ca the local bases of the war at its outbreak were New
York, Narragansett Bay, and Boston. The two former were then held by
the English, and were the most important stations on the continent,
from their position, susceptibility of defence, and resources. Boston
had passed into the hands of the Americans, and was therefore at the
service of the allies. From the direction actually given to the war,
by diverting the active English operations to the Southern States in
1779, Boston was thrown outside the principal theatre of operations,
and became from its position militarily unimportant; but had the plan
been adopted of isolating New England by holding the line of the
Hudson and Lake Champlain, and concentrating military effort to the
eastward, it will be seen that these three ports would all have been
of decisive importance to the issue. South of New York, the Delaware
and Chesapeake Bays undoubtedly offered tempting fields for maritime
enterprise; but the width of the entrances, the want of suitable and
easily defended points for naval stations near the sea, the wide
dispersal of the land forces entailed by an attempt to hold so many
points, and the sickliness of the locality during a great part of the
year, should have excepted them from a principal part in the plan of
the first campaigns. It is not necessary to include them among the
local bases of the war. To the extreme south the English were drawn by
the _ignis fatuus_ of expected support among the people. They failed
to consider that even if a majority there preferred quiet to freedom,
that very quality would prevent them from rising against the
revolutionary government by which, on the English theory, they were
oppressed; yet upon such a rising the whole success of this distant
and in its end most unfortunate enterprise was staked. The local base
of this war apart was Charleston, which passed into the hands of the
British in May, 1780, eighteen months after the first expedition had
landed in Georgia.

The principal local bases of the war in the West Indies are already
known through the previous narrative. They were for the English,
Barbadoes, Sta. Lucia, and to a less degree Antigua. A thousand miles
to leeward was the large island of Jamaica, with a dock-yard of great
natural capabilities at Kingston. The allies held, in the first order
of importance, Fort Royal in Martinique, and Havana; in the second
order, Guadeloupe and Cap Francais. A controlling feature of t