Yorktown Quotes

His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indispensable aid of the French Army and fleet. But he was a different kind of general fighting a different kind of war, and his military prowess cannot be judged by the usual scorecard of battles won and lost. His fortitude in keeping the impoverished Continental Army intact was a major historic accomplishment. It always stood on the brink of dissolution, and Washington was the one figure who kept it together, the spiritual and managerial genius of the whole enterprise: he had been resilient in the face of every setback, courageous in the face of every danger. He was that rare general who was great between battles and not just during them.

Hey, check this weirdo out.” Hi was inspecting a bus on the mantel. “This face is ninety percent eyebrow. What do you wanna bet he owned slaves?” Scowling to match the carving’s expression, Hi spoke in a gravelly voice. “In my day, we ate the poor people. We had a giant outdoor grill, and cooked up peasant steaks every Sunday. “That is General Clemmons Brutus Claybourne, you twit,” a voice said dryly. “He commanded two companies during the Revolution, before dying at Yorktown. You might show a little respect.

Henry O. Sturges, born in England, March 2nd, 1563. Landed at Roanoke, July 27th, 1587. Friend to the American Revolution, present at the Battles of Trenton and Yorktown, staunch supporter of the North in its hour of need, adviser to presidents, a decorated soldier who distinguished himself in the trenches of the Great War, and member of the Union Brotherhood—a collective of vampires dedicated to preserving the freedom of man and his dominion over the earth.

Of course Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy? Who wants to twirl sparklers and dwell on how the French government’s expenditures in America contributed to the bankruptcy that sparked the French Revolution that would send Rochambeau to prison, Lafayette into exile (then prison), and our benefactor His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI to the guillotine.

Mention you’re from Yorktown, Virginia, and I’ll forever connect you with the Colonial Parkway, the ribbon of road snaking along the York River where four couples either disappeared or were murdered between 1986 and 1989.

There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet-such a column represents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation -- Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly every year in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap in the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of women; and that abstract thing called patriotism, which I never heard combat soldiers mention -- all this passes into the forward zone, to the point of contact, where war is grit with horrors. Common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory.

French participation proved decisive in the Battle of Yorktown. Coordinating strategy with Washington, France sent twenty-nine warships and more than ten thousand troops, ultimately forcing the surrender of British General Cornwallis, which effectively ended the war.

But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.

The Midway battle was crucial. In exchange for 307 lives, the Yorktown and a destroyer, and 147 airplanes, the American fleet had destroyed four Japanese carriers, more than three hundred planes, a cruiser and a destroyer, and nearly five thousand Japanese sailors and airmen. It has been called, with justification, “the turning point” in the Pacific war.

and the University of Pennsylvania, he penned a memoir of his time in America. Shortly after marrying the twenty-eight-year-old Marie Brigitte Plunkett,

The majority of the guns fired on the British at Saratoga were French. Four years later, when the British set down their muskets at Yorktown, they surrendered to forces that were nearly equal parts French and American, all of them fed and clothed and paid by France, and protected by de Grasse’s fleet. Without French funds the Revolution would have collapsed; by a conservative estimate, America’s independence cost France more than 1.3 billion livres, the equivalent of $13 billion today.

About the end of the American war, when the officers of Lord Cornwallis’s army which surrendered at Yorktown, and others, who had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy were returning to their own country, to relate their adventures and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was amongst them a general officer, to whom Miss S. Gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative.

HOW GOOD A GENERAL WAS GEORGE WASHINGTON? IF WE CONSULT the statistics as they might have been kept if he had been a boxer or a quarterback, the figures are not encouraging. In seven years of fighting the British, from 1775 to 1782, he won only three clear-cut victories—at Trenton, Princeton, and Yorktown. In seven other encounters—Long Island, Harlem Heights, White Plains, Fort Washington, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth—he either was defeated or at best could claim a draw. He never won a major battle. Trenton was essentially a raid, Princeton was little more than a large skirmish, and Yorktown was a siege in which the blockading French fleet was an essential component of the victory.

