Chapter 7 - Review

US:  A Narrative History Volume 1 – Chapter 7 Review

The American People and the American Revolution [1775-1783]

On June 17, 1775, thousands of colonials flocked to the rooftops and upper windows of their Boston homes to witness the British attack on Breed's Hill across the water on nearby Charlestown peninsula. As the British artillery sent shells into the peninsula, houses there caught fire and burst into flames. Then the redcoats, unloaded from their ships, launched their assault on the hill.

“Will He Fight?”

From a high place somewhere in the city—Beacon Hill, perhaps, or Copse Hill—General Thomas Gage looked down on Boston. Through a spyglass his gaze traveled over the church belfries and steeples, the roofs of brick and white frame houses. Finally he fixed his sights on a figure far in the distance across the Charles River. The man was perched atop a crude fortification on Breed's Hill, an elevation lying just below Bunker Hill on the Charlestown peninsula. Gage took the measure of his enemy: an older man, past middle age, a sword swinging beneath his homespun coat, a broad-brimmed hat shading his eyes. As he passed the spyglass to his ally, an American loyalist, Gage asked Abijah Willard if he knew the man on the fort. Willard peered across the Charles and identified his own brother-in-law, Colonel William Prescott. A veteran of the Seven Years' War, Prescott was now a leader in the rebel army laying siege to Boston.

“Will he fight?” Gage wondered aloud.

“I cannot answer for his men,” Willard replied, “but Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell.”

Fight they did on June 17, 1775, both William Prescott and his men. The evening before, three regiments had followed the colonel from Cambridge to Breed's Hill—soldiers drawn from the thousands of militia who had swarmed to surround British-occupied Boston after the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord. All through the night, they dug deep trenches and built up high earthen walls atop the hill. At the first light of day, a British warship spotted the new rebel outpost and opened fire. By noon barges were ferrying British troops under Major General William Howe across the half mile of river that separated Boston from Charlestown. The 1,600 raw rebel troops tensed at the sight of scarlet-coated soldiers streaming ashore, glittering bayonets grasped at the ready. The rebels were farmers and artisans, not professional soldiers, and they were frightened out of their wits.

But Prescott and his men held their ground. The British charged Breed's Hill twice, and Howe watched in horror as streams of fire felled his troops. Finally, during the third British frontal assault, the rebels ran out of ammunition and were forced to withdraw. Redcoats poured into the rebel fort, bayoneting its handful of remaining defenders. By nightfall the British had taken Breed's Hill and the rest of the Charlestown peninsula. They had bought a dark triumph at the cost of 228 dead and 800 wounded.

The cost came high in loyalties as well. The fighting on Breed's Hill fed the hatred of Britain that had been building since April. Throughout America, preparations for war intensified: militia in every colony mustered; communities stockpiled arms and ammunition. Around Charlestown civilians fled the countryside, abandoning homes and shops set afire by the British shelling of Breed's Hill. “The roads filled with frightened women and children, some in carts with their tattered furniture, others on foot fleeing into the woods,” recalled Hannah Winthrop, one of their number.

The bloody, indecisive fight on the Charlestown peninsula known as the Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place on Breed's Hill. And the exchange between Thomas Gage and Abijah Willard that is said to have preceded the battle may not have taken place at all. But the story has persisted in the folklore of the American Revolution. Whether it really happened or not, the conversation between Gage and Willard; raised the question that both sides wanted answered. Were Americans willing to fight for independence from British rule? It was one thing, after all, to oppose the British ministry's policy of taxation. It was another to support a rebellion for which the ultimate price of failure was hanging for treason. And it was another matter entirely for men to wait nervously atop a hill as the seasoned troops of their own “mother country” marched toward them with the intent to kill.

Indeed, the question “will they fight?” was revolutionary shorthand for a host of other questions concerning how ordinary Americans would react to the tug of loyalties between long-established colonial governments and a long-revered parent nation and monarch. For slaves, the question revolved around their allegiance to masters who spoke of liberty or to their masters' enemies who promised liberation. For those who led the rebels, it was a question of strengthening the resolve of the undecided, coordinating resistance, instilling discipline—translating the will to fight into the ability to do so. And for those who believed the rebellion was a madness whipped up by artful politicians, it was a question of whether to remain silent or risk speaking out, whether to take up arms for the king or flee. All these questions were raised, of necessity, by the act of revolution. But the barrel of a rifle shortened them to a single, pointed question: will you fight?

The Decision for Independence

The delegates to the Second Continental Congress gathered at Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, just one month after the battles at Lexington and Concord. They had to determine whether independence or reconciliation offered the best way to protect the liberties of their colonies. For a brash, ambitious lawyer from Braintree, Massachusetts, British abuses dictated only one course. “The Cancer [of official corruption] is too deeply rooted,” wrote John Adams, “and too far spread to be cured by anything short of cutting it out entire.” Yet during the spring and summer of 1775, even strong advocates of independence did not openly seek a separation from Britain. If the radicals' objective of independence was ever to be achieved, greater agreement among Americans had to be attained. Moderates and conservatives harbored deep misgivings about independence: they had to be brought along slowly.

The Second Continental Congress

To bring them along, Congress adopted the “Olive Branch Petition” in July 1775. Drawn up by Pennsylvania's John Dickinson, the document affirmed American loyalty to George III and asked the king to disavow the policies of his principal ministers. At the same time Congress issued a declaration denying that the colonies aimed at independence. Yet, less than a month earlier, Congress had authorized the creation of a rebel military force, the Continental Army, and had issued paper money to pay for the troops.

A Congress that sued for peace while preparing for war was a puzzle that British politicians—least of all, Lord George Germain—did not even try to understand. A tough-minded statesman now charged with overseeing colonial affairs, Germain was determined to subdue the rebellion by force. George III proved just as stubborn: he refused to receive the Olive Branch Petition. By the end of that year Parliament had shut down all trade with the colonies and had ordered the Royal Navy to seize colonial merchant ships on the high seas. In November 1775 Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to any slaves who would join the British.

During January of the next year, he ordered the shelling of Norfolk, Virginia, reducing that town to smoldering rubble. British belligerence withered the cause of reconciliation within Congress and the colonies. Support for independence gained more momentum from the overwhelming reception of Paine's Common Sense in January 1776. Radicals in Congress realized that the future was theirs and were ready to act. In April 1776 the delegates opened American trade to every nation in the world except Great Britain; a month later Congress advised the colonies to establish new state governments. And on June 7 Virginia's Richard Henry Lee offered the motion “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States … and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

The Declaration

Congress postponed a final vote on Lee's motion until July. Some opposition still lingered among delegates from the middle colonies, and a committee appointed to write a declaration of independence needed time to complete its work. That committee included some of the leading delegates in Congress: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Connecticut's Roger Sherman, and New York's Robert Livingston. But the man who did most of the drafting was a young planter and lawyer from western Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson was just 33 years old in the summer of 1776 when he withdrew to his lodgings on the outskirts of Philadelphia, pulled a portable writing desk onto his lap, and wrote the statement that would explain American independence to a “candid world.” In the document's brief opening section, Jefferson set forth a general justification of revolution that invoked the “self-evident truths” of human equality and “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These natural rights had been “endowed” to all persons “by their Creator,” the Declaration pointed out; thus there was no need to appeal to the narrower claim of the “rights of Englishmen.”

While the first part of the Declaration served notice that Americans no longer considered themselves English, its second and longer section denied England any authority in the colonies. In its detailed history of American grievances against the British Empire, the Declaration referred only once to Parliament. Instead, it blamed George III for a “long train of abuses and usurpations” designed to achieve “absolute despotism.” Unlike Common Sense, the Declaration denounced only the reigning king of England; it did not attack the institution of monarchy itself. But like Common Sense, the Declaration affirmed that government originated in the consent of the governed and upheld the right of the people to overthrow oppressive rule.

Later generations have debated what Jefferson meant by the “pursuit of happiness” and whether he had either women or black Americans in mind when he wrote the famous phrase “all men are created equal.” His own contemporaries in Congress did not pause to consider those questions and surely would have found themselves divided if they had. No matter. By firmly grounding the Declaration on the natural rights due all people, Jefferson placed equality at the center of the new nation's identity, setting the framework for a debate that would continue over the next two centuries. Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

The colonies thus followed the course set by common sense into the storms of independence. To those Britons who took a wide view of their empire, it made no sense whatsoever, and their perplexity is understandable. Since the end of the Seven Years' War, Britain had added to its overseas dominion a vast and diverse number of subjects formerly under French rule—Native Americans, French Catholic Canadians, peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. And then there was India, part Hindu, part Muslim, most of it ruled by the East India Company.

What better, more efficient way to regulate this sprawling empire than to bring all of its parts under the rule of a sovereign Parliament? What other way could the empire endure and prosper—and fend off future challenges from Catholic, monarchical France? Of course, it was impossible to grant colonials the same rights as Britons: it would require an empire firmly based on hierarchy to hold chaos at bay. Most colonial elites assented to the logic of that position—East India Company officials, Bengal nabobs, Canadian traders and landlords. Only the leading men in Britain's original 13 colonies would not go along.

American Loyalists

But the sentiment for independence was not universal. Americans who would not back the rebellion, supporters of the king and Parliament, numbered perhaps one-fifth of the population in 1775. While they proclaimed themselves loyalists, their rebel opponents dubbed them “Tories”—“a thing whose head is in England, whose body is in America, and whose neck ought to be stretched.” That division made the Revolution a conflict pitting Americans against one another as well as the British. In truth, the war for independence was the first American civil war.

Predictably, the king and Parliament commanded the strongest support in colonies that had been wracked by internal strife earlier in the eighteenth century. In New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas, not only did memories of old struggles sharpen worries of future upheaval, but old enemies often took different sides in the Revolution. The Carolina backcountry emerged as a stronghold of loyalist sentiment because of influential local men who cast their lot with Britain. To win support against Carolina's rebels, whose ranks included most wealthy coastal planters, western loyalist leaders played on ordinary settlers' resentments of privileged easterners. Grievances dating back to the 1760s also influenced the revolutionary allegiances of former land rioters of New York and New Jersey. If their old landlord opponents opted for the rebel cause, the tenants took up loyalism.

Other influences also fostered allegiance to Britain. Government officials who owed their jobs to the empire, major city merchants who depended on British trade, and Anglicans living outside the South retained strong ties to the parent country. Loyalists were also disproportionately represented among recent emigrants from the British Isles. The inhabitants of Georgia, the newest colony, inclined toward the king, as did the Highland Scots, many of whom had arrived in the colonies as soldiers during the Seven Years' War or had worked for a short time in the southern backcountry as tobacco merchants and Indian traders.

Although a substantial minority, loyalists never became numerous enough anywhere to pose a serious menace to the Revolution. A more formidable threat was posed by the British army. And the greatest threat of all was posed by those very Americans who claimed that they wanted independence. For the question remained: would they fight?

