Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Battle of Yorktown

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

In 1781, after six years of fighting, the American Revolution came to a dramatic conclusion.  One of the two major British armies in the conflict found themselves trapped on a peninsula near Yorktown, Virginia.  A combination of American and French forces laid siege to the British at Yorktown in what turned out to be the war's final battle. Learn more about the Battle of Yorktown and how cliched American independence on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1781, after six years of fighting, the American Revolution came to a dramatic conclusion. One of the two major British armies in the conflict found themselves trapped on a peninsula near Yorktown, Virginia. A combination of American and French forces laid siege to the British at Yorktown in what turned out to be the war's final battle. Learn more about the battle of Yorktown and how it clinched American independence on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

If you could have given odds at the start of the American Revolution, I wouldn't have given the Americans less than a 10% chance of gaining independence. The British had a better trained and equipped army. They had more experienced officers. They had the world's most powerful Navy, and they had way more money. The Americans didn't have that professional army. Their commanders didn't have much military experience. And most of all, they were basically broke. Their biggest asset was having home field advantage and a large distance between themselves and Britain. Despite some initial success at the start of the war at the siege of Boston, things did not go well for the Americans after that. The Battle of Long Island was an almost complete disaster that would have ended the entire revolution just a month after the Declaration of Independence.

After the Battle of Long Island, Washington, at the behest of General Nathaniel Green, adopted a Fabian strategy of playing defense and trying not to lose. And here I'll refer you back to my episode on the Fabian strategy. Washington, for the most part, avoided any large confrontations with the British that he couldn't win, and this went on for several years. By the summer of 1781, the situation on the ground had changed considerably. For starters, the British Army began campaigning in the South. For the most part, the fighting in the war up until this point had been in the north.

The head of the British forces in the South, Lord Charles Cornwallis, had captured the cities and perhaps most importantly the ports of Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. After his victories at Charleston and Savannah, he began pursuing General Nathaniel Green, who always managed to stay one step ahead. Further north, the Americans finally got some reinforcements from France. The Comp de Rochambeau landed with a force of 5,500 French soldiers in Newport, Rhode Island. The rest of the British forces were in New York City, under the command of General Henry Clinton, who was the overall commander of the British during the war.

Washington was in the north with his army with Rochambe, and his plan was to team up with the French troops in an assault on New York City. However, Washington met resistance from both his officers and the French regarding his plan. Rochambeau told Washington that the French fleet, under the leadership, of the Comp de Gras was going to be sailing north from the Caribbean, and the better plan would be to attack Cornwallis's forces in the south. Washington was convinced and planned a ruse. He would fool Henry Clinton in New York by creating a large camp which was easily in sight. He built large bread ovens, which gave off smoke, and created fake documents indicating that he was intending to invade New York later that year. What he really did was march most of his force down south, along with the

French. The area which was shaping up to be the battleground was Virginia. Earlier in 1781, the trader Benedict Arnold led a small British force that landed in Portsmouth and then went inland to raid Richmond. General Cornwallis was coming north to Virginia with his army after a difficult victory at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. Washington had already sent the County Lafayette to deal with Arnold's forces in Virginia. When Cornwallis arrived in Virginia, he took control over all the forces in the area. The order he received from General Clinton, who was his superior, was to go to Yorktown, which was a port that was used for exporting tobacco. And Yorktown, it should be noted, sits on a peninsula. Cornwallis began constructing

a large defensive fortification. He built ten small forts known as redoubts. The redoubts were earthen structures with wooden palisades, and they were connected by trenches to allow units to move between the redoubts without getting shot. Cornwallis knew the position he was in was perilous. He had about 9,000 men, both British redcoats and German mercenaries, and needed reinforcements. He sent word to General Clinton, who promised to send him 5,000 additional troops. Washington and Rochambeau, along with the American forces already in Virginia, under the leadership of the Marquis de Lafayette, arrived in Williamsburg on September 13th, just 13 miles from Yorktown. The most important thing at this point, however, weren't the actual forces on the ground.

The week before on September 5th, the promise Comte de Gras and the... French fleet had arrived in the Chesapeake Bay. They encountered the British fleet, which was sailing south to relieve Cornwallis under the leadership of the British Admiral Thomas Graves. They fought what became known as the Battle of the Chesapeake. The French fleet had a slight numerical advantage of 24 ships to the British 19. The resulting sea battle was by no means conclusive, but it was enough to keep the British fleet and reinforcements away from Yorktown. Most people have never heard of the Battle of the Chesapeake, yet it was the most critical naval battle of the war, which made the victory at Yorktown possible. If the British reinforcements

and naval guns had arrived, it probably would have turned the tide of the battle. Back on land, Washington's forces began to dig a massive trench, 2,000 yards long, and about 800 yards in the front of the British redouts. Washington's side consisted of American regulars, American militia, French regulars, and some Germans of their own, as well as a small smattering of Canadian volunteers. They had about 16 to 17,000 men under arms and had an almost two-to-one advantage. On October 9th, they began a massive artillery bombardment of the fortified British positions. For days, they pounded the British, and by October 11th, they had taken out most of the large British guns.

