Independence - Yorktown

In October 1781, two armies closed a ring around a British force dug in at a Virginia tobacco port — and the American Revolution reached the field where it would be decided. This is the story of the siege of Yorktown: the parallels creeping closer night after night, the round-the-clock bombardment, and the midnight bayonet assault on Redoubts 9 and 10, where Alexander Hamilton’s light infantry went in with unloaded muskets and took the fort in the dark. It is the story of Cornwallis trapped with the sea at his back and no relief coming, his last escape scattered by a storm on the York River. And it is the surrender field on October 19th, where George Washington denied the British the honors of war they had denied Benjamin Lincoln at Charleston — colors cased, no victor’s tune — and directed the sword of a beaten British army into Lincoln’s own hands. A British army marched out and grounded its arms to an American one. To everyone who watched, it was exactly what the old tune said: the world turned upside down. The war was not over. But the news was already crossing the ocean toward London.