The Revolutionary Historian

The Post Yorktown Period: My Take

In his book Almost A Miracle the historian John Ferling noted on page 546, which covered the months after Yorktown that “this war was truly winding down.” I think John Ferling is one of the finest historians of the American Revolution and his scholarship will be used by historians and authors permanently, but I want to offer a different take on the matter. One would need to read several pages before Ferling’s statement on p.546 to grasp the full context, but my reaction to his claim is that it was typical of the large-scale historiography of the war.  My argument is that the war was not “winding down” but was rather taking on a new and different form. Yes, the British and Continental armies faced each other no more in large-scale pitched battles we so often think of, but this does not mean that armed conflict stopped, and it is not necessary for such battles to happen for a war to be…. a war.

The war simply evolved almost immediately after Yorktown. The American, British, and French armies all went various ways in the weeks after Yorktown, and each for their own reasons and in pursuit of their own agendas, a topic for another post. There was a brief lull between Yorktown in late October and the end of the year as the several armies relocated, evaluated, strategized and planned, but when the calendar rolled into 1782 everything changed and for many people in America it was as if Yorktown had never happened.

Particularly in the south, pitched battles and marching armies were replaced by a brutal civil war between Loyalists and Patriots that exploded in 1782 and brought rampant violence to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.  Throughout the middle and New England states Patriots and Loyalists also clashed as they spied on one another and did their part to support the larger armies they were attached to.  Militia units, both Patriot and Loyalist throughout the states became the dominant forces, with many state units attached to the command of the “regular” army.  Native Americans were violently removed from parts of Georgia and South Carolina in some of the first steps toward the destiny that would come in the following decades. 

In the Western theater lawlessness is the only word that can begin to describe the situation.  People of all factions made moves for the land, wealth, and power they believed would be available west of the Appalachian mountains when the war ended. The British made moves to hold the territory if they lost the war, the Americans to gain it if they won. Native Americans, as always were caught in the middle, and as they had been since the French and Indian War had no consensus on who they wanted to win from tribe to tribe and nation to nation.  The west was chaos, and perhaps the most dangerous place on earth at the time, certainly in America. Indians murdered white settlers, and whites massacred Indians as retaliation, a cycle of violence that only begat more violence.  Laws for all practical purposes were non-existent, and one living on the frontier risked all to do so.

This is but a broad overview of the situation in 1782.  No one in America’s military leadership (or the British for that matter) thought Yorktown ended the war, and none of them knew when it would end. They continued to plan for the next campaign, and the primary sources solidly demonstrate they all believed a next campaign was coming. General Nathanael Greene and his army undertook several operations to attack the British in early 1782, and the British for their own part took advantage of intelligence they had the Americans were disorganized and weak in January and made moves of their own in South Carolina, culminating in an American disaster at Videau’s Bridge on January 3. (See my JAR article on this engagement here: https://allthingsliberty.com/2025/12/videaus-bridge-an-american-disaster-after-yorktown/.)

This is but one engagement during 1782, dozens more happened, and men, women, and children of all races and backgrounds continued to lose their lives in the name of the war. It was not winding down in my judgement, and Yorktown was no end, yet the historiography poorly reflects this reality, even amongst our finest historians. The work on this period is nearly exclusively contained within larger narratives which had to dedicate hundreds and hundreds of pages to the period from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown. Yorktown has simply provided a convenient and tidy place to wrap up the war’s story.  Unfortunately, even the more focused work has suffered the same fate.  Don Glickstein’s After Yorktown, one of the very few books to address the post Yorktown period, while excellent, focuses heavily on the diplomatic efforts to end the war, the economic turmoil, and the political confusion that existed, all on a global scale. The military engagements are largely overlooked, and those to be mentioned have short descriptions that typically rely on previous, and inaccurate works.  Walter Edgar’s Partisans and Redcoats, a book directly addressing the civil war in the Southern theater, dedicates but three sentences to the situation in 1782. 

Before this post turns into a literature review (which I should post at some point, as I have written several) I believe my point is made…. the scholarship just does not cover this period very well, and certainly not with any detail. The books with 1782 or 1783 in the subtitle are misleading, as very few of their pages focus on events during those years. The period between Yorktown and the peace is filled with fascinating stories well worth telling and the primary sources permit the ability to expand our knowledge of the American Revolution and the war that won it.  Much of my work has corrected previous narratives written long ago, before the modern historical practices of today were implemented and before many of the primary sources we use became widely available. Yorktown was no end, and my work will advance the argument, with respect to Ferling and others, that war was not winding down just yet, but rather taking a new form, that while removed from large armies and pitched battles was just as deadly and perhaps more lawless and violent than the period before Yorktown. More to come!

Josh Wheeler, December 20, 2025