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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



plainly declared that there was but one 

 good plan, which was to reconquer the 

 South — that one, strange to say, was 

 neither Washington nor Rochambeau, 

 and was not in the United States either 

 as a sailor or a soldier, but as a diplomat, 

 and in drawing attention to the fact I am 

 only performing the most agreeable duty 

 toward a justly admired predecessor. 

 This wise adviser was La Luzerne. In 

 an unpublished memoir, drawn up by 

 him on the 20th of April and sent to Ro- 

 chambeau on May 19, with an explana- 

 tory letter, in which he asked that his 

 statement (a copy of which he also sent 

 to Barras) be placed under the eyes of 

 Washington, he insisted on the necessity 

 of immediate action, and action in the 

 Chesapeake : 



"It is in the Chesapeake Bay that it 

 seems urgent to convey all the naval 

 forces of the King, with such land forces 

 as the generals will consider appropriate. 

 This change cannot fail to have the most 

 advantageous consequences for the con- 

 tinuation of the campaign," which conse- 

 quences he points out with singular clear- 

 sightedness, adding: 



ADVANTAGES OF A SOUTHERN OFFENSIVE 



"If the English follow us and can reach 

 the bay only after us, their situation will 

 prove very different from ours ; all the 

 coasts and the inland parts of the coun- 

 try are full of their enemies. They have 

 neither the means nor the time to raise, 

 as at New York, the necessary works to 

 protect themselves against the inroads of 

 the American troops and to save them- 

 selves from the danger to which the ar- 

 rival of superior forces would expose 

 them." If the plan submitted by him 

 offers difficulties, others should then be 

 formed; but he maintains that "all those 

 which have for their object the relief of 

 the Southern States must be preferred, 

 and that no time should be lost to put 

 them in execution." 



At the Weathersfield conference, near 

 Hartford, Conn., between the Americans 

 and French, on the 23d of May (in the 

 Webb house, still in existence), Washing- 

 ton still evinced, and not without some 

 weighty reasons, his preference for an 

 attack on New York. He spoke of the 



advanced season, of "the great waste of 

 men which we have found from experi- 

 ence in long marches in the Southern 

 States," of the "difficulty of transports 

 by land" ; all those reasons and some 

 others, "too well known to Count de Ro- 

 chambeau to need repeating, show that 

 an operation against New York should 

 be preferred, in the present circum- 

 stances, to the effort of a sending of 

 troops to the South." On the same day 

 he was writing to La Luzerne : "I should 

 be wanting in respect and confidence 

 were I not to add that our object is New 

 York." 



to Virginia's rescue 



La Luzerne, however, kept on insisting. 

 To Rochambeau he wrote on the 1st of 

 June: "The situation of the Southern 

 States becomes every moment more crit- 

 ical ; it has even become very dangerous, 

 and every measure that could be taken 

 for their relief would be of infinite ad- 

 vantage. . . . The situation of the 

 Marquis de Lafayette and that of General 

 Greene is most embarrassing, since Lord 

 Cornwallis has joined the English divi- 

 sion of the Chesapeake. If Virginia is 

 not helped in time, the English will have 

 reached the goal which they have as- 

 signed to themselves in the bold move- 

 ments attempted by them in the South; 

 they will soon have really conquered the 

 Southern States. . . . 



"I am going to write to M. de Grasse 

 as you want me to do ; on your side, seize 

 every occasion to write to him, and mul- 

 tiply the copies of the letters you send 

 him" — that is, in duplicate and triplicate 

 for fear of loss or capture. "His coming 

 to the rescue of the oppressed States is 

 not simply desirable ; the thing seems to 

 be now of the most pressing necessity." 

 He must not only come, but bring with 

 him all he can find of French troops in 

 our isles ; thus would be compensated, to 

 a certain extent, the absence of the sec- 

 ond division. 



THE FATE OF THE UNITED STATES HANGS 

 ON DE GRASSE 



Rochambeau soon agreed, and, with 

 his usual wisdom, Washington was not 

 loner in doing the same. On the 28th of 



