Washington [289]
More than one hundred allied cannon terrorized the town with punishing consistency. One Hessian wrote that “the bombs and cannonballs hit many inhabitants and negroes of the city and marines, sailors, and soldiers.”52 In desperation Cornwallis took former slaves who had defected to British lines and contracted smallpox and pushed them toward the allied lines in a version of germ warfare. One American soldier reported “herds of Negroes” who had been “turned adrift” by Cornwallis for this grisly purpose.53 Jacky Custis, scanning the defecting blacks for runaway slaves from Mount Vernon, found none. “I have seen numbers [of blacks] lying dead in the woods,” he informed his mother, “and many so exhausted they cannot walk.”54
On the night of October 16 the allies crept so close to the British line that Cornwallis made a frantic effort to evacuate his army across the river to Gloucester. Banastre Tarleton, who was stationed there, sent over sixteen craft for the crossing. The first boat didn’t depart from Yorktown until almost eleven P.M., but a substantial number of men made it across the river. Cornwallis scribbled a note to Washington, asking for mercy toward the sick and wounded left behind. Then shortly before midnight a violent storm drove the boats downriver, terminating the operation and forcing Cornwallis to recall his men from Gloucester the next morning. He had exhausted his last option. Surrender was now the only course left open to him.
At ten A.M. on October 17, 1781—the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga—a British officer appeared before the ramparts, flapping a white flag and bearing a missive from Cornwallis. The battlefield, pulverized by bombs, fell silent. An American escort rushed to the British officer, bandaged his eyes, and shepherded him behind allied lines. Then a messenger on horseback transmitted the all-important letter to Washington, who opened it and read: “Sir, I propose a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours and that two officers may be appointed by each side to meet at Mr. Moore’s house to settle terms for the surrender of the posts of York and Gloucester. I have the honor to be, &c, Cornwallis.”55 Never one to gloat, Washington remarked only that the message came “at an earlier period than my most sanguine hopes had induced me to expect.”56
Washington sent Cornwallis a terse, businesslike note. “My Lord: I have had the honor of receiving your Lordship’s letter of this date. An ardent desire to spare the further effusion of blood will readily incline me to such terms for the surrender of your posts and garrisons of York and Gloucester as are admissible. I wish previously to the meeting of commissioners that your Lordship’s proposals in writing may be sent to the American lines, for which purpose a suspension of hostilities during two hours from the delivery of this letter will be granted. I have the honor etc.”57 Cornwallis’s return proposals conformed closely enough to Washington’s wishes that hostilities were suspended for the night as an eerie calm settled over Yorktown. “A solemn stillness prevailed,” St. George Tucker wrote. “The night was remarkably clear and the sky decorated with ten thousand stars. Numberless meteors gleaming through the atmosphere.”58 The next day soldiers waded across a hellish battlefield paved with cadavers, one recalling that “all over the place and wherever you look [there were] corpses lying about that had not been buried.”59 The majority of the bodies, he noted, were black, reflecting their importance on both sides of the conflict. Some of these black corpses likely belonged to runaway slaves who had sought asylum with Cornwallis, only to be stricken during the siege with smallpox or “camp fever