scarcely purchase a wagon-load of provisions. Yet, with one hundred millions of paper already out, congress issued, during this one year, one hundred millions more!