Under a dark sky of smoke and broken cloud, a long line of troops files out of the distance as the surrendering British officer, in a red coat, stands at the center beside a white horse. French officers wait at the left beneath the white banner of the Bourbon royal family, and American officers stand at the right beneath the Stars and Stripes. George Washington, on a brown horse, stays in the background. The scene is the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, which ended the last major campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Lord Cornwallis himself was not present, which is why Washington holds back and American General Benjamin Lincoln, on the white horse, extends his hand toward the sword. John Trumbull first imagined the subject in 1785 and sketched the site at Yorktown in 1791. He painted this large version between 1819 and 1820, the second of the four he completed for the Capitol under his 1817 commission from Congress. It was shown in New York, Boston and Baltimore before it reached Washington in late 1820.

It hangs in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC.