In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  In a Sept. 16–17, 1781, letter to Clinton, Cornwallis writes, “If I had no hopes of relief, I would rather risk an action than defend my half-finished works,” in Benjamin Franklin Stevens, ed., The Campaign in Virginia, 2:157; after learning that de Barras’s fleet had joined de Grasse’s, he wrote, “If you cannot relieve me very soon, you must be prepared to hear the worst,” p. 158. Captain Thomas Symonds’s Sept. 8, 1781, letter to Graves, in which he details the ways in which he has helped Cornwallis invest Yorktown, including anchoring the Guadaloupe across a creek “to enfilade a gulley,” is in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, pp. 103–4. Tornquist describes how the British fireships were “a beautiful and at the same time devastating sight,” in The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse, pp. 65–66. In a Sept. 22, 1781, letter to GW, de Grasse hypothesizes that Cornwallis intended to use the fireships to win “temporary possession of the river” so that the British army could escape “the right bank of the James”; in that same letter, he writes, “It is time to begin to close in on the enemy, and to give him a taste of our combined strength,” in Correspondence, p. 42. In a Sept. 23, 1781, letter to Thomas McKean, GW writes, “The intelligence [your letter] contains is so important, that I immediately transmitted it to de Grasse whose superiority, even supposing Digby should have arrived with ten ships, will be considerable,” in WGW, 23:129. Baron von Closen describes how de Grasse and the other French naval officers were “alarmed and disquieted” by the rumor of Digby’s bringing another ten ships of the line to New York, in his Journal, p. 133. De Grasse tells GW that he must leave the Chesapeake and take up “a less disadvantageous position” outside the Capes in a Sept. 23, 1781, letter in Correspondence, pp. 45–46. GW’s Sept. 24, 1781, letter in which he speaks of “the painful anxiety” de Grasse’s decision has caused him, as well as de Grasse’s Sept. 25, 1781, announcement “that the plans I had suggested for getting under way while the most brilliant and glorious did not appear to fulfill the aims we had in view,” and GW’s Sept. 27, 1781, reply “that a great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices,” are all in Correspondence, pp. 48–54. Flexner in George Washington in the American Revolution cites Rochambeau’s 1788 letter to GW in which he writes of de Grasse, “By the vivacity of his head, he did take always violent parts,” p. 449. Trumbull writes of the “most wonderful and very observable coincidence of favorable circumstances” in his “Minutes,” p. 334. GW writes of “[t]he line being formed” in his Diaries, 2:262.

  CHAPTER 9 ◆ YORKTOWN

  In an Oct. 1, 1781, letter to de Grasse, GW enumerates the many reasons for “stationing two or three ships above the enemy’s posts on York River; for want of this only means completing the investment of their works—the British remain masters of the navigation for 25 miles distance above them, and have by their armed vessels, intercepted supplies of the greatest value on their way to our camp. . . . We are even necessitated for the protection of Williamsburg and the magazines in our rear to leave a post of 700–800 men in that quarter. . . . We are besides reduced to the impossibility of concerting measures with the corps of [allied] troops at Gloucester—being obliged in order to communicate with them to make a circuit of near 90 miles . . . but what is still more decisive consideration is that Lord Cornwallis has by the York River an outlet left for his retreat,” Correspondence, pp. 62–63. In an Oct. 2, 1781, letter to GW, de Grasse claims that if French ships were to be sent up the York River, they “will be invested every night by fire rafts,” while insisting that “what your excellency proposes [is] not so much an impossibility but . . . a thing unfavorable to the French [navy] without resulting in the least benefit. It seems to me that batteries placed on the brink of the river would prevent [Cornwallis’s] escape. I am speaking perhaps as a blind man discoursing on colors, but you will pardon it to me as I have no knowledge of the locality,” Correspondence, pp. 68–69. GW complains of “determining upon a plan of attack and approach . . . without the assistance of the shipping” in a Sept. 29, 1781, entry in his Diaries, 2:262. In an Oct. 22, 1781, letter to Henry Clinton, Cornwallis explains why he had decided to abandon his outer works: “upon observing that the enemy were taking measures, which could not fail of turning my left flank in a short time . . . , I withdrew within the works on the night of the 29th,” in Benjamin Franklin Stevens, ed., The Campaign in Virginia, 2:209. Tarleton writes of how “great time would have been gained by holding and disputing the ground inch by inch” in his A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, pp. 374–75. Jonathan Trumbull writes of how the allied forces “find ourselves very unexpectedly upon very advantageous ground” in his “Minutes of Occurrences Respecting the Siege and Capture of Yorktown,” p. 335. Baron von Closen in his Revolutionary Journal talks of how “[t]he profound knowledge of Rochambeau (who was engaged in his 15th siege) guided in a large measure the successive works of the besieging army,” p. 156. For an excellent account of the mechanics of a siege, as well as how it unfolded at Yorktown, see John W. Wright’s “Notes on the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 with Special Reference to the Conduct of a Siege in the Eighteenth Century,” pp. 229–50.

