After the Humiliating Defeat at Yorktown in 1781, George III Vowed to Keep Fighting the Rebels and Their Allies Around the World, Holding a New Nation in the Balance Although most people think the American Revolution ended with the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, it did not. The war spread around the world, and exhausted men kept fighting--from the Arctic to Arkansas, from India and Ceylon to Schenectady and South America--while others labored to achieve a final diplomatic resolution. After Cornwallis's unexpected loss, George III vowed revenge, while Washington planned his next campaign. Spain, which France had lured into the war, insisted there would be no peace without seizing British-held Gibraltar. Yet the war had spun out of control long before Yorktown. Native Americans and Loyalists continued joint operations against land-hungry rebel settlers from New York to the Mississippi Valley. African American slaves sought freedom with the British. Soon, Britain seized the initiative again with a decisive naval victory in the Caribbean against the Comte de Grasse, the French hero of Yorktown. In After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence, Don Glickstein tells the engrossing story of this uncertain and violent time, from the remarkable American and French success in Virginia to the conclusion of the fighting--in India--and then to the last British soldiers leaving America more than two years after Yorktown. Readers will learn about the people--their humor, frustration, fatigue, incredulity, worries; their shock at the savage terrorism each side inflicted; and their surprise at unexpected grace and generosity. Based on an extraordinary range of primary sources, the story encompasses a fascinating cast of characters: a French captain who destroyed a British trading post, but left supplies for Indians to help them through a harsh winter, an American Loyalist releasing a captured Spanish woman in hopes that his act of kindness will result in a prisoner exchange, a Native American leader caught "between two hells" of a fickle ally and a greedy enemy, and the only general to surrender to both George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Finally, the author asks the question we face today: How do you end a war that doesn't want to end?

On October 19, 1781, Great Britain's best army surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown. But the future of the 13 former colonies was far from clear. A 13,000 man British army still occupied New York City, and another 13,000 regulars and armed loyalists were scattered from Canada to Savannah, Georgia. Meanwhile, Congress had declined to a mere 24 members, and the national treasury was empty. The American army had not been paid for years and was on the brink of mutiny. In Europe, America's only ally, France, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy and was soon reeling from a disastrous naval defeat in the Caribbean. A stubborn George III dismissed Yorktown as a minor defeat and refused to yield an acre of "my dominions" in America. In Paris, Ambassador Benjamin Franklin confronted violent hostility to France among his fellow members of the American peace delegation. In his riveting new book, Thomas Fleming moves elegantly between the key players in this drama and shows that the outcome we take for granted was far from certain. Not without anguish, General Washington resisted the urgings of many officers to seize power and held the angry army together until peace and independence arrived. With fresh research and masterful storytelling, Fleming breathes new life into this tumultuous but little known period in America's history.

The scene was set for Washington's and Rochambeau's rapid move south, setting up the daring siege of Yorktown." "Drawing on primary research, including diaries and personal letters, acclaimed historian of the American Revolution Richard Ketchum offers an account of the strategies and personalities behind the victory that surprised the world. Yorktown was that rarest of military and naval operations in which everything fell into place at exactly the right moment. It was a race against time and distance, by land and at sea. After almost seven harrowing years and against all odds, Washington - with French help - defeated the world's finest army. The war was won."--BOOK JACKET.

A modern, scholarly account of the most decisive campaign during the American Revolution examining the artillery, tactics and leadership involved. The siege of Yorktown in the fall of 1781 was the single most decisive engagement of the American Revolution. The campaign has all the drama any historian or student could want: the war’s top generals and admirals pitted against one another; decisive naval engagements; cavalry fighting; siege warfare; night bayonet attacks; and much more. Until now, however, no modern scholarly treatment of the entire campaign has been produced. By the summer of 1781, America had been at war with England for six years. No one believed in 1775 that the colonists would put up such a long and credible struggle. France sided with the colonies as early as 1778, but it was the dispatch of 5,500 infantry under Comte de Rochambeau in the summer of 1780 that shifted the tide of war against the British. In early 1781, after his victories in the Southern Colonies, Lord Cornwallis marched his army north into Virginia. Cornwallis believed the Americans could be decisively defeated in Virginia and the war brought to an end. George Washington believed Cornwallis’s move was a strategic blunder, and he moved vigorously to exploit it. Feinting against General Clinton and the British stronghold of New York, Washington marched his army quickly south. With the assistance of Rochambeau's infantry and a key French naval victory at the Battle off the Capes in September, Washington trapped Cornwallis on the tip of a narrow Virginia peninsula at a place called Yorktown. And so it began. Operating on the belief that Clinton was about to arrive with reinforcements, Cornwallis confidently remained within Yorktown’s inadequate defenses. Determined that nothing short of outright surrender would suffice, his opponent labored day and night to achieve that end. Washington’s brilliance was on display as he skillfully constricted Cornwallis’s position by digging entrenchments, erecting redoubts and artillery batteries, and launching well-timed attacks to capture key enemy positions. The nearly flawless Allied campaign sealed Cornwallis’s fate. Trapped inside crumbling defenses, he surrendered on October 19, 1781, effectively ending the war in North America. Penned by historian Jerome A. Greene, The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 offers a complete and balanced examination of the siege and the participants involved. Greene’s study is based upon extensive archival research and firsthand archaeological investigation of the battlefield. This fresh and invigorating study will satisfy everyone interested in American Revolutionary history, artillery, siege tactics, and brilliant leadership.

Questioning popular belief, a historian and re-examines what exactly led to the British Empire’s loss of the American Revolution. The loss of America was an unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. In interlinked biographical chapters, the author follows the course of the war from the perspectives of King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, military leaders including General Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and others who, for the most part, led ably and even brilliantly. Victories were frequent, and in fact the British conquered every American city at some stage of the Revolutionary War. Yet roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort. The book concludes with a penetrating assessment of the years after Yorktown, when the British achieved victories against the French and Spanish, thereby keeping intact what remained of the British Empire. “A remarkable book about an important but curiously underappreciated subject: the British side of the American Revolution. With meticulous scholarship and an eloquent writing style, O'Shaughnessy gives us a fresh and compelling view of a critical aspect of the struggle that changed the world.”—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen pen the triumphant conclusion to their George Washington series-a novel of leadership, brotherhood, loyalty, and the victory of the American Revolutionary cause. 1781. After three years in a bitter stalemate, General Washington decides to embark on one of the most audacious moves in American military history. He will take nearly his entire army out of New Jersey and New York and force march it more than three hundred miles in complete secrecy. He must pray that the French navy is successful in blockading Chesapeake Bay, so that he can fall upon British General Cornwallis at Yorktown. It is a campaign laden with "Ifs" but the deadlock must be broken, otherwise the American spirit, after six long years of war, will crumble. A tour de force narrative of one of America's most important heroes, Victory at Yorktown vividly portrays Washington's unparalleled courage, determination, and patriotism as he leads his professional army, once a "rabble in arms," to the heat of the Battle of Yorktown to execute the Revolution's most decisive contest.

Joseph Plumb Martin (1760 – 1850) was a soldier in the Continental Army and Connecticut Militia during the American Revolutionary War, holding the rank of private for most of the war. His published narrative of his experiences has become a valuable resource for historians in understanding the conditions of a common soldier of that era, as well as the battles in which Martin participated. "My intention is to give a succinct account of some of my adventures, dangers and sufferings during my several campaigns in the revolutionary army." Contents: Campaign of 1776. Campaign of 1777. Campaign of 1778. Campaign of 1779. Campaign of 1780. Campaign of 1781. Campaign of 1782. Campaign of 1783.