Happy Birthday, America! Most people believe that America was "born" on July 4, 1776, but that is our country's conception day, so to speak. Several times over the course of the next 5 years, it appeared that the United States would be still-born, but with a steady George Washington as mid-wife, America drew her first breath on this day in 1781, for today marks the British surrender at Yorktown.
We tend to look back on history as a series of foregone conclusions, but that is a mistake. There was nothing certain about America's existence. To read the history of America's Revolution is to read a story so preposterous that it's hard to realize that it's all true. The escape from New York, the victories at Trenton and Princeton, the struggle at Valley Forge . . .
Yorktown, Virginia is still a very small town surrounded by the national park. The surrender field has been kept intact and very little traffic mars the profound stillness that covers it. An octagon has been built overlooking that field, a temple as it were that provides a view of where a miracle took place.
While you're in Williamsburg visiting Busch Gardens and Water Country USA and the pottery store, take the time to venture out to Yorktown and contemplate the siege lines and that empty surrender field. Allow your imagination to fill in what it must have looked like, what it must have felt like to be there on America's birthday and I suspect you'll enjoy a thrill greater than any roller coaster could give you.
British Redoubt #9. When the French seized this position; and the Americans, under Alexander Hamilton, took Redoubt #10 on the night of October 14, the end of the Revolution was in sight.
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