had been established. His
opponent, General Greene, then turned the American troops toward South
Carolina. Cornwallis, too weak to dream of controlling, or even
penetrating, into the interior of an unfriendly country, had now to
choose between returning to Charleston, to assure there and in South
Carolina the shaken British power, and moving northward again into
Virginia, there to join hands with a small expeditionary force
operating on the James River under Generals Phillips and Arnold. To
fall back would be a confession that the weary marching and fighting
of months past had been without results, and the general readily
convinced himself that the Chesapeake was the proper seat of war, even
if New York itself had to be abandoned. The commander-in-chief, Sir
Henry Clinton, by no means shared this opinion, upon which was
justified a step taken without asking him. "Operations in the
Chesapeake," he wrote, "are attended with great risk unless we are
sure of a permanent superiority at sea. I tremble for the fatal
consequences that may ensue." For Cornwallis, taking the matter into
his own hands, had marched from Wilmington on the 25th of April, 1781,
joining the British already at Petersburg on the 20th of May. The
forces thus united numbered seven thousand men. Driven back from the
open country of South Carolina into Charleston, there now remained two
centres of British power,--at New York and in the Chesapeake. With New
Jersey and Pennsylvania in the hands of the Americans, communication
between the two depended wholly upon the sea.

Despite his unfavorable criticism of Cornwallis's action, Clinton had
himself already risked a large detachment in the Chesapeake. A body of
sixteen hundred men under Benedict Arnold had ravaged the country of
the James and burned Richmond in January of this same year. In the
hopes of capturing Arnold, Lafayette had been sent to Virginia with a
nucleus of twelve hundred troops, and on the evening of the 8th of
March the French squadron at Newport sailed, in concerted movement, to
control the waters of the bay. Admiral Arbuthnot, commanding the
English fleet lying in Gardiner's Bay,[145] learned the departure by
his lookouts, and started in pursuit on the morning of the 10th,
thirty-six hours later. Favored either by diligence or luck, he made
such good time that when the two fleets came in sight of each other, a
little outside of the capes of the Chesapeake, the English were
leading[146] (P