The Siege of Yorktown: American and France Corner Britain

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Battle of Yorktown sealed the fate of the Revolutionary War. In late 1781, American and French troops laid siege to the British Army at Yorktown, Virginia. First, a bit of backgroun. The partisan warfare that kept occurring in the upcountry of the Carolinas made it impossible for the British to obtain supplies from there. This in turn made it necessary for Cornwallis to keep his army relatively close to the coast. Greene kept his army far enough from Cornwallis to avoid a major pitched battle while constantly trying to lure Cornwallis away from the coast. Greene’s strategy was (in Allen Guelzo’s words) “dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” In this, he was assisted by a cavalry commander named Col. Henry (“Light Horse Harry”) Lee, as well as Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan. Skirmishers of the two armies occasionally fought each other, but the main armies never met.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who's in the lioness squad?
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0:55.0	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes,
1:12.0	Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres the forgotten stories that changed our world.
1:19.0	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:24.0	Hello everyone, welcome to Battle No. 10 in our series, Key Battles of the Revolutionary War.
1:31.0	Things are coming to a head between the Patriots, Loyalist, and British forces.
1:36.0	We're going to get into the battle of Yorktown, but as always, we don't just jump into things,
1:41.0	we give background context because that's what we're all about.
1:44.0	So James, what is the background of Yorktown?
1:47.0	So we saw last time that the Americans in the South, the Patriot Americans at least, are not going to roll over and die.
1:55.0	We saw that the British had hoped to send forces down into the South and rally the many, many Loyalists that were supposedly there to the British cause
2:07.0	and crush the rebellion in the South and then march up to the North and just kind of roll it up and isolate New England,
2:16.0	which would be a much easier, they thought a place to conquer or anyway, none of that works out correctly.
2:22.0	The British are defeated.
2:24.0	They have an initial victory at Camden and but then they lose major battles at King's Mountain and then Calpens, which we talked about previously.
2:34.0	And at the same time as that, partisan activity or guerrilla activity is spreading like wildfire throughout the South.
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