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A
Capsule History Of The War
The American Revolution was an event of sweeping worldwide importance.
A costly war that lasted from 1775 to 1783 secured American independence
and gave revolutionary reforms of government and society the chance
to continue. At its core, the war pitted colonists who wanted independence
and the creation of a republic against the power of the British
crown, which wanted to keep its empire whole. At certain times and
in certain places, Americans fought other Americans in what became
a civil war. From the family whose farm was raided, through the
merchant who could not trade, to the slave who entered British lines
on the promise of freedom, everyone had a stake in the outcome.
1763-1774 From Protest
to Revolt
Britain's victory in the Seven Years War ended her contest with
France over North American, but began a new conflict with her colonies.
Many colonists questioned Britain's decision to keep an army in
postwar America, and almost all of them opposed Parliament's effort
to finance that army by taxing colonists. They petitioned against
the 1764 Sugar Act, which imposed import duties, and the 1765 Stamp
Act, which imposed direct taxes on the sale of playing cards, dice,
newspapers, and various legal documents. Parliament could not tax
them, the colonists insisted, because they had no representatives
in the House of Commons, and British subjects could only be taxed
with the consent of their elected representatives. When Parliament
refused to back down, colonial mobs forced stamp distributors to
resign. Direct action by interracial urban mobs was a frequent occurrence
in the lead-up to the Revolution. Parliament repealed the Stamp
Act in March 1766, but also passed a Declaratory Act affirming its
complete authority over the colonists. The next year, it sought
to raise revenue through new duties on glass, lead, paint, paper,
and tea, known as the "Townshend duties." The colonists
responded with a coordinated refusal to import British goods. British
troops sent to Boston
to enforce the duties only added to the tensions. Ill will between
civilians and British troops led to an incident on March 5, 1770,
where British troops fired on an unruly mob, killing five people.
Local radicals called it the "Boston Massacre." In that
same year, Parliament repealed all of the Townshend duties except
that on tea. In 1773, Parliament reaffirmed the tax on tea and passed
a Tea Act designed to help the British East India Company compete
with smuggled tea. Colonists in some ports forced tea ships to return
to Britain without unloading. That strategy failed in Boston, so
a crowd thinly disguised as "Indians" dumped the imported
tea into the harbor. Parliament responded to the "Boston Tea
Party" with the Coercive Acts (called by the colonists the
"Intolerable Acts"), which closed the port of Boston and
changed the form of government in Massachusetts to enhance the Crown's
power. It then appointed Gen. Thomas Gage commander of the British
Army in America and governor of Massachusetts and placed that colony
under military rule. In response, 12 colonies sent delegates to
a Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia in fall 1774 to
coordinate support for the "oppressed" people of Massachusetts
and opposition to the Coercive Acts. The Congress adopted a colonial
bill of rights and petitioned Britain for a redress of grievances.
1775
The War Begins
In late April 1775, Gen. Gage sent British troops to seize colonial
military supplies and arrest opposition leaders in the towns of
Lexington and
Concord, west of Boston. The military clashes there and along
the British retreat route began what became the Revolutionary War.
News of the fighting spread quickly, and volunteer soldiers rushed
to a provincial camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon this force
had the British army bottled up in Boston, at that time a peninsula
with just one narrow link to the mainland. Meanwhile, other colonial
forces took the British forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in
New York, seizing valuable military supplies. The Second Continental
Congress, after assembling on May 10, took charge of the makeshift
Massachusetts force and appointed Virginian George Washington to
command this "Continental Army." In June British troops
frustrated an American attempt to fortify Breed's Hill overlooking
Boston, but suffered heavy losses in the "Battle of Bunker
Hill." Thereafter, Gen. William Howe replaced Gage as commander
of the British forces. In July, Washington arrived at Cambridge
and began a rigorous program to discipline the American army. Late
in August, Congress sent troops to take Canada, an operation that
would take the rest of the year and end in disaster. But, as the
year closed, American troops under Col. Henry Knox began dragging
55 cannon from Ticonderoga to the siege at Boston.
