STORMING YORKTOWN’S REDOUBT

The voices of ordinary American soldiers who took part in the Revolutionary War are seldom heard today. One exception is Joseph Plumb Martin, born in 1760 in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut. Martin plunged into the war at age 15 in June 1776, serving in the Connecticut state militia and eventually the 8th Connecticut Regiment of General George Washington’s Continental Army. Martin’s memoirs, first published in 1830, reveal the war through the eyes of an “average patriot” present virtually throughout the war at some of the momentous events during the struggle for American Independence.

Among the most significant of these was the September-October 1781 Siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in which Martin, then a 20-year-old sergeant, took part, including one of the most famous actions of the battle. Serving in a unit of sappers, Martin helped dig a line of entrenchments, parallel to the British trenches, which paved the way for Washington’s troops to assault and capture the British strongpoint at Redoubt No. 10 as the French simultaneously attacked and captured Redoubt No. 9. Washington was desperate for this attack to succeed and to show the strength and martial skill of American troops at this stage in the Revolutionary War to prevent Britain from falsely claiming Yorktown was merely a “French victory.” Therefore, the the actions of Martin and his sapper unit were crucial.

The assault and seizure of the redoubts put overwhelming numbers of American and French siege artillery cannon within point-blank range to batter British forces into total submission, thereby compelling the British to reluctantly but inevitably surrender. Martin,