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:
“Often on bare rocky carries the trail was so indistinct that I repeatedly lost it, but when I walked behind him I observed that he could keep it almost like a hound, and rarely hesitated, or, if he paused a moment on a bare rock, his eye immediately detected some sign which would have escaped me. Frequently we found no path at all at these places, and were to him unaccountably delayed. He would only say it was “ver strange.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“All the familiar horrors we
Associate with others
Are coming fast along our way:
The wind is warning in our tree
And morning papers still betray
The shrieking of the mothers.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)