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said he would not change them. They were, that all the army, with their arms and military stores, and all the ships and seamen, were to be delivered up, the troops to be prisoners to Congress, and the naval force to the French. The soldiers were to remain, with a few officers, in America; and the rest of the officers to return to Europe on assurance that they would not serve again against America. Cornwallis was to be allowed to send a ship unsearched to New York, to carry any papers he chose to send there. These terms were accepted by the English general, and on the 19th of October, 1781, the whole British army marched out of Yorktown, as prisoners of war. General Lincoln was appointed by Washington to receive the submission of the enemy, in the same manner in which Cornwallis had received that of the Americans on the 12th of May, 1780, at Charleston.

While the troops of Cornwallis were marching out of the town, with cased colours and drums beating the sad sound of defeat, Washington said to his men, "My brave fellows, let no sensation of satisfaction for the triumph you have gained, induce you to insult a fallen enemy; let no shouting, no clamorous huzzaing, increase their mortification. It

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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

ASTOR, LENOX AND. TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

is a sufficient satisfaction to us that we witness their humiliation. Posterity will huzza for us!”

On the day after the surrender, he ordered that all who were under arrest should be set at liberty, and he closed his order with this direction, "Divine service shall be performed to-morrow in the different divisions of the army; and the commander-in-chief recommends that all the troops that are not upon duty do assist at it, with a serious deportment, and that sensibility of heart, which the recollection of the surprising and particular interposition of Divine Providence in our favour, claims."

The force surrendered amounted to more than seven thousand men, with a train of upwards of one hundred and sixty pieces of cannon. The scene had scarcely closed when Clinton appeared at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a reinforcement equal to the number who had just laid down their arms. But he came too late. The news was communicated to him, that all was over with Cornwallis, and he returned to New York.

The capture of the Southern army awakened a thrill from one end of the United States to the other. It was everywhere hailed as the finishing of the war, the end of a long series of hardships and sufferings. There was scarcely a city, town, or village, through

out the whole Confederation that had not felt the scourge; few were the fields that escaped ravaging, or the houses that had not been plundered, and few the citizens but had suffered in their persons or property. The whirlwind had not confined itself to one narrow track; it had swept over the face of the country from north to south, from east to west; it had crossed and recrossed its path in every direction, and wherever it had passed had left its mark of ruin.

The prospect of winning the prize for which all these sufferings had been patiently endured, awakened the gladness of the whole people. In the dead of the night, a watchman in the streets of Philadelphia was heard to cry out, "Past twelve o'clock, and a pleasant morning-Cornwallis is taken." The city became alive; the candles were lighted, and figures might be seen flitting past the windows, or pushing them up, to hear the sound repeated, lest it should have been nothing but a dream. The citizens ran through the streets to inquire into the truth. None slept again that night, and the dawn, which brought confirmation of the happy tidings, shone on one of the most exulting cities that ever basked in the sunshine of triumph.

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