What did Hamilton do at Yorktown?

In the musical: in "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)", Hamilton finally gets the command he has begged Washington for, and leads the assault that helps end the war. Before the battle, he and Lafayette trade a line that became one of the show's most quoted: "Immigrants: we get the job done!" Miranda turns Yorktown into a victory won by outsiders — a West Indian orphan and a French aristocrat fighting for a country that was not yet theirs.

The battle: by the summer of 1781, the British general Lord Cornwallis had moved his army to Yorktown, a tobacco port on the Virginia coast, expecting the Royal Navy to supply or evacuate him. Instead, a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse defeated the British at the Battle of the Chesapeake on 5 September and sealed off the bay. Washington and the French general Rochambeau marched their combined armies some 450 miles south from New York, and by late September about 17,000 American and French troops had Cornwallis trapped, with water behind him and allies in front.

The siege followed European rules. Troops dug a trench, the "first parallel", and brought up artillery to bombard the town. To dig a second, closer trench, the allies had to take two British strongpoints near the river: Redoubt No. 9 and Redoubt No. 10.

Hamilton's moment: for an immigrant with no family name or fortune, battlefield glory was the fastest road to reputation. As a teenage clerk on St. Croix he had confessed to a friend that he despised "the grov'ling and condition of a Clerk" and "would willingly risk my life tho' not my Character to exalt my Station". He ended: "I wish there was a War." Four years as Washington's aide had made him indispensable at a desk, but kept him from the field. He left Washington's staff early in 1781 after a quarrel, and lobbied hard for a command. He got a battalion of light infantry, and on the night of 14 October 1781 he led about 400 men against Redoubt No. 10, while French troops attacked Redoubt No. 9. To keep the attack silent, the men reportedly advanced with unloaded muskets and fixed bayonets. The redoubt fell in about ten minutes. John Laurens took part in the assault.

The end: with both redoubts lost, Cornwallis's position became hopeless. An attempt to escape across the York River was wrecked by a storm. He asked for terms on 17 October and his army surrendered on 19 October. Cornwallis did not attend, pleading illness; his deputy, General Charles O'Hara, offered his sword first to the French, who directed him to Washington, who in turn directed him to his own second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln. Laurens was one of the officers who negotiated the terms. Fighting continued in places, but Yorktown effectively won the war; the peace was signed in Paris in 1783.

Fact-check verdict: true. The musical compresses the siege and turns Hamilton's quarrel with Washington into a different scene, but Hamilton's bayonet assault on Redoubt No. 10 was real, fast and important.