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A taste of
history… 234 Years
By Susan Olling
While 1781 had not opened terribly well for the American cause, by the
summer and fall there were developments in tidewater Virginia.
Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, had moved his army from
Wilmington, North Carolina to Yorktown, Virginia. A smaller
garrison was posted across the river in Gloucester.
General Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau received news that a
French fleet would be sailing to Chesapeake Bay. The armies
started a four-hundred mile march to Virginia that summer. The
Marquis de Lafayette and his army would be waiting in Williamsburg.
The French and British fleets met off Chesapeake Bay in
September. The British fleet went back to New York leaving the
French in control of the Chesapeake. The outcome of the Battle of
the Capes determined Lord Cornwallis’s fate. His army was trapped
in Yorktown unless it could get across the river to Gloucester. A
storm blew in that ended the attempt to escape across the York.
When the Allied armies arrived just outside Yorktown, they started
digging in for a siege. General Washington was in overall
command, but Rochambeau was the expert at siege warfare. The
first trench was dug, the artillery put into place, and firing into
Yorktown started on 09 October. Two days later, the second siege
line was started. Civilians who chose to stay in Yorktown were in
just as much danger as the troops. Food supplies for the humans
and forage for the horses began to run short. Horses were killed,
and their carcasses floated in the river. On 10 October,
the French started firing hot shot (cannonballs heated red hot) at the
British ships in the river. Very dangerous for the French gun
crews, but if a ball was well aimed or the gun crew was lucky, a ball
could enter a ship’s powder magazine and completely destroy the
vessel.
In order to finish the second siege line to the river’s edge, the
Allies had to capture Redoubts 9 and 10. They were attacked on
the night of 14 October. In less than thirty minutes, the French
captured Redoubt 9; and the Americans captured Redoubt 10. The
firing into Yorktown continued.
On 17 October, Cornwallis sent a letter to General Washington
requesting a twenty-four-hour cease fire to propose terms for
surrender. The General agreed to a cease fire but gave the Earl
just two hours after the delivery of Washington’s reply to propose
surrender terms. Not enough time, evidently, but the Earl
responded with terms. The British troops would go back to Britain
and the Germans to Germany. They would keep their personal
possessions. The Loyalists would be treated properly.
General Washington countered: the armies would become prisoners of war
(Fort Frederick in Maryland was one of the places where these troops
were held.), and they could keep their possessions. Military
supplies would be turned over to the Allies. Disposition of the
Loyalists would not be part of the surrender. Cornwallis had two
hours to respond. There weren’t many options for the Earl: accept
Washington’s terms, or the Allied artillery would resume firing.
Yorktown, by this time, was in ruins. The Earl accepted the terms.
On 19 October, the British and German troops in Yorktown started their
march to the Surrender Field. As they marched down the Hampton
Road, French troops were on one side, and Americans were on the
other. The British were a pretty sullen bunch by the time the
march was over. Lord Cornwallis did not appear due to
illness. His second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, rode up
to the French and offered his sword to Rochambeau. The Comte
nodded toward General Washington. O’Hara rode over and offered
his sword to Washington. General Benjamin Lincoln, who had to
surrender his army in Charleston, South Carolina, accepted O’Hara’s
sword instead. The Gloucester garrison surrendered at about the
same time on 19 October.
We see the surrender at Yorktown as the end of the American
Revolution. Those living in 1781 did not. But the surrender
of a second British army in North America helped bring down the British
government, and the new government sued for peace. Two years
later, in 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed formally ending the
American Revolution.
Yorktown is my favorite park in the National Park Service system.
When you’re finished at the park, leave your car and walk to the
town. The Thomas Nelson House, part of the park and Cornwallis’s
headquarters, survived the bombardment.
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