Completion of the second trench snuffed out the last remnants of resistance among the British. Cornwallis had grown so desperate that he infected blacks with smallpox and forced them to wander toward enemy lines in an attempt to sicken the opposing forces. He knew that he lay in grave peril and wrote to Sir Henry Clinton, “My situation now becomes . . . critical. . . . [W]e shall soon be exposed to an assault in ruined works, in a bad position, and with weakened numbers.”
