Yorktown, Virginia: the village that changed the world

YORKTOWN, Va. — The British defeat at Yorktown set up the perfect storm of circumstances that forced Britain’s eventual surrender in the last major battle of the Revolutionary War, which secured American independence and changed the modern world.

Should it alarm us then that in 2003, when a group of high school students was asked to identify the general who commanded America’s revolutionary troops at Yorktown when British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered, more than half guessed Civil War figure Ulysses S. Grant? Or that four years later an Intercollegiate Studies Institute study indicated that less than half of college seniors knew that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution?

“We can’t function in a society if we don’t know who we are and where we came from,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough. “Why is it important if you don’t know the facts about Yorktown? It means you have no idea it was the last battle of the Revolutionary War — the longest war in our history except the Vietnam War ... If it hadn’t been for George Washington, we wouldn’t have won the Revolutionary War. Without George Washington, we wouldn’t have the Constitution that we have and we wouldn’t have the presidency that we have.”

In a recent Fox TV interview, McCullough urged parents to take up the gauntlet and visit historical sites with their children to learn about their country’s past. Today we visit Yorktown, Va.

Mere miles separate Yorktown from Jamestown (the first permanent American settlement) and Williamsburg (where the first whispers of independence grew into a cry for revolution), making this Historic Triangle, as it is called, both the beginning and end of American colonization and the birthplace of America.

I began my first visit to Yorktown as most people do, with a stop at the Visitor’s Center. Let me suggest you begin in the restored village of Yorktown instead. Since the importance of liberty is its impact on lives, get a feel for this generation of American patriots. McCullough discussed the leaders of the Revolution.

“It was a young man’s-young woman’s cause,” he said. “George Washington took command of the Continental Army in the summer of 1775 at the age of 43. He was the oldest of them ... none of them had any prior experience in revolutions ... They were winging it.”