The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.Prescott, Thomas H.
History
The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel: Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.
Prescott, Thomas H.
Biography; World history
who aimed at political reforms. On the other hand, the king obtained
increased respect, in consequence of the firmness he had shown in
taking measures for the suppression of the riots.
The states of North and South Carolina, which contained a larger
proportion of persons friendly to the British crown than any of the
northern states, had submitted, in 1780, to a British army under
General Clinton. Next year the greater part of the troops which had
been left in those states were conducted northward by Lord Cornwallis,
in the hope of making further conquests; but the consequence was that
General Greene, after a series of conflicts, in which he greatly
distressed various parties of the British troops, regained both
Carolinas, while Lord Cornwallis took up a position at Yorktown in
Virginia. At this time, General Washington, the American
commander-in-chief, to whose extraordinary sagacity and purity of
motives the colonists chiefly owed their independence, was threatening
General Clinton’s army at New York. Clinton tamely saw him retire to
the southward, believing that he only meant to make a feint, in order
to draw away the British from New York, when he in reality meant to
attack Cornwallis. On the 29th of September (1781), Yorktown was
invested by this and other corps of Americans and French; and in three
weeks more, the British batteries being completely silenced, Lord
Cornwallis surrendered with his whole army. With this event, though
some posts were still kept up by the British troops, hostilities might
be said to have been concluded.
At the next opening of Parliament many of those who had formerly
supported the war, began to adopt opposite views; and early in 1782, a
motion, made by General Conway, for the conclusion of the war, was
carried by a majority of nineteen. The necessary consequence was,
that, on the 20th of March, Lord North and his colleagues resigned
office, after twelve years of continued misfortune, during which the
prosperity of the country had been retarded, a hundred millions added
to the national debt, and three millions of people separated from the
parent state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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