1776-1777 The War's
Early Stages
The year 1776 started badly for the colonists, who suffered a bitter
defeat at Quebec, which dashed hopes of drawing Canadians into the
conflict and opened the northern frontier to British attacks. In
February, however, American supporters crushed loyalist forces at
Moores Creek
Bridge, N.C. In late March, the cannon from Ticonderoga allowed
the Continental Army to force the British out of Boston,
and in June, American forces repulsed a British attack on Charleston,
S.C. In June and July, the British began assembling one of the largest
naval and military forces ever seen in North America at New York.
Meanwhile, the Congress at Philadelphia approved the Declaration
of Independence, which was read publicly to Washington's troops
in New York. After a costly defeat at Brooklyn Heights on Long Island,
Washington managed to cross the East River back to Manhattan. He
retreated first north, suffering defeats at Harlem Heights and White
Plains, then down into New Jersey as the British captured Forts
Washington and Lee on opposite sides of the Hudson River and took
control of Manhattan Island. Washington finally crossed the Delaware
River into Pennsylvania; then, after even he feared the cause was
almost lost, scored critical victories at Trenton, N.J., in late
December and Princeton, N.J., in January, stopping the downward
spiral. Soon Washington's army went into winter quarters at Morristown,
N.J.
In 1777, Britain tried to isolate radical New
England from the other colonies by sending a force under Gen. John
Burgoyne down from Canada to the Hudson River. Troops under Gen.
Howe sailed from New York toward Philadelphia, by way of the Chesapeake
Bay. They captured Philadelphia, but by then Howe was unable to
reinforce Burgoyne, who surrendered his much-diminished army to
Continental soldiers and local militiamen at Saratoga,
N.Y., in October. After that victory, the French negotiated an alliance
with the Continental Congress, greatly reducing Britain's chances
of victory. Not only would French military and naval forces become
available to the Americans, but Britain now faced a worldwide war
and could no longer focus only on North America. Meanwhile, after
being defeated by Howe's forces at Brandywine and Germantown in
Pennsylvania, Washington's army went into winter quarters at Valley
Forge, low on food and other necessities. There, German-born
"Baron" Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben drilled
the troops, providing a discipline that would prove useful the following
year.
1778-1781 The British
Adopt a Southern Strategy
The year 1778 brought a major change in British strategy. Britain
had failed to subdue New England in the war's first phase, and conventional
warfare in the middle colonies had not reinstated the crown's authority.
Following France's entry into the war, Britain decided to concentrate
on holding the southern colonies. It also made sporadic raids on
northern ports and, with the help of Indian allies, on the frontier.
Meanwhile, Gen. Henry Clinton replaced Gen. Howe as overall British
commander.
To counter the British activity in the West,
which centered on their forts at Detroit and Niagara, George
Rogers Clark in spring 1778 assembled a force of about 200 men.
Through forced marches, bold leadership, and shrewd diplomacy with
Indian leaders, Clark captured the British posts of Cahokia and
Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River. He then moved on to take Vincennes
on the Wabash River. The British recaptured Vincennes, but held
it only briefly. Although he never captured the British stronghold
at Detroit, Clark's actions relieved much of the pressure on the
frontier and were the first steps in breaking Britain's hold on
the Northwest Territory.
Believing the South to be home to many secret
loyalists and hoping to keep the region's timber and agricultural
products for the Empire, the British sent an expedition that captured
Savannah, Georgia, in December 1778. At first, the British concentrated
on taking territory with regular army forces, then organizing loyalist
militia bands to hold the territory while the army moved on. This
strategy largely succeeded in Georgia, but broke down in the Carolinas.
The British scored a major victory with the capture of Charleston,
S.C., and its 5,500 defenders in May 1780. Instead of discouraging
patriot resistance, the fall of Charleston stirred it up and led
to the formation of irregular militia bands to make hit-and-run
attacks against the occupiers. The British had enough soldiers to
move through the Carolinas and establish forts, but not enough to
protect their loyalist supporters or establish effective control.
