otten while
bands of Associated Loyalists and bands of Liberty Boys plundered the
inhabitants indiscriminately, hailed each other as they passed in the
night, or agreed, with the honor that prevails among thieves, to an
equitable division of the spoils.

And few victories came in this disastrous year to cheer the remnant of
tried Americans. Clinton's invasion of North Carolina was, indeed, a
failure; and at the close of 1780, after the frontier troops had
overwhelmingly defeated General Ferguson at King's Mountain, the British
were forced to evacuate that strongly revolutionary colony. But
Washington could do little more than hold with the desperation of
despair to West Point, where his army had lain helpless and almost
passive since the battle of Monmouth. Congress, barely able to hold
together, could not maintain even that "verbal energy" which had once
distinguished it. In this year as never before men served their country
with one hand and with the other filled their pockets by manipulating
the currency which had fallen to be a worthless scrip. And it was in
this year, when fidelity seemed a forgotten virtue, when men enlisted in
the army and deserted to the enemy with equal indifference, that
Benedict Arnold, entrusted at his own request with the command of West
Point, forswore his trust and wrote treason across the fair record of a
patriot's achievements. Well might Washington write, "I have almost
ceased to hope"; and Laurens, "How many men there are who in secret
say, could I have believed it would come to this!"

Yet at last a happy combination of circumstances enabled the American
and French forces, for the first time operating in complete accord,
to bring this disastrous war to a most successful conclusion. Well aware
of the importance of the Southern campaign, Washington had procured for
Greene, the ablest of his generals, command of the forces which were
gathering in North Carolina to resist the advance of Cornwallis in 1781.
Defeated at the Cowpens and checked at Guilford, the British commander
was forced to retire to Wilmington; but instead of returning to
Charleston he moved into Virginia to join Arnold, convinced that the
conquest of the Old Dominion must precede that of North Carolina. In May
and June he carried ruin to all the prosperous towns of the province;
but in July, when the American forces under Lafayette had been greatly
strengthened, it was no longer safe for the British commander to divide