NELSON HOUSE, YORKTOWN.
After a drawing given in Meade's Churches and Families of Virginia, i. 204. It was here that Cornwallis had his headquarters.
See other views and accounts in Balch's Les Français en Amérique, 1; Mag. of Amer. Hist. (1881), vii. 47 (by R. A. Brock); x. 458, July, 1881; Brotherhead's Signers of the Declaration of Independence (1861), p. 61; E. M. Stone's Our French Allies, p. 428; G. W. P. Custis's Recoll. of Washington, p. 337. A journal of Mr. Samuel Vaughan in 1787, owned by Dr. Charles Deane, describes the havoc made in this house by the bombardment.
The Moore house, at which the terms of surrender were arranged, is depicted in Appleton's Journal, xii. 705; Mag. of Amer. Hist., vi. 16 (etching); E. M. Stone's French Allies, 466; Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 530. Washington's headquarters at Williamsburg is shown in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., vii. 270. A view of the field where the arms were laid down is in Paulding's Washington, vol. ii. The so-called Cornwallis Cave is drawn in Scribner's Mag., v. 141. For other landmarks, see Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 509; Cycl. U. S. Hist., 155-157; Porte Crayon's "Shrines of Old Virginia" in Lippincott's Mag., April, 1879. In the Mag. of Amer. Hist. (1881), pp. 270, 275, are views of Washington's headquarters at Williamsburg; and of those, earlier occupied by Cornwallis, the president's house of William and Mary College.
For the Yorktown and Saratoga medal, see Loubat's Medallic Hist. U. S.; Amer. Jl. of Numismatics, xv. 76; Coin Collectors' Journal, vi. 173; Sparks's Franklin, ix. 173.
The best known picture of the surrender is Trumbull's painting, which is engraved in Harper's Mag., lxiii. 344, and elsewhere. Cf. early engravings of the scene in Barnard's Hist. of England; in Godefroy's Recueil d'Estamps (Paris, 1784).—Ed.
Greene's army had been so roughly handled at the Eutaws that it was the first of November before he felt strong enough again to take the field. He advanced first to Dorchester and the Round O. Then, reinforcements arriving from the troops set free by the surrender at Yorktown, he assumed a more vigorous offensive. He advanced to the eastern bank of the Edisto, between Jacksonborough, where the legislature was then assembling, and Charleston, still in the hands of the British. But if the Pennsylvanians were a welcome addition on account of their strength, they brought also a spirit of discontent. A plot was discovered to betray the army into the power of the enemy. A few examples were made and the attempted treason stamped out.
Greene now detached Wayne, with about five hundred men, to do what he could toward the recovery of the Georgia seaboard. On his approach the British retired to Savannah, burning everything that could not be removed. Wayne was too weak to attempt more than the blockade of the town. But on the 21st of May Lieutenant-Colonel Brown left the fortifications as if to attack the Americans. Placing himself between this party and the garrison, Wayne surprised Brown by a night attack, killing or dispersing the whole party. About a month later he was himself surprised by a large body of Creek Indians led by a British officer. Successful at first, the savages were finally beaten off, with the loss of their chief Escomaligo and a dozen braves. On the 11th of the next month, July, 1782, Savannah was evacuated, and the whole State once more came into the hands of the Americans.