For America250, which British commander surrendered at Yorktown in 1781?

For America250, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781.

The Siege of Yorktown ended on October 19, 1781, when Cornwallis’s army capitulated to the allied American and French forces. George Washington commanded the American army, while the French fleet under the Comte de Grasse blocked British escape by sea. The coordinated land and naval operation trapped Cornwallis on Virginia’s York River peninsula.

Cornwallis did not personally appear at the surrender ceremony. Brigadier General Charles O’Hara represented him and offered the sword to Washington’s second in command, Benjamin Lincoln. The British band reportedly played “The World Turned Upside Down,” although the story is not firmly documented from contemporary evidence.

Yorktown did not instantly end all fighting, but it was the decisive military turning point of the American Revolutionary War. Major combat largely ceased afterward, and peace negotiations produced the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Cornwallis is sometimes confused with General William Howe, who commanded British forces earlier in the war, or General Henry Clinton, the commander in chief based in New York.