The Fighting in the North

In the summer of 1775 Americans who wished to remain neutral probably outnumbered either loyalists or rebels. From the standpoint of mere survival staying neutral made more sense than fighting for independence. Even the most ardent advocates of American rights had reason to harbor doubts, given the odds against the rebel colonists defeating the armed forces of the British empire.

General George Washington

Perhaps no friend of American liberty saw more clearly how slim the chances of a rebel victory were than George Washington. But Washington's principles, and his sense of honor, prevailed. June of 1775 found him, then 43 years old, attending the deliberations of the Second Continental Congress and dressed—a bit conspicuously—in his officer's uniform. The other delegates listened closely to his opinions on military matters, because Washington was the most celebrated American veteran of the Seven Years' War who remained young enough to lead a campaign. Better still, as a southerner he could bring his region into what thus far had remained mostly New England's fight. Congress readily appointed him commander-in-chief of a newly created Continental Army.

The Two Armies at Bay

Thus did Washington find himself, only a month later, looking to bring some order to the rebel forces massing around Boston. He knew he faced a formidable foe. Highly trained, ably led, and efficiently equipped, the king's troops were seasoned professionals. Rigorous drills and often severe discipline welded rank-and-file soldiers, men drawn mostly from the bottom of British society, into a savage fighting machine. At the height of the campaign in America, reinforcements brought the number of British troops to 50,000, strengthened by some 30,000 Hessian mercenaries from Germany and the support of half the ships in the British navy, the largest in the world.

Washington was more modest about the army under his command, and he had much to be modest about. At first Congress recruited his fighting force of 16,600 rebel “regulars,” the Continental Army, from the ranks of local New England militia bands. Although enlistments swelled briefly during the patriotic enthusiasm of 1775, for the rest of the war Washington's Continentals suffered chronic shortages of men and supplies. Even strong supporters of the Revolution hesitated to join the regular army, with its low pay and strict discipline and the constant threat of disease and danger. Most men preferred to fight instead as members of local militia units, the “irregular” troops who turned out to support the regular army whenever British forces came close to their neighborhoods.

The general reluctance to join the Continental Army created a host of difficulties for its commander and for Congress. Washington wanted and needed an army whose size and military capability could be counted on in long campaigns. He could not create an effective fighting force out of militias that mustered occasionally or men who enlisted for short stints in the Continental Army. In contrast, most republican leaders feared standing armies and idealized “citizen-soldiers”—men of civic virtue who volunteered whenever needed—as the backbone of the common defense. “Oh, that I was a soldier,” chubby John Adams fantasized in 1775. “Everyone must and will and shall be a soldier.”

But everyone did not become a soldier, and the dwindling number of volunteers gradually overcame republican fears of standing armies. In September 1776 Congress set terms in the Continental Army at a minimum of three years or for the duration of the war and assigned each state to raise a certain number of troops. They offered every man who enlisted in the army a cash bounty and a yearly clothing issue; enlistees for the duration were offered 100 acres of land as well. Still the problem of recruitment persisted. Less than a year later, Congress recommended that the states adopt a draft, but Congress had no authority to compel the states to meet their troop quotas.

Even in the summer of 1775, before enlistments fell off, Washington was worried. As his inexperienced Continentals laid siege to British-occupied Boston, most officers provided no real leadership, and the men under their command shirked their duties. They slipped away from camp at night; they left sentry duty before being relieved; they took potshots at the British; they tolerated filthy conditions in their camps.

By 1769 radical propaganda had produced a new ritual of American resistance, the patriotic spinning competition. Wives and daughters from some of the wealthiest and most prominent families, women who had earlier vied to outdo one another in acquiring the latest English finery, were the featured players in this new form of political theater. Its setting was usually the home of a local minister, where, early in the morning, “respectable” young ladies, all dressed in homespun, assembled with their spinning wheels. They spent the day spinning furiously, stopping only to sustain themselves with “American produce … which was more agreeable to them than any foreign Dainties and Delicacies” and to drink herbal tea. At the end of the day the minister accepted their homespun and delivered an edifying sermon to all present. That was a large group, often including from 20 to 100 “respectable” female spinners as well as hundreds of other townsfolk who had come to watch the competition or to provide food and entertainment.

Women reveled in the new attention and value that the male resistance movement and the radical press now attached to a common and humdrum domestic task. By the beginning of 1769 New England newspapers were highlighting spinning bees and their female participants, sometimes termed the “Daughters of Liberty.” Wives and daughters from families of every rank were made to feel that they could play an important role in the resistance by imitating the elite women showcased in public spinning spectacles.

Spinning bees and “dressing down” in homespun thus contributed to the solidarity of the resistance by narrowing the visible distance between rich and poor Americans. In accounts of spinning competitions, the radical press emphasized that even the daughters of the elite sacrificed for the cause of resistance by embracing domestic economy and simplicity.

American women took pride in the new political importance that radical propaganda attributed to domestic pursuits. Writing to her English cousin, Charity Clarke of New York City cast herself as one of America's “fighting army of amazons … armed with spinning wheels.”

Even in the summer of 1775, before enlistments fell off, Washington was worried. As his inexperienced Continentals laid siege to British-occupied Boston, most officers provided no real leadership, and the men under their command shirked their duties. They slipped away from camp at night; they left sentry duty before being relieved; they took potshots at the British; they tolerated filthy conditions in their camps.

While Washington strove to impose discipline on his Continentals, he also attempted, without success, to rid himself of “the Women of the Army.” When American men went off to fight their wives usually stayed at home. To women then fell the sole responsibility for running farms and businesses, raising children, and keeping households together; they helped to supply the troops by sewing clothing, making blankets, and saving rags and lead weights for bandages and bullets. Other women on the home front organized relief for the widows and orphans of soldiers and protests against merchants who hoarded scarce commodities.

But the wives of poor men who joined the army were often left with no means to support their families. Thousands of such women—1 for every 15 soldiers—drifted after the troops.

In return for half-rations, they cooked and washed for the soldiers; and after battles, they nursed the wounded, buried the dead, and scavenged the field for clothing and equipment. An even larger number of women accompanied the redcoats: their presence was the only thing that Washington did not admire about the British army and could barely tolerate in his own. But the services that they performed were indispensable, and women followed the troops throughout the war.

Laying Strategies

At the same time that he tried to discipline the Continentals, Washington designed a defensive strategy to compensate for their weakness. To avoid exposing raw rebel troops on “open ground against their Superiors in number and Discipline,” he planned to fight the British from strong fortifications. With that aim in mind, in March 1776, Washington barricaded his army on Dorchester Heights, an elevation commanding Boston harbor from the south. That maneuver, which allowed American artillery to fire on enemy warships, confirmed a decision already made by the British to evacuate their entire army from Boston and sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Britain had hoped to reclaim its colonies with a strategy of strangling the resistance in Massachusetts. But by the spring of 1776 it saw clearly that more was required than a show of force against New England. Instead Britain's leaders chose to wage a conventional war in America, capturing major cities and crushing the Continental forces in a decisive battle. Military victory, the British believed, would enable them to restore political control and reestablish imperial authority.

The first target was New York City. General William Howe and Lord George Germain, the British officials now charged with overseeing the war, chose that seaport for its central location and—they hoped—its large loyalist population. Howe's army intended to move from New York City up the Hudson River, meeting with British troops under General Sir Guy Carleton coming south from Canada. Either the British drive would lure Washington into a major engagement, crushing the Continentals, or, if unopposed, the British offensive would cut America in two, smothering resistance to the south by isolating New England.

The strategy was sounder than the men placed in charge of executing it. Concern for preserving troops addicted General Howe to caution, when daring more would have carried the day. Howe's brother, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, the head of naval operations in America, also stopped short of pressing the British advantage, owing to his personal desire for reconciliation.

The reluctance of the Howe brothers to fight became the formula for British frustration in the two years that followed.

The Campaigns in New York and New Jersey

By mid-August, 32,000 British troops, including 8,000 Hessians, the largest expeditionary force of the eighteenth century, faced Washington's army of 23,000, which had marched down from Boston to take up positions on Long Island. At dawn on August 22 the Howe brothers launched their offense, easily pushing the rebel army back across the East River to Manhattan. After lingering on Long Island for a month, the Howe’s again lurched into action, ferrying their forces to Kip's Bay, just a few miles south of Harlem. When the British landed, the handful of rebel defenders at Kip's Bay fled—straight into the towering wrath of Washington, who happened on the scene during the rout. For once the general lost his habitual self-restraint, flogged both officers and men with his riding crop, and came close to being captured himself. But the Howe’s remained reluctant to hit hard, letting Washington's army escape from Manhattan to Westchester County.

Throughout the fall of 1776 General Howe's forces followed as Washington's fled southward across New Jersey. On December 7, with the British nipping at their heels, the rebels crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. There Howe stopped, pulling back most of his army to winter in New York City and leaving the Hessians to hold the British line of advance along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.

Although the retreat had shriveled rebel strength to only 3,000 men, Washington decided that the campaign of 1776 was not over. On a snowy Christmas night, the Continentals floated back across the Delaware, picked their way over roads iced with sleet and finally slid into Hessian-held Trenton at eight in the morning. One thousand German soldiers, still recovering from their spirited Christmas celebration and caught completely by surprise, quickly surrendered. Washington's luck held when, on January 3, 1777, the Continentals defeated British troops on the outskirts of Princeton, New Jersey.

During the winter of 1776–1777 the British lost more than battles: they alienated the very civilians whose loyalties they had hoped to maintain. In New York City the presence of the main body of the British army brought shortages of food and housing and caused constant friction between soldiers and city dwellers. In the New Jersey countryside still held by the Hessians, the situation was more desperate. Forced to live off the land, the Germans aroused resentment among local farmers by seizing “hay, oats, Indian corn, cattle, and horses, which were never or but very seldom paid for,” as one loyalist admitted. The Hessians ransacked and destroyed homes and churches; they kidnapped and raped young women.

At the Battle of Princeton, British troops bayoneted the rebel general Hugh Mercer, an assault later memorialized in this painting by George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted step-grandson of George Washington. This rendering focuses attention not only to Mercer's courage but also to the savagery of the redcoats, both of which helped the rebels gain civilian support.

Many repulsed neutrals and loyalists now took their allegiance elsewhere. Bands of militia on Long Island, along the Hudson River, and all over New Jersey rallied to support the Continentals.

Capturing Philadelphia

In the summer of 1777 General Howe still hoped to entice the Continentals into a decisive engagement. But he had now decided to goad the Americans into battle by capturing Philadelphia. Rather than risk a march through hostile New Jersey, he sailed his army to Maryland and began a march to Philadelphia, 50 miles away. Washington had hoped to stay on the strategic defensive, holding his smaller army together and harassing the enemy but avoiding full-scale battles. Howe's march on the new nation's capital made that impossible. Washington engaged Howe twice: in September at Brandywine Creek and in October in an early dawn attack at Germantown, but both times the rebels were beaten back. He had been unable to prevent the British occupation of Philadelphia.

