Hello, I'm Forrest Sawyer. In this, Program 5 of Liberty, the war shifts to the southern states. I grew up in the South, surrounded by powerful reminders of the Civil War, not the American Revolution.
But as we shall see, the southern states are now in a state of States played a decisive role in the war that created this country. The War of Independence was, until Vietnam, the longest ever fought by the United States. And in 1780, when our episode begins, the conflict has become a question of time.
of who can hold out the longest. On the American side, the states are bankrupt, and there are mutinies among the ragged, ill-fed soldiers. In England, members of Parliament are getting impatient.
While the war drains the Treasury, the rebellion drags on. Stalemated in the North, the British now decide to focus on the South, a volatile land fraught with old feuds and rivalries. Here, the British see a chance to divide and conquer.
Travelers in the 18th century coming down from the north enter a wild and strange land. The air becomes increasingly hot and humid. Deadly mosquitoes spread malaria with its unending fevers. People blame the swamp air, thick and steamy, unbreathable even at night. This is the Tidewater region.
The Low Country of the Carolinas and Georgia. Let us encourage the Negroes in the southern provinces to rise up against their masters. Let us send some regiments to support them in carrying the design into execution.
The Negroes will arise and steep their hands in the blood of their masters. December 1779. The war in America has been going on for five years and is at a stalemate. For England, it has expanded into a world war with her arch enemy, France.
British colonies around the world are under attack, and France seems poised to invade England itself. The American War has become a costly sideshow. The British are growing desperate.
General Henry Clinton sets sail from New York. He leaves behind a garrison of troops to tie down Washington's army. His destination is Charleston, South Carolina, the commercial and political center of the American Lower South. The decision to go south was really a last attempt.
They'd failed in New England, they'd failed in the middle colonies as they regarded them, and where else could they go? The answer was that they could attempt to go south, that they could pacify the entire south, and then use that as a springboard from which they could reconquer the rest of the colonies. Clinton lays siege to Charleston.
The entire southern division of the American Army defends the city valiantly for six weeks. But in May, Charleston falls to the British. Sixteen-year-old Eliza Wilkinson keeps a diary recording the events of the day.
A day of sorrow. I have seen my countrymen bound and dragged away. So many young men have died in her defense.
Now America must fall. We are entirely at the mercy of the British soldiers. Even women are being sent to the prison ships.
Do the Britons think that they'll conquer America this way? We may be led, but we'll never be driven. The entire Southern Army is captured. Most of South Carolina falls into British hands. Georgia has been pacified.
And North Carolina will soon follow. A delighted General Clinton reports back to London. With greatest pleasure, I report to your lordship that inhabitants from every quarter rush to declare their allegiance to the king.
I may venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not either in arms with us or... our prisoners. Since the beginning of the war, the British have issued two extraordinary proclamations offering protection to slaves who run away from their patriot masters.
They gave the African Americans the knowledge that they could become involved in this war, and that force could work toward their own freedom. They could work among the British, they would have occupations, they were paid by the British. And the march from plantations to the Clinton forces was for them a freedom march.
We ask for nothing more than is our right. We are the creatures of that God who made all nations of the earth of one blood and one kindred. We are no more obliged to serve you than you to serve us. The more we consider the matter, the more we are convinced we were not created to be slaves. It became very apparent to British military leadership that racial manipulation might be used successfully to bring white Southerners to heel.
It created widespread panic among white Southerners because every Southerner, whether he or she was a slave owner or a non-slave owner, feared the prospect of a massive. of slave uprising, they all felt their own vulnerability. A Negro man named Charles ran off from me last night.
I believe he intends to try to get to the British. He may prove resolute and daring if endeavored to be taken. His leaving was from no cause of complaint or dread of a whipping, for he has always been remarkably indulged, indeed too much so. From a determination to get his liberty by flying to the British.
He's very black, has a large nose and is about 5 feet 8 or 10 inches high. I will give 5 pounds to any person who secures him. The British see the proclamations as a powerful weapon to destabilize the South.
But the patriots are determined to hold on to their slaves. They unite in opposition to the British. And so in a great irony, the retention of this slave system becomes a significant objective of the revolution in Versailles.
So we have a revolution on behalf of freedom and independence, and part of the freedom and independence is the maintenance of the slave system. A victorious Clinton returns to New York. Leaving the South under the command of General Charles Cornwallis, a 40-year-old aristocrat and professional soldier. Cornwallis is charged with executing the second part of the strategy to conquer the South.
