Founding Myths

by Ray Raphael

  HAPPY ENDINGS

  “Everyone realized that this surrender meant the end.”

  The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, 19 October 1781.

  Lithograph by Nathaniel Currier, 1852, based on painting by John Trumbull, 1787–circa 1828.

  13

  THE FINAL BATTLE: YORKTOWN

  On October 19, 1781, Lord Cornwallis formally surrendered his entire army—some 8,000 troops—to George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.1 When Lord North, the British prime minister, heard the news, he exclaimed, “Oh, God, it is all over!” So ended the Revolutionary War.

  This story is repeated in virtually every narrative account of the American Revolution. The notion of a decisive final battle constitutes a neat and tidy conclusion to the war, placing America firmly in control of her own destiny. “The great British army was surrendering,” writes Joy Hakim in her popular textbook. “David had licked Goliath. . . . A superpower had been defeated by an upstart colony.”2

  “CARRYING ON THE WAR”

  Not everybody at the time saw it that way. In the wake of Yorktown, George Washington insisted that the war was not yet over, and King George III was not ready to capitulate. In fact, the fighting continued for over a year—but this part of history is rarely told. To stick to the story we like, we declare that people who engaged in subsequent battles were somehow mistaken—their fighting was some sort of illusion. “Washington considered the country still at war,” writes A. J. Langguth in his bestselling book Patriots, “and George III was under that same misapprehension.”3

  When King George III heard of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, he did not respond as fatalistically as did Lord North. “I have no doubt when men are a little recovered of the shock felt by the bad news,” he said, “they will find the necessity of carrying on the war, though the mode of it may require alterations.”4

  Washington was worried that the British Crown might respond this way—so worried, in fact, that he redoubled his efforts to build up the Continental Army. On October 27, only ten days after the victory at Yorktown, the commander in chief urged Congress to continue its “preparation for military Operations”; a failure to pursue the war, he warned, would “expose us to the most disgracefull Disasters.”5 In the following weeks, Washington repeated this warning more than a dozen times.6 “Yorktown was an interesting event,” he wrote, but it would only “prolong the casualties” if Americans relaxed their “prosecution of the war.” Candidly, he confessed:

  My greatest Fear is that Congress, viewing this stroke in too important a point of Light, may think our Work too nearly closed, and will fall into a State of Languor and Relaxation; to prevent this Error, I shall employ every Means in my Power.7

  Heeding Washington’s advice, Congress called on the states to supply the same number of soldiers they had furnished the preceding year. But the states were financially strapped, and their citizens were tiring of war. They failed to meet their quotas, and Washington did not receive enough men to undertake the offensive operations he had contemplated.8

  Meanwhile, the British and French continued to battle for control of the seas. In the West Indies, six months after Yorktown, British seamen defeated the French fleet that had cut off the lines of supply during the siege of Yorktown. With the French naval presence weakened, the British would be able to regroup and take the offensive; they could move their vast armies by sea to support any land operation they chose.

  Washington was not the only American general worrying about this. Nathanael Greene, who had hoped to lead an attack on Charleston, suddenly expressed concern that the British might attack him instead.9 On June 5, 1782, more than seven months after Yorktown, Washington wrote to the United States secretary of foreign affairs about the need to undertake “vigorous preparations for meeting the enemy.”10

  Finally, on August 4, the commanders of the British army and navy in North America informed Washington that the Crown was prepared to recognize “the independency of the thirteen Provinces,” providing only that loyalists receive full compensation for seized property and that no further property be confiscated. It seemed the war was coming to an end at last—but Washington was not buying it.11 Not until a peace treaty was signed and British troops had returned home would he relax his guard. In his general orders for August 19, 1782—ten months after Yorktown—he wrote: “The readiest way to procure a lasting and honorable peace is to be fully prepared vigorously to prosecute War.”12

  The British then offered to suspend all hostilities, but Washington still wouldn’t bite. Right at this moment, he received word that Lord Rockingham, the British prime minister believed to be responsible for the peace overtures, had died. The American commander in chief, who placed little stock in the fickle nature of British politics, assumed Rockingham would be replaced by a hard-liner. On September 12 he wrote: “Our prospect of Peace is vanishing. The death of the Marquis of Rockingham has given shock to the New Administration, and disordered its whole System. . . . That the King will push the War as long as the Nation will find Men or Money, admits not of a doubt in my mind.”13 A full year after Yorktown, Washington warned Nathanael Greene:

  In the present fluctuating state of British Councils and measures, it is extremely difficult to form a decisive opinion of what their real and ultimate objects are. . . . [N]otwithstanding all the pacific declaration of the British, it has constantly been my prevailing sentiment, the principal Design was, to gain time by lulling us into security and wasting the Campaign without making any effort on the land.14

  A preliminary peace treaty was signed on November 30, 1782—but even that was not enough to satisfy the ever-suspicious American commander. On March 19, 1783, one year and five months after Yorktown, Washington was still keeping his guard up: “The Articles of Treaty between America and Great Britain . . . are so very inconclusive . . . that we should hold ourselves in a hostile position, prepared for either alternative, War or Peace. . . . I must confess, I have my fears, that we shall be obliged to worry thro’ another Campaign, before we arrive at that happy period, which is to crown all our Toils.”15

