reader has only to
imagine General Burnside shutting up Norfolk on the south and west just
now, to conceive of Lafayette's position, as he supposed it to be, when,
on the 20th, he was told that the French fleet had arrived within the
Capes. But, alas! on the 23d, it proved that this was not the French
fleet, but the English, which had so far injured the French fleet in an
action that they had returned to Newport; so that it was Arbuthnot, and
not Destouches, whose fleet had arrived at Hampton Roads. Under their
protection the English General Phillips relieved Arnold with two
thousand more men; and it is at this moment that the active campaign of
1781 may be said to begin.

General Phillips immediately took command of the English army, for which
he had sufficient force of light transports, and proceeded up James
River. He landed first at Burrel's Ferry, opposite Williamsburg, into
which city, till lately the capital of the State, he marched unmolested.
His different marauding parties had entire success in their operations;
and it is to be observed that his command of the navigation was an
essential element of that success. "There is no fighting here," wrote
Lafayette, "unless you have a naval superiority, or an army mounted on
race-horses." Under almost all circumstances a corps embarked on boats
could be pushed along these rivers faster than an enemy marching on the
land. This remark, constantly verified then, will be much more important
in the campaign now pending, in which these streams will, of course,
be navigated by steam. It must be remembered, also, that the State of
Virginia was at this time the storehouse from which General Greene's
army in Carolina was supplied. To destroy the stores collected here,
and thus directly to break down the American army in the South, was Sir
Henry Clinton's object in sending out General Phillips. To protect these
stores and the lines of communication with the Southern army was the
object of the American generals. Had these designs been left unchanged,
however, I should not now be writing this history. Indeed, the whole
history of the United States would have had another beginning, and the
valley of the James River would have had as little critical interest,
in the close of the American Revolution, as have the valleys of the
Connecticut and the Penobscot. The important change came, when Lord
Cornwallis, at Wilmington, North Carolina, took the responsibility of
the dashing, but fatal