 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with John Furling, author of Winning Independence, a new book about the decisive years of the American Revolutionary War. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, July 6th at noon, Zachary M. Schragg will tell us about his new book, The Fires of Philadelphia, a study of anti-immigrant riots in 1844 Philadelphia. And on Thursday, July 8th at noon, Amy Sohn will discuss The Man Who Hated Women, her new book about anti-vice activists and U.S. postal inspector, Anthony Comstock. In just five days, we'll be celebrating our nation's 245th Independence Day. Each July 4th, we recall the bold words of the Declaration of Independence, but we do not always remember that independence was secured only after many years of warfare. The first official shots were fired in 1775, but the final decisive battle played out more than six years later. The latter years of the war, when the main theater of operations moved south, are less familiar to us. This southern strategy nearly led to success for the British. The correspondence of George Washington and others, which have been digitized and are freely available through Founders Online, reveals the concerns for the success of the revolution. In May 1780, Washington wrote, I assure you every idea you can form of our distresses will fall short of the reality. The country in general is in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests that I dare not flatter myself with any change for the better. In winning independence, John Furling shows us how the decisions on both sides led to ultimate victory for the Americans at Yorktown. John Furling, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of West Georgia, has also written extensively on the political and military aspects of the American Revolution and the early republic. In addition to biographies of George Washington and John Adams, he is the author of Almost a Miracle, A Leap in the Dark, and Whirlwind, which won the Francis Tavern Museum Book Award for the best book on the revolutionary period. His most recent book is Apostles of Revolution, Jefferson Payne, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe. Now let's hear from John Furling. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for that splendid introduction. It's an honor to be invited of the National Archives to speak today. I've done research in the National Archives, and I think I've spoken twice and also been on one panel at the National Archives, and I regard those events as among the real highlights of my career. So it's quite an honor to be here today. I just wish I could be with you in Washington and Boston are my two favorite cities in the country. So I would love to be there, but the pandemic has gotten in the way. So today I want to talk with you a little bit about my book and go through some of the things that I tried to highlight in the book. A couple of years ago, when I was writing the book, I rewatched one of my favorite movies, The Two Jakes, and in that movie there's a line by Jack Nicholson that I had never really noticed before, but this time it caught my attention. You can't forget the past any more than you can change it, Nicholson says, and I think why it caught my attention this time around was not that I think that the Revolutionary War has been forgotten, but I was writing about the last four years of the war, and I don't think that period is as well remembered by a great many people as the first thirty months of the war, the period from Lexington and Concord in April 1775 through the surrender of a large British army under John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October of 1777. Even though the period after Saratoga witnessed the deaths of more American soldiers than was the case prior to that time, in fact I think close to sixty percent of all of the American soldiers who died in this war died after Saratoga, so I think it is a crucial period and obviously culminates in Yorktown and the Allied victory that did secure independence. You'd probably spend the full hour talking about why the latter part of the war isn't as well remembered, but I think I can sum it up, I think, in just one sentence, and that is that Saratoga is often characterized as the turning point of the Revolutionary War, and I don't for a minute minimize the importance of Saratoga, I mean Britain lost an entire army there and it was what really brought France into the war, and without French aid and the alliance with France, America could not have won the war, so Saratoga is really crucial, but I think because it is often characterized as the turning point, I think every American textbook that's ever been written says Saratoga is the turning point of the war, that many people just think that what happened after Saratoga wasn't important and that the American victory in the war was now inevitable, and I try to argue in the book that that's not quite the case, in fact that it becomes a long war that goes on for four more years and the outcome of the war isn't known until York at the end of 1781, it could have gone another way as I'll try to show. If, let me show you one of my slides here, there we go, if many people think that the that American victory was inevitable after Saratoga, so did a lot of contemporaries, and one of those was George Washington, Washington goes into Valley Forge right after Saratoga and while he is at Valley Forge, he gets the word of the French alliance and Washington says that the war is now burging fast to a favorable issue and he also said the French alliance must put the independence of America out of all manner of dispute, so Washington along with a good many others thought that victory was now at hand and the victory was inevitable and I think he saw that time was on America's side now, he doesn't say this categorically but I think Washington probably thought that one of two things was likely to occur in the near future, either the French and the Americans would join forces and win a decisive victory over the British sometime in 1778 and that would bring an end to the war or that in the very near future the British would