of In-de-pend-ence was drawn up and sent out to the
world on July 4, 1776.

[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL BURGOYNE.

From an English print, 1733.]

War now be-gan in dead-ly earn-est; and, at the great bat-tle of Long
Isl-and, our men met with great loss of life, and had to flee from the
foe. Soon af-ter this bad news the Brit-ish took Phil-a-del-phi-a, and
now Wash-ing-ton was sad at heart; on Christ-mas day of 1776, though,
our troops won in the great fight that took place at Tren-ton, and there
was joy in the whole land; good news came with the New Year, too, for
Wash-ing-ton won ma-ny fights; and at last, in Oc-to-ber, 1777, the
Brit-ish troops in charge of Gen-er-al Bur-goyne gave up their arms to
Gen-er-al Gates. That win-ter of 1777 was a bad one for Wash-ing-ton and
his men; at no time in the war did they suf-fer so much; the time was
spent at Val-ley Forge, and the men lived in log huts which they had
first built, in long straight lines, like cit-y streets; twelve men
lived in each hut, and there was a fire-place at the back, but no fire
could keep out the aw-ful cold, and no hut was snug e-nough to keep out
the snow that fell in great drifts a-round this lit-tle town of log
huts. To make things worse there was lit-tle food to be had; the men had
on-ly poor, thin clothes, and their bare feet oft-en left marks of blood
on the white snow. But the men did not lose hope, and kept their faith
through all the long months in their great lead-er, whose lot was quite
as hard as theirs was; the farm-house in which he had a room still
stands, and it is hard to be-lieve, as you look at this old house on the
banks of the Del-a-ware Riv-er, that once the big or-chard back of it
and all the pret-ty fields were filled with poor little wood-en huts
in which, for the sake of free-dom, lived and suf-fered thou-sands of
brave men.

In the spring things were bet-ter, for France joined A-mer-i-ca in her
fight for free-dom, and three years from this time the Brit-ish were
beaten at York-town and A-mer-i-ca was free. One of the great
French-men, who gave us much help, and was a firm friend of
Wash-ing-ton's, was the Mar-quis de La-fay-ette.

[Illustration: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE.]

A ver-y sad thing dur-ing these last years of the war was the base act
of Ben-e-dict Ar-nold, who made up his mind to sell to the Brit-ish some
posts near West Point, of which he had charge. He sent a note to
Clin-ton by a young Brit-ish spy, Ma-jo