The World Turned Upside Down

“If ponies rode men and grass ate cows,/ And cats should be chased to holes by the mouse,/ If the mamas sold their babies to the gypsies for half a crown;/ Summer were spring and the t'other way around,/ Then all the world would be upside down.” Two hundred twenty-five years ago today, 8,000 sullen British soldiers marched out of Yorktown, Virginia.

According to legend, as the column approached a mile-long gauntlet of smiling American and French troops, the English fife and drum corps played a melancholy march called “The World Turned Upside Down.” There could be no more fitting music for this sunny afternoon. On October 19, 1781, the British army under Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans, ending the siege of Yorktown—and the Revolutionary War.

In the first days of October 1781, 1,200 Continental soldiers crowded the woods outside the tiny tobacco port, scrounging the forest floor for twigs and branches. Six months earlier, most of them had been stationed with Washington around the Hudson, starving in rags as the Revolution shriveled from poverty, inertia, and a six-year losing streak. But in late September, Washington’s troops and their French allies had rendezvoused with the southern army to trap Gen. Charles Cornwallis’s 9,000 men in the town above the York River. Twenty-nine French ships of the line under Rear Adm. Comte de Grasse blocked Cornwallis’s escape from the Chesapeake Bay. Now Washington and the French Lt. Gen. Viscount de Rochambeau would attack from the west.

The Americans suggested a coup de main—an infantry assault on the city walls. The French politely demurred. Even with the allies’ advantage in numbers, storming the strong British positions would be suicide. Better to strangle Yorktown with a siege. Washington, though commander in chief, deferred to Rochambeau—a veteran of fourteen sieges—and his engineers. The generals’ relationship was courteous but cool; Washington and his aides endured a palpable air of French superiority. “I must render the Americans the justice to say that they conducted themselves with that zeal, courage, and emulation, with which they were never backward, in the important part of the attack entrusted to them,” Rochambeau wrote in his memoirs, “and the more so as they were totally ignorant of the operations of a siege.”

On the dark, rainy night of October 6, 1,500 soldiers started digging trenches in the sandy, marshy soil south of Yorktown. They broke ground well out of enemy cannon range and burrowed in as close as 600 yards from the British positions, shoring up dirt walls with wickerwork the Americans had woven from their forest finds. By October 9, the allies had rolled their field guns, howitzers, and mortars into place. The French gave Washington the honor of firing the first cannonball, which delighted the commander by shooting straight to its target. (When the American batteries opened three hours later, their inaccuracy—veering balls, shells that wouldn’t explode—made an embarrassing show next to the well-calibrated, state-of-the-art French equipment.)

For the next week, the sky flashed and dazzled almost continuously with fiery stripes of flying shot. Late on October 10, French cannon found Cornwallis’s ships in the York River. Flames climbed the masts and silhouetted the city against a strobe-lit night. The British artillery had managed only six rounds an hour that day; the next morning they all but gave up. The allies seized the opportunity to dig a second parallel even closer to the enemy defenses. However, two British redoubts at the river’s edge blocked their path.

An eerie silence closed over Yorktown on the evening of October 14 as the cannon hushed for the first time in five days. Then, at 8 p.m., six rapid shots: the signal to attack. Four hundred French under Col. William de Deux-Ponts crept toward the western redoubt until a guard barked, “Wer da?” [“Who’s there?”] The French declined to reply, and 120 British and Hessians opened fire. Deux-Ponts and his men bayoneted their way to the parapet in a hard-fought half-hour, at which point the defenders threw down their weapons. A few hundred yards to the east, 400 Americans led by Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton took the second redoubt in 10 minutes.

By dawn the allies had extended the inner parallel to the river. Their artillery, now even closer to the British, shook the very earth under Yorktown, spraying dirt and rubble into air already thick with cannon smoke. In a gallant, if hopeless, effort to stop the bombardment, 350 British braved the allied trenches in the early hours of October 16. They spiked seven guns with bayonet points before fleeing back to Yorktown. Their bravery notwithstanding, they failed to inflict much damage. The cannon were firing again within six hours.