decide that this was just an impossible task that they should get out of the war, it was a fool's errand to stay in and that they would make peace and grant America its independence and as given this state of mind Washington reflected on what he was going to do in the near future and he doesn't spell it out but he does say while he's at Valley Forge that henceforth he would not act as he put it with impetuosity, I don't think Washington ever acted impetuously but he certainly didn't after Saratoga and again as I said he didn't spell out what was entirely on his mind but I think what given what we know about Washington over the next four years down to Yorktown I think what Washington was probably thinking at that point and from that point forward as a matter of fact was that he was not going to act without the consent of the French and perhaps not even with unless he could act in concert with with the French. Well if Washington and others felt that the war was virtually over what was going on on the other side of the Atlantic the British got the news of Saratoga in December of 1777 and it creates quite a debate through the winter of 77-78 over what Britain should do and I think there were there were probably three elements in in British politics at that point. One element wanted to just get out of a war that they either because they thought it was an unwinnable war or they wanted to get out before France came in and that they they didn't want a major war again with the French and there was a second element it was particularly strong among within naval circles in England and also among those people who had made fortunes off of sugar and slaves to not fool with the war in America in North America any longer on the mainland but to concentrate on trying to hold British possessions in the in the Caribbean which they believed that France would attempt to take and which France did attempt to take as it as it turned out but there was a third element in England that wanted to stay in the war and that element is really led by the American Secretary as his title was or official title was Secretary of State for America and that was Lord George Germain and by virtue of his office he was not only responsible for of the American colonies but he was also in in essence something of a war minister and the British commanders of the British army in America reported to Germain throughout his tenure during the war and Germain wanted to remain in the war continue to fight in North America though he realized that there had to be a change in strategy after all the British had fought for 30 months trying to defeat the Continental Army trying to in the north trying to take control of of states of colonies rather in the north where it was Massachusetts or New York or New Jersey or whatever and they hadn't succeeded so they just simply could not continue to do that British public opinion wouldn't tolerate that any longer and so Germain devised a new strategy and the strategy that he devises is comes to be known as the southern strategy and Germain believed that it was possible for Britain to regain control of two and quite possibly three southern colonies Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina Georgia and South Carolina were extremely important economically for the British Empire rice and and tobacco were produced in those areas and as I said earlier fortunes were were made off of that and so he he wanted he wanted to try to retake those areas and he thought it was a feasible strategy because he believed and I think he was correct and this as as his studies by historians over the last couple of generations have demonstrated that a greater percentage of the population in in the southern colonies remained loyal to to Britain than was the case in the in the northern colonies and since the since France was coming into the war Germain knew that the the British army in America would have to be reduced in size some of those troops would have to be sent to the Caribbean so he needed somebody to take their places and he reasoned that the the loyalist in the south and many of those would be willing to take up arms for their their king and they the idea was that those loyalist would go into what came to be known as provincial regiments that is they would become regulars in the British army the regiment might be commanded by a British army but everybody else would be an American loyalist who served in those those regiments and other loyalists in the south would go into loyalist militia units and the nob of Germain's idea was that the British army the regulars would drive the rebels out of an area and the loyalist militia would follow them and come in and occupy the area and complete the job of the pacification of the area and and that within a relatively short period of time Germain felt that as I said perhaps as many as three of the colonies could be reclaimed by Britain if Germain's strategy panned out and the war ended with Britain in control of those three southern colonies there might be a united states but the united states would not look like it did after Yorktown the area on this map that's shaded in red was the area that might have been there would have been the united states but everything else in white on that map would have been held by Great Britain you can see Georgia South Carolina North Carolina down below Virginia and below Georgia you can see east florida and west florida which Britain had acquired in an earlier war in 1763 the British still held the transmontane west and it held Canada so the united states would have been surrounded by by British held territories and it would have been small it would have faced a very uncertain and and rather bleak future whether it could have survived or not is an open question but even beyond that if even if the united states did survive if you think of the British empire is including everything in white on this map as well as what it continued to hold in the caravan then Britain would come out of the war with something in fact it would come out with still a pretty vibrant American empire so germane wins the struggle in in the winter of 1778 and the ministry