On Tuesday, October 9, 1781, at 5:00 that afternoon, as an American flag unfurled over Grand Battery 13A at Yorktown, George Washington personally set light to an eighteen-pounder announcing to Charles Cornwallis that his end was not far off. As the hurtling ball spent itself, it left behind a wake of devastation killing the British Commissary-General and injuring two other officers gathered together for their evening meal. For Massachusetts officer Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer Stevens, in charge of attending Henry Knox’s artillery park that day, it was no doubt an eminently satisfying result.[1]
While the thirty-year-old Stevens already possessed an extraordinary amount of experience in the patriot cause as an early leader at the Boston Tea Party, a member of the Quebec expedition and later assuming the duties as the leading artillerist of the Northern Department, witnessing the final moments of the war surely ranked high on his list of achievements. However, had he known what was taking place back home at that very moment, where the “fruits” of the conflict he was helping to bring to an end were beginning to make themselves known, he could be excused if he paused to reflect on what it all meant for his nation’s future.
The year 1781 marks not only the end of wholesale fighting in North America, but also the unveiling of other unanticipated and unforeseen forces about to radically change the patriots’ perceptions of what the Revolution was all about. From a large, macro perspective, this was the year that the Articles of Confederation, first drafted in 1777, were ratified in March resulting in the creation of what proved to be a largely ineffective federal government that did little to inhibit the sovereignty that the individual states continued to cling to. And on the micro level, much was also amiss.
