Battle of Yorktown (1781)

After the American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, the fledgling United States was finally recognized by France, followed soon thereafter by Spain and the Netherlands. This recognition, and the alliance that came with it, gave the American rebels the material resources necessary to match the moral resources displayed by such leaders as George Washington. In the summer of 1778, Washington’s forces reoccupied Philadelphia after British forces under General William Howe were ordered back to New York City. Howe’s removal from command soon thereafter brought his subordinate, General Henry Clinton, into power.

Clinton had to this point shown no indication that he would aggressively pursue the war against the Americans. Instead, he spent most of his time fortifying New York City against the attack he was convinced Washington was going to launch. Thus, for the two years following the rebels’ reoccupation of Philadelphia, the war remained rather low-key. In the summer of 1780 Clinton attempted to conspire with disaffected American General Benedict Arnold to acquire the major American fort at West Point on the Hudson River. That effort failed and Clinton spent his time improving his defenses. In the meantime, Washington spent his time trying to improve the caliber of the Continental Army, equip it with the supplies arriving from Europe, and begin planning with the French forces arriving under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau.

As Washington was focusing on organizational concerns in the northern states (Rhode Island and Connecticut), Clinton decided to refocus the British effort. To this point they had been singularly unsuccessful in any strategy to defeat the Revolution. They had been unable to split the colonies by controlling the Hudson River during Burgoyne’s 1777 Saratoga campaign, nor were they able to accomplish the same purpose by dealing with Arnold. Howe’s attempt to crush the uprising by capturing Philadelphia had proven likewise unproductive. Since capturing New York City in the late summer of 1776, the British war effort had for the most part gone nowhere. Therefore, Clinton decided to shift arenas. Instead of fighting in the north, where revolutionary fervor was the greatest, he sent forces to the southern states, where the percentage of loyalists was much higher. By occupying these states, he could roll the Revolution up from the south, isolating the Continental Army in the north. In order to implement this new strategy, Clinton sent Lord Cornwallis to South Carolina in the summer of 1780. His orders were to take advantage of the loyalist population and occupy the Carolinas and Virginia. The loyalists would, he thought, be able to provide manpower and supplies to make this job relatively simple. Further, the revolutionaries had few troops in the southern states, so fighting would be minimal. From the start this plan went wrong. The landing near Charleston was not too difficult and Cornwallis was able to force the rebels under General Benjamin Lincoln to give up Charleston. However, as the occupation took place fires broke out in the city, although who was responsible has never been determined. Still, it was an inauspicious beginning.

Next, Cornwallis refused to follow Clinton’s directives to make maximum use of local support. Instead, he often rebuffed attempts by South Carolinians to join or assist his army. Cornwallis began making enemies of friends, just as Burgoyne had done in upstate New York when he employed Indians and Hessians against the population there. As Cornwallis was settling in, area revolutionary forces began operations. Small groups of militia under commanders such as Francis Marion harassed British outposts and supply trains. They provoked harsh responses from Cornwallis and his subordinates, which also served to alienate local support.

Cornwallis marched out of Charleston convinced that he could easily occupy the Carolinas. The Continental Congress dispatched Horatio Gates to command the revolutionary forces, but he immediately lost a key battle at Camden, South Carolina. Recalled by the government, Washington replaced Gates with Nathaniel Greene, whose ingenuity was well suited to the guerrilla warfare he needed to conduct against Cornwallis.

There were occasional firefights or skirmishes through the winter of 1780–1781, but nothing decisive for either army. Cut off from his base of operations, Cornwallis had to live off the countryside, and his high-handed attitude and use of Hessians in requisitioning supplies did nothing to endear him to the people. When he did call for loyalists to join his army, they responded in smaller numbers than he had expected. Greene on the other hand tried to pay for supplies, although all he had were IOUs of dubious value from the Continental Congress. Still, it was better treatment than the British were displaying. The British Army grew ragged and frustrated as supplies became more difficult to acquire; Cornwallis marched to Wilmington, North Carolina, to resupply and pick up reinforcements.

From Wilmington Cornwallis marched into Virginia in the spring of 1781. British forces under turncoat Benedict Arnold had been operating there for a few months, but with little positive effect. After a few more months of circuitous marching and little concrete results, Cornwallis marched to the coast. He had been ordered by Clinton to establish a base for the Royal Navy to bring in more men and supplies, and Cornwallis began building facilities at Yorktown, on a peninsula flanked by the York and James rivers.

In the meantime, Washington had convinced the reluctant Rochambeau to aid him in an assault on New York City. Washington’s plan called for the French fleet in the Caribbean to bottle up the Royal Navy in New York harbor while the Franco-American army forced their way through Clinton’s defenses. Rochambeau warned Admiral de Grasse that he disliked this plan and preferred operating in the south. Admiral de Grasse complied with Rochambeau’s wishes, telling Washington that the French fleet would go no farther north than the Chesapeake. That information, plus his own intelligence concerning the strength of the British defensive positions, convinced Washington to accede to Rochambeau’s suggestion for a campaign in Virginia.

