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Yorktown, Virginia, USA. Five days after the capitulation at Yorktown, Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman reached Philadelphia and announced to the Continental Congress that Cornwallis had surrendered. On October 29, 1981, five days later, the Congress passed a resolution, "That the United States in Congress assembled, will cause to be erected at york, in Virginia, a marble column, adorned with emblems of the alliance between the United States and his Most Christian Majesty; and inscribed with a succinct narrative of the surrender of earl Cornwallis to his excellency General Washington, Commander in Chief of the combined forces of America and France; to his excellency the Count de Rochambeau, commanding the auxilliary troops of his most Christian Majesty in America, and his excellency the Count de Grasse, commanding in chief the naval army of France in the Chesapeake." Not moving very quickly, a hundred years passed before the cornerstone was laid, and construction began in ernest. Constructed on marble quarried in Maine, the base has four pediments; atop it is the column to depict drums, topped by 'Liberty herself'. Designed by R.M. Hunt, J.Q.A. Ward (New York) and Henry Brunt (Boston), there are many symbolic items on the monument.