19 October—After a disastrous battle, on this day in 1781, in what’s now known as Surrender Field in Yorktown, Virginia, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis, commander of British forces in the southern theater of the revolting colonies, surrendered his troops to General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Forces, thus effectively ending the Revolutionary War. Well, not quite.

First, it must be noted that Cornwallis, an hereditary peer but a Whig (the liberals of the day, who favored Parliament’s power over the monarchy), had been one of the few in the House of Lords to vote against the 1765 Stamp Act (which placed direct taxes on the colonies) and the 1766 Declaratory Act (which asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever”).

The Whigs were generally sympathetic to the colonists before the War of Independence and most supported full independence. Not that it mattered much, because the majority Tories pretty much got whatever they wanted, including the dreadful and dreaded so-called Townshend Acts, among whose abuses were:

The Revenue Act which imposed duties on necessities like glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea; the New York Restraining Act which suspended the New York Assembly until it complied with the Quartering Act of 1765 (which required colonies to house and feed British troops and led to the Constitution’s Third Amendment); the Vice Admiralty Act of 1768 which moved trials of accused smugglers and customs violators to courts without juries—usually located far from where the accused people lived.

Kind of reminds you of the abuses of the Trumpublican trifecta, doesn’t it?

Back to Lord Cornwallis, although he was consistent and constant in his support for the colonies and opposition to the Tory government’s reprehensible policies, he was a career soldier, so he put his duty to king and country above his political principles and once hostilities broke out he volunteered to serve in America. (Cornwallis was only one of many British generals and other officers who disapproved of the war but nevertheless fought honorably for king and country in America.)

After the war, Cornwallis went on to have an illustrious career in politics and colonial administration.

Cornwallis having been noted, then, it must also be noted that he didn’t actually surrender to Washington. He didn’t even attend the ceremony. And you can’t really blame the poor guy, even if he wasn’t really under the weather. Instead, he sent his second-in-command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, to hand over his sword to General George Washington, who was to accept it on behalf of American and French forces, the latter commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau.

But since the ceremony was supposed to be between commanding officers, Commander-in-Chief General Washington refused to accept the loser’s sword from a subordinate officer. Protocol is protocol, after all. So Washington passed the buck to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, who had a year-and-a-half earlier surrendered to the Brits—to General Sir Henry Clinton, Cornwallis’s superior officer, in fact—at Charleston, South Carolina. So forget that Major General Lincoln still outranked Brigadier General O’Hara.

After accepting Cornwallis’s sword, Lincoln immediately returned it to O’Hara. Military courtesy and precedent, if not protocol.

Contrary to popular legend, by the way, it’s unlikely—unsubstantiated, at any rate—that the British band present at the Yorktown surrender played “The World Turned Upside Down.”

And the No More Kings demonstrations yesterday were appropriate and laudable. But a bloody waste of time—except as pressure valves that allowed demonstrators to vent the immense hostility that Donald Trump and his corrupt flunkies have done everything in their abusive power to provoke . . .