The American Revolution (Revolutionary War)
Introduction
The American Revolution (1775–83) was the result of a conflict between the people of the thirteen North American colonies of Great Britain (the British crown) and their colonial government. The conflict began when British troops clashed with colonial militia at the battles of Lexington and Concord (April 1775). By the summer of 1778, the rebels had begun to wage a full-blown war for independence. In 1778, France joined the American Revolution in support of the colonists, transforming what had begun as a local civil war into a global conflict. By 1781, with French help, the Continental Army forced the British to surrender at the Battle of Yorktown (Virginia) 1781. The Americans had won the war for independence, though the final battle would not take place until 1783.
Causes of the American Revolution
Tensions between the colonists and the British government had been simmering for over a decade before 1775 when the American Revolution erupted. The French and Indian War (1756–1763) brought new territories under British control, but the costly conflict resulted in new and unpopular taxes imposed by the British government. The Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Act (1767) and the Tea Act (1773) were all examples of British attempts to tax the colonies. Many colonists were angry that they were not represented in Parliament and wanted the same rights as British subjects.
In 1770, colonial resistance was met with British military action, which resulted in the Boston Massacre, in which five colonists were killed after a group of Bostonians changed their appearance to conceal their identity and entered British ships. In 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place, during which 342 chests of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor. Parliament was so angry that it passed a series of acts (known as the “Intolerable” or “Coercive Acts” to reassert imperial control over Massachusetts.
Did you know that one of the Revolutionary War’s most notorious traitors, General Benedict Arnold, started the war as one of the war’s first heroes? He was in command of the rebels’ forces when they captured Ticonderoga Fort in May 1775.
In September 1774, a group of delegates from the colonies, including George Washington, John Adams, Patrick Henry and John Jay, gathered in Philadelphia to speak out against the British Crown. They didn't call for independence, but they did decry taxation without representation and the British army being allowed to stay in the colonies without their consent. They also declared that everyone had rights, like life, freedom, property, freedom of assembly and the right to a trial by jury. In May 1775, the Continental Congress met again to decide what to do, but by then, violence had already started.
On April 18th, 1775, British troops were marching from Boston to take an arms cache in Concord, Massachusetts. Paul Revere, one of the riders, sounded the alarm and the colonial militia began to mobilize. On April 19th, local militia fought British soldiers in the battles of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, which marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
Declaring Independence (1775-76)
On June 17, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and, with the help of new delegates such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others, voted to form a Continental Army under Washington as its commander-in-chief. In the first major battle of the Revolution, colonial forces inflicted severe losses on General William Howe's British regiment at Breed's Hill in Boston, the battle of Bunker Hill, which ended in British victory but helped galvanize support for the revolutionary cause.
Throughout the fall and winter of 1776, Washington's troops fought to keep the British in Boston, but the heavy artillery that was captured at the fort at Ticonderoga, New York, in late winter shifted the balance of the battle. In March 1777, the British evacuated the city and retreated to Canada in preparation for a large-scale invasion of New York.
By June of 1776, amid the Revolutionary War, the majority of colonists were in favour of seceding from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. It was written by a committee of five, including Franklin, John Adams, and Jefferson, but mostly by Jefferson. In August of that year, Howe's Redcoats defeated the Continental Army on Long Island. The British government, intent on crushing the rebellion, sent a fleet of over 34,000 men to New York and Washington was ordered to leave New York City. Washington's troops were forced to abandon their camp in New York City in September, and he was forced to retreat to Morristown for the winter. On Christmas night, 1776, Washington attacked Trenton in a surprise, New Jersey. The following day, he won another battle at Princeton to restore the rebels' flagging hopes.
The turning point in the Revolutionary War at Saratoga, 1777-78
In 1777, the British strategy was two-pronged. First, they wanted to separate New England (where support for the rebellion was strongest) from the rest of the colonies. Second, they wanted to draw Howe's army south from Canada to meet them on the Hudson. In July, Burgoyne's men inflicted a devastating defeat on the Americans at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. In September, Howe moved his troops south from New York to meet Washington's army at the mouth of the Chesapeake. The Americans were defeated at Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania on September 11, 1777, and the British captured Philadelphia on September 25, 1777. Washington's army rebounded to strike at Germantown early in October and then withdrew to winter quarters near valley forge.
As a result of Howe's move, Burgoyne's army was left defenceless at Saratoga in New York on September 19th. The British were defeated at Freeman's Farm by an American force led by Horatio Gates in the first battle of Saratoga. The following day, October 7th, the Second Battle of Saratoga (also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights) saw Burgoyne surrender his remaining troops on the 17th of October.
The American victory at Saratoga marked a major turning point in the American Revolution. France, which had been aiding the rebels secretly since 1776, had joined the war on the side of the Americans, although it would not officially declare war on Britain until June 1778. What began as a civil war between Britain and the colonies of the United Kingdom now became a world war.
Strongholds in the north, Battle in the south (1778-1781)
During the long and difficult winter, Washington's troops were trained and disciplined by the Prussian army officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who had been sent by the French, and under the command of the French Earl de Lafayette. At the end of January 1778, Washington's army attacked British troops at Monmouth in New Jersey near the mouth of the Potomac River. The battle was a draw, but Clinton managed to transport Washington's army and supplies to New York on June 28th, 1778. The following day, July 8th, the French fleet under the command of Comte d'Estaing sailed from the Atlantic coast to confront the British, under the command of Sir Henry Clinton, the new supreme commander of the army, who had replaced Howe. A joint British-French attack on Newport in Rhode Island at the end of July 1778 was unsuccessful, and the war settled for most of the year into a stalemated state in the North.
In 1779, General Benedict Arnold defected to the British, and the Continental Army experienced its first serious mutiny. The British occupied Georgia in early 1779, and in May 1780 captured the city of Charleston. Gates' American troops at Camden were destroyed in mid-August by British forces led by Lord Charles Cornwallis. Gates was replaced as the US commander in the South by Nathanael Green in December 1781. In early October 1781, the Americans won a battle against Loyalist troops at King's Mountain. In January 1781, General Daniel Morgan won a battle against a British force under Colonel Bannerre Tarleton near Cowpens.
The end of the Revolutionary War (1781-1783)
By autumn 1781, the combined forces of Greene and Washington had forced Cornwallis to retreat to the Virginia peninsula of Yorktown, not far from the confluence of the York River and the Chesapeake. Supported by the French army under the command of his own son-in-law, the 14,000-strong force pressed against Yorktown, while a flotilla of 36 French ships off the coast prevented British reinforcements or evacuation. Confiscated and overwhelmed, Cornwallis surrendered his entire force on October 19, 1781. Claiming to be ill, Cornwallis sent his chief of staff, Charles O'Hara, for surrender; O'Hara went to the French general and asked him to hand over his sword, which he did. When the Frenchman did so, Washington motioned for him to hand it over to his own representative, Benjamin Lincoln. Lincoln did so.
The movement for American independence won the battle of Yorktown, but contemporary observers did not view it as a decisive victory. British troops remained in the vicinity of Charleston, and the mighty main army remained in New York. Neither side would take decisive steps for another two years, but the British withdrawal from Charleston and Savannah at the end of 1782 signalled the end of the war. British and American representatives in Paris signed provisional peace terms in Paris at the end of November of that year. On September 3rd, 1783, the United Kingdom formally acknowledged the independence of the new nation in the Treaty of Paris. Britain had also concluded separate peace treaties with both France and Spain (who had entered the war in 1779) bringing eight long years of the American Revolution to an end.