under frederichord north and the king george the third agreed to continue hostilities against what what the americans called the united states at the time and that left germane with an immediate task and that was to name a new commander of the british army because the previous commander william howe resigned in the wake of sarah toga and he was back in london and germane names sir henry clinton to be the new commander of the the british army clinton learns that he's been named commander in may of 1778 so that that much of the story in my book winning independence deals with the choices that were made by washington and by clinton and they're both major figures in the in the book so let me say a word or two about about sir henry clinton um he was 50 years old two years older than washington in 1778 came from a very different background than though then washington came from he came his family was part of the aristocracy in england his father had been a career officer in the royal navy and he had served as a royal governor of new york and in fact young henry spent some of his childhood growing up in uh in new york city he entered the british army while he was a teenager uh and uh he he served in two wars before the revolutionary war and in fact was seriously wounded in a battle in germany during the seven years war in 1760 so he's a unlike washington who we served for four years in with the virginia regiment in the french and indian war and then left the military and became a planter in in virginia at mount varnan clinton is a professional soldier washington i i look upon as an amateur soldier when he became the commander of the continental army in 1775 clinton by contrast as i said was a professional he was an intellectually curious individual read widely especially in military history and military tactics even a 1.1774 out of his own pocket he traveled deep into eastern europe to observe a war between the russians and the turks hoping to learn more about military strategy he was sent to america in 1775 he arrived not long after lexington and conquered just in time to be part of the battle of bonker hill and he served with some distinction during the 30 months down through saratoga and into 1778 before he's appointed commander of the british army in fact he won a reputation during that period as perhaps the the best strategist of all of the british armies uh in uh in america but when clinton took command of the british army uh the first thing that he said when he wrote to a friend in london is my fate is hard and what he meant by that was that along with germain's orders making him the commander germain told him that he had to give up 8 000 of his troops and these this would be 8 000 men atop all of the british soldiers that had been lost at saratoga and then that numbered something like 7 000 uh men so that clinton knew from the beginning that his army would be uh about one third smaller than the army that had been unsuccessful uh previously and uh in addition to to the problem of manpower he now had to contend not only with the american rebels but with the french who would were coming into the war following the alliance with the united states so when he said my fate is hard what he went on to say was that he now thought that british victory in this war was hopeless and uh he said that he feared that he would be saddled with a considerable portion of the blame for britain's inevitable lack of success and in that regard clinton was oppressive uh he has not enjoyed a good historical reputation he was in fact maligned by contemporaries in england following yorktown and historians since then have largely criticized clinton portraying him as overly cautious and unwilling to to act and and not a risk taker so forth and in fact one of the things that that i try to show in the book is that uh washington was not a risk taker either remember he said he didn't want to act with he wouldn't act impetuously after this and uh clinton is is actually far more active between 1778 and 1781 than was washington but washington comes out on the winning side and he emerges from the war as an iconic figure whereas clinton comes out of the war with uh as as sort of the scapegoat the guy who lost the war because he failed to to to take risks and that he was just to to enact throughout the the war i argue in the book that that clinton was far more active than he was given credit for by contemporaries or by by most historians in fact he at the beginning of his command he faces more crises in a very short period of time in about three months than any other british commander faced in this war uh he immediately fights a battle with washington in new jersey the battle of monmouth and uh it's an indecisive battle but shortly after monmouth just days after that the first french fleet to be sent to america arrives off the coast of new jersey and it's a large french fleet commanded by uh comp disdain and the allies plan an attack on new york city with the french using their navy washington using their army his army um the the allied plan is foiled uh for two reasons one is that disdain ships were too heavy to get across the bore and the bar and into the new york harbor but also because clinton acted uh immediately uh by sending men and artillery to positions around new york from which they could shell uh any friendships that got too close to to new york harbor and no less than the second in command of the royal navy in america praised clinton and uh characterized him as the savior of uh of new york clinton guessed that uh now that the allies had struck out in new york they would try to take newport road island which the british had held since 1776 and clinton guessed exactly right in fact he he rushed men and provisions to the the british garrison in newport and got them there three weeks before the french navy got there or before an american army formed on aquedic island where newport is uh is located and uh again the the allies did plan to try to take newport which was a valuable harbor but again they were foiled and this time it was because a great storm roared out of the atlantic and caused serious damage to disdain's