  Joseph Plumb Martin describes how he and the other Sappers and Miners laid out the first parallel, as well as their interchange with GW, and how the next night, within 600 yards of the British, they dug the trench “under their noses,” in his Journal, pp. 146–47. Daniel Trabue’s remarks on the spectacle of soldiers “working with spades making a ditch” are in “Journal of Colonel Daniel Trabue,” p. 111. Martin recounts how the British “began to fire where they ought to have done sooner” in his Journal, pp. 147–48. Napoleon’s dictum that “the artillery . . . takes a stronghold, the infantry simply assists,” is in Wright’s “Notes on the Siege of Yorktown,” p. 233. Jerome Greene in The Guns of Independence writes of how “a traditional ceremony marked the formal opening of the trenches” and how Alexander Hamilton added his own audacious twist by ordering his men to perform the manual of arms in sight of the enemy; Greene also cites James Duncan’s claim that Hamilton “wantonly exposed the lives of his men,” pp. 167–68. Trabue tells of how the men in the trenches “could hear the ball go by” in his Journal, p. 112. Martin writes of being on the “tiptoe of expectation and impatience” in anticipation of the opening up of the batteries on the first parallel in his Journal, p. 148. Greene writes of the devastating effect of GW’s first shot, an 18-pounder cannonball that killed Cornwallis’s commissary general, in The Guns of Independence, p. 191. In “Yorktown During the Revolution,” Edward Riley cites the chaplain M. l’Abbé Robin’s description of the “parabolic path [of] the slow and destructive bomb,” p. 276; Riley also cites Johann Doehla’s accounts of the explosions of several allied bombs in the shallows of the York River and how he held “a piece of an exploded bomb in my hands which weighed more than thirty pounds and was over three inches thick,” as well as how the inhabitants of Yorktown “dug in among the sand cliffs,” pp. 274, 275. Johann Ewald describes how the bodies of the dead horses floated back to the beach off Yorktown “in heaps” in DAW, p. 336. St. George Tucker writes of how “[a]n immense number of Negroes have died in the most miserable manner” in “St. George Tucker’s Journal of the Siege of Yorktown,” p. 387.

  John O. Sands in Yorktown’s Captive Fleet lists the sixty-nine vessels known to have been part of the British fleet both scuttled and anchored between Yorktown and Gloucester, pp. 181–220. Frederick Mackenzie describes the express boat bound from New York to Yorktown in a Sept. 27, 1781, entry of his Diary: “An armed boat went off this night with letters in cypher . . . to Lord Cornwallis. This boat rows 14 oars, and carries 16 men, with 4 swivels. . . . [S]he is built like a whaleboat, is quite open and is rigged with two lateen sails. She has already been three times between Chesapeake and New York; twice since the French fleet has been in the bay. During her last passage to this place, she was obliged to anchor for 62 hours in open sea during a gale of wind that blew on shore,” 2:650. Cornwallis tells of how “[w]e have lost about seventy men
and many of our works are considerably damaged” in an Oct. 11, 1781, letter to Clinton in Stevens, The Campaign in Virginia, 2:175–77. St. George Tucker tells of how Cornwallis “has built a kind of grotto . . . where he lives underground” in his “Journal,” p. 387. In an Oct. 11, 1781, entry in his “Minutes,” Jonathan Trumbull writes of how “[t]he Charon being placed in such situation as greatly to annoy our troops in the battery above the town, produced that resentment which [was] the cause of her unhappy fate,” p. 336. John Wright in “Notes on the Siege” describes the process by which “hotshot” was fired, p. 243. Bartholomew James tells of how the Charon was “in flames from the hold to the mastheads” in his Journal, p. 121. James Thacher describes his “fine view of this conflagration” in his Military Journal, p. 274. James’s account of the “dreadful slaughter” and his emotions while watching “one of the finest ships in the navy of her rate totally destroyed” are in his Journal, pp. 121–22. James also writes of “the distressing cries of the wounded, and the lamentable sufferings of the inhabitants” and the “perfect undaunted resolution” of the British soldiers in his Journal, pp. 122–23. Lafayette speaks of how “[t]he troops of both nations chafe at the slowness of the approach” in an Oct. 12, 1781, letter to Luzerne in LAAR, 4:416. Jerome Greene cites Rochambeau’s statement to an aide that “[w]e shall see tomorrow whether the pear is ripe” in The Guns of Independence, p. 224.

