How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

”I have the Mortification to inform your Excellency...”

The London Gazette
London: Printed by Thomas Harrison, From Saturday December 15, to Tuesday December 18, 1781. Printed newspaper. (8) pp. Tax stamp at top of first page and at bottom of fifth page. Contemporary manuscript at top of first page, in left margin of second page ("Lord Cornwallis and Army takin (sic) at York Town and Gloucester: by Washington & Rochambeau."), left margin of p. 6 ("the Ship Savage was taken by an American Ship of Warr (sic)."), and on the following page. Partially separated along central vertical fold; scattered spotting ; chip in lower fore-edge of final two leaves. 

The British reception of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown and the beginning of the end of the American Revolution, printed in the official mouthpiece of the English Crown. Likely the first British newspaper to publish Cornwallis "Mortification" letter and the full articles of capitulation. 

Printed on the second page is Cornwallis's letter to British General and Commander-in-Chief in North America Sir Henry Clinton, announcing his surrender to General Washington, "I have the Mortification to inform your Excellency, that I have been forced to give up the Posts of York and Gloucester, and to surrender the Troops under my Command, by Capitulation, on the 19th Instant, as Prisoners of War to the Combined Forces of America and France." This is followed by printings of letters between Cornwallis and General Washington negotiating surrender, and then the full articles of capitulation, signed in type by Cornwallis, Washington, et al. 

News of Cornwallis's surrender on October 19, 1781, after a three-week siege by American and French forces, reached British shores by late November 1781. The news sent reverberations through the English public and political circles, amplifying opposition voices within Parliament and entrenching a sense of disgust over the whole American affair. The British press placed most of the loss on the shoulders of Clinton, for his inability to stop Washington's march south, and then his refusal to reinforce a cornered Cornwallis. Finger pointing continued in the British press in the months that followed, and over time a sense that America was lost became more clear. A preliminary treaty to end the eight-year-long war was signed in November of 1782.