folded letter datelined "Bordeaux 26 Jan 1782", carried aboard an American vessel which ran the British blockade and entered the mails at Cape Fear, North Carolina, marked "forw'd 10" [d] due for ship fee and postage to Boston via Suffolk, very fine, during this period the British imposed a blockade along the East Coast as both they and the Americans awaited news of the peace negotiations taking place in Paris as a result of Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781