United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This was to divide pursuit, as the larger party had taken the river route where Butler's troops were waiting in boats for them. The saddle-bags proved a windfall, for in them were orders to proceed to Yorktown and report to General Magruder.
But soldiers have their tragedies as well as their comedies in camp. It was here we lost our old friend, Jim George, the shallow-pated wit the man who found us the flour on the Potomac, and who floundered about in the river "for three hours," as he said, on that bitter cold night at Yorktown.
I went with my staff to attend the Yorktown celebration, and I may remark here that it was the first and only time during my service of six years as Governor on which my whole military staff accompanied me. We stopped in Washington to pay our respects to the President. It was soon after the assassination of General Garfield, and Arthur had not yet moved into the White House.
The whole devastation occasioned by the British army, during six months previous to the surrender at Yorktown, amounted to not less than L3,000,000 sterling, an immense loss for so short a time, falling, as it did, chiefly on the rural population. No wonder that they assembled in crowds to witness the humiliation of Cornwallis and his army.
She was, it appears, too low to cross the bar to go up to Richmond, and was not ocean-going; she was blown up when Yorktown was evacuated by the Confederates in May, 1862. The President had said of her defeater, to some naval officers: "I think she will be the veritable sling with the stone to smite the Philistine Merrimac."
The "Baltimore," "Charlestown," "Yorktown," and "Petrel" were given their trial trips in 1889, and were accepted by the Navy Department. The trip of the "Baltimore," in particular, was a brilliant success.
Opposite Yorktown is Gloucester point, which projects considerably into the river, the breadth of which at that place does not exceed a mile. Cornwallis had taken possession of both these places and diligently fortified them. The communication between them was commanded by his batteries and by some ships-of-war which lay in the river under cover of his guns.
"If you had seen as much of the horrors of war, my boy, as I have, you would not be so eager for it. God forbid it should deluge this frontier with blood; but if it do, old as I am, I will shoulder the old Brown Bess there above the fireplace that your grandfather bore at Brandywine and Yorktown." "What I dread most is the effect on religion," said Trueman.
Famous relics, too, such as a beautifully carved bronze cannon captured from the British at Yorktown in 1781, and a great gun called "Long Tom," with which the privateer General Armstrong repelled a British squadron off the shores of the Azores in 1814, and many other souvenirs of American history.
Hamilton was now desirous to resume active service in the line, and after some discussion as to rank, received the command of a New York battalion of light infantry, which he led right manfully at the siege of Yorktown.
Word Of The Day