Yorktown Through Time

Yorktown's position of first rank in the annals of American history, earned with the British defeat there in the fall of 1781 that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War in favor of the American colonies, also effectively ended the war. Though Yorktown no longer appears as it did when it was an important eighteenth-century port city or when the British were trapped within its boundaries during that fateful siege, it is still a place of national importance—a place where independence for the United States of America was won. In the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "I like to dwell not on the surrender of an army under a brave leader but rather on the genesis, as a result of this conflict, of a new concept of liberty for the human race—an ideal," he continued, "which quickly made itself felt among our allies of France and our mother peoples of the British Isles, and spread at last throughout the greater part of the civilized world." The changing fortunes of time and place, to include a world often turned upside down, has not diminished these words, offered by the nation's future thirty-second president during the sesquicentennial celebration of the British surrender.