Eutaw Springs was the last major battlefield confrontation of the American Revolutionary War. But for all its ferocity it was a minor affair compared with the impending siege in Virginia. The allied army marched to Yorktown on September 28, in one long column, then split and encamped before the little town that night. The Americans assumed the traditional post of honor and seniority on the right, the French, as their auxiliaries, took the left. Despite the forces massing against him, Cornwallis remained optimistic of holding out until help arrived. His confidence was bolstered the next day, September 29, when he received a dispatch from Clinton. Sent five days earlier, this assured him that relief would soon be on its way. Sir Henry had met with Graves and his replacement, Vice Admiral Robert Digby, who’d arrived at New York on September 21 with another three ships of the line. Finally alert to the full danger facing Cornwallis, they had agreed that 5,000 troops should be embarked, and the “joint exertions of the navy and army” made to rescue him. The force should be ready to sail by October 5. Cornwallis immediately replied that Sir Henry’s letter had given him the “greatest satisfaction.” He added: “I shall retire this night within the works, and have no doubt, if relief arrives in any reasonable time, York and Gloucester will be both in possession of His Majesty’s troops.”57
Acting on Clinton’s pledge, Cornwallis promptly abandoned three outlying redoubts that buttressed the center of his position, so enabling him to deploy his diminishing manpower along a shorter defensive perimeter. Yet by giving up his first line without a fight, Cornwallis allowed his enemies to shave vital days off their schedule and to burrow forward to within effective artillery range far more swiftly than they had anticipated. Rather than approaching Yorktown’s fortifications by the customary triple line of trenches or “parallels,” as the methodical Clinton had done at Charleston, they would be able to get by with just two. In addition, as Washington reported in his diary, the evacuated British defenses proved “very serviceable” to the allies in coming days as they began their own works, reconnoitered the enemy’s lines, stockpiled stores, and brought up artillery.58
The Connecticut veteran Joseph Plumb Martin, who was now a sergeant in the army’s corps of sappers and miners, remembered that work on the first parallel commenced on October 6 —but only after Washington himself had “struck a few blows with a pickaxe.” This was, as Martin sardonically observed, “a mere ceremony, that it might be said ‘Gen. Washington, with his own hands first broke ground at the siege of Yorktown.’”59
Despite the defenders’ gunfire, the diggers made good progress in the light sandy soil. Three days later, on October 9, the first parallel had been established at a range of 600 yards from Yorktown’s ramparts, and the allied artillery batteries were ready for action. Washington’s role as supreme commander of the land forces was now acknowledged in another symbolic act: Dr. Thacher reported that he formally initiated the bombardment, putting a glowing portfire to the touch hole of the first gun to be fired, at which “a furious discharge of cannon and mortars immediately followed.”60
The French and American gunners subjected Yorktown’s defenders to a remorseless pounding. Rochambeau was an old hand at sieges—according to Closen, this was his fifteenth; but it was only Washington’s second, and in scale and intensity it bore little resemblance to Boston in 1775–76, which had been more like a blockade until Henry Knox’s guns arrived from Ticonderoga. Washington was clearly fascinated by what he now witnessed, especially the expertise of the gunners. In his diary he noted how accurate cannon fire subdued the enemy’s batteries, allowing the mortars to lob in their shells with devastating effect. Baron von Closen maintained that the French gun crews were “so skilled and sure in their aim that they used to wager that they could hit the same embrasure”—the narrow opening from which guns were fired—“six times in succession. General Washington often admired their ability.”61
James Thacher was awestruck by the sheer spectacle of the “tremendous and incessant” bombardment. On October 10, the French surpassed themselves when they used forge-heated cannonballs—“red hot shot”—to burn a British forty-four-gun ship, HMS Charon, and three transports anchored in the York River. “I had a fine view of this splendid conflagration,” Dr. Thacher wrote.
The ships were enwrapped in a torrent of fire, which spreading with vivid brightness among the combustible rigging, and running with amazing rapidity to the tops of the several masts, while all around was thunder and lightning from our numerous cannon and mortars, and in the darkness of the night, presented one of the most sublime and magnificent spectacles which can be imagined.
During daylight, the shells from the mortars were clearly visible as black balls, but at night they became “like fiery meteors with blazing tails,” appearing “most beautifully brilliant” before descending “to execute their work of destruction.” Thacher shared Washington’s admiration for the technical proficiency of the gunners, who could calculate that a shell would “fall within a few feet of a given point, and burst at the precise time, though at a great distance.” Such blasts caused “dreadful havoc” among the defenders, sending body parts spinning far up into the air. The deadly traffic was not all one way: on duty in the trenches, the doctor was kept busy ministering to his comrades: more than a dozen were killed or wounded on one day alone.
