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Moreover, the South had already decided to call up every available man; thus forestalling the North by more than ten months on the vital issue of conscription. In May the preliminary clash of arms began on the Peninsula. The Confederates evacuated the Yorktown lines on the third. On the fifth McClellan's advanced guard fought its way past Williamsburg.
When the campaign opened in the spring, the young man was with his regiment near Yorktown, Virginia. They were ordered to attack a fort, and he fell at the first volley of the enemy. His comrades caught him up and carried him bleeding and dying from the field. "Bear witness," he said, "that I have proved myself not a coward, and I am not afraid to die."
Fighting went on spasmodically in the Carolinas and in the West for some time. But everyone knew the war was over. The British people no longer wanted to fight what had become a world war involving the Dutch, French, and Spanish, as well as the Americans. When he heard the news from Yorktown, Lord North supposedly cried out, "Oh God! It is all over." And it was.
"Why should Drayton so concern himself about me?" "And now 'tis my turn to explain," broke in Harriet. She did not tell him that Drayton had been actuated by gratitude toward her because she had assisted him in escaping from a similar plight at Yorktown. She did not wish her brother to know the part she had taken in that affair, so now she ignored his question, and began her explanation.
"A short distance to the south," I added, "is the old house where Washington made his headquarters during the most discouraging years of the Revolution, and in which he and Rochambeau planned the campaign which ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. And not far away is 'Sleepy Hollow, where Washington Irving lived, wrote, and died."
In the war he distinguished himself at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Yorktown, and was advanced to the rank of Major-General. The war over, Peter Muhlenberg served as Speaker of the House in Congress and afterwards as United States Senator. Chr. Streit at Winchester, Henkel at New Market.
He and his bride established themselves at Abingdon on the Potomac, not far from Mount Vernon, and with their little ones were often visitors, especially when the General was away to the war and Mrs. Washington was alone. Toward the close of the war Jack himself entered the army, rose to the rank of colonel and died of fever contracted in the siege of Yorktown.
Enormous siege guns of one hundred and even two hundred pound calibre, and immense mortars were brought up and mounted in the earthworks, and it was thought that with the powerful means we were using the fall of Yorktown was only a question of time. Our losses by the rebels before Yorktown were not great, but the ravages by disease were fearful.
If, however, he had possessed the gift of prophecy, he might have looked forward but one short century to the centennial of Yorktown, when the flags of the United States and of Great Britain would be run up together on the site of this historic surrender.
He was weary of the struggle, and anxious to secure his own safety. With renewed spirit the Americans in 1781 took the offensive in the Carolinas under Greene. Cornwallis moved northward to the peninsula of Yorktown. The moment had come.
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