Chapter 16: "Oh God, It Is All Over”   
       
      
   Peace, Conspiracy, Demobilization, Change, 1781–1783   
       
      
   Fittingly, the first definitive word of the catastrophe at Yorktown was   
   delivered to the London residence of Lord Germain. The American secretary   
   summoned a coach for a brief, uneasy ride to Downing Street, where he broke   
   the bad news to Lord North. The    
   prime minister, according to a witness, reacted as if he had “taken a ball   
   in the breast.” Wringing his hands and pacing the floor, North reportedly   
   cried, “Oh God, it is all over!” Whether he meant his ministry or the war,   
   or both, was not clear.   
   1   
       
      
   Opposition to war with America had existed in Parliament since before the   
   order to use force went out early in 1775, but North’s government had always   
   rested on a comfortable majority. Nearly four out of five MPs supported the   
   government’s policies    
   at the outset of hostilities, and after a snap election in the autumn of   
   1780—hard on the heels of word of the surrender of Charleston—the ministry   
   still enjoyed a two-to-one majority. Yorktown changed things. A motion in   
   December that decried the    
   war as “contrary to the true interests of this kingdom” was defeated by   
   only a narrow margin, failing because the king and Germain still supported the   
   war. “Take away America, and we should sink into perfect insignificance,”   
   said the American    
   secretary. The monarch insisted that losing America “would annihilate the   
   rank in which the British Empire stands among the European states.”2 But   
   support for their war steadily waned. Not even North any longer wanted the war   
   to continue, though he    
   thought it must in order for Great Britain to exercise leverage in the looming   
   peace negotiations.   
       
      
   North’s ministry fell piece by piece over a span of four months. In   
   December, Sir Henry Clinton, on whose watch the war was finally lost, was   
   replaced by General Sir Guy Carleton, the fourth commander of Britain’s army   
   in America in six years.    
   Germain was gone in January in a gust of nearly universal antipathy. Six   
   attempts were made to censure North’s ministry during the early weeks of   
   1782. Each failed, but the government’s majority steadily dwindled. North   
   survived the last vote of no    
   confidence by only a dozen votes. Late in February a motion stipulating that   
   the war “may no longer be pursued” failed by a single vote. A week later a   
   motion carried that labeled all who supported “the further prosecution of   
   the war” as enemies    
   of the realm. North stayed on for a few more days, telling the MPs that he   
   would remain at the head of the ministry until the king asked him to resign or   
   Parliament removed him with a vote of no confidence. The Hosue of Commons in   
   effect did just that on    
   March 27, prompting North’s immediate resignation in one last speech as   
   prime minister, remarks delivered “with that placid temper that never   
   forsook him,” according to an observer. With that, North hurried outdoors to   
   a waiting carriage and was    
   gone, bringing to an end his twelve years as prime minister.3   
       
      
   A melancholy spirit pervaded drab and dismal London throughout the weeks that   
   North’s ministry teetered and fell, but following Yorktown a festive mood   
   prevailed in Philadelphia. Word of Cornwallis’s surrender reached the city   
   late in the night of    
   October 22. Philadelphia’s night watchman, one of the first to know,   
   immediately walked the dark, lonely streets delivering his long-awaited   
   announcement in a mixture of English and his native German: “Basht dree   
   o’clock, und Gorn-wal-lis isht da-   
   ken.” Congress ordered a day of celebration that included a worship service   
   and an evening when most Philadelphians put a candle in at least one window, a   
   simple and unpretentious way of expressing their joy and thanksgiving.4 As the   
   news of Yorktown    
   spread across the land—followed in the spring by the arrival of the text of   
   the Commons’ condemnation of the war—the sense grew that Cornwallis’s   
   surrender meant that peace was at hand. Long and sticky peace negotiations   
   were certain to come, and    
   small-scale skirmishing would continue in the southern Low Country, but big   
   campaigns and battles were a thing of the past in North America.   
       
      
   De Grasse sailed away immediately after the British capitulation at Yorktown.   
   Rochambeau’s army stayed in Virginia until the following June, when it   
   commenced a leisurely march to Massachusetts that consumed nearly three   
   months. The French soldiers    
   were honored and entertained in nearly every hamlet through which they passed.   
   On Christmas Eve 1782, convinced that the war was really over, the French army   
   boarded troop transports in Boston and sailed for home.5 The Continental army,   
   on the other hand,   
    had left Yorktown almost immediately after Cornwallis’s surrender. It   
   marched north and spent most of 1782 on the Hudson above Manhattan. About   
   eight thousand men, all unpaid and eager to go home, remained on duty, but   
   America’s army could hardly be    
   disbanded. Some twenty-five thousand British troops were still in the United   
   States, most in New York, the remainder in Charleston and Savannah. The   
   soldiers in both armies would remain in place until the peace talks concluded.   
       
      
      
       
      
   Not long after North’s fall, the Earl of Shelburne formed a ministry. The   
   presumption in London was that peace talks were imminent.6 Nearly two decades   
   earlier, Shelburne, at the time the secretary responsible for American   
   affairs, had pursued an    
   enlightened Western policy linked to a scheme for staunching further   
   parliamentary taxation. Had he been able to realize his plans, the   
   Anglo-American crisis might never have returned to fever pitch. But Shelburne   
   had not lasted long before he was    
   supplanted by obdurate Lord Hillsborough. In the run-up to war, Shelburne,   
   though coy, had appeared to favor negotiations with the Continental Congress;   
   after Saratoga, he seemed to think a military solution was beyond Britain’s   
   reach, at least so long    
   as Germain was involved in the strategic planning. Word of Shelburne’s   
   ministry was greeted with optimism by perceptive colonists. John Adams thought   
   peace inevitable no matter who headed the ministry, but he welcomed Shelburne   
   as thoughtful and    
   reasonable. Benjamin Franklin saw Shelburne as a welcome replacement for the   
   “unclean Spirits” who had presided for years.7   
       
      
      
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