Jeffrey A. Denman

Between five and six thousand enslaved Black laborers had fled to the British lines at Yorktown and Gloucester, and they performed the most backbreaking work—construction of the fortifications. But their fate was about to take an even more terrible turn. Infected with smallpox and combined with dwindling provisions, they no longer were a valuable asset to the British. Cornwallis forced them out of camp and beyond the British lines, where they either died or fell into the hand