The British are aware that a large percentage of the population has never supported the Revolution. For the first time in the war, the British intend to make these loyalists a key component of their war effort. The plan is to conquer an area and then put loyalists in charge.
The idea is... that you send in a relatively small force, certainly far smaller than the force Howe took to Staten Island in 1776, you send in a relatively small force, that defeats whatever major unit, patriot units you have in the area. And once those patriot units have been defeated, the loyalists are encouraged to rise, to organise themselves in a militia, that that militia will terrorise their opponents and in effect take over the civil government. and produce resources and recruits for the British, and that this process will be extendable throughout the South. So it is a new strategy.
It is a strategy doomed from the start. The British have no idea that they are walking into a hornet's nest. Their loyalist allies have little enthusiasm for the British cause.
They are mainly interested in revenge against the patriots. The loyalists tend to be recent immigrants, poor Scots-Irish who have settled the backcountry. These new arrivals have been treated with contempt by the established, well-to-do gentry, and there is bad blood between them. They're descended from Brits, perhaps.
But they are one step removed from the brutes. There's no authority, no churches, schools, huh? And no law. Fightin', brawlin', fornicatin'are gloried in.
Practiced in the open new day. They calls us a pack of beggars. They're charleston, jankery, and fine linens. And who were your ancestors a few years back?
The British arm these backwoods loyalists and put them into positions of power. The loyalists seize the opportunity to settle old scores. British soldiers are soon horrified by the actions of their southern allies.
We approach the farm and we see pastures littered with the carcasses of dead cattle and horses. We walk into the plantation house but everything is silent. On the floor are the smashed fragments of porcelain figurines which had been collected by the owner.
On the shelf in their stead, we see five severed human heads. And then, are the barbarians. There lay a pregnant woman murdered in her bed. They had cut open each of her breasts with stabs from their bayonets.
And above the canopy they wrote in her own blood. I shall never give birth to a rebel. Patriots fight back. They form partisan bands, burning farms, torturing and killing suspected Tories.
Friend and foe alike were often pillaged and indiscriminate. Indiscriminately, people who had publicly declared their neutrality were pillaged by both sides. All sides were involved and all sides were guilty of the cruelest barbarities against one another. I come home after six months of hunting Tories, and there is the wreckage of our farm. And I find Mother.
They tied her up and whipped her. She's a widow. but they stole everything they could and burned the house.
I'd join up with another company, and we'd go to the house of a Tory named Campbell, and we'd capture a few of them. We'd shoot a fellow named McPherson, and Campbell was spicketed. It works like this. First, we hammer a sharp pin through a block of wood, and then it was Tom Archer. He got hold of Campbell, and he pushed his foot on the spike.
And then he turns him round and round till the pen runs clear through his foot. Cruel, you think? I loved seeing Campbell speak at it.
We figured he was part of the gang that horsewhipped the helpless widow. What had she ever done, except telling her son to be true to the cause? The British strategy of using loyalists to pacify the South is proving to be disastrous.
Cornwallis is frustrated and perplexed. If the loyalists allow themselves to be plundered, and their own families ruined by these rebel bandits, how do they expect us to protect them? In 1780, George Washington is with the main American forces outside of New York, locked in a stalemate with the British army stationed in the city. He and his soldiers have suffered two devastating winters at Valley Forge and Morristown. His thoughts turn to his beloved Mount Vernon, which he hasn't seen in six years.
He writes to his cousin managing the estate. I wait here with impatient anxiety for news from the south. I can do nothing. Do you have any prospects of getting paint? I trust you have taken care of the fallen trees and the hedges.
How many lambs do you have this spring? Write me how many horses I now own. Mrs. Washington tells me that she's taken a fancy to a horse belonging to James Cleveland. If he is as fine a horse as is claimed, try to get him.
I shall be very pleased if you do. 1780 was a low point because both militarily and politically things look bad. There's no money.
States are broke. And the army is in terrible condition, not being supported. So I think you have a lot of disillusionment and real feeling that maybe we've made a terrible mistake. I think in that sense, psychologically, it was a low point as well. At this moment, Washington and the country get devastating news.
General Benedict Arnold, Washington's most brilliant general and one of the Revolution's greatest heroes, has become convinced that the Americans are losing the war he has gone over to the British. Arnold was... An incredible figure in the minds of the Americans.