As the specialist engineers and artillerists went about their business Washington and many of his officers became little more than bystanders. Yet even a static siege could provide a stage for the displays of cool courage in which they delighted. By visiting the trenches, Washington showed his men that he was sharing their dangers; in his journal Dr. Thacher recorded how, during a considerable “cannonading from the enemy, one shot killed three men, and mortally wounded another.” The chaplain of Thacher’s regiment, the Reverend Evans, was standing close to Washington when another shot hit the ground nearby, showering his hat with sand. Evans, who was “much agitated” by this near miss, doffed his hat and showed it to Washington, exclaiming, “See here, General!” With his “usual composure,” Washington had replied: “Mr. Evans, you had better carry that home and show it to your wife and children.”62
Washington’s presence in the front lines was also recalled by Sarah Osborn, a cook and washerwoman whose husband was a commissary sergeant in the 3rd New York Regiment. At Yorktown, Sarah regularly braved the British batteries to bring up the rations she had cooked for her husband and his comrades as they toiled in the trenches. On one occasion “she met General Washington, who asked her if she ‘was not afraid of the cannonballs.’” As a veteran of the Continental Army, and clearly at ease in the presence of “His Excellency,” Sarah had chaffed back that she couldn’t let the bullets “cheat the gallows”; besides, “It would not do for the men to fight and starve too.”63 As both she and Washington knew only too well, many of the Continentals now besieging Yorktown had done precisely that many times before.
By October 12, work had begun on the allies’ second “parallel,” within only 300 yards of the British lines. For the work to progress it was necessary to eliminate two redoubts that outflanked it on the right. It was agreed that both should be stormed on the night of October 14. French grenadiers and chasseurs were given the task of assaulting the larger of the strongpoints, “Redoubt No 9,” while the Continental Light Infantry were allocated “No 10.” Lafayette was in overall command of the American operation and gave responsibility for leading the attack to his aide-de-camp and fellow countryman the Chevalier de Gimat. Washington’s former aide Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton objected to this: on grounds of seniority, the honor belonged to him, not Gimat, he argued. After examining the dates of the rival claimants’ commissions, Washington—who had long believed in strict military protocol—ruled in Hamilton’s favor.64
As Washington reported to Congress, both the French and Americans secured their objectives with “firmness and bravery”; carrying unloaded muskets, the troops “effected the business with the bayonet only.”65 In fact, t
he French had been obliged to load and open fire: they’d taken heavy casualties as they waited for ax-wielding pioneers to hack a path through the stout wooden palisade that surrounded their objective; the Americans, who simply tore down the obstructions with their bare hands, suffered just nine killed and thirty-two wounded—about a third of the French losses.66
Alexander Hamilton was unscathed, although having just recently married he clearly felt a pang of guilt at the dangers he’d needlessly courted. Two days later, he wrote to his wife, Elizabeth, seeking to justify the behavior that could easily have left her prematurely widowed: “My honor obliged me to take a step in which your happiness was too much risked,” he explained. Hamilton reassured his bride: “There will be, certainly, nothing more of this kind.” Honor had now been satisfied and, with the exploit duly reported “in the Philadelphia papers,” properly recognized.67
Washington’s own rank and responsibilities barred him from participating in such overtly aggressive displays, but he continued to find other ways to demonstrate his sangfroid in the face of the enemy. Soon after the storming of the redoubts, a young Virginian soldier laboring on the siege lines witnessed “a deed of personal daring and coolness in General Washington which he never saw equaled.” John Suddarth, who was sixteen at the time, recalled that this occurred when the British unleashed “a tremendous cannonade” in a desperate effort to demolish the besiegers’ steadily encroaching works. Noticing activity in the British lines, and determined to establish exactly what was happening, Washington took his telescope and climbed up onto the “highest, most prominent, and most exposed point of our fortifications.” There, as Suddarth remembered, he “stood exposed to the enemy’s fire, where shot seemed flying almost as thick as hail and were instantly demolishing portions of the embankment around him.” Washington stayed put for ten or fifteen minutes, despite the repeated efforts of his aides to coax him back under cover: they “were remonstrating with him with all their earnestness against this exposure of his person and once or twice drew him down.” They were “severely reprimanded” for their trouble, and Washington resumed his place until he was completely satisfied.68
Cornwallis’s own position under the allies’ bombardment was now growing increasingly hopeless: on the night of October 15, a spirited sortie to spike enemy guns in the advanced batteries brought only temporary respite, and a last-ditch attempt to break out by ferrying his garrison across the river to Gloucester was stymied by a storm. On October 17, Cornwallis bowed to the inevitable and proposed a negotiation of terms; two days later it was agreed that the garrison must surrender themselves as prisoners of war.