fleet and he had to retreat to uh boston to have his ships repaired but the allied army composed mostly of militiamen under uh continental general john selvin but also including about 2000 men that washington had sent under lafayette remained on aquedic island and clinton saw an opportunity uh he immediately cobbled together an expedition of about uh more than 80 british vessels and about 4500 men and sailed for aquedic island and his plan was with this american army there that the british garrison and newport would advance on it from a south wall clinton's expedition landed on the north end of aquedic island and the americans would be caught in a pincere movement and defeated and if clinton had succeeded in that plan the americans would have lost an army roughly the same size as the army that were going and lost at saratoga only 10 months earlier but now it was clinton's turn to be foiled because he his expedition ran into contrary winds when it was sailing toward aquedic island took a long time to get there and general selvin learned that they were coming in he managed to to get his army off of aquedic island literally just hours before the first british troops landed on the north north end so clinton had had been quite energetic and quite active in in his first three months as commander and his activity continued in in december of 1778 his first year in command he sends a 3000 man expedition to savannah to the coast of georgia and it takes savannah and a one-day engagement and the royal government of georgia is reinstituted it becomes at least in the british eyes a royal colony once again every law passed by the the rebel legislature since 1776 was was repealed the king's laws were put back on the books in may of 1779 clinton sent a large expedition to virginia which landed cock the virginians by surprise put the torch to thousands of acres of crops destroyed several ship construction sites liberated hundreds of slaves and that same expedition returned in new york and before the men could get off off their vessels clinton sent them up the hudson river and they in may of 17 may and june of 1779 they took two american forts at king's ferry well up the hudson and the hudson highlands and what clinton was hoping was that by taking those force he would would force general washington to take the field to try to defeat the british army because the americans lost not only their forts but they they now face communications and logistical problems as as a result of having lost those installations but washington did not come into the field he again remains very cautious and as he tells one of his generals washington said we can only lament what we cannot remedy and so clinton was unable to get washington into the field so clinton was quite active but there was one thing that he might have tried to do and he didn't and he was after the war severely criticized for for not having attempted to do it and that was he might have tried to take west point the american installation american fort at west point up in the hudson highlands and if the british succeeded in winning new york in taking west point the war is over purely and simply because the british would would control the hudson river from new york to albany and the four new england states or colonies whichever you prefer would be now indelibly separated from the other nine american states and america just couldn't continue in the war even with french help under those conditions but clinton did not try to to take west point and in in my book i tried i defend clinton's decision clinton inherited an intelligence network that according to the historian who has studied it most closely was still in a primitive state the result was that clinton knew next to nothing about uh west point's defenses uh he he essentially knew only two things he knew that washington had had five years to develop the defenses at new york at west point and he also knew that washington would call on every continental and every militiaman that he could get his hands on uh to defend west point so that clinton would have to go in blind attacking a fort that he knew really nothing about against an army that he knew would be a numerically superior adversary and uh he he uh did not take that risk and i think he was probably wise in not taking the risk and one reason i think beyond those that i mentioned a moment ago for him not striking at at west point was that whereas if you remember i mentioned that i think while washington was at valley forge he he concluded that time was on america's side a year later by the summer of 1779 clinton believes that time is on britain's side and so it would be foolish to act uh in a risky manner why did clinton think time was now on britain's side for for two reasons in effect one was that the american economy had absolutely collapsed uh by by this point as washington put at the value of money is melting like snow under a hot sun and clinton reason that the americans just could not continue the war for much longer he didn't think that it was going to to come to an end in the next week or anything but uh that that um time was running against america and of course we know uh that ultimately the from a financial standpoint americans survived because of french loans and and just money that the french gave to america not to mention weaponry and clothing and whatever for the uh for the uh for the troops but also clinton saw that or believed that and i think rightly so that um american morale was beginning to sag and not just because of the the economic collapsed uh but because this war was going on and on and on and there was no end in sight to the war by 1779 uh when clinton is thinking this two years have passed since saras saratoga the americans have not gained a single victory the french have been in the war for a year and they haven't gained a single thing uh from uh from this war and so uh morale is beginning to sag uh in the in the united states again i don't mean to suggest that that the end was near but that that probably for the first time since the really dark days of 1776 morale was waning in areas in america so clinton stays inactive for the