First Salute (50 page)

Cornwallis’ feelings when he surrendered to rebels and contemptible foes, as he thought them, were equally unrecorded. The need to justify himself is uppermost in an interesting letter he wrote to Clinton on that day. Now that the fight was over, he began to find excuses and suggest blame. As might be expected, he laid the blame politely but unmistakably in Clinton’s lap. At the same time, he seems conscious that his own passivity needed explanation.

He goes on to say that he
“never saw this post in a favourable light,”
and when found he was to be attacked in it by powerful forces—“nothing but the hopes of relief would have induced me to attempt its defence; for I would either have endeavored to escape to New York by rapid marches from the Gloucester side immediately on the arrival of General Washington’s troops at Williamsburg [the opponent appears as “General” here for the first time] or I would have attacked them in the open field, but [here comes the knife]
being assured by Your Excellency’s letters that every possible means would be tried by the navy and army to relieve us
I could not think myself at liberty to venture on either of those desperate attempts.… ” Why not? Desperate attempts when the worst is in prospect is a general’s business. Cornwallis was a man who could have thrust his hand in a flame if necessary, but not a man to organize the logistics and arrangements of a large campaign with a likely risk of failure. The smooth face in the Gainsborough portrait with no lines of thought or of frowns or of laughter—with no lines at all—tells as much. It is a face composed by a life of comfort and satisfaction without any need of desperate attempts.

As we know, Cornwallis took neither of the two courses he mentions to Clinton. He did nothing at the time of the Allied army’s arrival at Williamsburg on September 26, except three days later to order with-drawal from his front lines to the inner defenses of Yorktown, nor did he make any effort to escape by way of Gloucester until too late, and he certainly did not give any sign of contemplating an attack on them “in the open field.”

The clue to Cornwallis, one might suppose, was his initial opinion that forceful coercion of the Americans was a mistake because it could not succeed. Other men of the army and navy who shared his opinion refused to fight for the mistake. Cornwallis did not refuse; on the contrary, he volunteered, supposedly from a sense of duty while holding the King’s commission. It may be that his ambivalence about the war, from the beginning, lurked in his mind to become the reason for his halfhearted fight. His conduct during the last month is not easily understandable. Like Hamlet, he could say to us, the heart is not to be plucked from my mystery.

Perforce accepting the shortened truce, Cornwallis was able to deliver his proposals within the two hours allowed. His stipulations were more concerned with procedure and protocol than with military conditions, and, as such, they generated hours of controversy between the two parties when they met.

The parley Commissioners were John Laurens and the Vicomte de Noailles, Lafayette’s brother-in-law, representing the Allies, and on the other side two aides, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas and Major Alexander Ross, for Cornwallis.

Cornwallis’ conditions proved inadmissible. He asked for the honors of war to be granted to his garrison in the ceremony of surrender. Among these were the right to attend the ceremony with flags flying and the right to march to music of their choice. For some Byzantine reason of European custom, the right of the capitulators to play the national airs or anthems of the victor was considered to imply that they had put up a good fight. Washington did not think so. In his judgment, in a letter to Governor Sim Lee of Maryland, Cornwallis’ conduct “has hitherto been
passive beyond conception.” In
Washington’s creed, danger was created to be overcome. Moreover, at the surrender of Charleston, eighteen months before, the British had allowed no honors of war to the defenders and required them to appear with flags cased—that is, furled. Laurens, who had taken part in that occasion, was adamant in
refusing to allow the British the honor of marching to the music of their choice with regimental flags flying. When told by Major Ross that this was a “harsh article,” Laurens reminded the Major that after a gallant defense of six weeks in open trenches at Charleston, the same had been refused by the British there. Ross replied that “Lord Cornwallis did not command at Charleston,” and was firmly told by Laurens, “It is not the individual that is here considered. It is the nation.
This remains an article or I cease to be a commissioner.” Next, the British wanted honors for the garrison of Gloucester, while Laurens insisted it should be treated as one with the rest. A compromise was finally found, allowing the cavalry to ride with drawn swords and sounding trumpets while the infantry must keep its colors cased.

To plunge into passionate dispute over the trivialities of so-called honor is a queer but not uncommon gambit of men who have just come from putting their lives at stake in serious combat. These were men who had been fighting for empire in one case and for national independence in the other. Did they think they were altering the verdict of the battlefield?

A more substantive issue next arose in the British demand that British and German troops as prisoners be returned to their countries of origin under parole not to re-engage. The same provision granted at Burgoyne’s surrender had permitted the prisoners to fill the places of other troops at home, who could then be sent to America. This time it was disallowed. The most obstinate issue concerned treatment of the Loyalists who had fought for Britain and whose protection Laurens said he had no power to grant and which he was sure Washington would not permit. While the army waiting outside the parley stirred in restlessness at the delay, the arguments dragged on, until the terms were finally concluded at midnight.

