The Day the Revolution Ended: 19 October 1781 - Hardcover

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 Cornwallis’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 face-off 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.