Meditate.

Trumbull, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, 1788

On this day in 1781, British troops commanded by Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, signalling the end of the American Revolution.

The Architect of the Capitol explains John Trumbull's painting ...

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis in the Capitol Rotunda is one of two paintings that artist John Trumbull completed on this subject. He painted this version between 1819 and 1820, basing it upon a small painting (approximately 20 inches by 30 inches) that he had first envisioned in 1785, when he began to “meditate seriously the subjects of national history, of events of the Revolution.”