Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/263



alliance between France and the United States increased the probability of the final independence of the latter. It therefore became important to diminish the amount of territory held by the Americans, even if their main army could not be destroyed. Lord George Germaine hoped that the thinly inhabited southern provinces might speedily be reduced to obedience, and the royal authority established from the Gulf of Mexico to the Susquehanna River.

There was a further advantage to be gained by occupying at once the Northern and the Southern States. The summer and autumn were the season of activity in the former, the winter and spring in the latter. The British general, who could move his troops by sea, might thus leave each department with only soldiers enough to act on the defensive when the weather limited the operations that could be conducted, and maintain a superiority in each, when such a superiority was most important.

On the 6th of November, 1778, about thirty-five hundred men, under Lieutenant-colonel Campbell, were embarked at New York. Two Hessian regiments were of the expedition. The transports, delayed by bad