As soon as the British army moved on, loyalists were at the mercy
of their pro-independence neighbors.
After Gen. Clinton sailed for New York in June
1780, Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, took command of British forces
in the South and soon routed a patriot force under Gen. Horatio
Gates at Camden, S.C. Even the virtual elimination of a second American
army just three months after their triumph at Charleston did the
British little lasting good. Small militia bands under commanders
like Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens continued
to attack isolated British forces. In October, patriot militia from
both the Carolinas and Virginia defeated a loyalist army under British
Col. Patrick Ferguson at Kings
Mountain, South Carolina, putting an end to organized loyalist
activity in the state, and giving a large boost to American hopes.
Following Kings Mountain, Gen. Nathanael Greene
arrived in North Carolina to reorganize the southern American forces.
Soon thereafter, in January 1781, a combined force of Continental
and militia troops under Daniel Morgan beat a British army at Cowpens,
South Carolina. In March, Cornwallis and Greene tangled at Guilford
Courthouse (present-day Greensboro), North Carolina. Cornwallis
won a tactical victory, but one-quarter of his men were killed or
wounded. After shifting to the coast at Wilmington, N.C., he decided
to move his army north to Virginia. Greene then turned his attention
to retaking South Carolina, capturing one by one the isolated British
posts, including a 28-day siege that resulted in the British abandoning
Ninety Six.
Cornwallis's shift to Virginia resulted from
frustration with the situation in the Carolinas and a hope that
he could combine with Gen. Clinton's forces and win a decisive victory
over Washington's army. Washington was then encamped in New Jersey,
engaged in planning for an attack on the British in New York in
combination with the Comte de Rochambeau's French army. A large
French fleet under the Comte de Grasse had already left France with
orders first to take control of the seas in the West Indies and
then to support Washington and Rochambeau's operations. In August,
Washington learned that de Grasse was headed for the Chesapeake
Bay and saw a chance to destroy Cornwallis before he could be reinforced.
Leaving a small force to watch over New York City, Washington moved
his remaining Continentals and the French troops toward Virginia.
Meanwhile, Cornwallis occupied and fortified
Yorktown and
Gloucester on opposite banks of the York River. A small Continental
and militia force under the Marquis de Lafayette kept Cornwallis's
army occupied until Washington could concentrate his forces in Virginia.
The British sent a fleet under Admiral Graves from New York to relieve
Cornwallis, but the French fleet engaged it at the Naval Battle
of the Capes. Graves returned to New York with his damaged fleet,
leaving Cornwallis trapped at Yorktown. At the end of September,
with heavy cannons landed under the protection of the French ships,
the allied forces began the siege of Yorktown. As the bombardment
grew heavier and his attempt to break out from the Gloucester beachhead
failed, Cornwallis had no choice but to order his subordinate Brig.
Gen. Charles O'Hara to surrender his army of 8,000 to Washington
on October 19, 1781.
End Game
Yorktown was a great victory for Franco-American arms, but it was
not conclusive. The British still occupied New York City, Wilmington,
Charleston, and Savannah, and there was no immediate prospect of
the Americans taking these cities. However, the British were hard
pressed by years of war, and the government in London saw that it
would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Cornwallis's army.
The British public was also reaching the limits of its willingness
to pay taxes to support the American war. Realizing that the costs
of the war were greater than the potential gain, the British government
entered into peace negotiations, with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
and John Jay representing the United States. The Treaty of Paris,
signed in September 1783, officially ended hostilities, recognized
American independence, and made the Mississippi River the new nation's
western border. It also allowed Britain to retain Canada and returned
Florida to Spain. The failure of the British to withdraw from forts
in the northwest with "all convenient speed" and difficulties
with Spain over the navigation of the Mississippi River would require
more negotiations, but American independence, virtually unthinkable
in 1763, had been achieved.
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