Individual Wars, United States History - 18th Century - American Revolution, Diplomacy & International Relations

The day the Revolution ended

Name: The day the Revolution ended
Author: William H. Hallahan
ISBN: 9780471262404

by William H. Hallahan

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Overview

Following the success of William Hallahan's The Day the American Revolution Began, here is the dramatic conclusion to the American Revolution and the spirited beginning of a new nation. The Day the Revolution Ended vividly tells the story of America's victory through the eyes of those who lived it. Using such rich primary sources as diaries, journals, memoirs, newspapers, letters, official documents, and other eyewitness accounts, The Day the Revolution Ended traces the tense chess game of troop movements, skirmishes, and tooth-and-nail battles that brought the American forces, their French allies, the British troops, and the Hessian mercenary soldiers to their fateful encounter at Yorktown. Hallahan paints a sharp portrait of the events and the colorful players in the war, including Benedict Arnold's seething vengeance, Nathanael Greene's ability to turn even a retreat into a victory, Lafayette's military ardor, General Clinton's incompetent leadership, and Washington's high-stakes battles, as well as the extraordinary bravery of both generals and common soldiers alike.

William Hallahan's skillful and colorful narrative details the exuberance of the new nation, as news of England's surrender travels north, city by city, to Philadelphia, New York, Boston, then on to London and Paris, and our young nation takes its first steps toward fulfilling its brilliant destiny. Thrusting you into the revolution's worst year, 1780, and its finale the year after, The Day the Revolution Ended covers the many devastating blows that faced Washington and his impoverished troops during the last years of the war and the thrilling comeback of the allies -- made possible by France's resources -- as all forces made their way toward Yorktown in the final showdown of the American Revolution. After six long years of tooth-and-nail skirmishes, the Revolutionary War was drawing to a climactic close. The stage had been set. As General Cornwallis set up camp to make his final stand in the sleepy Virginian tobacco port of Yorktown, General Washington received the news that would change the fate of the colonies: France's Admiral de Grasse was leading a fleet of twenty-nine ships and six frigates from the French West Indies up to the Chesapeake. The allies would finally have the resources to win the revolution.

But with this great hope came far too many seemingly insurmountable obstacles: de Grasse would not stay in Chesapeake after October 15. This gave Washington and Lafayette less than two months to move their armies 450 miles, lay siege against Cornwallis, and compel him to surrender. If Cornwallis tried to escape by water, could the French Navy fight their way up the American coast past or through the British Navy and block Cornwalis's escape? Could Lafayette find enough cavalry and troops to block the Yorktown peninsula? Win or lose, the Battle of Yorktown would decide the fate of the colonies. William Hallahan's spellbinding narrative traces the dramatic events of those last crucial years of war and revolution, when all the gathered forces met in climactic resolution. He grippingly recreates the events that took place throughout America, England, and France during the revolution, culminating with the momentous sea battle between the French and British navies, the faceoff at Yorktown, and the world's reaction to Britain's surrender. Rivetingly told and vividly detailed, William Hallahan's breathtaking narrative follows a young, tenacious nation's relentless quest for emancipation and offers piercing portraits of the leading actors, on both sides, in the drama that shaped America's destiny.

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Editorials

Kirkus Reviews

For anyone betting on the outcome of the American Revolution in October 1780, the smart money would have been on King George. A year later, against all the odds, Britain was vanquished-a turnabout that forms the lively subject here. Historian Hallahan bookends his The Day the Revolution Began: 19 April 1775 (2000) with this popular study of tides turned and heroes made and unmade. He begins in November 1780 with the turncoat Benedict Arnold's revelation of a "master plan for personally finishing the revolution"-namely, by seizing Philadelphia with a force of redcoats and American loyalists, burning the Continental Army's supplies and ships, and hauling the Revolution's leaders in chains across the ocean to stand tall before the king. For whatever reason, Sir Henry Clinton, Arnold's commanding officer, chose not to accept Arnold's offer, instead committing him, and the forces of Cornwallis and other British commanders, to a safer course of warfare that entailed comparatively little risk. That strategy, Hallahan suggests, was a mistake. (Certainly Cornwallis thought so; after the war was over, he wrote a scornful memoir blaming Clinton for the loss of the colonies.) Clinton's failure to seize the initiative against a weakened rebel army roughly coincided with the reversal of fortunes in the South, where revolutionary forces were now crushing loyalist guerrillas and regular British troops. The emboldened rebels eventually broke Cornwallis's southern flank, and the British general found himself cooped up on the heights of Yorktown, where he, too, failed to break out when the opportunity presented itself. Cornwallis's surrender on October 19, 1781, effectively brought the Revolutionary War toan end. Hallahan defuses the drama a little by ending not with British officers weeping in shame at their defeat, but instead with an appendix reporting the postwar fortunes of the principal players-material that might have been better woven into the main narrative. A reminder, for general readers, of the high stakes at risk in the Revolution, and of the chance turns that changed the course of the game.