TWO:
THREE:When Washington arrived at the camp at Cambridge, instead of twenty thousand men, which he expected on his side, he found only sixteen thousand, and of these only fourteen thousand fit for duty. He describes them as "a mixed multitude of people under very little order or government." They had no uniforms; and Washington recommended Congress to send them out ten thousand hunting-shirts, as giving them something of a uniform appearance. There was not a single dollar in the military chest; the supply of provisions was extremely deficient and uncertain. There was a great want of engineering tools; and he soon discovered that the battle of Bunker's Hill, which, at a distance, was boasted of as a victory, had been a decided defeat. He immediately set about to reduce this discouraging chaos into new order. Assisted by General Lee, he commenced by having prayers read at the head of the respective regiments every morning. He broke up the freedom which confounded officers and men; he compelled subordination by the free use of the lash, where commands would not serve. He kept them daily at active drill. He laboured incessantly to complete the lines, so that very soon it would be impossible for the enemy to get between the ranks. But the great andif the English generals had been only properly awakethe fatal want was that of powder. Washington found that they had but nine rounds of powder to a musket, and next to none for the artillery. "The world," said Franklin, "wondered that we so seldom fired a cannon; why, we could not afford it!" And all this was disclosed to General Gage by a deserter, and he still lay in a profound slumber! The Ministry at home, scarcely more awake to the real danger, were yet astonished at his lethargy; and they recalled him under the plea of consulting him on the affairs of the colony. He sailed from Boston in October, leaving the chief command to General Howe.To prevent further carnage, a committee of the townsmen waited on the governor and council, and prevailed on them to remove the soldiers from the town to Castle William. The successful rioters carried the bodies of the killed in procession, denounced the soldiers as murderers, and spread the[202] most exaggerated accounts of the affray through the newspapers, under the name of "the massacre." Captain Preston and his men were arrested and put upon their trials before a jury of the irate townsmen. Nobody, for a time, would act as counsel for the defence; but at length John Adams, a young lawyer, undertook the office, and made the case so plain, that not only Captain Preston, but all the soldiers were acquitted, except two, who had fired without orders, and these were convicted only of manslaughter.
THREE:The American Congress, which had imagined Gates a greater officer even than Washington, because he had captured Burgoyne through the ability of Arnold, though Washingtonfrom envy, as they supposedhad always held a more correct opinion, now saw their error. No sooner was this victory at Camden achieved, than Cornwallis dispatched Tarleton after General Sumter, who was marching on the other side of the Wateree on his way into South Carolina. Tarleton started after him with a couple of hundred of cavalry, and rode so sharply that he had left half his little force behind him, when he came up with him near Catawba Ford, and fell upon his far superior force without a moment's hesitation, killing and wounding one hundred, and taking captive upwards of two hundred, with all Sumter's baggage, artillery, and one thousand stand of arms.
THREE:It was at this era of religious apathy that John Wesley (b. 1703; d. 1791), and Charles, his brother (b. 1708; d. 1788), and George Whitefield (b. 1714), came forward to preach a revival, and laid the foundation of Methodism. These young men, students at Oxford, all of them originally of clerical families but Whitefieldwho was the son of an innkeeperwith Hervey, afterwards the author of the well-known "Meditations amongst the Tombs," and some others of their fellow-collegians, struck by the dearth of religious life of the time, met in their rooms for prayer and spiritual improvement. They were soon assailed with the nicknames of "Sacramentarians," "Bible Moths," and finally, "Methodists," a term current against the Puritans in those days, and suggested by the appellative Methodist?, given to a college of physicians in ancient Rome, in consequence of the strict regimen which they prescribed to their patients.The Irish Bill was read a second time in the House of Lords on the 23rd of July. It was strongly opposed by the Duke of Wellington, as transferring the electoral power of the country from the Protestants to the Roman Catholics. Lord Plunket, in reply, said, "One fact, I think, ought to satisfy every man, not determined against conviction, of its wisdom and necessity. What will the House think when I inform them that the representatives of seventeen of those boroughs, containing a population of 170,000 souls, are nominated by precisely seventeen persons? Yet, by putting an end to this iniquitous and disgraceful system, we are, forsooth, violating the articles of the union, and overturning the Protestant institutions of the country! This is ratiocination and statesmanlike loftiness of vision with a vengeance! Then it seems that besides violating the union Act we are departing from the principles of the measure of 1829. I deny that. I also deny the assumption of the noble Duke, that the forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised on that occasion merely for the purpose of maintaining the Protestant interests in Ireland. The forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised, not because they were what are called 'Popish electors,' but because they were in such indigent circumstances as precluded their exercising their[353] suffrage right independently and as free agentsbecause they were an incapable constituency." The Bill, after being considered in committee, where it encountered violent opposition, was passed by the Lords on the 30th of July, and received the Royal Assent by commission on the 7th of August.
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