The Yorktown Story
On John Smith's map of Virginia, published in 1612, the Chiskiack (Kiskiack) Indian village is on the banks of the Pamaunke River (renamed the Charles, then the York). The village of Yorktown today is a few miles downriver, so people have lived there for a long time. It has not often been an easy life.
Early settlers got 50 acres, plus another 25 acres if they survived and stayed a second year.
Much later, 50 acres were set aside to make a deep-water port for trade. The York River has a deep channel and a tidal flow and was ideal as a sailing port. The village was laid out to support the port and was chartered in 1691 by the Act of Ports. From then until now, Yorktown has been the seat of government in York County.
In 1634 Virginia was divided into eight counties, one of which was Charles River County, renamed York County in 1643, probably for the Duke of York.
Yorktown was an international port, and like many ports around the world, it was a rough place to be. It was also a prosperous place to be. There was a thriving trade in tobacco outbound from Virginia and goods inbound from Great Britain and the West Indies. It was an active slave port. By the mid-18th century, “Warehouses, taverns, and shops cluttered the waterfront.” In the early 18th century, Yorktown was the chief tobacco port on the Chesapeake Bay and, according to an English traveler, had “Houses equal in Magnificence to many of our superb ones at St. James.”
The mid-1700s was Yorktown's best period, but as tobacco plantations moved upriver, so did tobacco ports. While Yorktown remained a prosperous port, in 1781 it was not a commanding one. The decisive revolutionary victory at Yorktown that made the village famous, almost made it fail. A contemporary writer in 1905 described Yorktown as a “dilapidated village of scarcely more than one hundred and fifty inhabitants.”
During the run-up to the war, America and Great Britain had one trade dispute after another that severely crippled the port, and over the course of the Revolutionary War, Yorktown almost disappeared. That Yorktown survived the 1781 siege and American victory is amazing.
British General Charles Cornwallis had been in North Carolina; American General George Washington had been in New York. They and their troops wound up in Yorktown. Yorktown lost.
As the two armies maneuvered into position - British and Hessian on one side, American and French on the other - the civilian population fled. The British had taken over civilian homes, so when the American and French bombardment started on October 9, 1781, the targets were the houses in Yorktown. (Traditionally, Gen. Washington is credited with firing the first shot from the American 12-gun battery.)
By the night of October 16th, British troops tried to escape across the York River to Gloucester, but a fierce storm made that impossible. On October 17th, after an American cannonade that destroyed positions and silenced British artillery, Cornwallis sent out a white flag.
Military historian Col. Vincent J. Esposito calls it, “the most important battle of the entire war.” Historian-writer David McCullough calls the Revolutionary War “the most important war in our history.” Yorktown was the critical battle in our critical war.
Victory would not have been possible without the French. French naval vessels blocked any re-supply from New York from entering Chesapeake Bay - the rescue effort did not arrive until well after the battle - and prevented the English from evacuating Cornwallis's troops by sea. Two French forces and Washington's Continentals blocked escape by land.
Remarkably few troops were killed. The British and Hessians lost more than 150; the French about 60; the Continentals fewer than 25. (Specific numbers differ in different accounts.) Yorktown was the major casualty; the battle destroyed the city, which never regained its pre-war opulence.
The city's sacrifice allowed our tentative national experiment to continue. Could ordinary people hold sovereignty? Could we govern ourselves? That experiment continues in the 21st century.
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