nsurgent country, which were not large enough to stand alone, yet too
large for their fall not to have been a fatal blow to the common
cause. The most familiar case is that of the line of the Hudson, where
the Bay of New York was held from the first by the British, who also
took the city in September, 1776, two months after the Declaration of
Independence. The difficulties in the way of moving up and down such a
stream were doubtless much greater to sailing vessels than they now
are to steamers; yet it seems impossible to doubt that active and
capable men wielding the great sea power of England could so have held
that river and Lake Champlain with ships-of-war at intervals and
accompanying galleys as to have supported a sufficient army moving
between the head-waters of the Hudson and the lake, while themselves
preventing any intercourse by water between New England and the States
west of the river. This operation would have closely resembled that by
which in the Civil War the United States fleets and armies gradually
cut in twain the Southern Confederacy by mastering the course of the
Mississippi, and the political results would have been even more
important than the military; for at that early stage of the war the
spirit of independence was far more general and bitter in the section
that would have been cut off,--in New England,--than in New York and
New Jersey, perhaps than anywhere except in South Carolina.[119]

In 1777 the British attempted to accomplish this object by sending
General Burgoyne from Canada to force his way by Lake Champlain to the
Hudson. At the same time Sir Henry Clinton moved north from New York
with three thousand men, and reached West Point, whence he sent by
shipping a part of his force up the river to within forty miles of
Albany. Here the officer in command learned of the surrender of
Burgoyne at Saratoga, and returned; but what he did at the head of a
detachment from a main body of only three thousand, shows what might
have been done under a better system. While this was happening on the
Hudson, the English commander-in-chief of the troops acting in America
had curiously enough made use of the sea power of his nation to
transport the bulk of his army--fourteen thousand men--from New York
to the head of Chesapeake Bay, so as to take Philadelphia in the rear.
This eccentric movement was successful as regarded its objective,
Philadelphia; but it was determined by political considerations,
beca