M'Fingal

17 January 1781

Battle of Cowpens

NOTES. 279

280 NOTES.

' Had you looked behind you at the battle of the
Cowpens, you might have seen him," retorted the
lady. Having remarked to her sister, ': I under
stand this Colonel AVashington cannot write his
name," glancing at Tarle ton's scarred hand, the
lady instantly replied, " You will acknowledge
that he knows how to make his mark."

34 General Greene, who succeeded General Gates
in the command of the Southern Army, was suc
cessful during the spring and summer of 1781, in
gradually driving the British toward the seaboard.
Marching slowly down the Santee, he fell upon
the British at Eutaw Springs, on the morning of
the 8th of September. A bloody battle ensued,
in which neither party gained an absolute victory.
It was disastrous to both, but especially so to the
British. Although they held the field at the end
of the conflict, they immediately abandoned it, and
fled percipitately toward Charleston.

15 March 1781

Battle of Guilford Court House

NOTES. 183

1 86 NOTES.

40 Lord North, Earl of Guilford, became First
Lord of the Treasury, or Prime Minister of
England, in 1770, and continued in that important
office until 1782. He was a well-meaning man,
but lacked the better qualities of a great stutes-
man ; and by his official blunders, obstinacy, and
unwise measures, he was chiefly instrumental in
alienating the loyalty of the American people,
and in causing and protracting their armed strug
gle for independence. He was blind for some
years before his death, which occurred in July,
1792, when he was sixty years of age. See note
157, Canto IV.

41 This is in allusion to the measure known as
the Quebec Act, in the spring of 1774, which
established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada.
When the British ministry perceived the general
disaffection in the American colonies, and the
probability that the important province of Canada
would join in the revolt, this conciliatory measure
toward the lloman Catholic population there, was
intended to prevent such a result. The cry of
" No Popery " was then very popular in England,
and the Quebec Act deeply offended public senti
ment there, and in America. The title here
given to the central Papal authority is derived
from the 17th chapter of Revclaiions.

NOTES. 307

19 In allusion to Tryon's marauding expeditions
already referred to.

110 After the defeat of Gates near Camden, in
August, 1780, General Nathaniel Greene was ap
pointed to the command of the Southern army.
He soon gathered a considerable force, took post
at Cheraw on the east, and on the Broad River ou
the west, and prepared to reclaim the Carolinas.
He was, however, compelled to flee before Corn-
wallis to Virginia, early in 1781. Greene re
mained in Virginia only long enough to refresh
his troops and receive recruits, when he again
entered North Carolina. The decisive battle at
Guilford Court- House, in which Cornwallis was
victor, so far as maintaining the field was con-

NOTES. 309

NOTES. 317

" A lady pawns her jewels by her maid,
And in declining stock presumes to trade,
Till in South Sea at length she drowns her coin,
And now in Bristol stones glad is to shine."

50 The infancy of modern chemistry, assumed
the charlatan form of Alchemy, or the pretence of
transmuting baser metals into gold. It was pre
tended that a certain powder, known to chemists,
would convert base metals into gold ; and many
men have wasted their lives in attempts to dis
cover this philosopher's stone, as that powder was
called. At about 1782, Dr. Price, of Guilford,
England, professed to have made the discovery,
and carried specimens of his gold to the king, af
firming that it was made by means of a red and
white powder. He was a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and was required, on pain of expulsion,
to repeat his experiments before a committee of
that body. After some equivocation, he committed
suicide by the use of poison, in 1783. The Phi
losopher's stone may be ranked with Perpetual
motion, the Inextinguishable lamp, the Quadra
ture of the circle, and other impossibilities, which
have puzzled and deranged the brains of other
wise sensible men.

151 The name of Midas appears among the earli
est mythological legends of the Greeks, as king