How had the powerful British army sunk to this sort of ineffectual flailing? When the allies had first begun to surround Cornwallis in late September, Gen. Henry Clinton, the commander in chief of the British forces in America, pledged to send 5,000 reinforcements by sea. So, rather than march his army out of Yorktown or attack the encircling rebels, Cornwallis waited. But as days turned into weeks, no matter how doggedly Cornwallis watched the horizon, the flotilla never came.

In Cornwallis’s letters from Yorktown, optimism slowly gave way to stoicism, then despondency, and, finally, resignation. On September 29, Cornwallis assured Clinton, “I . . . have no doubt, if relief arrives in any reasonable time, York and Gloucester will be both in possession of his Majesty’s troops.” By October 10, though, he pleaded that “nothing but a direct move to York River—which includes a successful naval action—can save me. . . . We have lost about seventy of our men and many of our works are considerably damaged . . . we cannot hope to make a very long resistance. P.S. 5 p.m. Since my letter was written [at 12 p.m.] we have lost thirty men.” After the assault on the redoubts, he wrote, “My situation now becomes very critical. We dare not show a gun to their old batteries, and I expect that their new ones will open tomorrow morning. . . . The safety of the place is, therefore, so precarious that I cannot recommend that the fleet and army should run great risque in endeavoring to save us.”

Instead, Cornwallis gambled on a last-ditch escape. If he could ferry his men the half mile across the York River to Gloucester Point without waking the French navy, they might be able to sneak overland through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey and join Clinton’s army in New York. British Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton described the plan as “the only expedient that now presented itself to avert the mortification of a surrender.”

So 19 hours after the futile sortie, Cornwallis ushered his Guards, light infantry, and part of the 23rd Regiment into 16 oared boats. They made it safely to Gloucester before midnight. But as the second wave of troops embarked, the Virginia sky opened in a terrific squall. “At this critical moment,” Cornwallis wrote, “the weather, from being moderate and calm, changed to a most violent storm of wind and rain and drove the boats, some of which had troops on board, down the river. It was soon evident that the intended passage was impracticable.” When the storm died down, at about 2 a.m., the troops on Gloucester rowed back to Yorktown. As Tarleton wrote, “Thus expired the last hope of the British army.”

The next morning, October 17, the allies opened their heaviest bombardment yet. More than 100 guns were now trained on the little town. The cannon fire boomed so loud that no one heard the lone British drummer who between 9 and 10 a.m. mounted the parapet. The American sentries saw him, though, and they saw the British officer outside the works waving a white handkerchief. The cannons stopped for the second time that week. Now, as an American soldier ran to meet the British officer, the redcoat’s parley was the only sound above the battlefield. “I never heard a drum equal to it,” wrote Lt. Ebenezer Denny of Pennsylvania. “The most delightful music to us all.”

Washington, catching up on his correspondence in his headquarters, failed either to notice the sudden silence or to guess what it implied. He looked up only when a red-faced aide on horseback appeared at his tent with a message. Washington paused and opened the letter. “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 at York & Gloucester. I have the honour to be Sir Your most obedient & most humble Servant, Cornwallis.”

What must have run through Washington’s mind at that moment, as Cornwallis’s handwriting swam on the page before him? Six years of worry, of teetering on the precipice above national bankruptcy, army-wide mutiny, and defeat: Could they be waved away by one piece of paper? In any case, he kept a clear head. Aware that every hour of cease-fire might bring Cornwallis reinforcements, Washington requested his terms within two hours. Cornwallis complied, and Washington agreed to a truce while they hammered out the details.

As the sun rose the next morning, the two armies—no longer hunched in trenches or behind broken walls—could finally get a good look at one another. From atop their parapets, the British gaped at the sheer numbers massed against them. Staring back, the allies marveled at the destruction they had wrought. Americans searched for a single right angle among the roofs and walls of the little town. They found only haphazard rubble and yawning holes.

