The fourth volume in this distinguished series is a documentary chronicle of the 1781 campaign that culminated in the October surrender of Cornwallis and his army to the joint American and French forces at Yorktown. As leader of the American troops in Virginia from April through September 1781, Lafayette played a major role in planning this campaign; the greatest American victory of the war was also an outstanding personal triumph.

In this volume Lafayette's correspondents include American military figures such as Washington, Greene, Steuben, and Wayne; the British commanders Phillips and Cornwallis; and such civil authorities as Jefferson, Thomas Nelson, William Davies, and Thomas Sim Lee. Their exchanges provide a vivid picture, with all the immediacy and authenticity that only documents can give, of the problems and frustrations of the campaign, and they draw attention to the specific decisions that led to the allied containment of the British forces.