rs in congress to ratify
that instrument as forming a union between the twelve states who had
assented to it. Maryland, alarmed at the prospect of being excluded
from the union, gave her reluctant consent to the confederation,
accompanied by a protest, in which she still asserted her claim to her
interest in the vacant territory which should be acknowledged at the
treaty of peace, to be within the United States.

It required the repeated lessons of a severe and instructive
experience to persuade the American people that their greatness, their
prosperity, their happiness, and even their safety, imperiously
demanded the substitution of a government for their favourite league.]

[Sidenote: Military transactions.]

Such was the defensive strength of the positions taken by the adverse
armies on the Hudson, and such their relative force, that no decisive
blow could be given by either in that quarter of the continent. The
anxious attentions of General Washington, therefore, were
unremittingly directed to the south. One of those incidents which
fortune occasionally produces, on the seizing or neglect of which the
greatest military events frequently depend, presented, sooner than was
expected, an opportunity which he deemed capable of being improved to
the destruction of the British army in Virginia.

The French fleet, from its arrival on the American coast, had been
blocked up in the harbour of Newport; and the land forces of that
nation had been reduced to a state of inactivity by the necessity of
defending their ships. Late in January, a detachment from the British
fleet was encountered on the east end of Long Island by a furious
storm, in which such damage was sustained as to destroy for a time the
naval superiority which Arbuthnot had uniformly preserved.

To turn this temporary superiority to advantage, Monsieur Destouches
resolved to detach a ship of the line, with two frigates, to the
Chesapeake; a force which the delegation from Virginia had assured him
would be sufficient for the purpose.

On receiving certain accounts of the loss sustained in the storm,
General Washington conceived the design of improving that
circumstance by immediate and powerful operations against Arnold.
Confident that the critical moment must be seized, or the enterprise
would fail, he ordered a detachment of twelve hundred men, under the
command of the Marquis de Lafayette, to the head of the Chesapeake;
there to embark for that part of V