After almost seven years of struggle, the American colonies, with the aid of France, won by the success of their arms that independence which they declared in 1776. The close of the Yorktown campaign with the surrender of Cornwallis virtually ended the Revolutionary War.
While the victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga (1777) produced a most encouraging effect upon the colonies, their scattered forces still had much arduous work before them. The defeat of Washington at Brandywine and at Germantown (September and October, 1777) left the British, under Howe, in possession of Philadelphia. Being in no condition to keep the field, Washington went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, twenty miles northwest of that city. There, in the most inhospitable surroundings, the army remained from the middle of December, 1777, suffering untold privations, while the British passed a winter of gayety in Philadelphia. The American camp consisted of log huts with windows of oiled paper. The soldiers built the huts in bitter weather, their only food being cakes of flour and water which they baked at the open fires. To the hardships of exposure were added the sufferings of disease; to scarcity of provisions, lack of clothing. The men, said Lafayette, "were in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; their feet and their legs froze till they became black, and it was often necessary to amputate them."
After such a winter it seems remarkable that Washington could have so strengthened his army as to win the Battle of Monmouth in the following June. The next considerable events of the war were the taking of Stony Point by the British in 1779, and its recapture by Anthony Wayne in the same year. The war went on during the next two years with varying results, but none decisive. The defection of Benedict Arnold deprived the Americans of a capable soldier and gave him to the enemy. The American victory at the Battle of the Cowpens, January 17, 1781, was offset by the triumph of Cornwallis at Guilford Court House, March 15th, but this was that general's last success on American soil. His own account of the surrender of Yorktown, in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Clinton, here follows the complete narrative of Dawson, which covers the final year of the actual War of the American Revolution.
HENRY B. DAWSON
The seventh year of the War of the Revolution was productive of great events. Opening with the mutiny of the Pennsylvania line of troops, its progress soon developed the disaffection of the New Jersey line also, and all the skill of General Washington was necessary to maintain that discipline in the army on which the salvation of the country depended. The resources of the country, from the long-continued struggle through which it had passed during six years, had become exhausted; its currency had become depreciated beyond precedent; and the people, weary of the contest, were lukewarm as well as enervated.
At that time, also, the Federal Congress appeared to lack that nerve and decision which had marked the proceedings of the same body earlier in the war; and contenting itself with "recommendations," without attempting to enforce its requisitions or even to advise the adoption of compulsory measures by the States, it left the troops who were in the field without clothing, provisions, or pay, and indirectly forced upon them those acts of apparent insurrection which, resolved to their first elements, might not improperly have been called "acts of necessity," and been justified, in charity, as essential to their self-preservation.
So gloomy, indeed, were the prospects of American independence at that time that the interposition of some foreign government was, by general consent, considered absolutely essential; and never were the good qualities of the Commander-in-Chief more nobly displayed than at this period, when, amid the most pressing discouragements, referred to, he urged the States to strengthen the bonds of the confederacy and to renew their efforts for the great final struggle with their haughty and determined enemy.
The enemy, still anxiously seeking to establish his power in the Southern States, had sent General Arnold to Virginia, with a strong detachment of troops, to coöperate with Lord Cornwallis, who was busily engaged, in a series of movements, in measuring his strength and his skill with General Greene; and, soon afterward, a second detachment, under General Phillips, was sent to the same State.
Early in May the Count de Barras arrived from Europe with the welcome intelligence of the approach of reënforcements from France; and that a strong fleet from the West Indies, under Count de Grasse, might be expected in the American waters within a few weeks. In view of these facts a conference between General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau was held at Weathersfield soon afterward, and the plans of the campaign were discussed and determined on.