Benjamin Lincoln (January 24, 1733 – May 9, 1810) was an American army officer. He served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is notable for being involved in three major surrenders during the war: his participation in the Battles of Saratoga (sustaining a wound shortly afterward) contributed to John Burgoyne's surrender of a British army, he oversaw the largest American surrender of the war at the 1780 Siege of Charleston, and, as George Washington's second in command, he formally accepted the British surrender at Yorktown.
After the war he was active in politics in his native Massachusetts, running several times for lieutenant governor but only winning one term in that office. He led a militia army (privately funded by Massachusetts merchants) in the suppression of Shays' Rebellion in 1787, and was a strong supporter of the new United States Constitution. He was for many of his later years the customs collector of the Port of Boston.
Read more about Benjamin Lincoln: Early Life, American Revolution, Post-war Politics, Legacy
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“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography.... For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
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