Victory at Yorktown

by Richard M. Ketchum

"In 1780 George Washington's dispirited troops lay idle for want of supplies and money. The new American Congress was unresponsive to Washington's requests, as were the state governments. News came that General Cornwallis's army had destroyed General Gates's troops in South Carolina. Later than year, Benedict Arnold's terrible betrayal would further weaken the American cause. But just as rebel hope seemed to fade, Comte de Rochambeau's powerful French army slipped by the British to land ten thousand trained soldiers at Newport, Rhode Island, on July 11, 1780. Farther south, Nathanael Greene's hit-and-run guerilla fighters were beginning to score victories in North Carolina and Virginia, and by the fall of 1781, the twenty-four-year-old Marquis de Lafayette was harassing Cornwallis's main force near the tobacco port of Yorktown, awaiting the arrival of the Comte de Grasse's French fleet. The scene was set for Washington's and Rochambeau's rapid move south, setting up the daring siege of