A total of about 200,000 Americans had served in the war, but that did not mean the rest of the country of about 3 million would show them any gratitude or respect. Americans in 1783 were desperate to put the trauma of the Revolution behind them, and these broken and penniless soldiers were a daily reminder of what they preferred to forget. “What scornful looks and hard words have I experienced,” Martin wrote forty-seven years later. “I hope I shall one day find land enough to lay my bones.

On October 17, the day when Cornwallis, heralded by his little drummer boy, asked for terms, his would-be rescuers in New York, Graves and Clinton, setting a record for belated action in military history, finally fixed a time to leave on the mission that had been waiting ever since Clinton had acknowledged on September 2 that Cornwallis would have to be "saved." An army of 7,000 was boarded, sails were hoisted, Graves' fleet with Clinton on board moved slowly down the Hudson. They crossed the Hook on October 19, on the same day when, in Yorktown, Washington and Cornwallis signed and accepted the terms of surrender. Five days later, October 24, they were off Cape Charles without encountering the feared interference from de Grasse, who had no reason to risk battle for a cause already won. While small craft scuttled through the bay seeking news, a boat came out from the York to tell the tale. Time had not waited; the door was closed. All the expense and armed force exerted for nearly six years had gone for nothing. No victory, no glory, no restored rulership. As a war, it was the historic rebuke to complacency. The two masters of lethargy, Admiral and General, with their 35 ships and 7,000 men turned around and sailed back uselessly to New York.

African American history – so much of it is truly unknown today. For example, few know of James Armistead – a black patriot and spy who helped make possible the 1781 Yorktown victory during the American Revolution that established America as an independent nation. 1

Ironically, the last aircraft carrier to sink as a result of the Battle of Midway was an American one. By the early afternoon on June 6, there was some optimism about the prospect of saving the Yorktown, as salvage crews had put out the fires and stabilised the vessel using pumps. The Yorktown was also surrounded by 6 protective destroyers as an escort. However, these destroyers failed to detect the Japanese submarine I-168, which crept to within easy torpedo range. In the middle of the afternoon on June 6, the submarine fired four torpedoes, two of which punched through the Yorktown’s hull, causing more extensive flooding. The third hit the destroyer Hammann, sinking the destroyer within three minutes and causing mass casualties. The fourth torpedo missed, and the I168 was chased off by the remaining American destroyers.

Unaware that they had launched another attack on the Yorktown, which they thought had already been badly damaged, the Japanese returned to the Hiryu thinking they had critically damaged or sunk a second U.S. carrier. Operating under this incorrect assumption, Nagumo believed the fight was still very much on. 

He took Molly’s small hand and pressed it between his big ones. “Thank you for riding here to warn me, niece,” he said, smiling warmly. “That was very brave of you.” “I couldn’t have done it without Sultan,” Molly told him. “He flew like the wind almost all the way. I used to be afraid to ride him, but not anymore. Now I can’t even understand why I was ever afraid of him.” “Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to discover what we really can do when we have to,” her uncle said. “You had to ride Sultan, so you did. Now you know how easy it is. It’s as simple as that.” At that moment, Corporal Henshaw jogged over to them. He saluted to Uncle William and said, “The men are ready to go, sir.” “Right,” Uncle William said. Then he turned to Molly. “It’s much too dark and dangerous for you to return to Yorktown now. You and Sultan will have to ride with us to the safety zone and spend the night. I know you’re worn out, and Sultan is, too, but do you think you could manage just a few more miles?” She patted Sultan’s neck. “After what Sultan and I just went through to get here, five more miles seems like nothing at all!

The steeper angle of a true dive bombing run (about 70 degrees) was far less vulnerable to flak and far more accurate. Japanese carriers had thin unarmored flight decks, and on board the ships there were hundreds of aircraft, many of them being refuelled and re-armed. All the factors were now aligned for a devastating attack. Yorktown’s

The Wildcats tore into the Vals as they climbed prior to making their dives, and 11 of the 18 attacking dive bombers were shot down before they could even begin their bomb run. Others were knocked down by flak as they bore in on the Yorktown. It would not be enough to save the ship from damage, however. By 12:30, the Yorktown had taken three bomb hits, damaging the flight deck, starting a series of fires, and stopping her engines. At 12:38, Admiral Fletcher moved his command to the heavy cruiser Astoria. The returning Japanese pilots reported that they had left an American carrier ablaze and at least crippled. This would end up causing an important misunderstanding in the Japanese command. Less

Tens of thousands of onlookers gaped in amazement as the shattered British troops marched out of Yorktown and, to the tune of an old English ballad, “The World Turned Upside Down,

Nothing good comes but by hard work.

