INTRODUCTION

THE STORY of the last great act in the drama of American independence has been told many times, but never more vividly than in the words of the actors themselves. This book is an attempt to portray the crowning campaign of the American Revolution in the language of participants. Cornwallis, commander of the British forces, and Tarleton, his dashing cavalry leader, have been called upon to describe scenes and events inside Yorktown, during the campaign which culminated in the surrender of Cornwallis's army and was followed by the abandonment of British efforts to reduce the revolting American colonies to their old allegiance. Washington, "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Surgeon Thacher of the Continental Line, the young and chivalrous Count William de Deux-Ponts, and others recount for us American and French operations around Yorktown, for the most part in words penned while the events themselves were transpiring. Lafayette writes exultantly, on the heels of the surrender, that "the play is over," and Washington congratulates the army on its success. Here is the story of the siege of Yorktown recorded by those who were a part of it.

Here also are estimates of the significance of the surrender by a contemporary American statesman who was in position to view its immediate effects on the watching European world, by an American President who saw Yorktown against the background of a century's independent national development, and by the commission which prepared the sesquicentennial celebration of the event in 1931. There has been added only sufficient new narrative to fill the obvious gaps in the accounts of contemporaries.

CHARLES E. HATCH, JR.
THOMAS M. PITKIN.

Colonial National Historical Park,
Yorktown, Virginia,
January 23, 1941.

REPRODUCED from a picture made shortly after the American Revolution by the painter Van Blarenburghe, based on an action sketch by Captain Louis Alexandre Berthier, of Rochambeau's army. It depicts the British Army marching out of Yorktown between the French and American troops to surrender its arms and flags.

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