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Updated: June 13, 2025
Early in August, Cornwallis, acting under orders from Clinton, withdrew his troops into the peninsula between the York and James rivers, and occupied Yorktown. Washington and Rochambeau had met on the 21st of May, and decided that the situation demanded that the effort of the French West Indian fleet, when it came, should be directed against either New York or the Chesapeake.
On the following afternoon Vincent told his mother that he was going over that evening to his friend Furniss, as an early start was to be made next morning; they intended to go down the river as far as Yorktown, if not further; that he certainly should not be back for two days, and probably might be even longer. "This new boating freak of yours, Vincent, seems to occupy all your thoughts.
You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Camden, Bennington, and Saratoga. VETERANS OF HALF A CENTURY! when in your youthful days you put everything at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this!
McClellan assures the President, and the other intriguers and fools constituting his supporters, that in a few days he will throw 55,000 men on Yorktown. He and his staff to do such a thing, which would be a masterpiece even for the French military leaders and their staffs! He, McClellan, never knew what it was to embark an army.
Then on across the State of Maryland the news went from one gun to another, till it reached Virginia, where it passed on from gun to gun till it got to Yorktown. In less than two days Washington knew that ships were coming. When Washington knew that British ships were coming, he pushed the fighting at Yorktown with all his might.
The Americans refusing to descend in front of Portsmouth, a portion of the English army embarks and proceeds by water to Yorktown and Gloucester. General Lafayette takes a position at the Fork of Pamunkey and Mattapony River, having a detached corps upon both sides of York River.
Fortunately for Edenton and the adjacent towns, Anthony Wayne was stationed at Roanoke with his troops. Hearing of the ravages committed by Cornwallis' men, he marched in pursuit of the enemy, who now left North Carolina, entered Virginia, burned South Quays, and then proceeded on their way to Yorktown.
That circumstance, in addition to the knowledge of his being in a faction hostile to the Commander-in-Chief, rendered his situation in the army so uncomfortable that he withdrew to Yorktown, in Pennsylvania, which was then the seat of Congress. When the expedition to Canada was abandoned he was not directed, with Lafayette and De Kalb, to rejoin the army.
Yorktown lies twenty-one miles northwestward from Old Point, and thither I turned my face at noon, resolving to delay my journey to "White House," till next day morning. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a narrow causeway, I passed Hampton, half burned, half desolate, and at three o'clock came to "Big Bethel," the scene of the battle of June 11, 1861.
La Fayette here did good service, following closely the retreating army. Clinton failed to reinforce Cornwallis, some say from jealousy, so that the latter felt obliged to fortify himself at Yorktown.
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