First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [178]
Epilogue
NEWS of the great event was carried northward by Tench Tilghman, Washington’s aide, who galloped from Yorktown to Philadelphia, spreading word of the surrender through village and farm like Paul Revere in reverse. The ride took four days, bringing him into Philadelphia at 2:30 in the morning of October 24. Pounding through the silent streets with clatter of hoofbeats that sounded to frightened residents like the noise of an invasion, he rode up to the house of Thomas McKean, President of the Congress, and banged loudly on the door. Seized by the night watch, he was saved from arrest by McKean, who, aroused from bed by the turmoil below, came down to vouch for his visitor. In the darkness Tilghman told his marvelous news to a gratifying response. McKean ordered bells to peal from the belfry of Independence Hall. The night watchman, a German-speaking veteran, carrying his lantern, started at once on his rounds, crying, “Basht dree o’glock und Gornvallis ist gedaken!” Windows flew open, excited residents thrust forth their heads to hear the words, then rushed into the streets to share the news and embrace each other; artillery salutes boomed; fireworks blazed, the city was illuminated; thanksgiving services were held in the churches; newspapers published extras; prominent citizens made speeches and gave balls; in distant Newburgh, New York, the populace enthusiastically burned Benedict Arnold in effigy.
The bells that pealed from Independence Hall spoke for more than military victory. They rang for the promise of a new world, for redemption from tyranny and oppression, for the hopes and dreams of America held not only by Americans who fought for the Revolution, but also by the French who had volunteered to share in the fight, by Dutch dissenters, by the Opposition Whigs in England, by spirits everywhere nurtured in the Age of Enlightenment and imbued by its optimism for the perfectibility of man. The triumph of the Revolution signaled the start of progress toward the guarantee of liberty offered by the American Declaration of Independence. It was for this, the “meliorating influence on all mankind,” as Washington said in his Last Circular to the States of 1783, that bonfires burned and citizens embraced—for the great hope that was America. It was for this that Lafayette carried home with him a quantity of American soil sufficient for a grave, and was buried in it when he died in 1834.
After disposal of the prisoners of Yorktown in guarded camps and garrisons, Washington wanted to carry the crest of victory forward to a combined attack on Wilmington and Charleston, but the departure of the French fleet made that impossible. Under orders to return to the West Indies by early November, de Grasse sailed for the Caribbean on November 4 with a mission to attack and take whatever British islands whose defense might be weakened after the hurricanes. On the general assumption that Jamaica, Britain’s richest island, was his objective, the Admiralty called on Rodney, who, though barely out of surgery, could be counted on to make a determined fight for the defense of the island. Other candidates for naval command inspired no great confidence. One, Admiral Kempenfelt, who had been sent to intercept the French fleet, had avoided a fight on the ground that he had twelve ships of the line to the enemy’s nineteen. The French grasp fell first on St. Eustatius, which Rodney thought he had left impregnable, but it was not proof against trickery. When the French landed an English-speaking regiment of de Bouillé’s troops wearing British red coats “exactly like the English with red jackets and yellow lapels,” who were composed partly of native Englishmen and partly of Irishmen in French pay as soldiers of fortune, the defense was thrown into hopeless confusion. The golden rock was retaken in November, 1781, administering another wound to British pride so soon after the fall of Yorktown. In 1784 the French restored Dutch sovereignty, whose flag has flown over the