• U.S.

A Last Bicentennial Bash

3 minute read
Kurt Andersen

Once more with feeling as the colonials win the big one

If the U.S. Secret Service had been on duty in 1781 at Yorktown, Lord Cornwallis might have had a fighting chance against George Washington. Concerned in 1981 about security for Washington’s 39th successor to the presidency, the prudent but unromantic federal agents forced the play-acting colonial troops to surrender all but a few of their 50 cannons, temporarily confiscated their flints and black powder and subjected each make-believe soldier to a metal detector’s scan. No matter: the glory of re-created victory was undimmed. Over the sunny Virginia meadows marched 2,200 ersatz Revolutionaries. There were French infantry of the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment in their gleaming white uniforms; authentically ragtag colonials, including the Barnstable Militia of Cape Cod, some in burlap and bandages; and, of course, 750 English redcoats and Hessians, gallant in their mock defeat.*

Behind a bulletproof plastic shield, like travelers in a time machine, a jubilant Ronald Reagan and his guest, French President François Mitterrand, watched the Bicentennial celebration of a transatlantic partnership that brought independence to the 13 colonies. “The surrender at Yorktown,” Reagan told the crowd of 60,000 (one of whom presented him with a reproduction of a Revolutionary sword), “was a victory for the right of self-determination. It was and is the affirmation that freedom will eventually triumph over tyranny.” His Socialist French counterpart, however, had a more pointedly contemporary interpretation of the celebration. Said Mitterrand: “The aspirations of the peoples of the world today are as legitimate as those of our forefathers. Let us act so that their message is heard before it is too late.”

The festivities, all stressing the longevity of Franco-American friendship, buffered any ideological friction created by the Presidents’ disparate history lessons with friendly toasts and good cheer. Mitterrand and his wife Danielle were hosts at a Sunday lunch aboard the moored French frigate De Grasse (named for Admiral François de Grasse, whose naval blockade sealed the English defeat at Yorktown). There, after lobster and lamb, Mitterrand told Reagan that he relished “the humor of your conversation” and toasted “the generous smile of Mrs. Reagan.” A few hours later the Presidents, their wives and 92 others arrived, amid fife-and-drum fanfare, for a black-tie state dinner at the 260-year-old Royal Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, twelve miles from Yorktown. Reagan, loose and happy, spilled a wineglass; Mitterrand, somewhat less bouncy, ate what was undoubtedly his first Virginia ham biscuit.

The centerpiece of the celebration was the re-enactment of the Battle of Yorktown, which was planned long before either President had been elected.The troops, volunteers from 23 states who bought their own period equipment, came with 1,000 wives and children (also decked out in period clothing); the lot of them camped in a period tent bivouac for five days. All weekend long, 180,000 tourists reveled in the show: attacks on British redoubts, demonstrations of colonial battlefield surgery and, finally, the white handkerchief of surrender waved by the English. Afterward, a Massachusetts colonial and his camp follower were married, vraiment, in an 18th century ceremony, and dancers, jousters and drummers roamed the fields. Occasionally time seemed out of joint, as when, in a surreal moment, 21 F-15 jets blasted out of the blue over a parade of musket-bearing troops across the ancient greensward. Now, as then, it was fire support the colonials did not need.

—By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Yorktown

* The real Battle of Yorktown, which effectively ended the Revolutionary War, dragged on for three weeks. The combatants: 9,000 Americans, 7,800 French under General Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau, and Cornwallis’ 7,000 dispirited troops.

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