This was not just a general that led an army. This was one who had accomplished incredible feats at Fort Ty, in front of Quebec, at Valcour Island, at Saratoga. And it was an incredible blow on Americans'belief in themselves.
If Arnold has turned traitor, what else can happen to us? Can we last? Can we survive?
It was the great betrayal of Washington's life. I don't think he ever got over it. And yet, Washington, for all the gloom, the sixth year of the war, never lost faith, at least publicly, and that's what counted.
Washington understood this was not a military conflict in the conventional, certainly the old world sense. This was ultimately a test of political endurance. And while he, by temperament and inclination, would prefer to play the proud of the lion, he learned to play the fox brilliantly.
He only fought nine battles in the Revolution, of which he only won three. His genius was in keeping the cause alive, in keeping the army such as it was together. It was that endurance that made him, even at the time, a legend. Washington has one great hope, his alliance with the French. King Louis'money is sustaining the war effort, and France is now America's principal source of military supplies, muskets, gunpowder, even uniforms.
The American army is flooded with idealistic foreign volunteers, many of them noblemen. The German Baron Wilhelm von Steuben, the Polish Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuska, Count Casimir Poloski. The most famous of them is a young, enthusiastic, and very well-connected French aristocrat named Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Mottier.
Americans know him as the Marquis de Lafayette. At age 19, Lafayette had become one of Washington's most trusted aides. He has returned to France to promote support for the revolution and writes Washington frequently. Be so kind, mon cher General, as to present my best respects to your lady.
Do not tell her, but I have a wife who is madly in love with you. My feelings for you are too strong that I can't object to her feelings. And indeed all of Europe wants to see you so much that I have boldly affirmed that you will pay me a visit after the peace is settled. Oh, mon cher General!
How happy I will be to embrace you again. Washington's royal admirer, Lafayette, is a young man of royal birth with liberal politics and what Jefferson later called a canine appetite for fame. Someone said he was a statue in search of a pedestal.
But he was intoxicated with a love, a rather theoretical love, of liberty. It was theoretical because liberty wasn't known to many Europeans. But he was a great romantic and he fell in love with America, the concept of America that the French had, this wild new world where you could start the world over, to use Tom Paine's phrase.
And he came to America and he became in effect a surrogate son to Washington. I think that Washington, when he met Lafayette... was charmed by this gallic joie de vivre, by this very exaggeration and exuberance that this very young Lafayette, he was only 19 when he arrived in America, had.
And I'm sure Lafayette had the best possible influence on loosening up Washington. My dear Marquis, you invite me to visit France after independence. Remember, my friend, I don't speak your language, and I am too old to learn it.
I cannot bear the idea that I would appear awkward and insipid in front of the ladies, especially in front of your young wife. Convey to her, in any event, my most tender affection, and don't be afraid of a rival. Alas, in all of history, there's no example of a young woman preferring an old man if she follows her own real inclinations.
George Washington. Lafayette meets with Louis XVI. and secures for Washington what he most wants from the king, a regiment of French troops to be sent to America.
Lafayette fully expects to be the commander of this army. He is disappointed when King Louis chooses instead a far more experienced general, Count Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau. Rochambeau is horrified by what he finds in America. To the Prince de Montbaray, Minister of War. Monsieur.
Their country is ruined. They have nothing, not a single coin. Washington's army grows and shrinks from moment to moment. Sometimes he claims he has 15,000 troops, sometimes only 3,000.
Send men, money, and ships. Don't count on any help from these people. Rochambeau and his 6,000 soldiers station themselves at Newport, Rhode Island, and wait for reinforcements.
Privately. Rochambeau is convinced that the Americans are near defeat. He says that he must reestablish an American military presence in the South.
He sends his most able and trusted general, Nathaniel Greene. Greene is appalled by what he finds. I have never witnessed such scenes of desolation, bloodshed.
and deliberate murder. Wherever you turn, the weeping widows and fatherless children pour out stories to shame humanity. And like the British invaders, we too have become savages.
There's not a day goes by that some Tory, deluded as he may be, is not shot to death just for standing in his doorway. Nathaniel Greene is a remarkable general. Absolutely remarkable.