All shipping, weapons, stores, and money were to be handed over to the victors; officers could keep their swords, while all ranks were allowed their “baggage and effects”—with the exception of “property taken in the country.”69
Such “property” embraced former slaves who had thrown in their lot with the British. They included eighteen-year-old Barnard E. Griffiths, a “negro man” and “laborer” born at Charleston who’d joined the British forces besieging the city in 1780 and enlisted in the Queen’s Rangers. According to his colonel, John Graves Simcoe, not only was he “very useful as a guide” but he served as a dragoon. Indeed, Griffiths was “frequently distinguished for his bravery and activity,” particularly at the skirmish near Spencer’s Ordinary, where he had fought hand to hand with a French officer and in a subsequent charge against the rebel infantry “by his gallantry preserved the life of his captain and was severely wounded.” When Yorktown surrendered, Simcoe successfully interceded with Baron Steuben to ensure that Griffiths “might not risk the hazard of being sent prisoner into the country.” The extraordinary efforts taken by an officer and gentleman like Simcoe on behalf of a former slave testify not only to his own enlightened humanity, but to the powerful bonds of comradeship; like the friendship between the Mohawk Joseph Brant and English aristocrat General Lord Percy, they also demonstrate the potential of a shared warrior’s code to surmount barriers of class and race.70
Sir Henry Clinton’s promised help for Cornwallis had never arrived, although here at least he was not to blame: Graves’s naval repairs had progressed with agonizing slowness. Waiting to embark at New York to make a “spirited exertion for the relief of Lord Cornwallis,” on October 6, Captain Peebles of the 42nd already knew that “the fate of America” was probably hanging in the balance; despite that, ten days later, when a desperate plea for help arrived from Cornwallis, the “Navy people” were still dragging their feet: it was October 19 before the fleet left port.71
That same day, Yorktown’s defenders marched out to lay down their arms. Pleading an indisposition, Cornwallis delegated the duty of surrendering to his subordinate, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, who had led the Brigade of Guards throughout the bloody southern campaign. Firsthand accounts of what happened next disagree over details, especially the mood of the key players, but the following sequence is as plausible as any: O’Hara at first rode up to Rochambeau to formally surrender his sword, apparently because he was confused rather than seeking to deliberately snub Washington; at this, a French officer, Comte Mathieu Dumas, indicated the rightful recipient; taking off his hat, O’Hara apologized to Washington for Cornwallis’s absence; as etiquette required that Washington refuse to accept the surrender of an officer of inferior rank, he in turn politely directed O’Hara to his own second in command, Major General Lincoln, the same officer who’d been obliged to capitulate at Charleston; Dumas recalled that Washington had softened his rejection of the proffered weapon with the words “Never from so gallant a hand.”72 Such magnanimity in the moment of victory, particularly toward a respected fellow soldier like O’Hara, would certainly have been more characteristic of Washington than the studied disdain with which he has sometimes been credited by later writers, and more in keeping with the courtesy enshrined in the Rules of Civility that he had transcribed as a teenager.
With O’Hara and Lincoln now riding at their head, the long column of vanquished British and German veterans marched out down a corridor formed by the victors: ragtag Americans to their left, pristine French on the right. Sarah Osborn left her cooking and washing to watch the procession. Although she didn’t know his name, Sarah never forgot Brigadier O’Hara’s “full face” or the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Perhaps the tough Irishman wept from sheer shame at the British Army’s humiliation; more likely he was remembering his son Augustus, a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery killed six months earlier at Guilford Court House; O’Hara himself had been severely wounded in that same terrible fight. Now, as the survivors of Cornwallis’s army marched out to surrender, such sacrifices must have seemed all too pointless.73
The precise terms of the capitulation reflected those imposed upon Lincoln’s men at Charleston, deliberately withholding some of the traditional honors of war: Yorktown’s defenders were required to keep their regimental colors cased rather than flying bravely on the breeze, while the drummers and fifers, whose instruments were decked in black cloth as if for a funeral, were denied the privilege of playing one of the victors’ tunes and restricted to a British or German march. According to a hallowed story, which has never been satisfactorily verified or debunked, they chose the melody of a popular, and singularly apt, English song: “The World Turned Upside Down.” If, as has been suggested by music historians, the tune was identical to that of an older song, “When the King Enjoys His Own Again,” the choice was both wistful and defiant.74
Arriving at the field appointed for their formal surrender, the British and Hessians relinquished their weapons. It was now, “the last act of the drama,” as Dr. Thacher styled it, “that the spirit and pride of the British soldier was put to the severest test, here their mortification could not be concealed.” Indeed, the redcoats’ platoon officers seemed chagrined when giving the command to “ground arms,” and their men only did so in a “sullen temper,” throwing down their muskets with violence. Such truculence is scarcely s
urprising: for many of Cornwallis’s men, it was their first defeat at rebel hands. Malcolm McKenzie and Neill Thomson of the 71st Highlanders were typical. As their pension applications testified, before “at last being taken prisoner with Lord Cornwallis,” both had already helped to win an impressive string of victories at Long Island, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Briers Creek, Camden, Guilford Court House, Jamestown Point, the capture and defense of Savannah, and the taking of Charleston, along with “numberless petty skirmishes too tedious to mention.”75
Thacher, who had joined the American army besieging Thomas Gage’s redcoats at Boston in 1775 and tended the war’s casualties ever since, clearly found the surrender of McKenzie, Thomson, and their surly comrades a moment to savor. For George Washington, commander of the Continental Army throughout those six long years of danger, hardship, and frustration, the thronged field outside the battered Virginian town must likewise have offered a supremely satisfying sight: nothing less than the humbling of the proud military organization that had rejected his youthful advances during the 1750s and inflicted humiliating defeats upon him twenty years later.
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