Beschreibung:

CORNWALLIS, CHARLES, Earl . Autograph cover signed ("Cornwallis") on folded cover sheet (letter not present) addressed in Cornwallis's hand TO GOVERNOR THOMAS NELSON of Virginia, "By a Flag of Truce," no postmarks (carried by courier), recipeient's docket "8 Septr. Recd. Septr. 10 [17]81," 79 x 119 mm., trifling soiling at edges, red wax seal. A MESSAGE FROM CORNWALLIS BY FLAG OF TRUCE, THROUGH THE CONTINENTAL LINES AT YORKTOWN Nelson, formerly a resident of Yorktown, now commanding Virginia's militia, had written to Cornwallis, also by flag of truce, on 3 September asking the release of two American prisoners, Archer and Ryell, captured by troops of George Tarleton ("Bloody Tarleton") for no apparent reason. In his reply, sent under the present cover, Cornwallis informed Nelson that the two Virginians had been captured because they refused to give parole and threatened their neighbors (Nelson's letter an a retained copy of Cornwallis's are in the Public Record Office, London; for abstracts of their correspondence, see George H. Reese, the Cornwallis Papers: Abstracts of Americana, 187-189. By the end of August, Cornwallis and his entire large Army had taken defensive positions at Yorktown, positions "they would leave only as prisoners of war" (Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, 1235); and Washington had begun to collect the Continental and French army, which, with the assistance of the French fleet, would eventually surround and entrap Cornwallis. Three days prior to this letter, the key naval action between the French and British fleets had taken place off the Chesapeake Capes, after which the defeated English flotilla had sailed northward, to New York. Washington's land forces were in place by late September and the siege commenced on 28 September. During the siege, Nelson directed the American artillery to fire upon his own house, in which enemy troops were lodged.