Washington was aided at this point by what, under other circumstances, would seem to be a severe misfortune. He had sent details of his plans for an attack on New York City to his friend the Marquis de Lafayette, commanding troops in Virginia. The British had captured that letter, however, and Clinton was preparing for the assault he now knew was coming. Washington, who began disseminating disinformation, further convinced Clinton that an attack was imminent. When French forces demonstrated near New York, covering Washington’s passage into New Jersey, Clinton braced for an assault that never came. By the time he realized there would be no attack, both Washington and Rochambeau were well on their way to Virginia.

Cut off from any serious hope of relief, unable to withstand the bombardment, unable to maintain his troops with the winter approaching, Cornwallis had no choice but to surrender. He proposed that he and his men be paroled, on condition of not taking up arms in America again, but Washington demanded surrender as prisoners of war. On the 19th Cornwallis’ second in command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, rode out at the head of 6,000 men to surrender. The march from Yorktown to Washington’s headquarters was certainly the longest the surrendering soldiers ever took, for it was gross humiliation to be defeated by colonials. O’Hara tried at first to surrender to Rochambeau, but that attempt at avoiding the Americans in favor of a fellow-European failed. When he offered his sword to Washington, he was again rebuffed. As second in command, he had to surrender to Washington’s second in command, Benjamin Lincoln.

Cornwallis and Clinton spent the next months and years blaming each other for the disaster. Clinton got the worst of it, and his career was ruined. Cornwallis was received in England as a hero and went on to redeem himself in an outstanding performance in India soon afterward. The English public was tired of the war by this time. When the news of Yorktown reached London, the government was unable to survive. In the spring of 1782 the newly elected leadership offered to negotiate a peace and talks began in Paris in September. They went on for a year before the Treaty of Paris of 1783 was signed. In this the London government recognized American independence, established the borders of the United States as the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes to the northern border of Florida. In return for assistance rendered the Revolution by the Spanish (particularly their governor in New Orleans Bernardo De Galvez) the Spanish received Florida, which they had surrendered to the English in the Treaty of Paris 1763 at the end of the French and Indian/Seven Years War.

The defeat at Yorktown ended the British experience in America, although they maintained the colony of Canada. They tried in Paris to claim all the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains, which would have limited U.S. expansion severely for decades. Hostilities between the two nations did not end, however, for the British were slow to abandon some of their forts in the Great Lakes region and even slower to give the fledgling country any respect on the high seas. Restrictive trade practices between 1805 and 1812 led to a second war between the Americans and the British, after which relations eased considerably. Had Cornwallis escaped the Yorktown peninsula prior to Washington’s arrival in late September he would have delayed the end of the war for a time, but the length of the war and its interminable drain on the British economy and psyche almost certainly would have brought about a similar end to the war before long. Without Cornwallis’ defeat, however, the American bargaining position in London would have been considerably weaker and the conditions gained in the treaty may well have restricted American growth for a long time to come.

The French effort in the Yorktown campaign cannot be overemphasized, and the results of the war were felt there as well. The huge expenditures King Louis XVI had spent in behalf of the United States sapped the nation’s treasury. The increasingly bad economy that resulted, in addition to the philosophy of liberty that many of the French soldiers embraced in America, led to their own revolution in 1789. Louis succeeded in harming his old enemy England, but ultimately paid for that success with his throne and his life.

While American forces under Greene and Lafayette kept an eye on Cornwallis, a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse was sailing north from the Caribbean. It arrived in late August at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Clinton in New York had heard reports of this, but dismissed them as rumors. Once the report was confirmed a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves sailed for the Chesapeake. There he found twenty-four French ships of the line, outnumbering his own nineteen. On 5 September the two fleets engaged, with de Grasse positioning himself in such a way as to deny the British access into the bay. After a few hours of cannonade, the British received the worst of the damage. Although they remained in the neighborhood for another three days, when Graves sailed for New York to repair his damaged ships he signed the death warrant of Cornwallis’s force.

When Washington and Rochambeau arrived and joined forces with Lafayette, their combined force numbered almost 16,000, more than twice that of Cornwallis. They began digging trenches that slowly but surely inched their way toward the redoubts around which the British were basing the defense of their position. With superior numbers and artillery, the Americans were able to severely punish the defenders, who could do little to respond. The constant pressure proved too much for the British to withstand. Cornwallis attempted an escape across the York River, but was undone by bad weather. On the night of 15 October the two British redoubts were attacked. The French took the larger one after a short but intense fight; the Americans took the smaller one in ten minutes with few casualties.

Although Cornwallis ordered a raid on the new rebel positions, it was too little and too late. On 17 October he asked for surrender terms. He had held his position on the assumption that Clinton was sending reinforcements from New York. How they would break through the French fleet is a matter of conjecture, but Graves was prepared to give battle a second time. When he finally set sail from New York harbor it was 17 October.