These two volumes relating to the military controversy between Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis will be found a valuable contribution to the history of the American campaign of 1781, by which the independence of the United States was virtually secured. They comprise: -
1. Reprints of five exceedingly rare pamphlets on the Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy, published in London in 1783, and a sixth with the official correspondence between these commanders, privately printed at New York in 1781. These six pamphlets are of such rarity that only one library, that of the Department of State at Washington, possesses all of them, and of the 'Parting Word' no other copy is known. All were purchased at the auction sales of two portions of Sir Henry Clinton's library in 1882 and 1884.
2. Innumerable important and hitherto unpublished Manuscript Notes made by Sir Henry Clinton in many separate copies of the pamphlets and in other books.
3. The full text of the omitted portions of the one hundred and eighty-three documents in the six pamphlets, now for the first time published, en tire whenever possible, from the manuscripts in the Public Record Office, the Royal Institution, the House of Lords, the bureaux des Affaires Etrangeres, de la Marine, and de la Guerre, Paris, and in the private collections of the Marquis of Lansdowne, Mrs. Stopford Sackville, and Lord Auckland.
4. A supplement containing: - a. Extracts from the Journals of the House of Lords from 27 Nov. 1781, to 6 March 1782.
