Did You Know? Washington re-enslaved thousands of runaways at Yorktown

Who Said It? (9/12/16) Who Said It? (9/19/16)

Did You Know? Washington re-enslaved thousands of runaways at Yorktown

When George Washington defeated the British at Yorktown, America won its freedom; thousands of enslaved African Americans lost theirs.

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull hangs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol (Public Domain)

When the British forces under Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington and his French allies on October 19, 1781, the terms of capitulation included the following phrase

It is understood that any property obviously belonging to the inhabitants of these States, in the possession of the garrison, shall be subject to be reclaimed.

(Article IV, Articles of Capitulation; dated October 18, 1781. Source and Complete Text: Avalon Project-Yale Law School)

Thousands of escaped enslaved people had flocked to the British army during Cornwallis’s campaign in Virginia in what has been called the “largest slave rebellion in American history.”

Among those thousands Washington had recaptured were seventeen people from his Mount Vernon plantation and about two dozen others from Thomas Jefferson’s plantations at Monticello and elsewhere. They were all returned to enslavement.