own boat’s crew as
prisoners of war!

André was brought to trial before fourteen general officers, among
whom were the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron Stuben, and was by all
the customs of war, and “according to the law and usage of nations,”
sentenced to be hanged. “His appeal to die by shooting rather than by
hanging was refused. As General Greene is reported to have said, to
have mitigated the sentence would have been to doubt its justice. So
he died the death of a spy, as from his own confession and action he
deserved, but he died bravely and calmly, like a gallant gentleman
of England.” No such death created more controversy, or raised more
hysterical sympathy. The whole business was bad, and André soiled his
hands in touching it at all, let alone the fact of his being in plain
clothes within the enemy’s lines, which at once placed him without
doubt in the position of a spy. His reasons for going there, assumed
to be patriotic, were largely personal, for promotion was to reward
success; and they have little to do with the matter. However good the
reasons, the means were vile; too vile even to justify the end.

Washington was censured severely for his severity at the time, but
no one now would blame him. He had his duty to his country to do,
and he did it. None the less, André’s bones were eventually moved to
Westminster Abbey, and a fulsome tablet records the manner of his death.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, Cornwallis in the Carolinas scored a victory at Guildford
Courthouse, where the Guards, the old 71st, and the 23rd and 33rd,
defeated an inferior force of militia and what were fast becoming
seasoned troops, but the task was too heavy for his strength. “My
cavalry,” he sadly writes, “wanted everything, and the infantry
everything but shoes.” So he marched, with sundry skirmishes of little
value in various places, north-east towards York Town, and Lord Rawdon,
who practically commanded the other wing, fell back south-east towards
Charleston, with the 3rd, 6