[An Announcement of Victory at the Battle of Yorktown]. The New-Hampshire Gazette. And General Advertiser. Portsmouth, New Hampshire; December 29, 1781. Printed by [Daniel Fowle and Robert Gerrish]. Volume XXVI [26], number 1313. Four pages of a bifolium, 9.75" x 15.25". Unpaginated and printed in three columns. An announcement of the victory at Yorktown and insights into the actions of British General Cornwallis. Chiefly a non-partisan news source during the course of the war, here we see one of the first instances of The New-Hampshire Gazette reporting directly on updates from the warfront. This issue contains a lengthy essay, signed "The Monitor", which outlines objections to the New Hampshire state constitution, particularly those amendments limiting trials to the county in which the crime was committed, as well as some of the named powers of the Governor. Furthermore, here we see printed one of the first public announcements of victory at the Battle of Yorktown, with a sharp indictment of General Cornwallis and those actions taken under his leadership, reading, in part: "It is generally allowed that the military talents of Lord Cornwallis are superiors to those of any British general hitherto employed in America: It is at the same time very certain that the cruelty of his conduct has been more than equal to that of any British commander. They have all acted in the Spirit of their nation, the fierce, the revengeful, the oppressive and unrelenting spirit that dictated the war, and all the horrid measures of it on their part. In this Spirit Lord Cornwallis has stood foremost; and in this dishonourable station will he go down to posterity in faithful history. It is no unmanly severity towards a captured enemy to assert that his Lordship has given too many flagrant and undeniable proofs of his inhumanity at the Southward, to allow him to ever be ranked among the greats." The paper goes on to detail a number of Cornwallis' alleged misdeeds, including an attempt to infect smallpox among the Colonial Army by way of inoculated enslaved peoples. Other reports mention a resolution by Congress thanking General Washington for his "eminent services", privateering news related to the Battle of Chesapeake, and a European plan to "declare the continent of North and South America independent of any European authority." Condition: Rough edges. Red pencil notation to page [1]. Just beginning to split along central horizontal fold, only just touching text. Light scattered foxing. HID03101062020 © 2022 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved

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