The Battle of Yorktown
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage

“General Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.” Actually Cornwallis did not personally surrender to General Washington, being “indisposed,” but Washington took no offense. He merely asked that the surrender by Brigadier General O'Hara be addressed to his deputy, General Benjamin Lincoln. The British army laid down its arms before the French and American troops, and the American Revoutionary war was, for all practical purposes, over., though the treaty ending the conflict was not signed until 1783. Courtesy of National Archives

The Battle of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781 effectively ended the American Revolution. Although the peace Treaty of Paris was not formally signed for two more years, the surrender of Cornwallis's army at Yorktown “turned the world upside down.”

The campaign was the culmination of cooperation between France and the young United States, without which the outcome of the revolution would certainly have been jeopardized. In the summer of 1781 Washington hoped to employ the French army under the Comte de Rochambeau, which had landed at Newport in 1780, in a joint expedition against New York City. Washington hoped to use the French West Indian fleet under the Comte de Grasse in the campaign as well. Meanwhile British troops in Virginia under Lord Cornwallis and Benedict Arnold, which had been gathered into a strength of about 7000, established a base at Yorktown where Cornwallis could maintain open communications with the British army in New York under General Clinton.

When Washington was informed that the French fleet would be available for operations in the Chesapeake area, and that Cornwallis was in Yorktown, he changed his objective from New York to Virginia. Washington began to march his army and Rochambeau's troops to Virginia, but at first he deployed his army in a manner that seemed to threaten New York to disguise his true intentions. While Washington and Rochambeau were marching southward, de Grasse's fleet arrived off Yorktown and fought a sharp battle with the Royal Navy under Admiral Thomas Graves, causing Graves to retreat toward New York.

Washington and Rochambeau's armies, which in combination heavily outnumbered the British, began the siege of Yorktown in late September, 1781. As Cornwallis shortened his lines, Washington's forces dug their way in closer and began pounding Cornwallis's Yorktown defenses with American and French heavy artillery. After an assault led by Colonel Alexander Hamilton had captured two strong points on the British line, and with the French rather than the Royal Navy off the coast, Cornwallis found himself in a hopeless position, and he opened negotiations with Washington. The formal terms of the surrender were signed, and on October 19, 1781, the British army laid down its arms. A week later General Clinton arrived with reinforcements for Cornwallis, but it was too late.

With the British having lost an entire army as well as having suffered defeats at sea to the French navy, Parliament decided not to prosecute the war any further and authorized the British government to begin to negotiate a settlement with the Americans. Lord North resigned, and peace talks began in Paris in April, 1782. American negotiators led by John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams negotiated a settlement that eventually led to the formal recognition of American independence with the Treaty of Paris. The victory at Yorktown had sealed the revolution once and for all and ended British rule in North America.

History 121 Part 1 | History 279