  Washington saw what we do not. He knew well that Cornwallis did not command and surrender the British army in North America, as most Americans now assume. In fact, Cornwallis served under General Henry Clinton, commander in chief of the British army in America, who still had at his disposal some 40,000 soldiers stationed in Halifax, New York, Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, and the West Indies, five times as many British soldiers as he lost for service at Yorktown and three-and-one-half times as many as were available for service under George Washington.16 Although a fraction of Clinton’s forces had surrendered, the vast majority remained ready for battle. The Americans had recently sustained a significant loss, the surrender of over five thousand at Charleston, yet they had continued to fight. So had the British in 1777, after the British commander John Burgoyne lost some 8,000 men in his ill-fated expedition down the Hudson River. By sheer numbers, Cornwallis’s defeat at Yorktown was not that different from these earlier battles.

  Great Britain still maintained a strong presence in and around the United States. It controlled the St. Lawrence Valley to the Great Lakes, East Florida, several islands in the West Indies, and the Atlantic ports of Halifax, New York, Charleston, Savannah, and St. Augustine. After the defeat at Yorktown, General Clinton could have unleashed forces from any of these enclaves. New York’s Hudson Valley was particularly vulnerable, since Washington had weakened its defense when he moved his army south. The West was still not secured from Native inhabitants, who were now aided by Spanish as well as British forces. Tory bands ruled much of the Southern backcountry. Most important, once the French fleet had sailed southward, the British navy controlled the coastal waters. “Without a decis
ive Naval force we can do nothing definitive,” Washington complained shortly after Yorktown.17

  Washington understood that the outcome of the Revolutionary War depended on continuing French support. The war was being waged with French money. The siege at Yorktown had been conducted with French equipment, and over half the regular forces had been French. The siege had been successful only because French ships were able to keep British ships from resupplying the troops. If French support were suddenly withdrawn for reasons beyond the control of the Americans—say, a separate treaty of peace between France and Britain—the Americans would never be able to dislodge the British from their coastal strongholds. If Britain then decided to unleash its vast army against Washington’s struggling Continentals, the fledgling United States might well be crushed.

  This was not idle speculation. Back in London, upon hearing the news from Yorktown, Secretary of State Lord George Germain argued that Britain should at least hold onto its coastal enclaves, which could service the West Indies trade and provide a foothold on the continent. Perhaps, if French-American relations turned sour, and if Americans tired of their wartime governments, the opportunity would present itself to mount another offensive. Although the war’s popularity was on the wane, the British ministry opted to continue the defense of positions it securely held.18

  Because of military realities and diplomatic uncertainties, the outcome of the Revolutionary War was still very much in doubt after Yorktown. Had they displayed resolve, the British certainly possessed the resources to continue the fight. Only by reading history backward can we conclude that total British withdrawal was a foregone conclusion. Under the circumstances, Washington had no choice but to continue the war, pushing the temporary advantage the Americans had gained from Yorktown until Britain actually removed all its troops and ships.

  He did just that. Immediately following the victory at Yorktown, Washington dispatched a force southward, hoping to put pressure on the British stationed in Charleston and Savannah. While placing control of the Chesapeake in French hands, he sent the main contingent of the Continental Army northward to counter any offensive by Clinton and the troops under his command in New York. Meanwhile, in the Southern backcountry, the war between local loyalists and patriots continued even without a British presence, each side seeking vengeance for atrocities committed by the other. Across the Appalachians, frontiersmen continued to battle against Native nations, who were still supported by the British.

  Warfare continued on all these fronts. According to military historian Howard Peckham, 365 Americans lost their lives in the fighting after Yorktown. (As a percent of the population of the United States, this would amount to over 36,500 today, several times the American death toll in any comparable period of time in the Vietnam War or the entire eight years of the Iraq War.) This is undoubtedly a conservative estimate; because of the decentralized nature of the conflict in the South and West, many encounters were never reported. By contrast, during the Battle of Yorktown, only twenty-four American soldiers had been killed. The post-Yorktown death toll exceeded that of the first twelve months of the Revolutionary War, from April 1775 to April 1776, which included the battles of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and Quebec.19 Family and friends of the deceased, were they alive today, would be taken aback to discover that we think the deaths of their loved ones had not occurred during the Revolutionary War. Henry Laurens, former president of the Continental Congress and one of the negotiators of the peace treaty, would have been particularly surprised: his son John, an aide-de-camp for Washington, perished in battle against British Regulars on August 27, 1782—more than ten months after the war had supposedly been over.

  Just as the story of “the shot heard ’round the world” hides the dramatic revolution that preceded it, so does the story of “the final battle” suppress all that came afterward. Our telling of the American Revolution is astoundingly incomplete, leaving out both its true beginning and its true ending.

