iver to
any man who did not dare share with him the perils of the summer against
a superior force. He also hanged one deserter whom he caught after this
order, and pardoned another who was less to blame. By such varied means
he so far "encouraged the rest" that he wholly stopped desertion. He
crossed the Susquehanna on the 13th of April, was in Baltimore on the
18th, and it was here that the ladies gave him the ball where he said,
"My soldiers have no shirts." He borrowed two thousand guineas on his
own personal security, promising to pay at the end of two years, when
the French law would make him master of his estates. He bought
material with the money, made the Baltimore belles, who were not then
Secessionists, make the shirts, and started on his forced march again,
with his troops clothed and partly shod, on the 20th. He passed the
hills where Washington stands, unconscious of the city that was to be
there, and of the Long Bridge which shakes under McClellan's columns.
He halted to buy shoes in Alexandria, which he reached in two days. He
pressed on to Fredericksburg, and was at Richmond on the 29th. So that a
light column can march in nine days from Baltimore to Richmond, though
there be no railroad in working order.

This was the first march "Forward to Richmond" in history. For the
moment, it saved the city and its magazines from General Phillips, who
had reached Manchester, on the opposite side of James River. Phillips
retired down the river, hoping to decoy Lafayette after him, on that
neck of land, now, as then, a point so critical, between the James and
York Rivers,--and then to return by his vessels on the first change of
wind, get in Lafayette's rear, and shut him up there. But it was another
general who was to be shut up on that neck. Phillips was called south to
Petersburg, where, as we have seen, he died. "Will they not let me die
in peace?"

Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg with his Southern troops, including
Tarleton's horse, on the 20th of May. He then had nearly six thousand
men under his orders. Lafayette had about thirty-two hundred, of whom
only a few were cavalry, a volunteer body of Baltimore young gentlemen
being the most of them. The Virginia gentry had hesitated about giving
up their fine blood-horses to mount cavalry on. But Tarleton had
no hesitation in stealing them for his troopers, nor Simcoe, his
fellow-partisan, for his,--so that Cornwallis had the invaluable aid of
two bodies of cava