And so, Tarleton and his dragooons ride hard for Monticello.
* * *
The year 1781 has not been a success for Colonel Tarleton. He failed utterly in his attempts to catch the Swamp Fox in South Carolina. Marion remained one step ahead of him at all times, moving stealthily through the swamps and demanding that his men travel dozens of miles in a single forced journey to evade capture. Cornwallis eventually recalled Tarleton to more traditional military operations before he was able to capture Marion.
On January 17, 1781, at the Battle of Cowpens, Tarleton suffered the first major defeat of his career when he and his men were routed by Continental forces under Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan, a man who so long ago fought with George Washington at Braddock’s Defeat and whose bravery helped secure the victory at Saratoga.
Then, on March 15, Tarleton lost two fingers to a gunshot wound at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, where an outnumbered British Army defeated the Americans.
Now in Virginia, Tarleton once again undertakes a mission at the order of Cornwallis. On the morning of June 3, one hundred eighty dragoons and seventy mounted infantry gallop out of their camp near Richmond, bound for Charlottesville. They are determined to make the journey in just twenty-four hours—a goal that does not prevent them from stopping to burn a dozen wagons and other Continental Army supplies they encounter along the way.
At ten o’clock that evening, almost halfway through their journey, Tarleton orders three hours’ rest for his exhausted troops. The dragoons dismount, water their horses, and enter a tavern to order food and drink.
A patron named Jack Jouett quietly observes the British cavalrymen, suspecting they are headed to Charlottesville and aware that the Virginia legislature is woefully unprotected. He is twenty-six years old, a Charlottesville resident, and a member of the Virginia militia who has signed an oath renouncing any loyalty to King George. Jouett also considers himself one of the best horsemen in western Virginia—a claim that will soon be put to the test. Finishing his drink, he slips outside and mounts his horse, then rides away to alert Governor Jefferson. The moon is full and clear after a long day of rain. Knowing the “byways of the neighborhood,” the tall, broad-shouldered Jouett travels all night, remaining off the main roads to avoid capture. The thick woods scratch his face, leaving scars that will remain for the rest of his life.
By 4:30 a.m., a breathless and exhausted Jouett stands before Thomas Jefferson. The Virginian pours him a tall glass of his best Madeira wine as he takes in the news, then orders Jouett to warn the remaining legislators in Charlottesville. Both men know what is at stake, for among these lawmakers are three men who, like Jefferson, signed the Declaration of Independence. All will surely be hanged if captured.5
Jefferson begins his escape by evacuating his wife, their two daughters, and their slaves from Monticello by carriage. He directs them to hide at a nearby farm.
After that, Jefferson eats breakfast, taking time to observe the movement of Tarleton and his men through a telescope. The British troops under Cornwallis are laying waste to the Virginia countryside, burning homes and crops and freeing slaves. This will soon be the fate of his beloved Monticello, of that Jefferson is sure. Even more than the house itself, he will miss his collection of books and the years of careful notations he has kept, documenting the weather and all aspects of life here on his mountaintop.
Finally, when the Green Dragoon uniforms begin to encircle Monticello, Jefferson leaves his slaves behind to hide the silver and other valuables, then says a farewell. Just ten minutes before British troops arrive at his door, Jefferson saddles Caractacus, a six-year-old stallion and his favorite horse, then rides down the mountain on trails he knows well, unobserved by Tarleton’s men.
Jefferson hides out in a remote house close to where his wife and children are staying. The Virginian will never again actively participate in the war.
Tarleton’s men reach Monticello on June 4. Inexplicably, they do not burn the plantation to the ground. Tarleton himself focuses his search on Charlottesville, declining to go to Monticello. Another of Jefferson’s farms, Elk Hill, is decimated by a British occupying force. Cornwallis himself uses Jefferson’s home as his headquarters, and upon departure, he orders that the Virginian’s tobacco and corn crops and his barns be burned. All cows, sheep, hogs, and horses are taken for use by the British Army. The house is spared.
* * *
Benedict Arnold is also temporarily halted. The British commander Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis does not have a high opinion of Arnold and sends him back to New York City. Before he departs, the traitor has a piece of advice for Cornwallis: “Locate your permanent base away from the coast,” he informs the British general.
It is a simple suggestion and hardly profound, but Cornwallis ignores it. After all, an officer of the British Crown does not need to heed the advice of an American traitor.
After a long summer of combat, His Excellency the Most Honorable Charles Cornwallis, First Marquis, returns to the Virginia coast in August 1781 and orders his army to set up a permanent base at exactly the place Benedict Arnold warned him about.6
It is a waterfront village called Yorktown.
27
DOBBS FERRY, NEW YORK
AUGUST 19, 1781
DAWN
George Washington is on the move.
It is a summer Sunday morning as the Continental Army breaks camp and assembles for the march. Three miles to the east, a French army does the same, soon to link up with the Americans. The great day has come: at long last, the combined armies will march away from the fields and valleys they have called home these past two months. The soldiers believe they will soon be fighting in New York City, but that is not the case.
