On Oct. 19, 1781, the tune “The World Turned Upside Down” sounded in the air along with the tramp of feet as the British and Hessian soldiers marched out to surrender to the American-French forces in the greatest American victory of the Revolution.
The surrender at Yorktown 245 years ago was not the last skirmish of the American Revolution, which would not officially end until 1783. But it was certainly the last major battle and the decisive event that convinced the British that somehow, inexplicably, miraculously, the despised American colonials had won. British Prime Minister Frederick North reportedly exclaimed when he heard about Yorktown, “Oh God, it is all over!” From the American perspective, however, this was only the beginning.
Joseph Plumb Martin was an ordinary foot soldier in the Continental Army, but his memoir, spanning almost the whole course of the Revolution from 1776 until the war's end, has earned him a place in the history books. His eyewitness accounts of multiple battles are invaluable sources for the historian and the enthusiastic patriot. Martin described his part in the siege at Yorktown and also the surrender:
Before night we were informed that the British had surrendered and that the siege was ended… The English felt their honor wounded, the Germans did not greatly care whose hands they were in. The British paid the Americans little attention as they passed them, but they eyed the French with considerable malice depicted in their countenances. They marched to the place appointed and stacked their arms; they then returned to the town in the same manner they had marched out, except being divested of their arms. After the prisoners were marched off into the country, our army separated, the French remaining where they then were and the Americans marching for the Hudson.
I referred above to the fact that the British still looked down upon the American colonials. The British were trying to ignore the Americans even while officially acknowledging defeat at their hands. In fact, Lord Cornwallis did not show up in person to the surrender ceremony. Brig. Gen. O’Hara stood in for him, and at first tried to surrender to the French Comte de Rochambeau instead of Washington. It was Rochambeau who pointed O’Hara to Washington, and Washington then forced O’Hara to surrender to his second-in-command Benjamin Lincoln.
One particularly interesting feature of Martin’s account is that he referred to the German or Hessian troops being indifferent as to whether their British allies lost. About a third of the Hessian troops brought over by the British ended up staying in America after the Revolution, according to History.com. The German mercenaries discovered that a land of freedom and opportunity was far preferable to the life of a foreign gun-for-hire or returning to their authoritarian homeland.
Martin later mentioned how many slaves had run to the British under the promise of freedom and then been abandoned in the woods to suffer from various dreadful diseases. It is an interesting comment because it reminds us that the Americans had still to realize their own ideals of liberty, but that the British were often much worse. Cornwallis and company had not promised freedom to the slaves out of humanity, but for political reasons, and as soon as the slaves ceased to be useful, the British tossed them aside. Martin expressed strong empathy for the slaves and slammed Cornwallis for his dishonesty. The British Army had engaged in its usual tactic of exploiting the locals while trying to crush any resistance. America is one of the few places where this brutal tactic did not succeed.
Despite all of the disasters and defeats along the way, the Americans had finished the course and kept the faith. They had won independence from the world’s most powerful empire.