In November the Continental army was disbanded, and in December, at Annapolis, where Congress was sitting, Washington formally surrendered his command, and went home to Mount Vernon. [16] SUMMARY 1. Despite the king's proclamation in 1763, frontiersmen soon crossed the mountains and settled in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee. 2. In the region north of the Ohio were a few British forts, some of which George Rogers Clark captured in 1778 and 1779; but Fort St. Joseph in Michigan was captured by the Spanish. 3. At the end of 1778 the British began an attack on the Southern states by capturing Savannah. 4. Georgia was then overrun. The Americans, aided by a French fleet, attacked Savannah and were repulsed (1779). 5. In 1780, reënforced by a fleet and army from New York, the British captured Charleston and overran South Carolina. The Americans under Gates were badly beaten at Camden; but a British force was destroyed at Kings Mountain. 6. In the same year Benedict Arnold turned traitor, and sought in vain to deliver West Point to the British. 7. In the following year (1781) our arms were generally victorious. Morgan won the battle of the Cowpens; Greene outgeneraled Cornwallis and then reconquered South Carolina. At the end of the year Charleston and Savannah were the only Southern towns held by the British. 8. Cornwallis marched into Virginia, and fortified himself at Yorktown. There Washington, aided by a French army and fleet, forced him to surrender (1781). 9. Peace was made next year, our independence was acknowledged, and by the end of 1783 the last British soldiers had left the country. [Illustration: WASHINGTON AND LAFAYETTE AT MOUNT VERNON.] FOOTNOTES [1] About this time the settlers on the upper Ohio River (in what is now West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania) became eager for statehood. Both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed their allegiance. They asked Congress, therefore, for recognition as the state of Westsylvania, the fourteenth province of the American Confederacy. Congress did not grant their prayer. [2] Read Thompson's _Alice of Old Vincennes_. [3] Farther east, meantime, a band of savages led by Colonel John Butler swept down from Fort Niagara, entered Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, near the site of Wilkes-Barre, and perpetrated one of the most awful massacres in history (July 4, 1778). (Read Campbell's poem _Gertrude of Wyoming_). A little later another band, led by a son of Butler, burned the village of Cherry Valley in New York, and murdered many of the inhabitants--men, women, and children. Cruelties of this sort could not go unpunished. In the summer of 1779, therefore, General Sullivan with an army invaded the Indian country in central New York, burned forty Indian villages, destroyed their crops, cut down their fruit trees, and brought the Indians to the verge of famine.