General Washington has long been focused on capturing the city. Just two months ago, British spies intercepted a letter from Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette in Virginia. Lafayette has used his small force well, harassing Lord Cornwallis’s army so completely that the British behave like a force in retreat, burning all in their wake as they pull back to the more populated cities near the Virginia coast. General Washington was pleased by Lafayette’s success, but regretted to inform the dashing young general that the combined forces of the Continental Army, French Army, and French Navy would be used in “expelling the enemy” from New York—not in providing help for Lafayette in Virginia.
LEGEND HERE
Undeterred, Lafayette followed up with another missive. “Should a French fleet now come into Hampton Roads,” the marquis implored, referring to the mouth of the James River, “the British Army, I think, would be ours.”
Still, Washington steadfastly clung to the belief that New York was the best option.
That would soon change.
Curiously, Washington did not write that letter to Lafayette in code. Nor did he entrust it to an express rider. Instead, he mailed it by regular post. Not surprisingly, the British acquired it. General Clinton in New York City was so ecstatic about possessing the American plans that he paid the mail thief two hundred guineas as a token of his thanks.1 The British Army began preparing for the coming American invasion of New York.
Now, as George Washington watches the majestic might of the combined American and French armies sally forth to do battle, that blunder seems inconsequential. With about twelve thousand troops under his command, Washington has switched his strategy. Much has changed: Alexander Hamilton has finally left Washington’s staff and has been assigned to command a battalion of light infantry; Lafayette has pushed Cornwallis all the way back to the Atlantic; and most of all, Washington has just received news that a French fleet of twenty-nine warships carrying three thousand additional marines is sailing north from the West Indies to support the American cause.
There were two stipulations to the French naval assistance. The first was that the ships must leave the American coast no later than October 15 to avoid winter storms.
But it is the second demand that was most consequential. Alth
ough Washington is very much the commander in chief of the Continental Army, the French are now the ones making crucial decisions about where the next great battle will be fought.
“There are two places for an offensive against the enemy: the Chesapeake and New York,” French general John-Baptiste Rochambeau had written to his naval counterpart, Adm. François Joseph Paul de Grasse. “You will probably prefer Chesapeake Bay, and it is there we think you can render the greatest service.”
The suggestion pleased de Grasse, for his decision to sail for America from his home base in the West Indies has left those islands undefended against British naval invasion. Virginia being closer to the West Indies than New York, the admiral opted to follow his colleague’s advice.
Accordingly, Washington’s entire force now swings south toward Virginia, some five hundred fifty miles away.
“An army is a machine whose motions are directed by its chief,” one soldier will write of this day.
The British fully expect George Washington to attack New York City. The notion that he would move his entire army south, leaving New England and West Point naked in the face of a British attack, is so extreme as to be absurd. But Washington is now convinced that by going to Virginia he can trap Cornwallis and the British Army in a snare—the Continental forces confronting them by land and the French Navy by sea.
“The moment is critical, the opportunity precious, the prospects most happily favorable. I pray that no supineness or want of exertions on our part may prove the means of our disappointment,” Washington will write of what lies ahead.2
* * *
Lord Cornwallis is equally confident of victory.
From his new base of operations in Yorktown, just thirty miles up the James River, the English commander awaits the arrival of the British fleet. In addition to the marauding services of Banastre Tarleton, who has joined Cornwallis in Yorktown, a task force of nineteen ships with a combined firepower of fourteen hundred guns is now sailing south from New York City to aid Cornwallis’s infantry. The firepower should be more than adequate to protect Cornwallis and his seven thousand men, and will continue to show the wisdom of his Virginia strategy. It is here where Cornwallis plans to win the war.
LEGEND HERE
“Now, my dear friend, what is our plan?” Cornwallis writes to a fellow general. “Without one we cannot succeed, and I assure you I am quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures. If we mean an offensive war in America, we must abandon New York and bring our whole force into Virginia. We then have a stake to fight for and a successful battle will give us America.”
* * *
It is September 12 when George Washington says good-bye to his beloved Mount Vernon home. He has left his army, which continues to march to the Virginia coast, and allowed himself the luxury of a brief stopover, visiting his home for the first time since 1775. The general means to stay just one night, but the comforts of sleeping in his own bed and seeing Martha, and of standing on the porch looking out at the Potomac River, have kept him here for two. Yet, for all the nostalgia this visit has brought forth, Washington is anxious as he leaves his estate behind—the French fleet still has not materialized. Without naval firepower, there can be no assault on Cornwallis’s positions.
Impatient and eager, George Washington races to Yorktown. There is no time to waste, for he has less than one month before the French fleet’s October 15 deadline, the date when they will sail away—should they ever arrive at all. The general has no illusions about the future of America’s independence—once again, the nation is beggared by apathy; his troops are not being properly fed, clothed, or paid; and as a result, enlistments are tumbling. Yet, as always, George Washington finds a reason to hope.
“We are at the end of our tether,” Washington writes to John Laurens, a compatriot of Benjamin Franklin in Paris. “Now or never, our deliverance must come.”
28
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
SEPTEMBER 28, 1781
5:00 A.M.
The French have arrived.
