The triumph of perseverance

The American Thinker ^ | Nov. 26, 2004 | John B. Dwyer

[Kitten Festival]

Victory At Yorktown: The Campaign That Won The Revolution by Richard M. Ketchum, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 350 pages. Index, maps, Notes, Principal Character bios. $27.50.

“A surprising number of these men had six years of punishing, bloody warfare behind them; six years of hardship and suffering, hunger and tedium, no pay, and unparalleled neglect by their government and fellow Americans… some of these men standing under the hot Virginia sun were survivors of the fights at Concord and Bunker Hill, had suffered bitter defeat with Arnold and Montgomery before Quebec, had been part of the humiliating loss of New York and the retreat across New Jersey, and endured the killing winters of Morristown and Valley Forge. They had experienced the glorious and all too rare victories of Trenton and Princeton and Saratoga… Yet somehow, they had endured to participate in and savor this glorious moment.”

That glorious moment, victory at Yorktown, occurred October 19, 1781 when Major General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrendered his forces to General George Washington.

With this book, award-winning, veteran Revolutionary War historian, Richard M. Ketchum, puts the capstone on his series about the campaigns waged for American independence. (See Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War; Divided Loyalties: How The American Revolution Came To New York, for a start.)

As with his other volumes, the author presents his readers with a masterful combination of superb story telling, informed insight, social, political and military anecdotes, broad brush strokes and deft detail work from a comprehensively researched palette, all combined in a dramatically compelling portrait of the climactic battle of the Revolutionary War.

[Kitten Festival]

An elegant essay by a real historian on the meaning of Yorktown and the indispensibility of George Washington.