re him out by drawing him into long marches. When Cornwallis advanced
to attack La Fayette at Richmond, La Fayette was not there but had
slipped away and was able to use rivers and mountains for his defense.
Cornwallis had more than one string to his bow. The legislature of
Virginia was sitting at Charlottesville, lying in the interior nearly
a hundred miles northwest from Richmond, and Cornwallis conceived
the daring plan of raiding Charlottesville, capturing the Governor of
Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, and, at one stroke, shattering the civil
administration. Tarleton was the man for such an enterprise of hard
riding and bold fighting and he nearly succeeded. Jefferson indeed
escaped by rapid flight but Tarleton took the town, burned the public
records, and captured ammunition and arms. But he really effected
little. La Fayette was still unconquered. His army was growing and the
British were finding that Virginia, like New England, was definitely
against them.

At New York, meanwhile, Clinton was in a dilemma. He was dismayed at the
news of the march of Cornwallis to Virginia. Cornwallis had been so long
practically independent in the South that he assumed not only the right
to shape his own policy but adopted a certain tartness in his despatches
to Clinton, his superior. When now, in this tone, he urged Clinton to
abandon New York and join him Clinton's answer on the 26th of June was
a definite order to occupy some port in Virginia easily reached from
the sea, to make it secure, and to send to New York reinforcements.
The French army at Newport was beginning to move towards New York and
Clinton had intercepted letters from Washington to La Fayette revealing
a serious design to make an attack with the aid of the French fleet.
Such was the game which fortune was playing with the British generals.
Each desired the other to abandon his own plans and to come to his
aid. They were agreed, however, that some strong point must be held in
Virginia as a naval base, and on the 2d of August Cornwallis established
this base at Yorktown, at the mouth of the York River, a mile wide where
it flows into Chesapeake Bay. His cannon could command the whole width
of the river and keep in safety ships anchored above the town. Yorktown
lay about half way between New York and Charleston and from here a fleet
could readily carry a military force to any needed point on the sea.
La Fayette with a growing army closed in on Yorktown, and Cornwallis