Surrender of Lord Cornwallis
With the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, the Revolution effectively ended; painting by John Trumbull, 1820.
Siege of Yorktown
United States history
Siege of Yorktown, (September 28–October 19, 1781), joint Franco-American land and sea campaign that entrapped a major British army on a peninsula at Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender. The siege virtually ended military operations in the American Revolution. After a series of reverses and the depletion of his forces’ strength, the British commander in the southern colonies, General Lord Cornwallis, moved his army from Wilmington, North Carolina, eastward to Petersburg, Virginia, on the Atlantic...