  Ron Chernow recounts how Hamilton determined to go directly to GW to complain about Lafayette’s selection of de Gimat to lead the attack on redoubt number 10, and how he returned to his tent shouting “We have it!” in Alexander Hamilton, pp. 162–63. Greene recounts how GW “turned down Lafayette’s repeated requests that he be named second in command” in The Guns of Independence, p. 128. Edmund Morgan cites GW’s advice to his plantation manager at Mount Vernon to keep “all men . . . at a proper distance” in The Genius of George Washington, p. 7. Catherine Williams cites Stephen Olney’s description of the attack on redoubt number 10, beginning with his account of GW’s “harangue,” in Biography of Revolutionary Heroes, pp. 267–78. Martin describes how the branches of the abatis were cut with a “slashing stroke,” as well as how the watchword “Rochambeau” sounded like “rush-on-boys,” in his Journal, p. 149. Greene cites the various accounts of the mortal wounding of Alexander Scammell, as well as an account of how Cornwallis had “thrown into the wells heads of steers, dead horses, and even the bodies of dead negroes,” in The Guns of Independence, pp. 117–19, 110. Karl Tornquist writes of the brutal killing of a pregnant woman in The Naval Campaigns of Count de Grasse, p. 57. My account of Benedict Arnold’s raid on New London is largely dependent on Eric Lehman’s Homegrown Terror: Benedict Arnold and the Burning of New London, in which he cites Arnold’s neighbor Jedidiah Huntington’s insistence that “[n]o instance of conduct in the enemy since the war has raised so general a resentment,” pp. 136–74. In an Oct. 16, 1781, letter to Luzerne, Lafayette writes, “We had promised ourselves to avenge the New London affair,” in LAAR, 4:421. Martin recounts the challenges of negotiating shell holes big enough to “bury an ox in,” as well as how the British soldier escaped the redoubt by leaping over the cliff to the beach, in his Journal, p. 150. Hamilton tells of how the American soldiers “spared every man who ceased to resist,” in an Oct. 15, 1781, letter to Lafayette in LAAR, 4:420. The exchange of letters between Lafayette and Baron de Vioménil during the attacks on redoubts numbers 9 and 10 is recounted in Thacher’s Military Journal, p. 276. Greene in The Guns of Independence cites the account of GW’s telling Henry Knox, “The work is done, and well done,” p. 253.

  Johann Ewald in DAW recounts the British response to the taking of the redoubts, as well as the expulsion of the African Americans from Yorktown, pp. 335–36. Samuel Adams Drake cites Chastellux’s praise of Henry Knox in Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox, pp. 72–73. Greene cites Aeneas Monson’s account of Hamilton and Knox’s wrestling match in redoubt number 10 in The Guns of Independence, p. 273. Joel Achenbach cites Thomas Jefferson’s claim that GW was “incapable of fear” in The Grand Idea, p. 17. Thacher tells of GW’s advice to the sand-covered chaplain in his Military Journal, p. 271. Ewald writes of how the British sortie against the two unfinished allied redoubts failed because the soldiers had brought “along wheel nails to serve for spiking, which were too large, instead of the proper steel spikes,” as well as of how devastated the British were when the spiked guns began to fire the morning after the sortie, in DAW, p. 336. Ewald also tells of Cornwallis’s decision to cross the York River and lead his men on a desperate breakout at Gloucester and how “[t]he whole thing seemed to me like a delusion which misleads people for a moment,” pp. 336–38.