remainder of 1779 and one reason one other reason for his inactivity is that after distangs fleet was repaired in boston distangs sailed for the caravan and he campaigned there through the through the winter of 1778 79 but clinton and washington expected uh distang to return and both thought that he would in sometime in the late summer of 1779 that he would return to to new york and that the once again the allies would campaign for new york but distang didn't do that instead distang landed on the coast of georgia and in conjunction with a continental army and militiamen under general benjamin lincoln distang the french the french and the americans attempted to retake savannah and they failed they lost heavily uh in their siege and attack on savannah after which distang sailed back to england and never returned uh to america and once distang leaves clinton knows that he can at last really begin to put uh uh uh lord germain's southern strategy in operation in earnest and so just after christmas of 1779 clinton puts together a large expeditionary force and thousands of british troops and he sails for charleston and they land off the coast of of georgia they advance on charleston uh slowly they're there by april of 1780 and launch a siege operation of charleston which succeeds an american army under benjamin lincoln again surrenders uh all of the american troops in charleston and the city of charleston in may of 1780 and this is a loss of uh of uh men almost as many americans are lost in the siege and battle and surrender at charleston as the british had lost at saratoga so it really is america's saratoga and uh it made clinton something of a hero in england there were many people who felt that lord norse war ministry was saved by the victory at uh at charleston and a friend in london wrote to clinton and now said and told clinton that he was now the most popular man in england which it was probably drew he may very well have been more popular in england than washington was in america in uh in the summer of of 1780 so clinton doesn't remain in uh charleston for very long he returns to new york and once he returned to new york he appointed uh as his successor in um as his command and person who was to command the british southern strategy general cornwallis url char charles url cornwallis who like clinton he was eight years younger than clinton but like clinton was a veteran and a professional british office cornwallis's orders emphasize that he is to focus on south carolina he is to try now to to pacify the back country of south carolina and he's left with about 7500 troops and the assumption is as i said earlier that lots of loyalists would rally to arms uh and join the british army and in fact cornwallis would have several thousand loyalists not very many from the south as it turned out most of them were from new york pennsylvania and new jersey but there were some southerners uh who who went into those provincial regiments and things went went very well uh early in the first weeks that that cornwallis was active in the south carolina back country so well in fact that he writes to clinton in july of 1780 that he believed that the insurgency was was almost over uh at at that point and he had even better news for clinton in august of 1780 another american army a successor army to the one that lincoln had surrendered at charleston is sent into uh the south that's under haratio gates and it collides with an army under cornwallis at camden in south carolina in august of 1780 and the american army is utterly defeated uh at the battle of camden in fact it was the fourth american army to be destroyed in the south in a space of 20 months two armies had been lost at at savannah lincoln's army had been lost at charleston and now gates's army had been lost at um at camden more than 8 000 american troops had been lost in 20 months in those four uh engagements and not for nothing did washington that same month of august 1780 write a letter to the chief executive of pennsylvania in which he said uh i have almost ceased to hope it now really began to to appear that an american victory in this war might not be uh likely at all and even more telling i think than than what washington said in that letter was something that arthur lee said arthur lee was from virginia he was one of the first diplomats appointed by congress he'd spent years in um in uh europe he was one of the three that negotiated the alliance with uh france and he returned to america in um in august of 1780 first time to come back to america since before the war and he lands in boston and he's in boston a few days and he talks with many of the leaders of boston and some of the leaders of massachusetts and arthur lee writes that after that he he felt that the that the leaders of massachusetts according to lee believed now that the war would end in a negotiated settlement that would be short of american independence that america would not achieve uh independence so this is a very bleak period for uh for the for the united states in many ways i think as dark as those dark days in in late 1776 and in a sense they they grew even even darker even though cornwallis began to experience some problems losing a about about a thousand-minute kings mountain in october of 1780 and other reversals would come down the road clinton as he looked at the situation as 1781 approach concluded that america faced a brighter future than than the british uh then the then the americans did um in in 1781 that he was now really hopeful that the southern strategy would pan out and he devised a new strategy a strategy that i think came very could have that could have succeeded and brought the war to a different end and clinton's new strategy was twofold on the one hand he put a large army in virginia for the first time an army that swelled to about six thousand men and the job of that army was to destroy supply depots and interdict the flow of supplies from the north down into the carolinas the only way the any american army or any american partisans fighting in the carolinas and georgia could stay in the field stay active was by getting supplies from the outside and this