Green has learned one thing from history. He knows that you never have to win the battle in order to win the war. What Green recognizes in the South very quickly is the side that ultimately secures the support of the people will prevail. And he designs his military strategy to win popular opinion. He knows that the best way to do that is to make the British presence unacceptable, to make the British presence so oppressive that the other side is preferable.
That's his genius. Green leads Cornwallis on a six-month chase through the backwoods, further and further from the British base on the coast, further and further from their stores of food and supplies. This strategy forces the British to plunder the countryside.
They also liberate slaves and pursue a policy of pillage and burning. The British Army appeared to be incapable of distinguishing between a loyal American and a rebel. They all looked the same. As a result, the British Army proved to be an extraordinary asset for the revolutionary cause. As the Americans confronted the enemy in the flesh and experienced firsthand the arrogance, the atrocities that occasionally came from British hands, needless to say, they became more ardent supporters.
supporters of the revolution. Cornwallis pursues Greene with a vengeance, from South Carolina into North Carolina, up to Virginia and back. In one long march north, with Greene crossing and recrossing rivers, the British, in furious pursuit, lose 500 men to heat, disease, and exhaustion.
There are few generals who run oftener or more lustily than I do. I run as fast backwards as forwards to convince our enemy that we are like a crab. We can run in any direction as long as it's a way.
As the months go by, Green and his army succeed both in rallying popular support and in wearing down the British. He loses every major engagement he fights. He loses at Guilford Courthouse.
He loses at Hopkirk's Hill. He loses at 96th. He loses at Utah Springs. And nonetheless, his forces are gradually becoming more accepted by the local populace. Green's strategy in the South is still admired by all professional military people.
He went in and lost every battle. And he won the South. Fought and lost and rose and fought again. And in doing so, he reclaimed North, South Carolina, and Georgia.
And he did it with his air crew against some of the most magnificent leadership and troops that Europe had to offer. Johann Ewald, a Hessian mercenary, has been with the British since the beginning of the campaign. What other army in the world would put up with what these men do?
Even our best disciplined German soldiers would desert in droves rather than face these conditions. Our generals would soon be all alone. I now see what enthusiasm, what these ragged fellows call liberty, can do. Out of this rabble rises a people who defy kings. By the summer of 1781, Cornwallis has spent six months chasing green through the swamps and forests.
He has nothing to show for it. I've had a most difficult and dangerous campaign, often fighting 200 miles from anywhere against an enemy seven times my number. A third of my army is sick and wounded and I must carry them in wagons. The remainder are without shoes and are worn down with fatigue. It is time to find some place for rest and resupply.
I assure you, I am quite tired of marching about the countryside in search of adventure. If we are to have an offensive war in the South, Clinton must abandon New York and bring his whole army to Virginia. So, now, what is our plan?
If we don't have one, what are we doing here? Capturing New York didn't make any difference. Capturing Charleston didn't make any difference.
Holding Boston, the first stage of the war, didn't make any difference. Ultimately, it was like trying to stick a fork in a piece of jelly. It kept us, the revolution kept us.
escaping from them because they couldn't hold territory, they couldn't cement loyalty, they couldn't create functioning administration, they couldn't restore the authority of the crown, which was the object of the exercise to begin with. The sensation that you're winning the battles but you're not winning them. war is very common in colonial warfare.
It's what happened to the French in Indochina in their war against the people who were going to become the Viet Cong and it happened to the Americans in Vietnam. You keep on winning the battles but you're not winning the war. It's because you win but you don't take control of the territory and you don't take control of the population and in that hackneyed phrase you don't have their hearts and minds. You can kill their soldiers.
but your victories don't convince. People go on disliking you. Cornwallis and his weary soldiers begin a retreat to set up a base camp on the coast.
He'll be regaining the sea, and it's always important for the British in North America to be with their back to the sea. They can be resupplied, evacuated or reinforced. Rochambeau and the French army have been in America for over a year. Still waiting for reinforcements, they drill on Rhode Island, far from the action.
Outside of New York, Washington is beside himself with frustration. He had pinned his hopes on the French, but they have done nothing. Lafayette, now back in America, urges General Rochambeau to take action. Monsieur Lecomte, here I find myself in the middle of a foreign land. with the French army sitting idle in Rhode Island.
The talk among the Tories and the English is that France has come to stir up fire but not fight themselves. How am I to answer them when you are guarding an island that nobody in America cares about? Whatever troops you are expecting next year from France, whatever plans you have for the future will not make up for the fatal harm of your inaction now. We must do battle, and my vanity makes me believe that we French can never be beaten. Rochambeau finds Lafayette's proposal less than appealing.