But in Philadelphia, as in New York, British occupation created hostile feelings, as the flood of troops drove up the price of food, fuel, and housing. While inflation hit hardest at the poor, the wealthy resented British officers who became their uninvited house guests. Philadelphians complained of redcoats looting their shops, trampling their gardens, and harassing them on the streets. Elizabeth Drinker, the wife of a Quaker merchant, confided in her diary that “I often feel afraid to go to bed.”

Even worse, the British march through Maryland and Pennsylvania had outraged civilians, who fled before the army and then returned to find their homes and barns bare, their crops and livestock gone. Everywhere Howe's men went in the mid-Atlantic, they left in their wake Americans with compelling reasons to support the rebels. Worst of all, just days after Howe marched his occupying army into Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, another British commander in North America was surrendering his entire army to rebel forces at Saratoga, New York.

Disaster for the British at Saratoga

The calamity that befell the British at Saratoga was the doing of a glorymongering general, John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne. After his superior officer, Sir Guy Carleton, bungled a drive into New York in 1776, Burgoyne won approval to command another attack from Canada. The following summer he set out from Québec with a force of 9,500 redcoats, 2,000 women and children, and a baggage train that included the commander's silver dining service, his dress uniforms, and numerous cases of his favorite champagne. As Burgoyne's entourage lumbered southward, it was slowed by a winding road that was broken by boulders, felled trees, and ramshackle bridges. Meanwhile, a handful of Continentals and a horde of New England militia assembled several miles below Saratoga at Bemis Heights under the command of General Horatio Gates.

On September 19 Gates's rebel scouts, nested high in the trees, spied the glittering bayonets of Burgoyne's approaching force. Benedict Arnold, a brave young officer, led several thousand rebels into battle at a clearing at Freeman's Farm. At the end of the day British reinforcements finally pushed the rebels back from a battlefield piled high with the bodies of soldiers from both sides. Burgoyne tried to flee to Canada but got no farther than Saratoga, where he surrendered his army to Gates on October 17.

Saratoga changed everything. Burgoyne had not just been nipped in a skirmish; he had lost his entire army. The triumph was enough to convince Britain's old rival France that, with a little help, the Americans might well reap the fruits of victory.

The Turning Point

France had been waiting for revenge against Britain since its humiliating defeat in the Seven Years' War. And for some years a scheme for evening the score had been taking shape in the mind of the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier de Vergennes. He reckoned that France might turn discontented colonials into willing allies against Britain.

The American Revolution Becomes a Global War

Vergennes approached the Americans cautiously. He wanted to make certain that the rift between Britain and its colonies would not be reconciled and that the rebels in America stood a fighting chance. Although France had been secretly supplying the Continental Army with guns and ammunition since the spring of 1776, Vergennes would go no further than covert assistance.

Congress approached its former French enemies with equal caution. Would France, the leading Catholic monarchy in Europe, make common cause with the republican rebels? A few years earlier American colonials had fought against the French in Canada. Only recently they had renounced a king. For centuries they had overwhelmingly adhered to Protestantism.

The string of defeats dealt the Continental Army during 1776 convinced Congress that they needed the French. In November Congress appointed a three-member commission to negotiate not only aid from France but also a formal alliance.

Its senior member was Benjamin Franklin, who enchanted all of Paris when he arrived sporting a simple fur cap and a pair of spectacles (something no fashionable Frenchman wore in public). Hailed as a homespun sage, Franklin played the role of American innocent to the hilt and watched as admiring Parisians stamped his face on everything from the top of snuffboxes to the bottom of porcelain chamber pots.

Still, Franklin understood that mere popularity could not produce the alliance sought by Congress. It was only news that Britain had surrendered an entire army at Saratoga that convinced Vergennes that the rebels could actually win. In February 1778 France signed a treaty of commerce and friendship and a treaty of alliance, which Congress approved in May. Under the terms of the treaties, both parties agreed to accept nothing short of independence for America. The alliance left the British no choice other than to declare war on France. Less than a year later Spain joined France, hoping to recover territory lost to England in earlier wars.

Winding Down the War in the North

The Revolution widened into a global war after 1778. Preparing to fight France and Spain dictated a new British strategy in America. No longer could the British concentrate on crushing the Continental Army. Instead they would disperse their forces to fend off challenges all over the world. In May Sir Henry Clinton replaced William Howe as commander-in-chief and received orders to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York City.

Only 18 miles outside Philadelphia, at Valley Forge, Washington and his Continentals were assessing their own situation. Some 11,000 rebel soldiers had passed a harrowing winter in that isolated spot, starving for want of food, freezing for lack of clothing, huddling in miserable huts, and hating the British who lay so close and yet so comfortably in Philadelphia. The army also cursed their fellow citizens; its misery resulted from congressional disorganization and from civilian indifference. Congress lacked both money to pay and maintain the army and an efficient system for dispensing provisions to the troops. Most farmers and merchants preferred to supply the British, who could pay handsomely, than to do business with a financially strapped Congress. What little did reach the army often was food too rancid to eat or clothing too rotten to wear. Perhaps 2,500 perished at Valley Forge, the victims of cold, hunger, and disease.

Why did civilians who supported the rebel cause allow the army to suffer? Probably because by the winter of 1777 the Continentals came mainly from social classes that received little consideration at any time. The respectable, propertied farmers and artisans who had laid siege to Boston in 1775 had stopped enlisting. Serving in their stead were single men in their teens and early 20s, some who joined the army out of desperation, others who were drafted, still others who were hired as substitutes for the more affluent. The landless sons of farmers, unemployed laborers, drifters, petty criminals, vagrants, indentured servants, slaves, even captured British and Hessian soldiers—all men with no other means and no other choice—were swept into the Continental Army. The social composition of the rebel rank and file had come to resemble that of the British army. It is the great irony of the Revolution: a war to protect liberty and property was waged by those Americans who were poorest and least free.

The beginning of spring in 1778 brought a reprieve. Supplies arrived at Valley Forge, and so did a fellow calling himself Baron von Steuben, a penniless Prussian soldier of fortune. Although Washington's men had shown spirit and resilience ever since Trenton, they still lacked discipline and training. Those defects and more von Steuben began to remedy. Barking orders and spewing curses in German and French, the baron (and his translators) drilled the rebel regiments to march in formation and to handle their bayonets like proper Prussian soldiers. By the summer of 1778 morale had rebounded.

Spoiling for action after their long winter, Washington's army, now numbering nearly 13,500, harassed Clinton's army as it marched overland from Philadelphia to New York. On June 28 at Monmouth Courthouse a long, confused battle ended in a draw. After both armies retired for the night, Clinton's forces slipped away to safety in New York City. Washington pursued, but he lacked the numbers to launch an all-out assault on New York City.

During the two hard winters that followed, resentments mounted among the rank and file over spoiled food, inadequate clothing, and arrears in pay. The army retaliated with mutinies. Between 1779 and 1780 officers managed to quell uprisings in three New England regiments. But in January 1781 both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines in an outright mutiny marched on Philadelphia, where Congress had reconvened. Order returned only after Congress promised back pay and provisions and Washington put two ringleaders in front of a firing squad.

War in the West

The battles between Washington's Continentals and the British made the war in the West seem, by comparison, a sideshow of attacks and counterattacks that settled little. American fighters such as George Rogers Clark, with great daring, captured outposts such as Kaskaskia and Vincennes, without materially affecting the outcome of the war. Yet the conflict sparked a tremendous upheaval in the West, both from the dislocations of war and from the disease that spread in war's wake.

The disruptions were so widespread because the “War for Independence” had also become a war involving the imperial powers of Britain, France, and Spain. The same jockeying for advantage went on in the West as had occurred in previous imperial wars. The United States as well as the European powers pressed Indian tribes to become allies and attacked them when they did not. Caught in the crossfire, some Indian nations were pushed to the brink of their own civil war, splitting into pro-American or British factions. None suffered more than the mighty Iroquois. When days of impassioned speeches failed to secure a unified Iroquois policy regarding the Revolution, the six confederated tribes went their own ways. Most Tuscaroras and Oneidas remained neutral or joined the Americans, whereas Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cayuga warriors aided the British by attacking frontier settlements.

This pro-British faction rallied around the remarkable Mohawk leader Joseph Brant. Bilingual, literate, and formidable in war, Brant helped lead devastating raids across the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania. In response Washington dispatched troops into Iroquois country, where they put the torch to 40 towns and destroyed fields and orchards everywhere they went. Many Iroquois perished the following winter—whichever side they had supported in the war—and the confederacy emerged from the revolution with but a shadow of its former power.

Other native peoples switched allegiances more than once. Near St. Louis, a young Kaskaskia chief, Jean Baptiste de Coigne, allied first with the French, then joined the British and briefly threw in his lot with the Spanish, before finally joining the Virginians. Indians understood well that the pressures of war always threatened to deprive them of their homelands. “You are drawing so close to us that we can almost hear the noise of your axes felling our Trees,” one Shawnee told the Americans. Another group of Indians concluded in 1784 that the Revolutionary War had been “the greatest blow that could have been dealt us, unless it had been our total destruction.” Thousands fled the raids and counter-raids, while whole villages relocated. Hundreds made their way even beyond the Mississippi, to seek shelter in territory claimed by Spain. The aftershocks and dislocations continued for the next two decades; an entire generation of Native Americans grew up with war as a constant companion.

Smallpox Pandemic

The political instability was vastly compounded by a smallpox epidemic that broke out first among American troops besieging Québec in 1775. The disease soon spread to Washington's troops in New England, and he was obliged to inoculate them—secretly, for the vaccination left many soldiers temporarily weakened. From New England, the pox spread south along the coast, eventually reached New Orleans and next leapt to Mexico City by the autumn of 1779. From New Orleans it spread via fur traders up the Mississippi River and across the central plains, and from New Spain northward as well. By the time the pandemic burned out in 1782, it had felled over 130,000. By contrast, the Revolutionary War caused the deaths of some 8,000 soldiers while fighting in battle and another 13,000 from disease, including the mortality from smallpox.

The Home Front in the North

Although in 1779 most northern civilians on the seaboard enjoyed a respite from the war, the devastation lingered. Refugees on foot and in hastily packed carts filled the roads, fleeing the advancing armies. Those who remained to protect their homes and property might be caught in the crossfire of contending forces or cut off from supplies of food and firewood. Loyalists who remained in areas occupied by rebel troops faced harassment, imprisonment, or the confiscation of their property. Rebel sympathizers met similar fates in regions held by the British.

The demands of war also disrupted family economies throughout the northern countryside. The seasons of intense fighting drew men off into military service just when their labor was most needed on family farms. Wives and daughters were left to assume the work of husbands and sons while coping with loneliness, anxiety, and grief. Two years after she fled before Burgoyne's advance into upstate New York, Ann Eliza Bleecker confessed to a friend, “Alas! The wilderness is within: I muse so long on the dead until I am unfit for the company of the living.”

Despite these hardships, many women vigorously supported the revolutionary cause in a variety of ways. The Daughters of Liberty joined in harassing opponents to the rebel cause. One outspoken loyalist found himself surrounded by angry women who stripped off his shirt, covered him with molasses, and plastered him with flower petals. In more genteel fashion, groups of well-to-do women collected not only money but medicines, food, and pewter to melt for bullets.

