294 ' SOLDIERS AND SAILORS Lafayette. This he did at Fredericksburg in June. The enemy seemed intent upon destroying all military stores they could reach, and for this purpose contin- ually sent raiding parties through the State. The efforts of Wayne were ever put forth to suppress these raids. Believing, on July 6, 1 781, that Cornvvallis's forces were divided by the James River, Wayne was sent forward to attack them at Green Springs. He found a great force of the British Army in his front. Too late to retreat, Wayne with true soldierly instinct, having faith in the courage and discipline of his men, boldly charged a force five times as, large as his own, threw them into disorder and safely brought his men away under cover of the enemy's confusion. Cornwallis hastened to Yorktown, the investiture and siege of which Wayne aided in furthering, first, by occupying the ground south of the James River to prevent the enemy's reaching North Carolina ; and then in opening the first par- allel with six regiments on October 6, 1781. A few days afterward he, with two battalions, covered the Pennsylvania and Maryland troops while they began the second parallel. Wayne, with the Pennsylvania regiments, supported the French troops in the attack of the 14th, and was present at the surrender on the 19th. Notwithstanding a wound in the fleshy part of the leg, early in the siege, caused by a sentry mistaking him, Wayne remained active, and participated in the glory of the capture of Cornwallis and his army. This operation over, Wayne joined , the army of General Nathaniel Greene, in South Carolina, in January, 1782, and was instrumental in quelling the disturbances in that section. A very large force of Indians threatened the destruction of his command on the night of June 23, 1782. These Indians were skilfully handled by a noted Creek Chief, as well as by a British officer. They surrounded Wayne's forces and held his artillery. Wayne fiercely attacked, using only the bayonet, and so impetuous was his onslaught, that he broke the lines of the Indians, and routed them completely. The dead body of the Creek leader, who, it is said, was felled by Wayne's own sword, was found on the ground the next day. Wayne commanded the forces that took possession of Savannah and Charles- ton, after their evacuation by the British. Having freed the South from all ma- rauders, Wayne returned, much shattered in health from the effect of a low fever, to his old home in Pennsylvania, and settled down to civil life, desiring, as he puts it, "to pass many happy hours in domestic felicity with a few of our friends, unfettered by any public employ and consequently unenvied." He was, however, made a member of the Council of Censors, and in i 784 represented his county in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. He was likewise, in 1787, a mem- ber of the Convention of the State called to ratify the Constitution of the United States. To better look after an estate given him by the State of Georgia, in recog- nition of the services he rendered that State, Wayne settled there, and was elected a member of Congress on January 3, 1791. lie served from October, 1791, to March, 1792, when, a contest being made, Congress decided his election illegal and declared his seat vacant. Almost immediately after this action, on April 3,
