The Daily History Chronicle

The siege that ended the Revolutionary War is remembered as America's founding victory, but inside Cornwallis's lines at Yorktown were thousands of formerly enslaved people who had trusted a British promise of freedom with their lives. As food and medicine ran out, that promise collapsed, and the record shows the collapse was not an accident. This episode holds Cornwallis's tactical desperation, Washington's alliance-driven triumph, and a wartime betrayal that most retellings of Yorktown leave out.