Carries Surrender Papers To Yorktown
The Siege of Yorktown in October 1781 marked the start of the Patriot’s victory and an honor for Tench who Washington picked to carry the surrender papers to Philadelphia. Two poets have written about the ride, Dr. Oliver Huchel and Howard Pyle which both make Tilghman into a hero. A Ballad titled "The Ride of Tench Tilghman" also speaks of the ride and the surrounding areas as well.
In a letter to Tilghman the following year, Washington’s humor and admiration is apparent. Washington’s letter to Tench on July 9, 1782 from Newburgh, New York:
- “Till your letter of the 28th arrived which is the first from you and the only direct account of you since we departed at Philadelphia, we have various conjectures about you. Some thought you were dead—others that you were married—and all that you have forgot us. Your letter is not a more evident contradiction of the first and last of these suppositions than it is a tacit conformation of the second and as more can wish you greater success in the prosecution of the plan you are upon than I do...you have no friend who wishes more to see you than I do.”
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Famous quotes containing the words carries, surrender and/or papers:
“No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It took nine years, and a great depression, and two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender without war, to break my faith in the benign power of the press. Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.”
—Martha Gellhorn (b. 1908)
“You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)