  In an Oct. 14, 1781, letter to George Jackson, Samuel Hood writes of how “it was agreed to attempt by the united efforts of army and navy to relieve Lord Cornwallis in the Chesapeake” in Chadwick’s The Graves Papers, p. 116. In a Sept. 27, 1781, entry in his Diary, Frederick Mackenzie writes, “The graceful appearance and manner of the Prince, with his liveliness and affability gives universal satisfaction,” 2:648. William Smith describes how the prince spent “the morning at the window” before he walked about the town with Clinton “with crowds after him” in his Memoirs, p. 447; Smith also writes of how Graves “considers himself as ruined already,” p. 449. In the Oct. 14, 1781, letter to Jackson, Hood recounts how Graves put forward the question “whether it was practicable to relieve Lord Cornwallis in the Chesapeake?,” as well as his outraged response, in Chadwick, The Graves Papers, pp. 117–18. William Smith recounts his meeting with Henry Clinton during which the British commander insisted that he had “nothing to do with the difficulties” Graves was then encountering in repairing his fleet while also relaying his hope that if Cornwallis should be saved Clinton would get “the credit of restoring the tranquility of the empire,” in Memoirs, pp. 451–52. Mackenzie reports the British captain’s claim that “the loss of two line of battle ships in effecting the relief of [Cornwallis’s] army is of much more consequence than the loss of [that army]” in an Oct. 16 entry in his Diary, 2:664. In a Sept. 20, 1781, entry in his Memoirs, William Smith records, “the boat from Lord Cornwallis that arrived Sept. 17 left him 11th. Our army in health. . . . The French fleet there. Had landed 3000 at Jamestown to join Lafayette. The Earl not apprehensive. Wish for the enemy,” p. 445. On Oct. 8, Smith records, “Much joy at headquarters by a boat from Lord Cornwallis with letters of 24th. He had offered battle for two days to Washington and the French beyond his works, but they declined. . . . The dispatches assuring him of reinforcement arrived. The answer came: ‘But don’t hurry too fast,’” p. 456.

  Johann Ewald writes of how it was as “dark as a sack” on the stormy night Cornwallis attempted to cross the river to Gloucester and how he was ultimately forced to abandon “the whole praiseworthy plan” in DAW, pp. 337–38. Thacher describes how “[t]he whole peninsula trembles under the incessant thunderings of our infernal machines” in his Military Journal, p. 277. In an Oct. 20, 1781, letter to Clinton, Cornwallis writes of how “I thought it would have been wanton and inhuman to the last degree to sacrifice the lives of this small body of gallant soldiers who had ever behaved with so much fidelity and courage. . . . I therefore proposed to capitulate” in Stevens, The Campaign in Virginia, 2:213. In an Oct. 11, 1781, letter to de Grasse, GW writes of how Cornwallis has been “passive beyond our expectation,” in Correspondence, p. 82. In an Aug. 22, 1781, letter to his wife, Elizabeth, Alexander Hamilton writes, “It is ten to one that our views will be disappointed by Lord Cornwallis retiring to South Carolina by land,” in his Papers, 2:667. In an Oct. 20, 1781, letter to Clinton, Cornwallis makes the claim that “nothing but the hopes of relief would have induced me to attempt its defense for I would either have endeavored to escape to New York by rapid marches from the Gloucester side immediately on the arrival of General Washington’s troops at Williamsburg, or I would notwithstanding the disparity of numbers have attacked them in the op
en field, where it might have been just possible that fortune would have favored the gallantry of the handful of troops under my command; but being assured by your Excellency’s letters that every possible means would be tried by the navy and army to relieve us, I could not think myself at liberty to venture upon either of those desperate attempts,” in Stevens, The Campaign in Virginia, 2:207–8. GW insists that “without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive” in a Nov. 15, 1781, letter to Lafayette in WGW, 23:341. My thanks to Admiral John Baldwin for bringing this quote to my attention. In a Sept. 29, 1781, letter to Henry Knox, NG writes, “We have been beating the bush and the General has come to catch the bird,” in PGNG, 9:411. In an Oct. 17, 1781, letter to Cornwallis, GW writes, “I wish, previous to the meeting of commissioners that your lordship’s proposals in writing, may be sent to the American lines, for which purpose a suspension of hostilities, during two hours, from the delivery of this letter, will be granted,” in Correspondence, p. 95. According to Ewald, “The English officer had scarcely reached the barrier when the fire of the besiegers was redoubled, whereupon a parley was sounded for a second time. General O’Hara was sent . . . to conclude as favorable a capitulation as could be made,” DAW, p. 339. GW writes “tho’ some of [Cornwallis’s proposals] were inadmissible,” he was led “to believe that there would be no great difficulty in fixing terms,” in his Diaries, 2:269.