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form earthworks in front of it, enabling them to work while shielded from British fire. Washington toured the nocturnal site, wrapped in a cloak, without revealing his identity. During the clear, unseasonably mild autumn days, the British raked the allied lines with almost continuous fire, making it risky to move about. They threw everything imaginable at the allies: a thick hail of musket fire, cannonballs, grapeshot, shells, and bombs. Washington again showed preternatural calm in braving shots and never deviated from his fearless stand. It was futile for people to insist that he protect himself. One day a cannonball landed near him, tossing a huge cloud of sand in the sky, which filtered down on Chaplain Israel Evans. He removed his hat, examined it, and said to Washington, “See here, general!” “Mr. Evans,” Washington replied, “you had better carry that [ball] home and show it to your wife and children.”37 Washington bore the stress gracefully, and Jacky Custis wrote home that “the general, tho[ugh] in constant fatigue, looks very well.”38

When the first parallel was completed on October 9, the French, in a gesture of respect, allowed Washington to ignite the first gun aimed at the British, which scored a memorable shot. “I could hear the ball strike from house to house,” recalled Philip Van Cortlandt of New York, “and I was afterwards informed that it went through the one where many of the officers were at dinner, and over the tables, discomposing the dishes and either killed or wounded the one at the head of the table.”39 While American gunners lacked pinpoint accuracy, they wreaked terrible devastation on the enemy. “One could not avoid the horribly many cannonballs, either inside or outside the city,” said one of Cornwallis’s soldiers. “. . . Many men were badly injured and mortally wounded by the fragments of bombs . . . [so that] their arms and legs [were] severed or themselves struck dead.”40

A standard siege inched forward in a slow, creeping motion, with each trench nearer the enemy. On October 12 a second trench was begun only three hundred yards from enemy lines, and once again miners and sappers worked diligently through the night, astounding the British the next morning with their overnight progress and doubtless inducing a claustrophobic feeling. Day and night the cannon fire was deadly, cacophonous, and incessant. Cornwallis issued a cri de coeur to Sir Henry Clinton, asking him to send a fleet and asserting that “nothing but a direct move to York River—which includes a successful naval action—can save me.” He concluded bleakly that “we cannot hope to make a long resistance.”41

As the second parallel neared completion, the next priority became seizing two outlying British defenses, redoubts nine and ten, which blocked any further advance. In a spirit of Franco-American harmony, Washington assigned one redoubt to the French, the other to Americans under Lafayette. Since the siege had been the handiwork of gunners and engineers, affording little opportunity for swashbuckling heroism, a spirited competition arose to lead the charges. At first Lafayette drafted his personal aide, the Chevalier de Gimat, but this seemed unsporting to American soldiers, especially the determined Alexander Hamilton. After wearing down Washington with petitions for a field position, he had been rewarded with command of a New York light infantry battalion. Now Hamilton, claiming seniority over Gimat, applied his persuasive powers to win the assignment of leading four hundred men against redoubt ten. That Washington acceded to his wishes shows not only his respect for Hamilton’s ability but his willingness to rise above personal pettiness to patch up a quarrel.

John Adams later insisted that Hamilton had blackmailed Washington into granting him the assignment. “You inquire what passed between Washington and Hamilton at Yorktown?” wrote Adams (who wasn’t there) to Benjamin Rush. “Washington had ordered . . . another officer to take the command of the attack upon the redoubt. Hamilton flew into a violent passion and demanded the