The Struggle in the South

Despite their armed presence in the North, the British had come to believe by the autumn of 1778 that their most vital aim was to regain their colonies in the mainland South. The Chesapeake and the Carolinas were more profitable to the empire and more strategically important, being so much closer to rich British sugar islands in the West Indies. Inspired by this new “southern strategy,” Clinton dispatched forces to the Caribbean and Florida. In addition, the British laid plans for a new offensive drive into the Carolinas and Virginia.

Britain's Southern Strategy

English politicians and generals believed that the war could be won in the South. Loyalists were numerous, they believed, especially in the backcountry, where resentment of the Patriot seaboard would encourage frontier folk to take up arms for the king at the first show of British force. And southern rebels—espeially the vulnerable planters along the coast—could not afford to turn their guns away from their slaves. So, at least, the British theorized. All that was needed, they concluded, was that the British army establish a beachhead in the South and then, in league with loyalists, drive northward, up the coast.

The Siege of Charleston

The southern strategy worked well for a short time in a small place. In November 1778 Clinton sent 3,500 troops to Savannah, Georgia. The resistance in the tiny colony quickly collapsed, and a large number of loyalists turned out to help the British. Encouraged, the army moved on to South Carolina.

During the last days of 1779 an expedition under Clinton himself set sail from New York City. Landing off the Georgia coast, his troops mucked through malarial swamps to the peninsula lying between the Ashley and Cooper rivers. At the tip of that neck of land stood Charleston, and the British began to lay siege. By then, an unseasonably warm spring had set in, making the area a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for human beings. Sweltering and swatting, redcoats weighted down in their woolen uniforms inched their siege works toward the city. By early May Clinton's army had closed in, and British shelling was setting fire to houses within the city. On May 12 Charleston surrendered.

Clinton sailed back to New York at the end of June 1780, leaving behind 8,300 redcoats to carry the British offensive northward to Virginia. The man charged with leading that campaign was his ambitious and able subordinate, Charles, Lord Cornwallis.

The Partisan Struggle in the South

Cornwallis's task in the Carolinas was complicated by the bitter animosity between rebels and loyalists there. Many Carolinians had taken sides years before Clinton's conquest of Charleston. In the summer and fall of 1775 the supporters of Congress and the new South Carolina revolutionary government mobbed, tortured, and imprisoned supporters of the king in the backcountry. These attacks only hardened loyalist resolve: roving bands seized ammunition, broke their leaders out of jail, and besieged rebel outposts. But within a matter of months, a combined force of rebel militias from the coast and the frontier managed to defeat loyalist forces in the backcountry.

With the fall of Charleston in 1780, the loyalist movement on the frontier returned to life. Out of loyalist vengefulness and rebel desperation issued the brutal civil war that seared the southern backcountry after 1780. Neighbors and even families fought and killed each other as members of roaming rebel and tory militias.

The intensity of partisan warfare in the backcountry produced unprecedented destruction. Loyalist militia plundered plantations and assaulted local women; rebel militias whipped suspected British supporters and burned their farms; both sides committed brutal assassinations and tortured prisoners. All of society observed one minister “seems to be at an end. Every person keeps close on his own plantation. Robberies and murders are often committed on the public roads…. Poverty, want, and hardship appear in almost every countenance.”

Cornwallis, when confronted with the chaos, erred fatally. He did nothing to stop his loyalist allies or his own troops from mistreating civilians. A Carolina loyalist admitted that “the lower sort of People, who were in many parts originally attached to the British Government, have suffered so severely … that Great Britain has now a hundred enemies, where it had one before.” Although rebels and loyalists alike plundered and terrorized the backcountry, Cornwallis's forces bore more of the blame and suffered the consequences.

A growing number of civilians outraged by the behavior of the king's troops cast their lot with the rebels. That upsurge of popular support enabled Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” and his band of white and black raiders to cut British lines of communication between Charleston and the interior. It swelled another rebel militia led by “the Gamecock,” Thomas Sumter, who bloodied loyalist forces throughout the central part of South Carolina.

It mobilized the “over-the-mountain men,” a rebel militia in western Carolina who claimed victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain in October 1780. By the end of 1780 these successes had persuaded most civilians that only the rebels could restore order.

If rebel fortunes prospered in the partisan struggle, they faltered in the conventional warfare being waged at the same time in the South. In August of 1780 the Continentals commanded by Horatio Gates lost a major engagement to the British force at Camden, South Carolina. In the fall of 1780 Congress replaced Gates with Washington's candidate for the southern command, Nathanael Greene, an energetic 38-year-old Rhode Islander and a veteran of the northern campaigns.

Greene Takes Command

Greene bore out Washington's confidence by grasping the military situation in the South. He understood the needs of his 1,400 hungry, ragged, and demoralized troops and instructed von Steuben to lobby Virginia for food and clothing. He understood the importance of the rebel militias and sent Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee to assist Marion's raids. He understood the weariness of southern civilians and prevented his men from plundering the countryside.

Above all, Greene understood that his forces could never hold the field against the whole British army, a decision that led him to break the first rule of conventional warfare: he divided his army. In December 1780 he dispatched to western South Carolina a detachment of 600 men under the command of Brigadier General Daniel Morgan of Virginia.

Back at the British camp, Cornwallis worried that Morgan and his rebels, if left unchecked, might rally the entire backcountry against the British. However, Cornwallis reckoned that he could not commit his entire army to the pursuit of Morgan's men, because then Greene and his troops might retake Charleston. The only solution, unconventional to be sure, was that Cornwallis divide his army. That he did, sending Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and 1,100 men west after Morgan. Cornwallis had played right into Greene's hands: the rebel troops might be able to defeat a British army split into two pieces. For two weeks Morgan led Tarleton's troops on a breakneck chase across the Carolina countryside. In January 1781 at an open meadow called Cowpens, Morgan routed Tarleton's force.

Now Cornwallis took up the chase. Morgan and Greene joined forces and kept going north until the British army wore out. Cornwallis finally stopped at Hillsboro, North Carolina, but few local loyalists responded to his call for reinforcements. Greene decided to make a show of force near the tiny village of Guilford Courthouse. On a brisk March day the two sides joined battle, each sustaining severe casualties before Greene was forced to retreat. But the high cost of victory convinced Cornwallis that he could not put down the rebellion in the Carolinas. “I am quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures,” he informed Clinton.

Although Nathanael Greene's command provided the Continentals with effective leadership in the South, it was the resilience of rebel militia that thwarted the British offensive in the Carolinas. Many Continental Army officers complained about the militia's lack of discipline, its habit of melting away when homesickness set in or harvest approached, and its cowardice under fire in conventional engagements. But when set the task of ambushing supply trains, harrying bands of local loyalists, or raiding isolated British outposts, the militia came through.

Many southern civilians refused to join the British or to provide the redcoats with food and information, because they knew that once the British army left their neighborhoods, the rebel militia would be back. The Continental Army in the South lost many conventional battles, but the militia kept the British from restoring political control over the backcountry.

African Americans in the Age of Revolution

The British also lost in the Carolinas because they did not seek greater support from those southerners who would have fought for liberty with the British—African American slaves.

Black Americans, virtually all in bondage, made up one-third of the population between Delaware and Georgia. Since the beginning of the resistance to Britain, white southerners had worried that the watchwords of liberty and equality would spread to the slave quarters. Gripped by the fear of slave rebellion, southern revolutionaries began to take precautions. Marylanders disarmed black inhabitants and issued extra guns to the white militia. Charlestonians hanged and then burned the body of Thomas Jeremiah, a free black who was convicted of spreading the word to others that the British “were come to help the poor Negroes.”

Southern whites fully expected the British to turn slave rebelliousness to their strategic advantage. As early as 1775 Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, confirmed white fears by offering to free any slave who joined the British. When Clinton invaded the South in 1779 he renewed that offer. One North Carolina planter heard that loyalists were “promising every Negro that would murder his master and family he should have his Master's plantation” and that “the Negroes have got it amongst them and believe it to be true.”

But in Britain there was overwhelming opposition to organizing support among African Americans. British leaders dismissed Dunmore's ambitious scheme to raise a black army of 10,000 and another plan to create a sanctuary for black loyalists on the southeastern coast. Turning slaves against masters, they recognized, was not the way to conciliate southern whites.

Even so, southern fears of insurrection made the rebels reluctant to enlist black Americans as soldiers. At first, Congress barred African Americans from the Continental Army. But as the rebels became more desperate for manpower, policy changed.

Northern states actively encouraged black enlistments, and in the Upper South, some states allowed free men of color to join the army or permitted slaves to substitute for their masters.

Slaves themselves sought freedom from whichever side seemed most likely to grant it. Perhaps 10,000 slaves took up Dunmore's offer in 1775 and deserted their masters, and thousands more flocked to Clinton's forces after the fall of Charleston. For many runaways the hope of liberation proved an illusion. Although some served the British army as laborers, spies, and soldiers, many died of disease in army camps (upward of 27,000 by one estimate) or were sold back into slavery in the West Indies. About 5,000 black soldiers served in the revolutionary army in the hope of gaining freedom. In addition, the number of runaways to the North soared during the Revolution. In total, perhaps 100,000 men and women—nearly a fifth of the total slave population—attempted to escape bondage. Their odysseys to freedom took some to far-flung destinations: loyalist communities in Nova Scotia, a settlement established by the British in Sierra Leone on the West African coast, even the Botany Bay penal colony in Australia.

The World Turned Upside Down

Despite his losses in the Carolinas, Cornwallis still believed that he could score a decisive victory against the Continental Army. The theater he chose for that showdown was the Chesapeake. During the spring of 1781 he had marched his army to the Virginia coast and joined forces with the hero of Saratoga and newly turned loyalist, Benedict Arnold. Embarrassed by debt and disgusted by Congress's shabby treatment of the Continental Army, Arnold had started exchanging rebel secrets for British money in 1779 before defecting outright in the fall of 1780. By June of 1781 Arnold and Cornwallis were fortifying a site on the tip of the peninsula formed by the York and James rivers, a place called Yorktown.

Meanwhile, Washington and his French ally, the Comte de Rochambeau, met in Connecticut to plan a major attack. Rochambeau urged a coordinated land-sea assault on the Virginia coast. Washington insisted instead on a full-scale offensive against New York City. Just when the rebel commander was about to have his way, word arrived that a French fleet under the comte de Grasse was sailing for the Chesapeake to blockade Cornwallis by sea. Washington's Continentals headed south.

Surrender at Yorktown

By the end of September, 7,800 Frenchmen, 5,700 Continentals, and 3,200 militia had sandwiched Yorktown between the devil of an allied army and the deep blue sea of French warships. “If you cannot relieve me very soon,” Cornwallis wrote to Clinton, “you must expect to hear the worst.” The British navy did arrive—but seven days after Cornwallis surrendered to the rebels on October 19, 1781. When Germain carried the news from Yorktown to the king's first minister, Lord North replied, “Oh, God, it is over.” Then North resigned, Germain resigned, and even George III murmured something about abdicating.