When copied and delivered to Washington, he promised to reply to the modifications early in the morning, with another two hours granted for Cornwallis’ signature, expected at 11 a.m., to be followed by surrender of the garrison at two o’clock, failing which, hostilities would resume. The signed papers were duly delivered in the given time. Promptly at 2 p.m. on October 19, 1781, the first steps took place in the ceremony so often described, inaugurating the existence of a new nation.

Lined up on one side of the road to Williamsburg were ten French regiments in their white uniforms, with white silk flags bearing the royal
fleur-de-lis
in gold. On the other side stood the Americans, with
the Continentals drawn up in front and the less disciplined and shabbier militia, some with toes poking through broken boots, behind. The British, with polished black boots and gaiters whitened, and wearing fresh uniforms issued by their commissary so that they should not be included in the surrender of property, marched out between the lines with colors tightly cased, no flags flying to wave them along. As required, they marched to the music of their own nation—according to one of history’s most memorable invented legends, a ballad, as everyone supposes, called “
The World Turned Upside Down.” In fact, no such song or melody by that name existed.
^*

In the surrender march, the Germans, stiff and correct, followed soberly in step, but the British, having emptied their last stores of rum and brandy, “appeared
much in liquor” and exhibited
morgue
(bitterness) and insolence and, above everything else “
contempt for the Americans,” as remarked by the French Quartermaster, Claude Blanchard. Contempt of the defeated for the victor, seemingly a perverse response, is a loser’s sentiment—denying admission of its own fault or failure and
believing itself robbed of victory by some malign mischance, as in sports when a gust of wind might divert the throw of a ball, giving victory to the opponent. The British kept their eyes on the French, refusing to look at their late subjects, until Lafayette called for the playing of “
Yankee Doodle,” which brought all British heads around in a single turn toward the Americans.

The ceremony of surrender was too much for the soldierly heroism of Lord Cornwallis, who on the grounds of illness did not attend, sending his second in command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, to act for him. Admiral de Grasse, too, though an author of the victory, was kept absent by an attack of asthma and was represented by Admiral de Barras.

Washington, statuesque on horseback in his familiar buff and blue, was stationed at the head of the American line. When O’Hara approached as Cornwallis’ deputy, he advanced toward Rochambeau, evidently intending to surrender his sword to the French rather than the Americans. Rochambeau with a smile shook his head and pointed to General Washington across the road. Washington, not willing as Commander-in-Chief to complete the ritual with the British second in command, pointed to his own deputy, General Lincoln, who had been the American commander at the surrender of Charleston. Whether Lincoln accepted the sword from O’Hara for Washington has been a disputed point. He did indicate to O’Hara the spot in the field called
the Pigeon Quarter where the British should lay down their arms. Inebriated or not, the redcoats slammed the guns down with spiteful vigor in the hope of breaking the locks, until O’Hara, watching, ordered them to stop this petty revenge.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

The tune “Derry Down,” more plaintive than jaunty, is not particularly suitable for marching, but on the way to surrender jauntiness might not be wanted.

Taking place at a seaport of the Bay where a British Admiral had declared the French to be “absolute masters of its navigation,” the surrender at Yorktown marked an overturn of naval sovereignty that added gall to the occasion. Within a year Rodney would prove the overturn ephemeral, but at Yorktown it had marked a further fall for the British.

On October 17, the day when Cornwallis, heralded by his little drummer boy, asked for terms, his would-be rescuers in New York, Graves and Clinton, setting a record for belated action in military history, finally fixed a time to leave on the mission that had been waiting ever since Clinton had acknowledged on September 2 that Cornwallis would have to be “saved.” An army of 7,000 was boarded, sails were hoisted, Graves’s fleet with Clinton on board moved slowly down the Hudson. They crossed the Hook on October 19, on the same day when, in Yorktown, Washington and Cornwallis signed and accepted the terms of surrender. Five days later, October 24, they were off Cape Charles without encountering the feared interference from de Grasse, who had no reason to risk battle for a cause already won. While small craft scuttled through the bay seeking news, a boat came out from the York to tell the tale. Time had not waited; the door was closed. All the expense and armed force exerted for nearly six years had gone for nothing. No victory, no glory, no restored rulership. As a war, it was the historic rebuke to complacency.

The two masters of lethargy, Admiral and General, with their 35 ships and 7,000 men turned around and sailed back uselessly to New York.

Officially the war was not over, nor American sovereignty recognized, nor would it be until the long-drawn-out process of negotiating a peace treaty, which was to last two years, was concluded in 1783. No shots heard round the world were fired to announce the surrender. The event spoke for itself, verifying the independent statehood of America saluted nearly six years before by the guns of St. Eustatius. At that time, American independence was not a fact but only a newborn Declaration. When de Graaff’s guns spoke, hardly six months had passed since, as the second President, John Adams, was to say, “
The greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater never was or will be decided among men.” The purport of those words hung over the capitulation at Yorktown, notifying the Old World that the hour of change to a democratic age had come.