Washington then ordered the construction of another trench 400 yards closer, but to complete the trench, it would require taking out the redoubts number 9 and 10. The attack on redoubt number 9 would be conducted by the French. And the attack on Redoubt number 10 would be led by one Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had served as General Washington's chief of staff during the war. It was a very important and prestigious position, but Hamilton, who sought a political career after the war, desperately wanted to be in battle.

He needed to prove his valor in combat to buttress his reputation. Redoubt number 10 was his opportunity, and quite literally, his last chance. On October 14th, Hamilton led a group of 400 men in a nighttime raid over the the wall of the redoubt. They only used bayonets and didn't even bother to load their guns, as so they wouldn't make a noise to alert the British. Hamilton managed to take the redoubt, losing only nine men with 30 wounded. The French likewise took redoubt number nine at a cost of 27 dead and 109 wounded. With both redoubts taken, the American and French were able to complete the second trench, and the noose began to tighten around Cornwallis's neck. On October 15th,

Cornwallis launched a desperation attack at the American lines, but other than decommissioning a few cannon and taking a few prisoners, it really achieved nothing. On the night of October 16th, Cornwallis attempted to escape by ship, but his efforts were thwarted by a storm. At this point, having run out of options, with the morale of his troops incredibly low, and with the enemy inching ever closer, Cornwallis was forced to surrender. On the morning of October 17th, a drummer boy and a British officer came over the redoubt waving a white handkerchief. immediately upon seeing the white handkerchief, the guns on both sides fell silent. Negotiations began the next day between a representative of the British, Americans, and French.

Washington kept the French involved in the negotiations because he didn't want anything to fall apart between them at the last minute. Cornwallis demanded the traditional honors of war. He asked to be allowed to march out carrying his colors flying, with bayonets attached, while playing an American or French song to honor the victors. The Americans had given such honors to General General General. John Bergoin at the Battle of Saratoga four years earlier. However, General Cornwallis refused to grant such honors to the Americans when he took the city of Charleston the year prior, so Washington refused it to him now. The British were forced to march out with their flags furled, their guns on

their shoulder, and their band playing a British tune. And this was actually a really big deal at the time. At the actual surrender ceremony, it was tradition for the ranking general on the losing side to surrender his sword to the victorious general. Cornwallis, however, refused to attend the ceremony and claimed an illness. In his place, his second-in-command, Brigadier-General Charles O'Hara attended. O'Hara tried to give a sword to General Rochambeau, but Rochambeau, however, pointed to Washington as he was the senior officer. Washington, however, refused to accept the sword if Cornwallis wasn't the one surrendering it, so he let his second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln, accept it. The soldiers captured at Yorktown represented about a third of the British forces in

America. The remaining British troops were garrisoned in either New York, Charleston, or Savannah. While the victory was a major battlefield win, the real impact of the Battle of Yorktown was in the British Parliament. News of the defeat took several months to cross the Atlantic, but when it did, it hit like an explosion. When Prime Minister Frederick North heard the news, he was reported to have shouted, oh God, it's all over. The war. The war was a war. had been an expensive endeavor for the British, and it wasn't the only conflict they had to worry about. They had concurrent conflicts in Ireland, the Caribbean, Gibraltar, and India that they had to fight as well. The additional cost of having to replace Cornwallis's army and the continued war for

who knows how many years, and having to deal with the French in addition to that was simply too much. In March 1782, Parliament passed a resolution to end the war against the Americans. The Battle of Yorktown ended up being the last major military conflict of the American Revolution. It proved Washington's strategy to be correct. He managed to avoid any major losses until he was able to strike when the time was right. And in the end, he looked like a genius, and it sealed Washington's reputation. The British and the now independent United States of America signed a formal peace treaty in Paris on September 3, 1783, and the last British troops left New York City on November 25, 1783, a day still celebrated as evacuation day.

In the end, the Battle of Yorktown was a very important battle, but it wasn't a great battle. The Americans and French only had 88 killed and the British had around 200, very small in historical terms. Its importance lies in the fact that it was the first time in history that a colony in the new world managed to defeat and get independence from a European power. And all it took was patience, opportunity, and a lot of help from the French Army and Navy. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise.

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