Why did cornwallis finally surrender? how many prisoners did the patriots capture?

The residence saw wartime action again during the Civil War, when it was used as a hospital. Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the Revolutionary War. Lacking the financial resources to raise a new army, the British government appealed to the Americans for peace.

Historian Edwin G. Burrows writes that "by the end of 1776, disease and starvation had killed at least half of those taken on Long Island and perhaps two-thirds of those captured at Fort Washington – somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 men in the space of two months."