Washington had waited for months for the French allies to commit to aiding him. Finally, the French were acting. French ships disembarked soldiers in Providence, Rhode Island, and they marched south and joined the Americans. On July 8, Cuff Smith, who had little experience of the world outside the wooded hamlets of Haddam, East Haddam and Haddam Neck, watched with the other men of the Connecticut Line as the French forces—5,300 men—conducted a formal parade that was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. Their uniforms were white, and they weren’t soiled in the least but, amazingly, were truly as pure as snow, with flashes of crimson, pink and azure to signify their regiments. They executed their formal maneuvers with an exactness that had the Americans gawping. The French were equally thunderstruck by the American troops but for different reasons: “soldiers composed of men of every age, even children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed,” an officer described them. But he was equally struck that such a ragtag army could “march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly,” and this he attributed to their commander.
At eight o’clock in the morning of July 21, Washington organized his army to move on New York. They aligned in four columns; Cuff Smith was in the far right. The French were all the way to the left. Field pieces, twelve-pounders, howitzers: the engines of war were maneuvered into position. They advanced southward. As a private, Venture Smith’s son wasn’t told anything beyond the fact that they would make a reconnaissance of the British defenses around Manhattan. For all he knew, if General Washington thought conditions were right, they would then launch the attack on New York that would spell the end of British control of America.
In Haddam, meanwhile, once Cuff had marched off along with so many other local boys, life was even quieter than usual. Venture Smith rode his two-wheeled, horse-drawn cart on his rounds: to the ferry, to Bezaleel Brainerd’s sawmill, to a store in East Haddam where people tended to congregate and where, if pressed, he would perform feats of strength, such as carrying a tierce of salt—a 42-gallon cask—across the room. When he had to travel down to the coast at Stonington, he would stop in to see Rebecca Mumford, the youngest sister of his first owner, who, despite their difference in status, had been a playmate in his youth, and they would reminisce about their childhood on Fishers Island.
Trips to Stonington and New London were routine. Sailing vessels came up and down the Connecticut River, for the men of Haddam, looking to make money from the war, were heavily involved in privateering and shipping. Venture Smith, in addition, kept up his land speculation. In February 1781, in the days after he had seen Cuff off, he did a bit of business with two of the town’s most respectable men. James Green was a wealthy blacksmith; Amos White was a cooper who also managed the business of Humphrey Lyon, a local shipowner and merchant. Smith sold 28 acres of his land to White and Green, for 174 pounds. It wasn’t a true sale. Venture needed capital just now, and without banks, you made deals like this with friends and neighbors. He would pay “rent” until such time as he could repay the loan. The arrangement spoke to the position of trust he had in town.
More noteworthy, however, was a tiny detail on the deed. In all previous transactions he had been identified as “Venture, a Free Negro.” The custom of slaves being referred to by only one name was long-standing, and it tended to linger even for those who had won their freedom and chosen a surname. This time, however, whether consciously or not, the town clerk had taken a modest step toward healing a transcendent wound. “To all People to whom these Presents shall Come, Greeting,” the deed of transfer began, and then the clerk picked up his pen and wrote: “Know Ye that I, Venture Smith . . .”
The decision to focus Britain’s full military might on the South was George Germain’s. Henry Clinton, his commander in the field, did not agree with it, but Germain went behind his back and gave Cornwallis instructions to proceed. Clinton had wanted to bring forces northward again, but Germain sent him an order that not a single one of Cornwallis’s soldiers was to be shifted from the Chesapeake, that rather he should send troops southward to aid Cornwallis, that the final conquest of America was to be mounted from there.
Cornwallis then conspired with the American Secretary against his superior officer. He and his army would make for the coast: Clinton was to send ships and men to meet them. He wrote to both Clinton and Germain ensuring them that his position was strong. But then things changed, swiftly. Cornwallis was supposed to be aided by the droves of loyalists in the South, but there didn’t seem to be as many as Germain had thought. Washington had sent Lafayette south with an army of 4,500 men; soon after they arrived, they began small-scale attacks that harassed Cornwallis’s larger force as it traveled eastward. And as the summer wore on, his men—marching through the humid Virginia countryside, from Charlottesville to Richmond to Portsmouth—were stricken with malaria. He dashed off a note to a fellow officer, admitting, “My situation here is very distressing.”
His goal was Yorktown. Here the ships that Clinton was to send from New York would provide reinforcements. It was a risky plan because Yorktown was on a peninsula; if the American army arrived in force, he would be trapped. But even if that happened, he reasoned, the ships coming from New York would allow the possibility of escape by sea.
In London, George Germain agonized as he waited the interminable time for reports from his two American armies to make their leisurely way across the ocean to him. He seemed to sense that things were coming to a head, and he knew there was cause for concern. He had few close friends; with his wife gone, he was mostly alone with his anxiety. He attended his oldest daughter Elizabeth’s wedding but was too preoccupied to fully enjoy the occasion. His youngest daughter, Caroline, was sometimes able to distract him with a game of chess. Then would come a letter, which he pounced on. In September, his nephew, George Damer, who was serving in Cornwallis’s army, wrote him from the precarious peninsula, noting a “considerable part of our force cut off and besieged” and declaring, “I do not believe the most sanguine admirer of my Lord Cornwallis or of his army could expect him to hold out longer than from two months to ten weeks.” If Clinton’s ships arrived, the army would be saved, and the great offensive begun. But where were Clinton’s ships? And, meanwhile, where on earth was the main American force? Had Washington remained on the outskirts of New York, or was he moving south? It was now the desperate goal of the British at Yorktown, Damer informed his uncle, “to discover Mr. Washington’s true design.”
“I begin, at this Epoch, a concise Journal of Military transactions &ca. I lament not having attempted it from the commencement of the War.”
After six years of fighting, it was dawning on George Washington that a decisive “Epoch” had at last arrived, prompting him, belatedly, to start recording events as they unfolded.
In July, he marched 5,000 of his soldiers, among them Venture Smith’s son, from their camp near Dobbs Ferry to Kingsbridge, just opposite the northern tip of Manhattan Island. Manhattan was the center of British power in America. Washington remained convinced that taking it would end the war. After doing extensive reconnaissance of the British positions, however, he pulled his men back to camp. He was bitterly disappointed with the state governments, which had sent him far fewer recruits than he had requested. This put him all the more at the mercy of promised French ships. He could not act until and unless he knew they were making for New York Harbor.
The joy that came with the first news of a French alliance had long since worn off. France had its own affairs to manage, only one small component of which involved assisting the Americans against England. The main French fleet was in the West Indies. Washington was informed that a detachment would sail north to aid him. But he didn’t know when, or how big it would be, or what kind of assistance to expect. What caused him the most anxiety was having no idea where this detachment would even sail to. As conflicting reports reached him, he concocted plans for a grand attack on New York, then switched to pondering a joint assault against Cornw
allis’s army in the Chesapeake, then switched back to New York, then back to the South.
Meanwhile, he had Rochambeau, and a French army, here in camp with him. They too were awaiting word. Wanting to impress the French officers and keep them primed to assist, he went out of his way to stage lavish dinners for them. The French were indeed impressed, but less by the meals—they noted with displeasure that salads had vinegar but no oil, and they were not given clean plates for each course—than by Washington himself, who presided with “unaffected cheerfulness.”
On August 14 he got a dispatch from the Comte de Barras, the French admiral who was then in Newport, Rhode Island. With a mixture of excitement and anxiety, Washington read that de Barras’s colleague, the Comte de Grasse, was leaving the Caribbean imminently. Amazingly, wondrously, he would have with him between 25 and 29 ships of the line and 3,200 troops. Aided by such a force, Washington knew he could wreck the British. But, he read further, the French assistance came with a catch. De Grasse considered his main duties to be in the Caribbean. He would have to sail back there on October 15. Thus, he was not heading for New York, which was too far away. He would sail for the Chesapeake.
Washington had to let the French plans dictate his prosecution of the war. He would not attack New York. Instead, he had to get his entire army more than 400 miles to the south. And the clock was ticking: he had to do it with all possible speed in order to take advantage of the French timetable. If he was angry, however, it was less at the French, who had no emotional stake in the fight, than at his country’s own leaders. In his diary he noted that his fighting force was limited by “the feeble compliance of the States to my requisitions for Men.”
The next day he sent word to Lafayette, who was doing a fine job of pestering Cornwallis’s army, telling him to “prevent if possible the retreat of Cornwallis toward Carolina.” Everything now depended on the element of surprise. If they could fool the British into thinking New York was their objective, perhaps Clinton would keep his main force there and Cornwallis could be trapped.
He gave the orders to march. He was so concerned with keeping his plans secret that his own men didn’t know where they were headed. They had to begin by marching north in order to cross the Hudson River without alerting the British. On the evening of August 21, after a long and satisfying day, Washington wrote in his diary, “In the course of this day the whole of the American Troop, all their baggage, artillery & Stores, crossed the river.” It was a huge undertaking, and getting it done so rapidly pleased him. But that turned to exasperation when the French army took an unconscionably leisurely four days to make the same crossing.
At the end of the month he rode ahead of the army into Philadelphia. He was hoping to arrange for ships to take men and supplies as much of the way as possible, but those he was able to locate he found “inadequate to the purpose of transporting both Troops & Stores,” which meant his men would have to continue trudging on foot all the way to the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay.
He rode on southward. Couriers pounded up to him giving him progress reports. On September 5 he learned that his army, marching behind him, had passed through Philadelphia and the French army had just entered the city. Another courier, this one from the south, reached him. He tore open the letter and read words that were perhaps sweeter than any he had ever read in his life. The Comte de Grasse had arrived in the Chesapeake: “with 28 Sail of the line & four frigates,” he wrote in his diary, and “with 3000 land Troops which were to be immediately debarked at James town & form a junction with the American Army under the command of the Marqs. de la Fayette.”