It need not have ended at Yorktown, but timing made all the difference. At the end of 1781 and early in 1782, the British army received setbacks in the other theaters of the war: India, the West Indies, and Florida. The French and the Spanish were everywhere in Europe as well, gathering in the English Channel, planning a major offensive against Gibraltar. The cost of the fighting was already enormous. British leaders recognized that the rest of the empire was at stake and set about cutting their losses in America.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, was a diplomatic triumph for the American negotiators: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. They dangled before Britain the possibility that a generous settlement might weaken American ties to France.

The British jumped at the bait. They recognized the independence of the United States and agreed to ample boundaries for the new nation: the Mississippi River on the west, the 31st parallel on the south, and the present border of Canada on the north. American negotiators then persuaded a skeptical France to approve the treaty by arguing that, as allies, they were bound to present a united front to the British. Spain, the third member of the alliance, settled for retaining Florida and Minorca, an island in the Mediterranean.

On September 30, 1780, a wagon bearing this two-faced effigy was drawn through the streets of Philadelphia. The effigy represents Benedict Arnold, who sits between a gallows and the devil. Note the similarities between this piece of street theater and the demonstrations mounted on Pope's Day several decades earlier, shown on page 149.

If the Treaty of Paris marked both the end of a war and the recognition of a new nation; the surrender at Yorktown captured the significance of a revolution. Those present at Yorktown on that clear autumn afternoon in 1781 watched as the British second in command to Cornwallis (who had sent word that he was “indisposed”) surrendered his superior's sword.

He offered the sword first, in a face-saving gesture, to the French commander, Rochambeau, who politely refused and pointed to Washington. But the American commander-in-chief, out of a mixture of military protocol, nationalistic pride, and perhaps even wit, pointed to his second in command, Benjamin Lincoln.

Some witnesses recalled that British musicians arrayed on the Yorktown green played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Their recollections may have been faulty, but the story has persisted as part of the folklore of the American Revolution—and for good reasons. The world had, it seemed, turned upside down with the coming of American independence.

The colonial rebels shocked the British with their answer to the question: would they fight? The answer had been yes—but on their own terms; by 1777 most propertied Americans avoided fighting in the Continental Army. Yet whenever the war reached their homes, farms, and businesses, many Americans gave their allegiance to the new nation by turning out with rifles or supplying homespun clothing, food, or ammunition. They rallied around Washington in New Jersey, Gates in upstate New York, Greene in the Carolinas. Middle-class American men fought, some from idealism, others out of self-interest, but always on their own terms, as members of the militia. These citizen-soldiers turned the world upside down by defeating professional armies.

Of course, the militia did not bear the brunt of the fighting. That responsibility fell to the Continental Army, which by 1777 drew its strength from the poorest ranks of American society. Yet even the Continentals, for all their desperation, managed to fight on their own terms. Some asserted their rights by raising mutinies, until Congress redressed their grievances. All of them, as the Baron von Steuben observed, behaved differently than European soldiers did. Americans followed orders only if the logic of commands was explained to them. The Continentals, held in contempt by most Americans, turned the world upside down by sensing their power and asserting their measure of personal independence.

Americans of African descent dared as much and more in their quests for liberty. Whether they chose to escape slavery by fighting for the British or the Continentals or by striking out on their own as runaways, their defiance, too, turned the world upside down. Among the tens of thousands of slaves who would not be mastered was one Henry Washington, a native of Africa who became the slave of George Washington in 1763. But Henry Washington made his own declaration of independence in 1776, slipping behind British lines and serving as a corporal in a black unit. Thereafter, like thousands of former slaves, he sought to build a new life elsewhere in the Atlantic world, settling first in Nova Scotia and finally in Sierra Leone.

By 1800 he headed a community of former slaves who were exiled to the outskirts of that colony for their determined efforts to win republican self-government from Sierra Leone's white British rulers. Like Thomas Paine, Henry Washington believed that freedom was his only country.

In all those ways, a revolutionary generation turned the world upside down. They were a diverse lot—descended from Indians, Europeans, and Africans, driven by desperation or idealism or greed—but joined, even if they did not recognize it, by their common struggle to break free from the rule of monarchs or masters. What now awaited them in the world of the new United States?

Chapter Summary

Even after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the strong response to Common Sense, it remained unclear whether most Americans favored independence. And would those Americans who did want independence be willing to fight for it?

The Decision for Independence

When the Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia in the spring of 1775, many moderate and conservative delegates clung to the hope of a settlement with Britain. Radicals who favored independence moved cautiously, hoping that time would create consensus. Even as Congress approved the creation of the Continental Army, it dispatched the "Olive Branch Petition" that declared continued loyalty to George III. The harsh British response to that overture withered the cause of compromise within the colonies, opening the way for Congress's adoption of the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. In the first part of the Declaration, Jefferson set forth a general justification of revolution. He invoked the "self-evident truths" of human equality and "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The second and longer section denied England any authority in the colonies and blamed George III for a "long train of abuses and usurpations." Despite an increasing base of support, rebel leaders still recognized that a substantial minority of colonials remained loyal to the king and Parliament. Loyalty to Britain remained especially strong in those places where violent controversies over sectional grievances or land tenure had raged during the decades before 1776. The loyalists' feared that the break from Britain would plunge America into anarchy or civil war.

The Fighting in the North

British troops under General William Howe prepared to wage a conventional war in America through a strategy focused on capturing cities and luring the main American force into a decisive battle. As George Washington took command of the Continental Army outside of Boston, he faced daunting odds. The British army was a seasoned professional fighting force, while the Continentals lacked both numbers and military discipline. In 1776 the British evacuated Boston, took New York City, and drove the Continentals into a retreat through New York and New Jersey. But as winter set in, Washington recovered some of his army's credibility at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Many civilians in that region, alienated by the British army's harsh treatment, switched their loyalties to the rebel cause. In the summer campaign of 1777, Howe's army took Philadelphia, but British forces under John Burgoyne suffered a disastrous defeat at Saratoga, New York.

The Turning Point

France had waited for an opportunity to gain revenge against Britain since its defeat in the Seven Years' War. Thus from the beginning of the American Revolution, the French were anxious to turn discontented colonials into willing allies against Great Britain. The victory at Saratoga marked a turning point in the fighting. In 1778, France openly allied with American rebels, and shortly thereafter, Spain joined France. What had begun as a colonial rebellion had now widened into a European war, forcing the British to disperse their army to fend off challenges all over the world. Sir Henry Clinton, who replaced Howe as commander-in-chief, pulled back from Philadelphia to New York City. En route, he fought to a draw with Washington at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in June 1778. The Continentals had suffered grievously through the previous winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but the struggle left them spoiling for a fight and the training and discipline instilled by Baron von Steuben during that winter showed at Monmouth Courthouse. But thereafter, with Clinton's army holed up in New York City, Washington's inactive Continentals erupted into mutinies. Since the end of 1776, the Continental rank-and-file had come from the most propertyless and desperate Americans.

Congress, suspicious of standing armies had neglected their needs for food, clothing, and shelter, a mistake further exploited by profiteering military contractors who delivered substandard goods to the troops.

The Struggle in the South

While the war in the North stalemated, the British pursued a southern strategy. They easily captured Savannah, Georgia, and, after a long siege, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. But the rebel militia dashed British hopes that southern resistance would quickly collapse. Although loyalists remained numerous in the Georgia and Carolina backcountry, they met determined resistance from rebel irregulars led by men such as Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. As a vicious, partisan war seared the backcountry, the Continentals, after a humiliating defeat at Camden, South Carolina, secured an important victory at Cowpens. Soon after, they forced exhausted British troops under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, to abandon their pursuit of the rebel army at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina. Nathanael Greene, in command of the Continental Army in the South, proved an ingenious strategist. His support for the rebel partisans and his careful treatment of a civilian population disenchanted by Cornwallis's marauding army frustrated British efforts to take the Carolinas. The British, fearful of estranging whites, had also erred by refusing to mobilize one large group of southerners who might have fought with them to win liberty--African-American slaves.

The World Turned Upside Down

Cornwallis made one final bid for victory at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. In this final battle, though, he found himself outflanked by Continentals under Washington, French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau, and the French navy under the Comte de Grasse. With the tide of war in Europe turning against them as well, the British decided to cut their losses in America and agreed to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Many Americans had, indeed, proven willing to fight.

Key Terms

Continental Army - The Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in their revolt against the rule of Great Britain. The Continental Army was supplemented by local militias and other troops that remained under control of the individual states. General George Washington was the commander-in-chief of the army throughout the war. Most of the Continental Army was disbanded in 1783 after the Treaty of Paris ended the war. The 1st and 2nd Regiments went on to form the nucleus of the Legion of the United States in 1792 under General Anthony Wayne. This became the foundation of the United States Army in 1796. Page 123

Loyalists - Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain (and the British monarchy) during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution. Page 125

Hessians – Hessians were 18th-century German auxiliaries contracted for military service by the British government, which found it easier to borrow money to pay for their service than to recruit its own soldiers. They took their name from the German region of Hesse. The British used the Hessians in several conflicts, including in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, but they are most widely associated with combat operations in the American Revolutionary War. About 30,000 German soldiers fought for the British during the American Revolutionary War, making up a quarter of all the soldiers the British sent to America. They fought in their own traditional uniforms under their usual officers and their own flags. They were under the overall command of British generals. Nearly half were from the Hesse region of Germany (which is the origin of their name); the others came from similar small German states. Several more German units were placed on garrison duty in the British Isles to free up British regulars for service in North America. American patriot’s propaganda presented the soldiers as foreign mercenaries with no stake in America. Hessian prisoners of war were put to work on local farms and were offered land bounties to desert and join the Americans. Some did, while most returned to Germany. Page 125

Militia/Citizen-soldiers - A militia generally is an army or other fighting force that is composed of non-professional fighters; citizens of a nation or subjects of a state or government that can be called upon to enter a combat situation, as opposed to a professional force of regular, full-time military personnel, or historically, members of the fighting nobility class (e.g., knights or samurai). However, beginning as early as the late 20th century, some militias (particularly officially recognized and sanctioned militias of a government) may be considered professional forces, while still maintaining their status as a "part-time" or "on-call" organization. For instance, the members of the various Army and Air National Guard units of the United States are considered professional soldiers and airmen, respectively. These soldiers and airmen are trained to maintain, and do maintain, exactly the same standards as their "full-time" (active duty) counterparts. Therefore, these professional militia men and women of the National Guard of the United States are colloquially known as "citizen-soldiers" or "citizen-airmen". The historical view is when three or more citizen gather together in the common defense of their country or state, do then become a militia. Page 128

Mutiny - Mutiny is a criminal conspiracy among a group of people (typically members of the military; or the crew of any ship, even if they are civilians) to openly oppose, change or overthrow a lawful authority to which they are subject. The term is commonly used for a rebellion among members of the military against their superior officer(s), but can also occasionally refer to any type of rebellion against an authority figure. Until 1689, mutiny was regulated in the United Kingdom by Articles of War, instituted by the monarch and effective only in a period of war. In 1689, the first Mutiny Act was passed, passing the responsibility to enforce discipline within the military to Parliament. The Mutiny Act, altered in 1803, and the Articles of War defined the nature and punishment of mutiny, until the latter were replaced by the Army Discipline and Regulation Act in 1879. This, in turn, was replaced by the Army Act in 1881. The military law of England in early times existed, like the forces to which it applied, in a period of war only. Troops were raised for a particular service, and were disbanded upon the cessation of hostilities.