  There are at least three major reasons for this hushing up of the historical record. First, we want our stories to have neat beginnings and endings, and we are willing to bend the evidence to make this happen. Second, we prefer to view the war as a bipolar struggle between Americans and their oppressors, without acknowledging that the brutal civil war in the South and fighting in the West continued unabated after Yorktown. Third, we remain blind to the global nature of the conflict. With no interest in the broader picture, we fail to comprehend why the war went on long after we believe it did.

  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: A GLOBAL WAR

  The French navy and army that enabled the victory at Yorktown were no strangers to their British adversaries. The American Revolution marked the fifth time in less than a century that Britain and France had been at war with each other. For thirty-six years (1689–1697, 1701–1713, 1744–1748, 1754–1763, 1778–1781) these two colonial powers had battled for dominance in Europe and around the world. The debt Britain accrued during the previous conflict, known in this country as the French and Indian War, led to increased British taxation of her American colonies. This met great resistance, culminating in the Revolutionary War. American rebels, realizing they could not win the war alone, declared their independence in large measure so they could receive aid from France; the French government could not openly support the United States unless there was a United States, an actual nation. With French money, French troops, French arms and ammunition, and French ships, Americans were able to counter British attempts to quash their rebellion. The causes, the politics, the fighting, and the outcome of the American Revolution were integrally linked to the ongoing struggle for supremacy first between two European nations and ultimately among all European powers.

  In 1763, British victory in the French and Indian War had caused France to lose its stake on the North American mainland. When British colonists declared independence from their mother country thirteen years later, the French monarchy—no great friend to the cause of “liberty”—saw an opportunity to strike back. Once the rebels had proved their mettle with the victory at Saratoga, France jumped into the fray. France had not been able to beat Britain alone, but with the help of others, it might be able to cripple, or at least maim, its archrival.

  France tried to get Spain to oppose Britain. Initially, Spain declined; governmental leaders did not wish to give credence to the American rebellion, fearing it might inspire Spanish colonies to follow suit. But Spain had many good reasons for joining the fight against the world’s dominant naval power. Britain had seized Gibraltar, the Spanish fort that controlled the entrance to the Mediterranean. It had also taken the island of Minorca, off Spain’s eastern coast. It held the former Spanish colony of Florida, and by controlling Honduras, Jamaica, and several smaller islands, it vied with Spain for dominance in the West Indies, key to its empire in Central and South America. Following the French defeat in 1763, Spain and Britain were the only colonial powers competing for the mainland of North America. If Britain could be expelled, Spain might gain control of the Mississippi and extend its hegemony throughout most of the continent.

  In April 1779, Spain allied with France against Britain. It did not formally ally with the United States, but by waging war on Britain, Spain played a major role in the American Revolution. Troops, ships, and money that Britain might have used to quell the rebellion had to be used against Spain instead. In the later years of the war, Spain battled against Britain on the American frontier, dislodging the British from West Florida and challenging their control of the Mississippi.

  In the summer of 1779, a combined French-Spanish force—sixty-six ships of the line and ten thousand men—prepared to invade southern England. For several weeks the allies cruised the English Channel, sending British communities along the coast into a panic. But the allies could not overcome logistical problems caused by poor communications, and they called the invasion off. Also near home
, early in 1781, a French force invaded the British-held island of Jersey in the English Channel, closer to France than to Britain. The invasion was repulsed, but over two thousand men remained stationed there, along with another two thousand on the neighboring small island of Guernsey. In southern Britain (England and Wales), some 25,000 cavalry and infantrymen, along with an average of 35,000 militiamen, remained on duty in case of another attack from the English Channel, while in Scotland, some 6,000 Regulars protected the North Sea coastline. Meanwhile, British generals in America kept asking for more manpower to stage their offensives, but with the homeland itself in jeopardy, they had to make do with the soldiers they already had.20

  In fact, British troops and ships at this time were scattered all over the globe. At Gibraltar, French and Spanish forces began a siege that would last for years. Five thousand soldiers remained stuck there, and worse yet, the British navy needed to devote considerable resources to break through the blockade periodically to supply the beleaguered garrison. So too with Minorca and the two thousand troops besieged there. The battle for control of the West Indies demanded constant attention, siphoning off some ten thousand soldiers and a hefty portion of the British navy. To the east, local rebellions in India were trying to expel British who had colonized the coast, and French vessels and soldiers aided the rebels, as they had the Americans. British soldiers and sailors needed to fight on all these fronts simultaneously.

  Diplomatically, because it was perceived as the strongest world empire, Britain found itself isolated. In December 1780, the Netherlands formally allied with France and Spain against Britain. The Dutch, major commercial rivals of the British, controlled the Cape of Good Hope, a key supply station for ships on their way to India or the East Indies. Now that France and the Netherlands were allies, French ships could make use of this station while British ships could not, thereby allowing France to compete for hegemony in the Indian Ocean. Early in 1781 Britain tried to take the Cape, but the Dutch, reinforced by French ships on their way to India, prevailed. In August, just before the Continental Army and the French converged on Yorktown, British ships engaged Dutch ships in a fierce sea battle for control of the North Sea and command of the critical Baltic trade, rich with naval stores.