Evening star., 1941-10-19
Yorktown Duy

One hundred and sixty years ago
today, Lord CORVALLIS surrendered
at Yorktown. He was distinguished
officer who had led the campaign
against Nathaniel Greene in North
Carolina and thus aroused confident
expectations at home in London.
Marching into Virginia, he hoped to
join forces with Benedict Arnold
against Baron Won Steuben and John
P. G. Muhlenberg. The situation"
as George Washington visualized it,
was very alarming, and threatened
, to place all the Southern States in
the hands of the British" Lafayette
with twelve hundred light infantry
was hurried to the scene and
Rochambeau, blockaded at Newport,
was asked to help if he could break
through the enemys line.
When these proceedings were
made known to CORVALLIS, he pre-
pared for a conflict in which he felt
sure of decisive victory" Lafayette,
however, made use of an old and
forgotten road to Albemarle where
military stores from Richmond had
been assembled There the gallant
French volunteer showed SO strong
a front that the British commander
did not venture an attack" Corn
wallis, instead, moved to Williams
burg, near the coast, = thus prac-
tically abandoning control over any
part of Virginia except where naval
forces gave possession" Won Steuben
now effected junction with Lafay-
cite, and their combined armies
drove the British to Portsmouth,
from which place CORVALLIS mo-
mentarily supposed he might escape
to New York. What prompted him
to attempt last desperate gamble
on the Virginia peninsula is matter
of debate. 1t provided Washington
with an opportunity to plan IAN eff
cient offensive" Every factor that
he could bring to bear upon the
situation was enlisted. Washington
himself, Fastening south, was met
at Chester with tidings that Count
de Grasse with a fleet of twenty
eight ships had arrived in Chesa-
peake Bay and that the Marquis de
st. Simon had landed at Jamestown
with reinforcements for Lafayette.
BY October CORVALLIS was sur
rounded. Washington personally
applied the torch to the first gun
fired into his fortified camp. Count
William de Deux Points led the
French storming party, Alexander
Hamilton the American. Even the
elements-wind and rain-combined
to compel request for an armistice.
John Trumbull's picture in the
Capitol may not be an accurate rep
resentation of the final ceremony.
But there can be no question about
the fact that on October 10. 1881,
CORVALLIS, the garrison of York and
Gloucester, together with all the
officers and seamen of the British
ships in the Chesapeake, surrendered
themselves prisoners of war to the
combined forces of America and
France" With the British general
fell the English cause in the Col
onieS.
The quiet countryside in which the
great drama was enacted gives little
hint in contemporary times of the
historic events which a century and
six decades ago occurred there. No
sign of continued strife persists un-
der the Virginia sky. Pilgrims to
Yorktown think of CORVALLIS with
sympathy rather than otherwise
The world has so much changed
since he lived and died that the
democratic ideals which now relate
the English-speaking communities
of the earth seem infinitely more i'm
portant than any quarrel which once
separated them could be.