The sun is rising as the now combined French and American armies numbering nineteen thousand men begin marching the final twelve miles to the hamlet of Yorktown, where Lord Cornwallis and his army await. It has been a reluctant journey for the Americans. After six years, the war has become frustrating and protracted, with seemingly no end in sight. Traveling hundreds of miles to fight a battle in the south so late in the year is an immense hardship, for it means the troops may winter here, far from their families and homes. Their uniforms are threadbare and Congress is once again short of money, meaning the fighting men do not get paid. If not for French general Rochambeau arranging a loan to ensure their salary three weeks ago, the Continental Army would be fighting without compensation.
The American lines march smartly forward as the day quickly grows warm and humid, each man in step, muskets on shoulders as Baron von Steuben taught them at Valley Forge. But it is not the Prussian who provides their inspiration, nor the sight of their gallant new French compatriots, or even the rumors that the British may finally be on the verge of defeat.
LEGEND HERE
Instead, it is the original soldier in the Continental Army, the general who has led these men since that long-ago winter in Boston. George Washington inspires, cajoles, and commands the respect of one and all. He now inspects the columns astride a tall chestnut horse with a white face and white feet, wearing his uniform of Virginia blue inspired by his time at Braddock’s Defeat.
Much has changed about Washington since that massacre in 1754; these last six years as commander in chief have dramatically tested him. The general is just a few months shy of fifty years old but his brown hair has turned gray. Yet the energy is still there. A few weeks ago, Washington surprised even himself, jumping up and down and waving his handkerchief in joy at the glorious sight of a French vessel in the Chesapeake Bay. After weeks of hesitation, Admiral de Grasse finally realized that his own French army was in danger if he didn’t deliver his fleet to Virginia. And so, he did.
The struggle has been long but Washington has never wavered in the cause—never once expressed doubt as to whether independence was worth the sacrifice. His home has been attacked, he has endured long separations from Martha, and his sometimes prickly personality has seen some top aides grow weary and request a transfer.
But through it all, His Excellency has believed that given the right number of men, the right location, and the right combination of timing and artillery, he would one day defeat the British.
Now, General Washington believes that day has come.
* * *
The British force, numbering nine thousand British, Loyalist, and Hessian soldiers, camps on a bluff overlooking the York River, but that waterway will provide no source of escape. The French fleet now blockades the entire Chesapeake Bay, including the York and James Rivers. It was only yesterday that Admiral de Grasse finally began delivering on his promise of tactical support. Upon receiving the admiral’s missive stating these intentions, General Washington immediately issued orders that the infantry march on Yorktown at first light. It is a landscape the general knows well, for the deepwater port was founded on land that once belonged to a direct ancestor, and Washington visited it several times in his youth.
Now it is Washington’s turn to drape the noose. Upon their arrival, the American and French troops will form an offensive perimeter in a semicircle opposite the British lines. With ground forces in front of the enemy and the river at their backs, Washington will then lay siege, pounding the redcoats with artillery until they surrender.
Lord Cornwallis has always had misgivings about Yorktown. “The position is bad,” he wrote upon arriving in early August. “I am not easy about my post,” he added two days later, quietly making plans to flee back to the Carolinas with his army.
If there was ever a time to escape, however, that moment has passed. Cornwallis’s decision to press the war in Virginia is proving to be a grave error. Now
he can only pray that help will arrive before he is forced to surrender.
It is almost three weeks since British commander in chief Sir Henry Clinton promised that more soldiers were on the way, stating, “I think the best way to relieve you is to join you as soon as possible, with all the force that can be spared from hence, which is about four thousand men.”
“If you cannot relieve me very soon,” Cornwallis responded, “you must be prepared to hear the worst.”
* * *
Day one of the Siege of Yorktown begins with George Washington rising from the ground where he has slept the night beneath a mulberry tree. His army is now one mile from the British lines. The baggage wagon carrying his tent has not yet arrived at the field of battle, so he happily slept in the open. Even when the tent is pitched, he will prefer the smells of Yorktown, the salt air, autumn leaves, and gunpowder, and he will continue sleeping outside on these warm autumn nights. Now that the Americans and French have the British surrounded, the general is eager to begin softening their defenses with artillery fire—but first he must carefully build the fortifications and gun emplacements that will ensure victory.
After a breakfast of soft buckwheat cakes, in deference to his painful mouth, Washington undertakes a personal reconnaissance of the British lines. It is soon clear that the enemy must wage a defensive war, waiting out Washington’s offensive from within the confines of the town. Any attempt to break out by attacking into the American lines would be suicide.
The general walks within a few hundred yards of the British forward position, taking note of the location and size of each fortification. Yorktown is a broad plain covered in forest and punctuated by creeks and ravines. Cornwallis has constructed an imposing defensive perimeter around the town, encircling Yorktown in protective ditches, earthen mounds, and tall wooden fences composed of thick tree trunks. The forests around town have been felled to give his army a clear field of fire. The majority of the British and Hessian forces are concealed within Yorktown, along with the few thousand local residents and slaves who are also trapped by Washington’s army.
Killing England Page 24
