I’ve always thought that Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the war. However, on Bill Reilly’s Fox show (based on his book). he said that battles were still being fought in the south. Is that true?
I think that was because of poor communications in the day. I think the same is true with the emancipation of blacks in the deep South. I read somewhere (no cite) that it took 2 years for the news to reach New Orleans.
Perhaps you are thinking of Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, news reached slaves in Texas that they were all free. A delay of a little over 2 months.
Speaking of New Orleans, the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 took place after the armistice had already been signed, 'cause no one down there had gotten the memo.
My question was were there battles after Yorktown? I thought militias had driven all the British to Cornwallis. I did not think there were any British men left in the south.
There were no operations after Yorktown by British Regulars. It is possible that there was continued fighting of a sporadic nature between loyalists and “patriots.” Settling scores is a time-honored tradition in the South.
One of the nastier campaigns in the South after Yorktown was “The Bloody Scout” waged by a loyalist militia under Major “Bloody Bill” Cunningham. (“Bloody” seems to be the keyword here.) November/December '81.
Charleston, SC continued to be held by the British and minor actions around it continued for a while.
Yeah, the slaves in New Orleans had been under Federal governance since 1862 when Adm. Farragut captured New Orleans.
It was on June 19th, 1865 when Gen. Granger announced the emancipation of the slaves in Galveston, TX.
It’s not quite as weird as it sounds; Texas was the Confederate state that was furthest west, and was more or less cut off from the rest of the Confederacy after a certain point, as well as from the Union.
So while news of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 may have made its way there, it wasn’t in effect until backed by the Union Army occupying forces in June 1865. Same basic idea that the 1815 Battle of New Orleans was fought a month after the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, and several days after the Senate had ratified the treaty. News traveled slowly in those days.
Once word reached Britain in early 1782 that Cornwallis had surrendered and the British navy defeated at Chesepeake Bay, it became very clear among the British that American independence was inevitable. But that wasn’t the end of the war; such vital issues as the size of the new nation or treatment of Loyalists was still much in the air. Plus we Americans tend to forget that the American Revolution had become a worldwide struggle between Britain and their traditional enemies the French and Spanish. Just settling whether the colonies were independent didn’t solve what gains their allies should get. So until the Treaty of Paris was signed in early 1783, both sides fought on in order to get an advantage at the peace negociations.
I only learned very recently that Spain went to bat for us and that actions connected to our revolution went down in other parts of the world. Why don’t they teach that in school? They scarcely even clued us in that the French and Indian war was just one theater in a de facto world war. So parochial!
They taught this all in my high school. I regret that yours did not.
Also, Spain “going to bat” for the the nascent US was, like the French and Indian War, one element of a global struggle for ascendancy that raged until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
However, I wasn’t really aware of the ongoing fighting in the colonies after Yorktown–it makes sense, just wasn’t something we were taught. The story of the Battle of New Orleans is well-known I assume.
Even slaves in Texas had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. (Sam Houston, in “exile” in Huntsville because of his failure to swear allegiance to the CSA, read the news to his slaves; it’s said he offered to let them go (illegal in Texas) or start paying them. Alas, we don’t know the full story.) But, as you stated, without Federal troops to enforce it, they remained enslaved. General Granger landed in Galveston & made the announcement.
After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence seems agood source for the continuing conflict.
John Laurens, intimate friend of Alexander Hamilton & early enemy of slavery (despite being a son of a South Carolina slaveholder & trader) was one of the last deaths in the South. Not all the post-Yorktown fighting occurred down there–but the Southern campaigns in the Revolution are generally not as well known as the more Northern battles
Here is a brief account of the battle in which John Laurens died.
You’ll note that the British were not truly trying to fight anyone; they were simply trying to obtain provisions by foraging the countryside (which is, admittedly, hard on those who live in the countryside), having been denied a truce to obtain provisions without foraging.
By far the greatest amount of post-Yorktown fighting on the soil of what were the first 13 states occurred between loyalists and patriots. See for example: The Bloody Scout.
On the Western Frontier, 1982 was known as “The Bloody Year.” Fighting between the frontier settlers and the Indian surrogates for the British was particularly gruesome that year. The infamous Gnadenhutten Massacre is from that time period. But, again, the British regulars were not involved.
Actions between Great Britain and other countries continued up to the Treaty of Paris. France and Spain were effectively allies (Bourbon kings ruled both countries). France fought England after Yorktown in naval battles throughout the Caribbean; Spain actually captured a British base in the Bahamas during the post-Yorktown time as well, having previously taken British Florida. French trading posts in India had been captured by England, leading Mysore to declare war against them, and fighting went on between these three combatants post-Yorktown. The Netherlands made the mistake of trying to become one of the member states of the First League of Armed Neutrals; Britain declared war upon them to keep this from happening and the Dutch weren’t very successful in the naval war that followed. This included some naval battles after Yorktown.
While we are discussing history not taught in school, I do not remember being told that we almost went to war with France in 1798. I believe it had to do with the French capturing our sailors, much like the reason we declared war against Great Britain a short time later. Can someone be so kind as to give me the details.
Short answer: we reneged on the debt owed to the French as a result of their participation in the Revolutionary War, on the theory that the French Republic was not the same entity as the French monarchy. In response, the French started seizing American flagged vessels. Fortunately, cooler heads eventually prevailed.
Comes under the category of: being used by one of the noisy neighbors, then cast aside when they make up with each other. :rolleyes:
Perhaps literally, according to Ron Chernow.
In the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, the “aliens” they were worried about were French.
Even the short version is rather misleading. The French Revolutionary government had behaved with gross arrogance towards the United States, which was not inclined to put with with it. The French seemed to have assumed they were going to, in effect, order the Americans about and were violating American neutrality whenever convenient. In response to that, and incidents like the XYZ Affair, the John Adams government was now even less inclined to indulge the French than before. Stopping payment on the debt was a reaction to French actions already being done and attempts to drag them into the war.