Caesar finally got back to Rome in 46 BC, having defeated most of the Western world, and he decided to throw himself the biggest party ever. He had a huge parade, he changed the calendar, he staged a fight where gladiators killed four hundred lions, and he flooded one of the chariot courses to stage a naval battle. He even had two armies of captured soldiers fight to the death for entertainment. Four thousand people were killed. That means ten times more people died at Caesar’s party than at the Battle of Yorktown at the end of the American Revolution. Ancient Rome was a crazy place.

Yorktown, where friendly French soldiers and sailors had outnumbered American ground troops more than two to one.

Put it all together and the TBDs at Midway would have been worried about gas all the time they were in the air, and the four Enterprise and two Yorktown Devastators that made it back must have been running on empty at the end of their flight.

In September 1997, while conducting fleet maneuvers in the Atlantic, the USS Yorktown, one of the Navy's new Aegis guided-missile cruisers, stopped dead in the water. A Navy technician, while calibrating an on-board fuel valve, entered a zero into one of the shipboard management computers, a Pentium Pro running Windows NT. The program attempted to divide another number by that zero—a mathematically undefined operation—which resulted in a complete crash of the entire shipboard control system.

If all men really are created equal, the anniversary of Selma must be treated as a date every bit as important to American history as is the end of the Siege of Yorktown.

On September 28 at 5:00 a.m., Washington started his Franco-American army down the road from Williamsburg to Yorktown.

My heart beats,” he said in the same letter, “when I think of the treaty of peace.

[F]rom the observations I have made in the course of this war,” he wrote to his friend Benjamin Harrison, who was now governor of Virginia, “I am decided in my opinion that if the powers of Congress are not enlarged and made competent to all general purposes, that the blood which has been spilt, the expense that has been incurred and the distresses which have been felt will avail us nothing; and that the bond, already too weak, which holds us together, will soon be broken; when anarchy and confusion must prevail.

He was not forced to resort to a siege by the president’s order, nor did it affect how the siege was conducted nor even how long it lasted. What made “rapid and brilliant operations impossible” was his own decision, already taken, to abandon any effort to turn Yorktown.

concentration of naval might in existence. Interwoven with civilian cities and commercial waterways, this sinew of steel is a world of its own. Even so, its powerful present cannot overwhelm images that upwell from the past: the sails of the French fleet in surprising bloom off Yorktown; the Monitor battling the Merrimack; and within living memory the Battle of the Atlantic, when ships burned offshore and corpses washed up on the sand.

Interwoven with civilian cities and commercial waterways, this sinew of steel is a world of its own. Even so, its powerful present cannot overwhelm images that upwell from the past: the sails of the French fleet in surprising bloom off Yorktown; the Monitor battling the Merrimack; and within living memory the Battle of the Atlantic, when ships burned offshore and corpses washed up on the sand. From these docks and quays millions left for the World Wars, half a century of Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East.

If we are doomed to lose this campaign, and all odds are against us, we shall go down fighting, and by losing that way, perhaps inspire a future generation, maybe a hundred, two hundred years hence to attempt to stand yet again for their rights and the rights of their children. It must end now, he thought. This campaign must end it and I am venturing all on this single throw of the dice, not just for my army, which has stayed loyal, but for all these people as well.

overhead. Enterprise planes at two thousand, and you Yorktowners at three.” Kroeger glanced at the faces next to him, many unfamiliar. Practically all of

The Japanese and the Americans were 200 miles apart, with the Japanese northeast of the Americans. Each side had two carriers: Japan’s Shōkaku and Zuikaku and America’s Yorktown and Lexington. The Americans could launch 121 aircraft, the Japanese 122.

ten times more people died at Caesar’s party than at the Battle of Yorktown at the end of the American Revolution

Long Island is a sandspit 150 miles long. It originally was the great outwash plain of a glacier, and history shows even the Indians didn’t want much to do with it. They moved out without a fight and without asking for a dime when the whites arrived. Later the redcoat General Howe engaged Washington’s Colonials in something called the Battle of Long Island, and Howe succeeded in driving Washington off Long Island and up the Hudson to someplace like Dobbs Ferry. Anybody who knows anything about Dobbs Ferry as opposed to Long Island can never accept a history book which says this was a defeat for Washington. In fact, there are many people who still wonder why we did not insist that the English, as part of the Yorktown surrender, be forced to retain Long Island.