My dear fellow, I let you in on one of my great secrets, learned from years of experience. I am a Frenchman. Frenchmen aren't invincible.
Our troops are easily beaten when they lose confidence in their leaders. And they do it very quickly. When they see that their lives are being risked to satisfy some general's personal ambition. Perhaps the warmth of your spirit has, for the moment, gotten the better part of your sound judgment.
Keep this fire for when we actually go into battle. Then, on August 14th, Events take a sudden and surprising turn. Rochambeau receives a bulletin from the French Admiral Count de Grasse in the Caribbean.
He immediately passes the news to Washington. Count de Grasse will be arriving in the Chesapeake area with 29 war boats, 3,000 troops, several dozen field guns and 1,200,000 pounds in cash. Because of obligations in the islands, this force will be available to us only until October 15th. We must make use of it promptly and efficiently. DeGrasse's ships and troops will be coming to Virginia, close to where Cornwallis is camped.
Because hurricane season is approaching, they will be available for two weeks only. Washington leaps into action. Coordinating with Rochambeau, he makes plans to rush their best troops south to Virginia to meet up with DeGrasse's fleet. The French and the Americans are planning an operation in order to destroy the British position in Yorktown. Now they know that the only way to do that successfully is a combined operation.
And a combined operation is incredibly difficult. It means you've got to have the troops and the ships and also the seaborne artillery, which is another crucial element of it because the artillery is too heavy to move over land. And they've all got to arrive in the same area to provide a local superiority on... both on land and at sea at the same moment.
Washington and Rochambeau begin a month-long march south. Lafayette is camped in Williamsburg, near Yorktown. He sends Washington detailed reports.
Lord Cornwallis is entrenching at Yorktown. He's picking up whatever provisions he can get from the surrounding countryside. He has a large quantity of Negroes in town with him.
They are working day and night on the fortifications. The moment I can get the plans, I will send them to you. The French Admiral Count de Grasse arrives on schedule at the Virginia Capes.
He is met by a fleet of British ships coming to Cornwallis'aid. They engage in a fierce two-hour battle. British fleet retreats to New York for reinforcements. When Washington and Rochambeau arrive outside of Yorktown, the French Navy controls the Chesapeake.
Rochambeau sends his greetings to Degrasse. I must confess, you are, mon cher Amiral, the most wonderful admiral that I know. You have surpassed everything we could want. Now we are preparing for our own equally good piece of work.
Tomorrow we will move as close as possible to Yorktown. And then our troops will just wait for the pear to ripen. We will, of course, yield precedence to the Americans. We will allow them to claim the victory.
Cornwallis'troops are camped on the river's edge. Facing them are the allied French and American armies. To their rear, DeGrasse's fleet.
They have blockaded Chesapeake Bay. Cornwallis can get no reinforcements. He really can't move around because you can send ships up virtually any river in Virginia and cut him off.
So he's penned in there, he can't get out. And the Allies have Chesapeake Bay as a giant superhighway to bring men and guns and food and all the other things necessary to fight a battle. This is the moment that Washington has been waiting for.
The Allies command 17,000 troops. The British, only 9,000. Washington's troops are ready for action.
In the five years of the war, they have become the disciplined army he has always wanted. Among the soldiers is a young man who had fought in the first major battle of the revolution as a raw recruit. Joseph Plum Martin is now a seasoned veteran of numerous campaigns.
They told us that we're about to pay a visit to our old friends, the British. Their accommodations are cramped, and I fear that they're not ready to receive so many visitors, but we've come such a long way to see them. We're just not going to be put off by their excuses. Cornwallis sends a dispatch to Clinton, suggesting that he hurry up the reinforcements.
Clinton replies that rescue is on the way. 5,000 soldiers are on the King's ships. Joint operations will commence in a few days to relieve you. While they wait, Cornwallis'men furiously dig trenches in preparation for the Allied assault. His black auxiliaries do much of the heavy labor.
Working hard in the heat. The works will soon be in a tolerable state of defense. The army is in good health. We have six weeks provisions.
The French and Americans prepare for a siege. They dig trenches encircling the town. Rochambeau, an expert at siege warfare, guides the activities.
