Our Fayette Heritage
By Carolyn Cary
- In the last article, I mentioned that Gen. Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) was the
nation's hero at the French Canadian border from
1775-76. Unfortunately, he got so discouraged with
the Continental Congress not giving him any men, arms or supplies in support of his mission, that
he decided to betray the country by giving the
British the plans for Fort West Point in New York.
He had met with fellow general Marquis de LaFayette (1757-1834) early on the day he
was going to deliver these plans, and told LaFayette
to go on to his house and join him and Mrs. Arnold for breakfast. Arnold and LaFayette had
served with Gen. George Washington at Valley
Forge. There were 11,000 soldiers there, too 3,000
of whom did not even have shoes.
- The man Arnold gave the plans to was caught and everything led right back to general. For
a while he fought with the English and
then escaped to England. The English, wanting to make a big production of his defection to
their side, offered him £20,000 in public. In
reality, once he was in England, they only gave
him £6,000. He died there in 1801.
- LaFayette later got a bright idea (1781) on
how to shorten the American Revolutionary War. Studying the ship and land movements of
the British, he realized that Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805) could be hemmed up
at the peninsula at Yorktown, Va. He also knew he could get word to French ships for help do
just that.
- Gen. Cornwallis had been leading the English forces in the Revolutionary War for several
years when he went home and married. He returned
to the war, only to learn in a matter of months
that his wife had died. By the time he was leading
his forces at Yorktown, he had just about had it
with the war.
- LaFayette relayed his plan to Gen. Washington, who was about to travel to
New York.The American general said, in effect, "sounds like a good idea, you follow through
with it and send word to me in New York."
LaFayette, along with Anthony Wayne, did just that.
The surrender proceedings had to be held up for
three days while Washington got to Yorktown from New York. (Do you get the feeling here,
that Washington really didn't think it would work?)
- To simplify things, Arnold had already gone to live in London, Cornwallis returned to
England, LaFayette returned to France and
Washington became America's first president.
- Just 20 years after the surrender at Yorktown, Fayette County, Georgia, was born
- Carolyn Cary is Fayette County's
official historian and editor of "The History of
Fayette County," published by the Fayette
County Historical Society.
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