The crown, by prerogative, made laws known as Articles of War, for the government and discipline of the troops while thus embodied and serving. Except for the punishment of desertion, which was made a felony by statute in the reign of Henry VI, these ordinances or Articles of War remained almost the sole authority for the enforcement of discipline until 1689, when the first Mutiny Act was passed and the military forces of the crown were brought under the direct control of parliament. Even the Parliamentary forces in the time of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell were governed, not by an act of the legislature, but by articles of war similar to those issued by the king and authorized by an ordinance of the Lords and Commons, exercising in that respect the sovereign prerogative. This power of law-making by prerogative was however held to be applicable during a state of actual war only, and attempts to exercise it in time of peace were ineffectual. Subject to this limitation it existed for considerably more than a century after the passing of the first Mutiny Act. From 1689 to 1803, although in peace time the Mutiny Act was occasionally suffered to expire, a statutory power was given to the crown to make Articles of War to operate in the colonies and elsewhere beyond the seas in the same manner as those made by prerogative operated in time of war. In 1715, in consequence of the rebellion, this power was created in respect of the forces in the kingdom, but apart from and in no respect affected the principle acknowledged all this time that the crown of its mere prerogative could make laws for the government of the army in foreign countries in time of war. The Mutiny Act of 1803 effected a great constitutional change in this respect: the power of the crown to make any Articles of War became altogether statutory, and the prerogative merged in the act of parliament. The Mutiny Act 1873 was passed in this manner. Page 130

Partisan warfare - A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity. The term can apply to the field element of resistance movements, examples of which are the civilians that opposed Nazi German or Fascist Italian rule in several countries during World War II. The initial concept of partisan warfare involved the use of troops raised from the local population in a war zone (or in some cases regular forces) who would operate behind enemy lines to disrupt communications, seize posts or villages as forward-operating bases, ambush convoys, impose war taxes or contributions, raid logistical stockpiles, and compel enemy forces to disperse and protect their base of operations. One of the first manuals of partisan tactics in the 18th century was The Partisan, or the Art of Making War in Detachment..., published in London in 1760 by de Jeney, a Hungarian military officer who served in the Prussian Army as captain of military engineers during the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763. The concept of partisan warfare would later form the basis of the "Partisan Rangers" of the American Civil War. In that war, Confederate States Army Partisan leaders, such as John S. Mosby, operated along the lines described by von Ewald (and later by both Jomini and Clausewitz). In essence, 19th-century American partisans were closer to commando or ranger forces raised during World War II than to the "partisan" forces operating in occupied Europe. Mosby-style fighters would have been legally considered uniformed members of their state's armed forces. Partisans in the mid-19th century were substantially different from raiding cavalry, or from unorganized/semi-organized guerrilla forces. Russian partisans played a crucial part in the downfall of Napoleon. Their fierce resistance and persistent inroads helped compel the French emperor to flee Russia in 1812. Page 132

General William Howe - William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, was a British army officer who rose to become Commander-in-Chief of British forces during the American War of Independence. Howe was one of three brothers who enjoyed distinguished military careers. William Howe was sent to North America in March 1775, arriving in May after the

Revolutionary War broke out. After leading British troops to a costly victory in the Battle of Bunker Hill, Howe took command of all British forces in America from Thomas Gage in September of that year. Howe's record in North America was marked by the successful capture of both New York City and Philadelphia. However, poor British campaign planning for 1777 contributed to the failure of John Burgoyne's Saratoga campaign, which played a major role in the entry of France into the war. Howe's role in developing those plans, and the degree to which he was responsible for British failures that year (despite his personal success at Philadelphia) have been a subject of contemporary and historic debate.

Admiral Lord Richard Howe - Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe, was a British naval officer, notable in particular for his service during the American War of Independence and French Revolutionary Wars. He was the brother of William and George Howe. Howe joined the navy at the age of thirteen and served throughout the War of the Austrian Succession. During the Seven Years' War he gained a reputation for his role in amphibious operations against the French coast as part of Britain's policy of naval descents. He took part in the decisive British naval victory at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759. He is best known for his service during the American War of Independence, when he acted as a naval commander and a peace commissioner with the American rebels and for his command of the British fleet during the Glorious First of June in 1794.

Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding  Father, the principal  author  of  the United  States  Declaration  of  Independence (1776)  and  the  third  President  of  the  United States  (1801-1809).  At the beginning of the American Revolution, Jefferson served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia. He then served as wartime Governor of Virginia (1779-1781).

George Washington - George Washington was the first President of the United States of America, serving from 1789 to 1797, and the dominant military and political leader of the United States from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of the Constitution in 1787. Washington became the first president,

by unanimous choice, and oversaw the creation of a strong, well-financed national government that maintained neutrality in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion, and won acceptance among Americans of all types. His leadership style established many forms and rituals of government that have been used since, such as using a cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address. Washington is universally regarded as the 'Father of his country.'

   

John Burgoyne - General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762. Burgoyne is best known for his role in the American Revolutionary War. He designed an invasion scheme and was appointed to command a force moving south from Canada to split away New England and end the rebellion. Burgoyne advanced from Canada but his slow movement allowed the Americans to concentrate their forces. Instead of coming to his aid according to the overall plan, the British Army in New York City moved south to capture Philadelphia. Surrounded, Burgoyne fought two small battles near Saratoga to break out. Trapped by superior American forces, with no relief in sight, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army of 6200 men on October 17, 1777. His surrender, says historian Edmund Morgan, "was a great turning point of the war, because it won for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory. He and his officers returned to England; the enlisted men became prisoners of war. Burgoyne came under sharp criticism when he returned to London, and never held another active command.

   

General Horatio Gates – Horatio Gates was a retired British soldier who served as an American general during the Revolutionary War. He took credit for the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, Benedict Arnold, who led the attack, was finally forced from the field when he was shot in the leg-and was blamed for the defeat at the Battle of Camden. Gates has been described as 'one of the Revolution's most controversial military figures' because of his role in the Conway Cabal, which attempted to discredit and replace George Washington; the battle at Saratoga; and Gates's actions after his defeat at Camden.

Charles Gravier de Vergennes – Charles Gravier, de Vergennes was a French statesman and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister from 1774 during the reign of Louis XVI, notably during the American War of Independence. Vergennes rose through the ranks of the diplomatic service during postings in Portugal and Germany before receiving the important post of Envoy to the Ottoman Empire in 1755. While there he oversaw complex negotiations that resulted from the Diplomatic Revolution before being recalled in 1768. After assisting a pro-French faction to take power in Sweden, he returned home and was promoted to foreign minister. Vergennes hoped that by giving French aid to the American rebels, he would be able to weaken Britain's dominance of the international stage in the wake of their victory in the Seven Years' War.

This produced mixed results as in spite of securing American independence France was able to extract little material gain from the war, while the costs of fighting damaged French national finances in the run up to the Revolution. He went on to be a dominant figure in French politics during the 1780s.

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.

John Jay – John Jay was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, Founding Father of the United States, signer of the Treaty of Paris, and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1789–95). Jay was born into a wealthy family of merchants and government officials in New York City. He became a lawyer and joined the New York Committee of Correspondence and organized opposition to British rule. He joined a conservative political faction that, fearing mob rule, sought to protect property rights and maintain the rule of law while resisting British violations of human rights. Jay served as the President of the Continental Congress (1778–79), an honorific position with little power. During and after the American Revolution, Jay was a Minister (Ambassador) to Spain, France and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, helping to fashion United States foreign policy. His major diplomatic achievement was to negotiate favorable trade terms with Great Britain in the Treaty of London of 1794 when he was still serving as Supreme Court Chief Justice. Jay, a proponent of strong, centralized government, worked to ratify the new Constitution in New York in 1788 by pseudonymously writing five of the Federalist Papers, along with the main authors Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. As a leader of the new Federalist Party, Jay was the Governor of New York State (1795–1801), where he became the state's leading opponent of slavery. His first two attempts to end slavery in New York in 1777 and 1785 failed, but a third in 1799 succeeded. The 1799 Act, a gradual emancipation he signed into law, eventually gave all slaves in New York their freedom before his death in 1829.

John Adams – John Adams was the second President of the United States (1797-1801), having earlier served as the first Vice P resident of the United States. An American

Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat, and a leader of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism.

Sir Henry Clinton – General Sir Henry Clinton, was a British army officer and politician, best known for his service as a general during the American War of Independence. First arriving in Boston in May 1775, from 1778 to 1782 he was the British Commander-in-Chief in North America. In addition to his military service, due to the influence of the 2nd Duke of Newcastle, he was a Member of Parliament for many years. Late in life he was named Governor of Gibraltar, but died before assuming the post. Clinton, along with Major Generals William Howe and John Burgoyne, were sent with reinforcements to strengthen the position of General Thomas Gage in Boston. They arrived on 25 May, having learned en route that the American War of Independence had broken out, and that Boston was under siege. Gage, along with Clinton and Generals Howe and Burgoyne discussed plans to break the siege. Clinton was an advocate for fortifying currently unoccupied high ground surrounding Boston, and plans were laid to occupy those spots on 18 June. However, the colonists learned of the plan and fortified the heights of the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16–17 June, forcing the British leadership to rethink their strategy.

Charles, Lord Cornwallis – Charles Cornwallis, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. In the United States and the United Kingdom he is best remembered as one of the leading British generals in the American War of Independence. His surrender in 1781 to a combined American and French force at the Siege of Yorktown ended significant hostilities in North America. He also served as a civil and military governor in Ireland and India; in both places he brought about significant changes, including the Act of Union in Ireland, and the Cornwallis Code and the Permanent Settlement in India. From 1766 until 1805 he was Colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot. He next saw military action in 1776 in the American War of Independence. Active in the advance forces of many campaigns, in 1780 he inflicted an embarrassing defeat on the American army at the Battle of Camden, though he surrendered his army at Yorktown in October 1781 after an extended campaign through the Southern states which was marked by disagreements between him and his superior, General Sir Henry Clinton (which became public knowledge after the war) Despite this defeat, Cornwallis retained the confidence of successive British governments and continued to enjoy an active career. Knighted in 1786, he was in that year appointed to be Governor General and commander-in-chief in India. There he enacted numerous significant reforms within the East India Company and its territories, including the Cornwallis Code, part of which implemented important land taxation reforms known as the Permanent Settlement. From 1789 to 1792 he led British and Company forces in the Third Anglo-Mysore War to defeat the Mysorean ruler Tipu Sultan. Returning to Britain in 1794, Cornwallis was given the post of Master-General of the Ordnance. In 1798 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief of Ireland, where he oversaw the response to the 1798 Irish Rebellion, including a French invasion of Ireland, and was instrumental in bringing about the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Following his Irish service Cornwallis was the chief British signatory to the 1802 Treaty of Amiens, and was reappointed to India in 1805. He died in India not long after his arrival.

