The British were beginning to be hard pressed in the South. The struggle had been long and disappointing, and burning and looting and the horrors of civil war had spread over a large area. Two Continental armies had been lost in rapid succession, and there had been months when one disaster seemed to follow upon another; but gradually the British were being driven away from their ships and bases of supply on the coast. The heat of summer had brought much sickness to their camps, and General Greene, next to Washington the most skilful of the Revolutionary generals, had perfected his "science of losing battles" to the point where his opponents might claim almost every engagement as a victory and yet the advantage remained with the Americans. Recently the British had lost a large part of their light troops. In March, 1781, Cornwallis decided to leave General Rawdon, with whom Lafayette had danced in London, to face Greene, while he himself went to Virginia, joined Benedict Arnold and General Phillips there, and returned with them to finish the conquest of the South. Washington [Pg 150]learned of the plan and knew that if it succeeded General Greene might be crushed between two British forces. Arnold and Phillips must be kept busy in Virginia. Steuben was already on the ground; Anthony Wayne was ordered to hurry his Pennsylvanians to the rescue; and Lafayette, being near the point of danger, was turned back. He found new orders when he reached Head of Elk. The scene was being set in Virginia, not in New York, for the last act of the Revolutionary War; but neither he nor his men realized this, and if Lafayette was disappointed, the men were almost in a state of panic. They began deserting in large numbers. "They like better a hundred lashes than a journey to the southward," their commander wrote. "As long as they had an expedition in view they were very well satisfied; but the idea of remaining in the Southern states appears to them intolerable, and they are amazingly averse to the people and climate." Most of them were New England born. He hastened to put many rivers between them and the land of their desire; and also tried an appeal to their pride. In an order of the day he stated that his force had been chosen to fight an enemy superior in numbers and to encounter many dangers. No man need desert, for their commander would not compel one of them to accompany him against his will. Whoever chose to do so might apply for a pass and be sent back to rejoin his former regiment. They were part of his beloved light infantry of the previous year, with [Pg 151]all this implied of friendship and interest on both sides, and this appeal worked like a charm. Desertion went suddenly and completely out of fashion; nobody asked for a pass, and one poor fellow who was in danger of being sent back because he was lame hired a cart to be saved from this disgrace.