The British soldiers watch with increasing alarm. I try to warn the Earl of the weakness of our defenses. I show him how I can just jump over the earthworks.
It will disgrace our army to fall in a siege. If that happens, the answer's coldly. The blame will be on Clinton, not on us.
The bombardment of Yorktown now begins in earnest. The French cannon pound the British defenses day and night. When the British are weak enough, the Allies advance their lines, bringing the cannon ever closer.
It's almost an exercise in mathematics, in which you aim to break up the enemy's attack, and you want to get it so you can shoot at him from as many sides as possible. So it's a very structured... and formal activity, much like the way that a war constrictor deals with its victims. They grasp them, weaken them, let up a little, and then grasp them tighter until eventually they have their dinner. And a siege is like that.
Once one is properly undertaken, unless there is some outside intervention, the people besieging the town are going to win. The siege began. It lasted week after week.
And as it lasted, Cornwallis'provisions began to grow very short. In order to prevent his horses from starving to death, they had to be slaughtered and thrown into the river. And He did with the African Americans something very similar to what he did with the horses.
His men were starving, and they wanted every ounce of food for his men, and so they simply drove them out of the camp. The black auxiliaries are forced into the no-man's land between the fighting armies. It's harsh. Our black... Our friends have served our army well and now we drive them out by force between firing guns.
Now they will have to face the reward of their cruel masters. No, I just can't talk about what we are doing to them. The Americans and French position themselves to advance on the British outer defenses. The password for tonight is the name of the French commander, Rochambeau.
Easy to remember, Rochambeau. And it sounds just like Rochambeau's. The signal is given. We silently move on the readouts. Bayonets fixed.
The enemy sees us and begins firing. I hear people crying. The readouts are ours! There's no stopping us.
In we go. It really is. Rush on, boys. By now, the Americans and French are just outside the final barricades.
Yorktown is ready to be taken. On the 17th of October 1781, the British send up a flag of truce. It was to say the victorious Colonials are in a mood to celebrate and to rub in their victory. Washington the consummate actor.
dramatically appears on a charger, riding up and down the American lines, forbidding them to engage in any demonstration, and shouting, posterity will huzzah for us. The play is over. The fifth act has ended. I must confess, I was a bit uneasy during the first four acts, but my heart keenly enjoyed this last one.
Their faces darken. They look like boys who've been whipped at school. On October 24th, a huge British fleet arrives off the Chesapeake Capes.
Clinton has made good on his promise, but it is one week too late. The French fleet has returned to the Caribbean. Cornwallis and his entire army are prisoners of the Americans. Yorktown is the biggest British disaster since Saratoga.
The news reaches British essayist Horace Walpole. Ah yes, Cornwallis. That Columbus who was to bestow America on us again. For us to lose a second army.
Now this is an achievement. Well, here ends another volume in the American War. I would suggest that it's all over, but for the fact that there are three other wars that have grown out of it.
And we're forty million pounds in debt. It is not immediately obvious that the war is over. The English still hold New York, Charleston, and Savannah. With the French Navy out of the way, the British again rule the sea.
But the British have bet everything on victory in the South. They must now accept that this is a war they can never really win. In Tom Paine's words, They cannot conquer an idea with an army. British popular opinion, which had been so strongly in favour of the war at the beginning, had turned heavily, and as it turned out, irrevocably against the government.
It's the same thing with other wars, of course. Long wars bring higher taxes, bring economic crisis, bring an interruption of trade, decline of property prices, and so on. All these things, and especially the fact that the war had become a world war against France, all of them created a crisis which public opinion would no longer tolerate.
Yorktown brings down the government. The opposition takes over, committed to ending the war. In 1783, two years after the defeat at Yorktown, a treaty is signed in Paris.
The British signatories decline to pose for the official portrait. King George tries to console himself. America seems to be a land of knaves.
In the end, perhaps it is for the best that its inhabitants have become aliens to this kingdom. But it is observed that when he announces the terms of the American Treaty to Parliament, his voice chokes when he says the word, independence. The old man, our captain, came in and handed us our discharge papers. We didn't say much. We've lived together for eight years, young men with warm hearts, through hardships, dangers, family of brothers, and now never to see each other again.
It's a sad time. And by now everyone's heard the old story of the soldiers tracking the blood of their feet on the frozen ground. It literally happened, but you don't know a thousandth part of how we suffered. You never can.