The War In 1780–81

The tide began to turn in the South when backwoodsmen of south-western Virginia and western North Carolina wiped out a force of Southerners allied with the British in a battle on Kings Mountain, in South Carolina, in 1780. British regulars were defeated in January, 1781, at Cowpens, near Kings Mountain, by militia and Continentals (Continental Army troops) under General Daniel Morgan. In March the British, under Cornwallis, attacked Nathan-ael Greene's forces at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. Greene retreated but Cornwallis lost one-fourth of his army as casualties. Thus weakened, Cornwallis abandoned the interior and withdrew to Wilmington, North Carolina, and then to Yorktown, Virginia, near Chesapeake Bay.

In New York state, Washington mapped strategy for trapping Cornwallis with the aid of French naval forces. He had already sent the Marquis de Lafayette to Virginia with 1,200 Continentals and had reinforced him with troops under Anthony Wayne and Baron von Steuben. On learning that a large French fleet, under the Comte de Grasse, would put in at Chesapeake Bay in August, 1781, Washington arranged to confront Cornwallis' army of 7,500 with a much larger force. The fleet would be used to cut off Cornwallis' escape.

Joined by 3,600 French soldiers who were at Newport, Rhode Island, under General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington marched to Virginia with 2,500 of his own men. The French fleet landed 3,000 additional soldiers. Virginia militiamen brought the total under Washington's command to some 16,000 when the siege of Yorktown began in formal European military style on October 6.

Earlier, on September 5, de Grasse had outmaneuvered a British fleet at the Battle of Chesapeake Capes to win control of Chesapeake Bay, depriving Cornwallis of reinforcements and of an escape route. On October 17, the day a British fleet left New York with 7,000 soldiers to come to his aid, Cornwallis asked for a temporary truce to arrange a surrender. He surrendered on October 19.