Standing, shortly after, on the shore at the town of Chester, Pennsylvania, he spied a small boat approaching. In it were General Rochambeau and other French officers. Their arrival meant that his army would be there soon, and he now knew the French fleet was already in place. This confluence of forces, which he had worked for not just for days but for years, sent him into an uncharacteristic state of giddiness. The Frenchmen in their boat saw a figure dancing and hopping on the bank, waving his hat at them. They could not believe it was the famously reserved commander of the American forces. One of them reported, “I have never seen a man more overcome with great and sincere joy than was General Washington.”
Washington greeted them with the news that de Grasse was in the bay. All the forces were aligning. He just had to get his own army another 270 miles south.
When he reached the Maryland town called Head of Elk (because it was located at the mouth of the Elk River, where it enters the Chesapeake), he was disgusted to find “a great deficiency of Transports.” He had hoped to sail his men and supplies the length of the bay, and he thought he had made arrangements for this. He commenced a furious round of letter-writing, calling on “Gentn. of Influence on the Eastern shore” to assist him in getting boats. His actions betrayed his anxiety and exasperation, as he sensed how much was at stake and seemingly wondered that others in the country, who were supposedly ardent fellow patriots, were going blithely about their lives without urgency.
He decided it was better that he ride onward to meet personally with de Grasse than wait for the army to catch up to him. The route southward carried, as he well knew, right past his front door. He had not been to Mount Vernon in six years. He rode over the familiar rolling hilltops, and finally the main building came into view. The house was still incomplete when he had left; work had been done since; he was seeing now for the first time his home as he had envisioned it. Its mix of grandeur and simplicity suited him. Here a man could feel at peace. The architectural pedigree was as frankly European as were the Enlightenment principles he had been in the service of these many years.
Martha was here, as were his stepchildren and their own children, some of whom had been born in his absence. The slaves formed dutiful lines to greet him. He had repeatedly in the past year longed to get back home. But now that he was here he could not rest. The next day Rochambeau and other officers arrived. The foreign officers had been curious to see what a great American’s estate was like. They were somewhat disappointed. Instead of opulence, there was simplicity and a sense of austerity about the place, which they supposed reflected America’s puritan tendencies. One of them described the general’s wife as “small and fat.”
After three days, Washington was back on his horse, hurrying southward. Early on September 18, off Cape Henry, at the southernmost point of the bay, he saw what he had long dreamed of: 32 French vessels, elegant machines of war, their sails and guns catching the orange light of the morning sun. He was rowed out to the Ville de Paris, de Grasse’s flagship, and had his first meeting with the admiral, in which he “settled most points with him to my satisfaction.” De Grasse had deep experience with siege warfare, and he informed the American general that the French would run the siege. It was not, they told him, a matter of cleverness but of method; it was, as Washington reiterated, “reducible to calculation.”
For weeks now, Washington had been hoping that Cornwallis would stay on the long finger of land that protruded out into the bay, where he could be trapped. And, inexplicably, he had. Cornwallis had taken over the little village of Yorktown, which sat at the edge of the peninsula on the banks of the York River, as well as the village of Gloucester across the river.
Over the next two weeks, the French and American armies dug trenches, built walls and hauled cannons into position. Washington was amazed that Cornwallis, once he became aware of their presence, did not lunge forth in attack. He figured the British general had at most 6,000 men. The combined American and French armies totaled more than 18,000. Cornwallis was clearly waiting, but for what? Did he expect Clinton to rescue him?
On October 9, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the first French guns, way to Washington’s left, began blasting. After two hours of unrelenting noise, the American battery to his right opened fire. The attack on the enemy positions, which continued through the next day, was so successful the British had to pull back the cannons with
which they had been returning fire. In the night, the French cannons took aim at enemy ships at anchor. They had loaded with “red hot shot”—balls heated until they glowed—and sent them with expert precision at their wooden targets. Washington watched in awe as four British ships, including one frigate, caught fire and sent roaring columns of flame into the night sky. By morning they were gone.
The deafening blasts continued over the following days. From time to time the British mounted a strong counteroffensive, which then subsided. Steadily, the trench building continued, edging the allied armies and their artillery closer to the walls the British had built.
For all his supreme exertions over the years of the war, here at Yorktown Washington had a curiously reduced role. He was the chief commanding officer, but diggers and artillerymen controlled the action, along with the French engineers who had planned it all out with mathematical calculations. From runaways he learned that Cornwallis was living underground somewhere behind the walls, in a cave his men had built him, directing the defense and, apparently, waiting for a British fleet.
Then on the morning of October 17, after eight days of unrelenting, shuddering onslaught, a courier handed Washington a message from the enemy:
Sir, I propose a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, and that two officers may be appointed by each side to meet at Mr. Moore’s house to settle terms for the surrender of the posts of York and Gloucester. I have the honor to be, &c., Cornwallis
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