From Farm House to the White House - 912 Freedom Library

Farm House to the White House, by William M. Thayer 187
"We'll find out about that," said Paulding; and they proceeded to search him. Finding nothing of a suspicious
character about his clothes, they were disposed to let him proceed, when Paulding said:
"Boys, I am not satisfied; his boots must come off."
His boots were drawn off, and the concealed papers were found in his stockings.
"My God!" exclaimed Paulding, "he is a spy."
They conducted their prisoner to North Castle, and he was finally hung as a spy.
Arnold escaped to a British man-of-war, and figured thereafter as a general in the king's army, despised even
by those who commissioned him.
Near the close of the winter of 1781, and through the spring, the enemy committed many depredations on our
coast, in which Arnold played a conspicuous part. In Virginia and Connecticut his command wantonly
destroyed a large amount of property. New London was burned under his generalship. Washington employed
every means possible to capture the traitor, but in vain.
The British directed their chief efforts against the South, designing to spread consternation by their terrible
ravages. Richmond was laid in ashes. Along the shores of the Potomac and Chesapeake they plundered and
burned. They threatened to destroy Washington's home at Mount Vernon, and landed for the purpose of
applying the torch to every building. The agent, Lund Washington, saved the property from destruction by
furnishing the enemy with a large quantity of supplies. When the general heard what his agent had done, he
wrote to him as follows:
"I am very sorry to hear of your loss; I am a little sorry to hear of my own; but that which gives me most
concern is, that you should go on board the enemy's vessels, and furnish them with refreshments. It would
have been a less painful circumstance to me to have heard that, in consequence of your non-compliance with
their request, they had burnt my house and laid the plantation in ruins."
In July, 1781, Washington planned an attack upon New York by the combined French and American forces.
But his purpose was suddenly changed by hearing that the portion of the French fleet at the West Indies, under
Count de Grasse, had sailed for the Chesapeake. Cornwallis was at Yorktown with his command, and his
capture would give the Americans an illustrious prisoner. General Lafayette, who had returned from France,
was in Virginia, looking after the British general as well as he could.
Immediately Washington put his army in motion for Virginia, leaving only troops enough to guard the passes
of the Hudson. He marched directly for Williamsburg, to join Lafayette. On his way he called at Mount
Vernon, from which he had been absent six years. "Here, unannounced, he darted into his home, like the first
sunbeam after a storm, only to disappear again under as black a cloud as any of those that had brought the
thunder. He had come but to tell his wife that he was on his way to seek a battle, an unequal though glorious
contest, from which he might never return."
Washington joined Lafayette at Williamsburg on the 14th of September. Hastily arranging the siege of
Yorktown, Cornwallis was surprised, one bright morning, to find that the heights around him were swarming
with American soldiers, and the bay in front securely occupied by the French fleet.
On the 6th of October the bombardment of the British works commenced with terrible earnestness. An eye
witness said:
"General Washington put the match to the first gun, and a terrible discharge of cannon and mortars