Dixon prompted a round of applause on the Yorktown and Lexington when he radioed back the prearranged message: “Scratch one flattop! Dixon to Carrier, Scratch one flattop!

Ensign Buell, the Yorktown SBD pilot, was so exhausted that he crawled into a bunk in a room full of dead shipmates. He was awakened in the small hours of the morning by “hands grasping me and lifting me from the bunk. It was still dark, and I had no idea what was happening so I asked in a rather loud voice what the hell was going on. At the sound of my voice I was immediately dropped halfway out of the cubicle, and a rather startled voice said: ‘My God, Doc, this one ain’t dead!

After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue. The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.” One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.

American cause at Concord, Bunker Hill, Rhode Island and finally at Yorktown (where they were put in the front line—whether as a tribute to their courage or as expendable sacrifices is not clear). At the battle of Monmouth in New Jersey black troops on both sides fought each other. But until the British aggressively recruited slaves in 1775 and 1776, state assemblies, even in the North, as well as the multi-state Continental Congress, flinched from their enlistment.

En la decisiva influencia española en la guerra de Independencia, merece ser destacada la figura de Bernaldo de Gálvez Gallardo y Madrid (1746-1786), conde de Gálvez y vizconde de Galveston. Gálvez consiguió tener ocupados a los británicos en otras zonas, al tiempo que recuperaba las dos Floridas para la Corona española a partir de la célebre batalla de Pensacola. Allí derrotó a los ingleses con una flota menor, arrojo y elevada estrategia, al grito primero de «el que tenga honor y valor que me siga» y después del «¡yo solo!», pues fue su barco ondeando la bandera de comandante de la flota y habiendo hecho las reglamentarias quince salvas de honor, para que no cupiera duda de quién lo capitaneaba, el que se atrevió a cruzar el fuego enemigo. Bloqueó asimismo el puerto de Nueva Orleans para evitar que utilizaran el río los británicos y facilitó el aprovisionamiento de las tropas norteamericanas —tanto en víveres y armas, como en medicinas y otros pertrechos—, en contacto directo con Thomas Jefferson y George Washington. Destaca su habilidad a este respecto para conseguir financiación de las familias adineradas de Cuba, cuando los fondos franceses no llegaban. Hasta el punto de que sin esta financiación no se habría ganado la decisiva batalla de Yorktown (1781). Además, Gálvez se apoderó de la isla Nueva Providencia en las Bahamas, abortando el último plan británico de resistencia, con lo que mantuvo el dominio español sobre el Caribe y aceleró el triunfo norteamericano. Se disponía a tomar Jamaica, único reducto inglés de importancia en el Caribe, cuando en mitad de los preparativos le sorprendió el fin de la guerra. El 8 de mayo de 1783 el Congreso de los EE. UU. agradeció la ayuda del Reino de España y honró a Bernardo de Gálvez con un retrato en las paredes del Capitolio por su destacada participación en la guerra de Independencia. Este retrato no llegó sin embargo a colgarse y a partir de ahí, silencio…, hasta que hace pocos años cuando se recuperó esta idea por la iniciativa personal de Teresa Valcárcel (una española que ostenta asimismo la nacionalidad norteamericana), logrando esta vez, con el apoyo del gobierno español y otras asociaciones, no sólo que se colgase el cuadro, sino que se nombrase a Gálvez (2014), por resolución conjunta del Congreso y Senado norteamericanos, ciudadano honorario de los Estados Unidos, un honor del que sólo disponen siete personas, entre ellas Lafayette, Madre Teresa y Winston Churchill. ¿Cómo puede ser que un personaje de esta talla no haya recibido el reconocimiento debido en los libros de historia y en todas las escuelas de nuestro país?

