Existing comment:
Remembering Yorktown
New Jersey played a key role in one of the biggest battles of the Revolutionary War
One hundred years after the American victory at the 1781 Battle of
Yorktown, the United States commemorated the anniversary with a
grand military encampment on the same hallowed ground that saw the
Revolutionary War come to a close. There, New Jersey's "Yorktown
Battalion" defeated military units from fifteen states to earn top honors
for their proficiency in dress, drill, discipline, and soldierly bearing.
The trophy was this magnificent Tiffany cup adorned with Revolutionary
figures, scenes of the battle and surrender, patriotic motifs, and a finial
depicting a Continental soldier in full uniform. The so-called "Yorktown
Cup" was a fitting trophy. In 1781, soldiers from the then colony of New
Jersey had featured prominently in the seminal battle.
Upon the battalion's return, commanding officer E. Burd Grubb
officially presented the Yorktown Cup to the people of New Jersey at an
elaborate ceremony in the State House. "This battalion has returned not
with tattered flags and thinned ranks," Grubb remarked, "but as New
Jersey soldiers always return… with proof of victory in their hands." New
Jersey woodworkers constructed the mahogany base in 1903 in order to
display the trophy in the office of Governor Franklin Murphy. |