Francis Marion/Swamp Fox- Francis Marion was a military officer who served in the American Revolutionary War. Acting with Continental Army and South Carolina militia commissions, he was a persistent adversary of the British in their occupation of South Carolina in 1780 and 1781, even after the Continental Army was driven out of the state in the Battle of Camden. Due to his irregular methods of warfare, he is considered one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the United States Army Rangers. He was known as the Swamp Fox.

Nathanael Greene - Nathanael Greene was a major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United States are named for him.

Baron von Steuben – Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben (also referred to as the Baron von Steuben, was a Prussian-born military officer who served as inspector general and Major General of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with being one of the fathers of the Continental Army in teaching them the essentials of military drills, tactics, and disciplines. He wrote Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, the book that served as the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812. He served as General George Washington's chief of staff in the final years of the war.

Benedict Arnold - Benedict Arnold was a general during the American Revolutionary War who originally fought for the American Continental Army but defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces. After the plot was exposed in September 1780, he was commissioned into the British Army as a brigadier general.

Comte de Rochambeau - Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau was a French nobleman and general who played a major role in helping America win independence during the American Revolution. During this time, he served as commander-in-chief of the French Expeditionary Force which embarked from France in order to help the American Continental Army fight against British forces. In 1780, Rochambeau was appointed commander of land forces as part of the project code named Expedition Particulière. He was given the rank of Lieutenant General in command of some 7,000 French troops and sent to join the Continental Army, under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War Rochambeau commanded more troops than did Washington. Count Axel von Fersen the Younger served as Rochambeau's aide-de-camp and interpreter. The small size of the force at his disposal made him initially reluctant to lead the expedition. He landed at Newport, Rhode Island, on 10 July, but was held there inactive for a year, owing to his reluctance to abandon the French fleet blockaded by the British in Narragansett Bay. Brown University, then named the College in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, served as an encampment site for some of Rochambeau's troops, and the College Edifice, now known as University Hall, was converted into a military hospital.

In July 1781, Rochambeau's force left Rhode Island, marching across Connecticut to join Washington on the Hudson River in Mount Kisco, New York. From July 6 to August 18, 1781, the Odell farm served as Rochambeau's headquarters.] There then followed the celebrated march of the combined forces, the siege of Yorktown and the Battle of the Chesapeake. On 22 September, they combined with Marquis de Lafayette's troops and forced Lord Cornwallis to surrender on 19 October. In recognition of his services, the Congress of the Confederation presented him with two cannons taken from the British. These guns, with which Rochambeau returned to Vendome, were requisitioned in 1792. He was an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati.

Lord George Germain - George Germain, was a British soldier and politician who was Secretary of State for America in Lord North's cabinet during the American War of Independence. His ministry received much of the blame for Britain's loss of thirteen American colonies. His issuance of detailed instructions in military matters, coupled with his failure to understand either the geography of the colonies or the determination of the colonists, may justify this conclusion. He had two careers. His military career had distinction, serving in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War including at the decisive Battle of Minden, but ended with a court martial. His political career ended with the fall of the North government in March 1782.

Lord Dunmore - John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, generally known as Lord Dunmore, was a Scottish peer and colonial governor in the American colonies. Murray was named governor of the Province of New York in 1770; he succeeded to the same position in the Colony of Virginia the following year, after the death of Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt. As Virginia's governor, Dunmore directed a series of campaigns against the trans-Appalachian Indians, known as Lord Dunmore's War. He is noted for issuing a 1775 document proclaiming martial law in Virginia, (usually known as Dunmore's Proclamation), in an attempt to turn back the rebel cause in Virginia. Dunmore fled to New York after the Burning of Norfolk in 1776, and later returned to Britain, although he did later spend time as Governor of the Bahama Islands, from 1787 to 1796. Dunmore was the last royal governor of Virginia. Dunmore became royal governor of the Colony of Virginia on 25 September 1771. Despite growing issues with Great Britain, his predecessor, Lord Botetourt, had been a popular governor in Virginia, even though he served only two years before his death. As Virginia's colonial governor, Dunmore directed a series of campaigns against the Indians known as Lord Dunmore's War. The Shawnee were the main target of these attacks, and his avowed purpose was to strengthen Virginia's claims in the west, particularly in the Ohio Country. However, some accused Dunmore of colluding with the Shawnees and arranging the war to deplete the Virginia militia and help safeguard the Loyalist cause, should there be a colonial rebellion. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, in his history of the Indian Wars, denied these accusations. Dunmore is noted for Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, also known as Lord Dunmore's Offer of Emancipation. Dated 7 November 1775, but proclaimed a week later, Dunmore thereby formally offered freedom to slaves who abandoned their Patriot masters to join the British. Dunmore had previously withheld his signature from a bill against the slave trade. The proclamation appeared to respond to the legislature's proclamation that Dunmore had resigned his position by boarding a warship off Yorktown nearly six months earlier. However, by the end of the war, an estimated 800 to 2000 escaped slaves sought refuge with the British; some served in the army, though the majority served in noncombatant roles. Dunmore organized these Black Loyalists into the "Ethiopian Regiment". However, despite winning the Battle of Kemp's Landing on 17 November 1775, Dunmore lost decisively at the Battle of Great Bridge on 9 December 1775. Following that defeat, Dunmore loaded his troops, and many Virginia Loyalists, onto British ships. Smallpox spread in the confined quarters, and some 500 of the 800 members of the Ethiopian Regiment died.

Richard Henry Lee - Richard Henry Lee was an American statesman from Virginia best known for the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and his famous resolution of June 1776 led to the United States Declaration of Independence, which Lee signed. He also served a one-year term as the President of the United States in Congress Assembled (USCA), and was a U. S. Senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792, serving during part of that time as one of the first Presidents pro tempore of the United States Senate.

Second Continental Congress - The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the twelve colonies (except Georgia) that started meeting on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met between September 5, 1774 and October 26, 1774, also in Philadelphia. The Second Continental Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. By raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties, the Second Continental Congress acted as the de facto national government of what became the United States.

Olive Branch Petition - The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, in a final attempt to avoid a full-on war between the Thirteen Colonies that the Congress represented, and Great Britain. The petition affirmed American loyalty to Great Britain and entreated the king to prevent further conflict. However, the Petition succeeded the July 6 Declaration of Taking up Arms which made its efficacy in London dubious. In August 1775 the colonies were formally declared to be in rebellion by the Proclamation of Rebellion, and the petition was rejected in fact, although not having been received by the king before declaring the Congress-supporting colonists traitors. However, the Petition was undermined by a confiscated letter of John Adams to a friend, expressing his discontent with the Olive Branch Petition. Adams wrote war was inevitable and he thought the Colonies should have already raised a navy and captured British officials. This confiscated letter arrived in Great Britain at about the same time as the Olive Branch Petition. British advocates of coercion used Adams' letter to claim that the Olive Branch Petition was insincere. Richard Penn and Arthur Lee were dispatched by Congress to carry the Petition to London, where, on August 21, they provided Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, with a copy, followed on September 1 with the original. However, the King refused to see Penn and Lee or to look at the Petition, which in his view originated from an illegal and illegitimate assembly of rebels. Instead, on August 23, in response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the King had issued the Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, declaring the North American colonies to be in a state of rebellion and ordering "all Our officers ... and all Our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavors to withstand and suppress such rebellion." The proclamation was written before Lord Dartmouth had received the Petition. Because the King refused to receive the Petition, the Proclamation effectively served as an answer to it. Nevertheless, the Olive Branch Petition still served a very important purpose in American independence. The King’s rejection gave Adams and others who favored revolution the opportunity they needed to push for independence. The rejection of the “olive branch” polarized the issue in the minds of many colonists, who realized that from that point forward the choice was between complete independence or complete submission to British rule, a realization crystallized a few months later in Thomas Paine's widely read pamphlet, Common Sense.

Declaration of Independence - The Declaration of Independence is the usual name of a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence, which was unanimously approved on July 2. A committee of five had already drafted the formal declaration, to be ready when Congress voted on independence. The term "Declaration of Independence" is not used in the document itself. Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which Congress would edit to produce the final version. The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The national birthday, Independence Day, is celebrated on July 4, although Adams wanted July 2. After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially published as the printed Dunlap broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. The source copy used for this printing has been lost, and may have been a copy in Thomas Jefferson's hand. Jefferson's original draft, complete with changes made by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Jefferson's notes of changes made by Congress, are preserved at the Library of Congress. The most famous version of the Declaration, a signed copy that is popularly regarded as the official document, is displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. This engrossed copy was ordered by Congress on July 19, and signed primarily on August 2.

Regular/irregular troops - A regular army is the official army of a state or country (the official armed forces) -- contrasting with irregular forces such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies, mercenaries, etc. A regular army usually consists of:    

·         A standing army, the permanent force of the regular army that is maintained under arms during peacetime.

·         A military reserve force that can be mobilized when needed to expand the effectives of the regular army by complementing the standing army.

A regular army may be:

·         A conscript army, including professionals, volunteers and also conscripts (presence of enforced conscription, including recruits for the standing army and also a compulsory reserve).

·         A professional army, with no conscripts (absence of compulsory service, and presence of a voluntary reserve). It is not exactly the same as a standing army, as there exist standing armies both in the conscript and the professional models.

In the United Kingdom and in the United States the term regular army means the professional standing army, as different from reserves, National Guard, etc. Irregular military refers to any non-standard military. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used. An irregular military organization is a military organization which is not part of the regular army organization of a party to a military conflict. Without standard military unit organization, various more general names are used; such organizations may also be called a "troop," "group," "unit," "column," "band," or "force." Irregulars are soldiers or warriors that are members of these organizations, or are members of special military units that employ irregular military tactics. This also applies to irregular troops, irregular infantry and irregular cavalry. Irregular warfare is warfare employing the tactics commonly used by irregular military organizations. This involves avoiding large-scale combats, and focusing on small, stealthy, hit and run engagements.

  

The women of the army - While Washington strove to impose discipline on his Continentals, he also attempted, without success, to rid himself of “the Women of the Army.” When American men went off to fight their wives usually stayed at home. To women then fell the sole responsibility for running farms and businesses, raising children, and keeping households together; they helped to supply the troops by sewing clothing, making blankets, and saving rags and lead weights for bandages and bullets. Other women on the home front organized relief for the widows and orphans of soldiers and protests against merchants who hoarded scarce commodities. But the wives of poor men who joined the army were often left with no means to support their families. Thousands of such women—1 for every 15 soldiers—drifted after the troops. In return for half-rations, they cooked and washed for the soldiers; and after battles, they nursed the wounded, buried the dead, and scavenged the field for clothing and equipment. An even larger number of women accompanied the redcoats: their presence was the only thing that Washington did not admire about the British army and could barely tolerate in his own. But the services that they performed were indispensable, and women followed the troops throughout the war.

