Surrender at Yorktown

Near this spot on the afternoon of October 19, 1781, as silence prevailed among Allied soldiers and onlookers, British troops approached to surrender at Yorktown. Cornwallis, sending word that he was ill, appointed his second in command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, to surrender his sword. O’Hara mistakenly approached French General Rochambeau to present the sword, but he was quickly corrected and led to Washington, the supreme commander of the Allied forces. Washington refused to take the blade from O’Hara’s “good hand” and referred him to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, his second in command. Lincoln accepted it and escorted O’Hara to an open field about one and a half miles from here, where British and German soldiers, regiment after regiment, grounded their arms.

Virginia · United States