As the British withdrew first from Yorktown and Wilmington, then Savannah and Charleston, and finally New York and St. Augustine, they carried on their ships a great many African Americans. Estimates vary as to the numbers, but historians estimate that it was in the tens of thousands.121 At first glance, it might appear that such a mass exodus signaled freedom and new beginnings, but the vast majority—in the vicinity of 80 percent—remained enslaved, the property of loyalist émigrés or British officials.122 Some of these had always belonged to loyalist masters; others had escaped to the British to find freedom, only to be commandeered by army officers or given to loyalists as compensation for lost property.

The 68-page first issue of Calling All Girls contained four comic stories—an 8-pager on Queen Elizabeth (the mother of the current queen); a 9-pager on famed author Osa Johnson, “the famed jungle adventuress,” as the story so quaintly dubbed her; a fictional 7-pager on Judy Wing, Air Hostess No. 1 (aviation themes were huge in the early years of comics, just as they were in all of popular culture); and a fictional 8-pager on the teenage adventures of the Yorktown Younger Set, which “lives in a town like yours. The other half of the first issue contained text stories of a wide variety, with an astonishing amount of reading material for the teen girl’s dime. There was a 4-page story devoted to Connie Martin, a Nancy Drew knockoff; a 4-pager devoted to circus girls; a 3-pager on Gloria Jean herself; a 3-pager by publisher George Hecht on “13 ways girls can help in the national defense”; a 2-pager on manners; a 3-pager by best-selling sports novelist John R. Tunis on women in sports; a 2-pager on grooming; a 4-pager on a fictional female boater; a 2-pager on films; a 2-pager on fashion, with delightful drawings; a page on fashion accessories; and a 2-pager on cooking, by the famed food writer Cecily Brownstone. This issue gave girls an awful lot of reading, some of it inspirational and showing they could be more than “just a girl,” as the boys in Tubby’s clubhouse used to call Little Lulu and her friends a decade later in their Dell Comics adventures. The most intriguing aspect of Calling All Girls is that it approached schoolgirls not as boy-crazy or male-dependent, but as interesting individuals in their own right. The ensuing issues of Calling All Girls expanded on this theme. This was definitely a mini “feminist manifesto” for teens!

While neither the British nor the Americans realized it at the time, Guilford Courthouse altered the course of the war. It changed the strategy of both sides: it halted a potentially disastrous pending Patriot attack on New York, stopped the British conquest of the Carolinas, and set the stage for a stunning defeat of a British army at Yorktown.

The argument here is straightforward: In the American Revolution the British southern campaigns ultimately led to defeat at Yorktown in October 1781 in part because their forces were much more susceptible to malaria than were the American…. [T]he balance tipped because Britain’s grand strategy committed a larger proportion of the army to malarial (and yellow fever) zones.” A full 70% of the British Army that marched into this southern mosquito maelstrom in 1780 was recruited from the poorer, famished regions of Scotland and the northern counties of England, outside the malaria belt of Pip’s Fenland marshes. Those who had already served some time in the colonies had done so in the northern zone of infection and had not yet been seasoned to American malaria.

THAT SPRING WASHINGTON received a letter from Lafayette, who had long since returned to France. Now that peace was looking like a certainty, he had a “wild scheme” to propose: the two of them should buy a small plantation together and “try the experiment to free the Negroes and use them only as tenants. Such an example as yours might render it a general practice.” Lafayette’s time in Virginia had given him a firsthand knowledge of the horrifying realities of southern slavery. He still loved Washington like a father, but something needed to be done to ensure that the promise of the Declaration of Independence—“liberty and justice for all”—applied to all Americans, no matter what their skin color.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote the following year, “the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.

My great-grandchildren tell me the War for Independence ended with the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. No one teaches them that the Revolutionary War went on for almost two more years after Yorktown, albeit with very limited fighting, until a peace treaty was signed.

When he had learned in the fall of 1778 that she was critically ill, he rushed from New York back to their home in Culford, a small town about a hundred miles to the northeast of London, arriving shortly before her death at the age of thirty-two. Never happy about her husband’s decision to leave her and their two children in England while he fought the war in America, Jemima had requested that a thorn tree be planted over her grave to signify “the sorrow which [had] destroyed her life.