Siege of Yorktown

Yorktown is a census-designated place in York County, Virginia, United States. The population was 220 in the 2000 census. It is the county seat of... York County, one of the eight original shires formed in colonial Virginia in 1634. The town is most famous as the site of the siege and subsequent surrender of General Cornwallis to General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War on October 19, 1781. Although the war would last for another year, this British defeat at Yorktown effectively ended the war. Yorktown also figured prominently in the American Civil War , serving as a major port to supply both northern and southern towns, depending upon who held Yorktown at the time. Today, Yorktown is part of an important national resource known as the Historic Triangle of Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg, and is the eastern terminus of the Colonial Parkway. Yorktown is also the eastern terminus of the TransAmerica Trail, a bicycle touring route created by the Adventure Cycling Association. Yorktown, named for the ancient city of York in Yorkshire, Northern England, was founded in 1691 as a port for shipping tobacco to Europe.
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The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War in America, began as a war between the Kingdom of... Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers, such as conflicts in India and West Africa between Great Britain and France. The war was the result of the political American Revolution. Colonists galvanized around the position that the Stamp Act of 1765, imposed by Parliament of Great Britain, was unconstitutional. The British Parliament insisted it had the right to tax colonists. The colonists claimed that, as they were British subjects, taxation without representation was illegal. The American colonists formed a unifying Continental Congress and a shadow government in each colony, though ostensibly claiming loyalty to the monarch and a place in the British Empire. The American boycott of directly taxed British tea led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. London responded by ending self-government in Massachusetts and putting it under the control of the British army with General Thomas Gage as governor.
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