The World Turned Upside Down

Yorktown, Va., October 19, 1781      Finally, they had won. After more than six years of warfare, the War for Independence was ending—and it was an American victory. So many times the cause of American freedom had seemed lost. So much hardship had been borne by these Continental troops, and so often General George Washington had kept them in the war equipped with little more than determination. Now, aligned before them was the fearsome British army that had been sent to conquer the South—the army that had won so many victories in the Carolinas and had inflicted so much suffering on American civilians. Now these troops in red uniforms, composing perhaps the finest army in the world, were laying down their arms in surrender. And standing victorious before them were America’s citizen soldiers— “contemptible, cowardly dogs,” a British commander had once erroneously and ironically called them.      Led by General Washington and strengthened by a French army under General Comte de Rochambeau,