large army i think in virginia had the resources to shut down the flow of those supplies and the second aspect of clinton's strategy was that cornwallis was to remain in in south carolina and he was to focus on destroying whatever uh insurgency uh existed in south carolina and i think between the two clinton strategy might have succeeded all along clinton believed that the allies would try to retake new york in 1781 he was getting intelligence reports from london that demonstrated that that if the allies did not score a decisive victory that year that france was going to drop out of the war it would take a face-saving means of doing so by agreeing to a european peace conference that would determine the fate of america in the outcome of the of the war and uh so um uh clinton i i i knew too that the french were sending over a navy another navy a successor navy to distanced this one under admiral de grau and that uh he expected the allies to attempt to take new york and his plan was that during the summer of 1781 he would recall all but about 2000 of those 6000 men in virginia to new york so that he would have an an adequate army to defend new york against the allied onslaught but two things went awry and those two things i think sealed britain's fate in this war and that what one was that cornwallis didn't stay in in south carolina in violation of his orders he took his army to virginia which means that there's now 7500 british troops in in virginia and the second thing is that lord germain wrote to clinton in june of 1781 and told him not to remove any troops from virginia so an army of 7500 men remain a british army of 7500 remains in virginia and i think i can't answer this question no one can but uh i wonder what the brit what the allies would have done if clinton had withdrawn all those troops from virginia and only 2000 remain would going to the into the chesapeake after that small 2000 man army in virginia would would scoring a victory over them have been a decisive enough victory to have won the war or would washington and his french allies under principally under prompter the rochambeau would they have decided that that they had to attack new york and if they attack new york could they have won uh an engagement in new york after all the british had had five years to fortify new york and i think all of the indications are that rochambeau did not think that the allies could could emerge being victorious in new york but clinton has foiled and the result is that the road is now paved to york town as you know and washington is going to come out of this conflict as an iconic figure and sir henry clinton is going to come out of this war with a reputation as a failed british general well i'd i'd be happy to try to take any questions that that anyone has oh okay well there are no questions okay well i i go much further in my book uh into many things that i discussed uh today uh some things i didn't get to at all today the decisions for example that clinton made when the allies began moving toward virginia what what did he do why did he uh do it and so forth and the last couple of chapters in the book deal with the siege and the victory at york town and ultimately i conclude that um that that mistakes were made if clinton had had a free hand i think the war might have turned out differently but also i think uh the british lost the war because they found themselves in a um a a world war uh and they were just spread too thin especially the royal navy was spread too thin it it was unable to defend the british homelands british imperial interest in asia in the caravan and in north america could do some of it but it couldn't do all of it and the result was the the uh french succeeded in gaining maritime supremacy in september of 1781 in the chesapeake and that doomed the the british oh there is one question here and that is the did clinton have a fort named after him uh no i don't i don't not that i know of um maybe wrong i i just bought a a book about two or three months ago on british forts in on long island and i got a book on the interlive the interlibrary loan on british defenses in new york uh that i i read when i wrote the book and i don't remember a fort clinton in new york there was a fort clinton that was an american fort but i presume that it was named after george clinton who was the governor of new york revolutionary governor of new york oh another question any comment about the financial condition of the states from 1780 well the uh the americans uh were getting loans from from uh france and uh at the outset of 1781 uh congress was so desperate for money that it decided to bypass its minister in france who was none other than benjamin franklin and send a special envoy to france to plead for for money and that envoy was colonel john lauren's of south carolina he was a continental army uh officer and he comes to meet with washington and washington writes a very lengthy letter that uh uh that lauren's takes to um to to france uh with him and franklin didn't give up franklin sought loans lauren sought loans they both got money and that that money was crucial uh in getting the army to york town there were there was some evidence that the army which many of the these were northern soldiers by and large looked on the south as something of a death trap because uh diseases were more prevalent fevers were more prevalent in the south and in the north so many were reluctant to go into the south in the first place they hadn't been paid for in forever and uh so uh uh washington had to to pay them and the money that that that was used to pay them was the movie the money that lauren's brought back from france so it's a it's a crucial move and crucial on the part of france which didn't want to come out of this war empty handed and and helps sustain america through the through the york town campaign any other uh question well if there are no other questions uh thank you very much and as i said at the beginning it's really i appreciate the the invitation from the national archives induced sincerely regarded as as an honor to be invited to uh to speak today by the national archives thank you very much