Meanwhile, half a mile down the York River, two commissioners from each side met in a white clapboard house to negotiate the surrender terms. Cornwallis had suggested that his troops be paroled to Europe, but Washington refused: The entire army must yield as prisoners of war. Arguments dragged into the night. But at 11 the next morning, Washington, Rochambeau, and the French Adm. Comte de Barras gathered in one of the captured redoubts to sign the finished document. Under the British signatures, Washington added, “Done in the trenches before Yorktown, in Virginia, October 19, 1781, G. Washington.”

An hour later on that crisp, clear day, two parallel lines of soldiers stretched a mile down the road from Yorktown. On one side, spotless white broadcloth shone in the sun, and majestic French hat-plumes twitched in the breeze. On the other, ragged, dingy hunting jackets hung on skinny shoulders and toes poked through what remained of boots. But as the Continental Surgeon James Thacher noted, “every countenance beamed satisfaction.”

For many of the ill-clad Americans, this day was the culmination of six continuous years of starving, freezing, marching, and fighting. Now the parade finally halted, and the veterans of Concord and Bunker Hill, Quebec and New York, Valley Forge and Morristown, and “Independence fever” and apathy snapped to attention. The man who had led them through it all was taking his place at the head of the line. Washington, on his bay horse, looked calm even on the day of his greatest glory.

The tones of fifes and drums started to filter down the road at 2 p.m. The allies craned to glimpse Cornwallis, but at the head of the British column they found a ruddy Irishman named Charles O’Hara. Rather than face “the humiliating scene,” Cornwallis feigned illness, sending a deputy to surrender his army. O’Hara asked the first officer he met, Comte Mathieu Dumas, where he might find Rochambeau. After pointing him out, Dumas realized O’Hara planned to surrender to the French general and hurried over to where the two stood.

“You are mistaken,” Dumas said. “The commander in chief of our army is on the right.” Rochambeau indicated a tall man in the American line. O’Hara, embarrassed, rode over to Washington and presented his sword. But Washington decided deputy should surrender to deputy, and he motioned to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Lincoln accepted the sword and pointed to the field where the rest of the troops must give up their arms.

As the vanquished passed through the double line of victors, British officers ordered their troops to look to the right, at the French, and ignore the Americans. The King’s soldiers could tolerate being beaten by a resplendent and venerable European army; defeat by the motley mob to their left proved unbearable. On the American side, the Marquis de Lafayette yelled an order to the fife and drum corps, which abruptly struck up a French tune. The startled British turned to look for the noise, and faced their American conquerors.

“The British officers in general behaved like boys who had been whipped at school,” wrote a New Jersey officer. “Some bit their lips; some pouted; others cried.” The mood worsened when they reached the field where they were to lay down their weapons. Cursing, faces streaked with tears, many hurled their muskets to the ground in an effort to damage them. “One man, a corporal,” wrote the Scottish Capt. Samuel Graham, “embraced his firelock and then threw it on the ground, exclaiming, ‘May you never get so good a master again!’”

It would have been small consolation to know their planned salvation had finally sailed. That very day, 7,000 British troops on 25 ships of the line and eight frigates left New York for Yorktown. Damage from a September battle had kept the fleet moored in New York a month longer than Clinton expected. The reinforcements arrived at the Chesapeake October 24, a week too late to save Cornwallis’s army.

Prime Minister Lord North, in London, heard about the surrender November 25. “Oh God,” he cried. “It is all over!” Ultimately, he was right, but it took two years for history to bear him out. Cornwallis had surrendered one quarter of the King’s forces in America—a significant fraction, yes, but the remaining British still outnumbered Washington’s men. The Crown still held Wilmington, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; New York City; Penobscot, Maine; and Halifax, Nova Scotia—enough to claim control of the country. But the English people, weary of this expensive war, demanded peace. John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated with British commissioners throughout late 1782 and 1783 and finally, on September 3, 1783, signed the treaty that granted the United States full independence. The end had come so gradually that in no single moment did the Americans suddenly realize they had won. If the Revolution had a climax, it was the day when, an American colonel remembered, “the officers and soldiers could scarcely talk for laughing, and they could scarcely walk for jumping and dancing and singing.” For a nation struggling to be born, catharsis came October 19, 1781, at Yorktown.