   

Treaty of Paris - The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States of America. France, Spain and the Dutch Republic had separate agreements; for details of these, and the negotiations which produced all four treaties, see Peace of Paris (1783). Its territorial provisions were "exceedingly generous" to the United States in terms of enlarged boundaries. Peace negotiations began in April of 1782, involving American representatives Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and John Adams. The British representatives present were David Hartley and Richard Oswald. The treaty document was signed in Paris at the Hotel d'York (presently 56 Rue Jacob), by Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Hartley. Franklin was almost successful in getting Britain to cede the Province of Quebec (today's eastern Canada) to the United States because he hoped to control all of North America. The British at first agreed, and then rejected the proposal. On September 3, 1783, Great Britain also signed separate agreements with France and Spain, and (provisionally) with the Netherlands.

In the treaty with Spain, the territories of East and West Florida were ceded to Spain (without a clear northern boundary, resulting in a territorial dispute resolved by the Treaty of Madrid in 1795), as was the island of Minorca, while the Bahama Islands, Grenada, and Montserrat, captured by the French and Spanish, were returned to Britain. The treaty with France was mostly about exchanges of captured territory (France's only net gains were the island of Tobago, and Senegal in Africa), but also reinforced earlier treaties, guaranteeing fishing rights off Newfoundland. Dutch possessions in the East Indies, captured in 1781, were returned by Britain to the Netherlands in exchange for trading privileges in the Dutch East Indies, by a treaty which was not finalized until 1784. The American Congress of the Confederation ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784. Copies were sent back to Europe for ratification by the other parties involved, the first reaching France in March 1784. British ratification occurred on April 9, 1784, and the ratified versions were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784. It was not for some time, though, that the Americans in the countryside received the news because of the lack of speedy communication.

   

Breeds Hill – Breed's Hill is a glacial drumlin located in the Charlestown section of Boston, Massachusetts. It is best known as the location where in 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, most of the fighting in the Battle of Bunker Hill took place. Much of the hill is now occupied by residential construction, but the summit area is the location of the Bunker Hill Monument and other memorials commemorating the battle.

Battle of Bunker Hill - The Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775, mostly on and around Breed's Hill, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after the adjacent Bunker Hill, which was peripherally involved in the battle and was the original objective of both colonial and British troops, and is occasionally referred to as the "Battle of Breed's Hill." On June 13, 1775, the leaders of the colonial forces besieging Boston learned that the British generals were planning to send troops out from the city to occupy the unoccupied hills surrounding the city. In response to this intelligence, 1,200 colonial troops under the command of William Prescott stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, constructed an earthen redoubt on Breed's Hill, and built lightly fortified lines across most of the Charlestown Peninsula. When the British were alerted to the presence of the new position the next day, they mounted an attack against them. After two assaults on the colonial lines were repulsed with significant British casualties, the British finally captured the positions on the third assault, after the defenders in the redoubt ran out of ammunition. The colonial forces retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, suffering their most significant losses on Bunker Hill. While the result was a victory for the British, they suffered heavy losses: over 800 wounded and 226 killed, including a notably large number of officers. The battle is seen as an example of a Pyrrhic victory, because the immediate gain (the capture of Bunker Hill) was modest and did not significantly change the state of the siege, while the cost (the loss of nearly a third of the deployed forces) was high. Meanwhile, colonial forces were able to retreat and regroup in good order having suffered fewer casualties. Furthermore, the battle demonstrated that relatively inexperienced colonial forces were willing and able to stand up to regular army troops in a pitched battle.

Trenton - The Battle of Trenton took place on the morning of December 26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, after General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey. The hazardous crossing in adverse weather made it possible for Washington to lead the main body of the Continental Army against Hessian soldiers garrisoned at Trenton. After a brief battle, nearly the entire Hessian force was captured, with negligible losses to the Americans. The battle significantly boosted the Continental Army's flagging morale, and inspired reenlistments. The Continental Army had previously suffered several defeats in New York and had been forced to retreat through New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Morale in the army was low; to end the year on a positive note, George Washington—Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army—devised a plan to cross the Delaware River on the night of December 25–26 and surround the Hessian garrison. Because the river was icy and the weather severe,; the crossing proved dangerous. Two detachments were unable to cross the river, leaving Washington with only 2,400 men under his command in the assault. The army marched 9 miles (14 km) south to Trenton. The Hessians had lowered their guard, thinking they were safe from the American army, and had no long-distance outposts or patrols.

Washington's forces caught them off guard and, after a short but fierce resistance, most of the Hessians surrendered. Almost two thirds of the 1,500-man garrison were captured, and only a few troops escaped across Assunpink Creek. Despite the battle's small numbers, the American victory inspired rebels in the colonies. With the success of the revolution in doubt a week earlier, the army had seemed on the verge of collapse. The dramatic victory inspired soldiers to serve longer and attracted new recruits to the ranks.

   

Saratoga - The Battles of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777) marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War. British General John Burgoyne led a large invasion army up the Champlain Valley from Canada, hoping to meet a similar force marching northward from New York City; the southern force never arrived, and Burgoyne was surrounded by American forces in upstate New York. Burgoyne fought two small battles to break out. They took place eighteen days apart on the same ground, 9 miles (14 km) south of Saratoga, New York. They both failed. Trapped by superior American forces, with no relief in sight, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army on October 17. His surrender, says historian Edmund Morgan, "was a great turning point of the war, because it won for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory. Burgoyne's strategy to divide New England from the southern colonies had started well, but slowed due to logistical problems. He won a small tactical victory over General Horatio Gates and the Continental Army in the September 19 Battle of Freeman's Farm at the cost of significant casualties. His gains were erased when he again attacked the Americans in the October 7 Battle of Bemis Heights and the Americans captured a portion of the British defenses. Burgoyne was therefore compelled to retreat, and his army was surrounded by the much larger American force at Saratoga, forcing him to surrender on October 17. News of Burgoyne's surrender was instrumental in formally bringing France into the war as an American ally, although it had previously given supplies, ammunition and guns, notably the de Valliere cannon, which played an important role in Saratoga. This battle also resulted in Spain joining France in the war against Britain. The first battle, on September 19, began when Burgoyne moved some of his troops in an attempt to flank the entrenched American position on Bemis Heights. Benedict Arnold, anticipating the maneuver, placed significant forces in his way. While Burgoyne did gain control of Freeman's Farm, it came at the cost of significant casualties. Skirmishing continued in the days following the battle, while Burgoyne waited in the hope that reinforcements would arrive from New York City. Militia forces continued to arrive, swelling the size of the American army. Disputes within the American camp led Gates to strip Arnold of his command. British General Sir Henry Clinton, moving up from New York City, attempted to divert American attention by capturing two forts in the Hudson River highlands on October 6, His efforts were too late to help Burgoyne. Burgoyne attacked Bemis Heights again on October 7 after it became apparent he would not receive relieving aid in time. In heavy fighting, marked by Arnold's spirited rallying of the American troops, Burgoyne's forces were thrown back to the positions they held before the September 19 battle and the Americans captured a portion of the entrenched British defenses.

   

Valley Forge - Valley Forge in Pennsylvania was the site of the military camp of the American Continental Army over the winter of 1777–1778 during the American Revolutionary War. It is approximately 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.[1] Starvation, disease, and exposure killed nearly 2,500 American soldiers by the end of February 1778. With winter almost setting in, and with the prospects for campaigning greatly diminishing, General George Washington sought quarters for his men. Washington and his troops had fought what was to be the last major engagement of 1777 at the Battle of White Marsh (or Edge Hill) in early December. He devised to pull his troops from their present encampment in the White Marsh area (now Fort Washington State Park) and move to a more secure location for the coming winter.

Southern strategy - The Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War was the central area of operations in North America in the second half of the American Revolutionary War. During the first three years of the conflict, the largest military encounters were in the north, focused on campaigns around the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. After the failure of the Saratoga campaign, the British largely abandoned operations in the Middle Colonies and pursued a strategy of peace through subjugation in the Southern Colonies. Before 1778, the southern colonies were largely dominated by Patriot-controlled governments and militias, although there was also a Continental Army presence that played a role in the defense of Charleston in 1776, suppression of Loyalist militias, and attempts to drive the British from strongly Loyalist East Florida. The British "southern strategy" commenced in late 1778 with the capture of Savannah, Georgia, which was followed in 1780 by operations in South Carolina that included the defeat of two Continental Armies at Charleston and Camden. General Nathanael Greene, who took over as Continental Army commander after Camden, engaged in a strategy of avoidance and attrition against the British. The two forces fought a string of battles, most of which were tactical victories for the British. In almost all cases, however, the "victories" strategically weakened the British army by the high cost in casualties, while leaving the Continental Army intact to continue fighting. This was best exemplified by the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Several American victories, such as the Battle of Cowpens and the Battle of Kings Mountain also served to weaken the overall British military strength. The culminating engagement, the Siege of Yorktown, ended with the British army's surrender, and essentially marked the end of British power in the Colonies.

Monmouth Courthouse - The Battle of Monmouth was an American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence) battle fought on June 28, 1778 in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The Continental Army under General George Washington attacked the rear of the British Army column commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton as they left Monmouth Court House (modern Freehold Borough). It is known as the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse. Unsteady handling of lead Continental elements by Major General Charles Lee had allowed British rearguard commander Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis to seize the initiative, but Washington's timely arrival on the battlefield rallied the Americans along a hilltop hedgerow. Sensing the opportunity to smash the Continentals, Cornwallis pressed his attack and captured the hedgerow in stifling heat. Washington consolidated his troops in a new line on heights behind marshy ground, used his artillery to fix the British in their positions, then brought up a four-gun battery under Major General Nathanael Greene on nearby Combs Hill to enfilade the British line, requiring Cornwallis to withdraw. Finally, Washington tried to hit the exhausted British rear guard on both flanks, but darkness forced the end of the engagement. Both armies held the field, but the British commanding general Clinton withdrew undetected at midnight to resume his army's march to New York City. While Cornwallis protected the main British column from any further American attack, Washington had fought his opponent to a standstill after a pitched and prolonged engagement; the first time that Washington's army had achieved such a result. The battle demonstrated the growing effectiveness of the Continental Army after its six month encampment at Valley Forge, where constant drilling under officers such as Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and Major General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette greatly improved army discipline and morale. The battle improved the military reputations of Washington, Lafayette and Anthony Wayne but ended the career of Charles Lee, who would face court martial at Englishtown for his failures on the day. According to some accounts, an American soldier's wife, Mary Hays, brought water to thirsty soldiers in the June heat, and became one of several women associated with the legend of Molly Pitcher.

   

Battle of King's Mountain - The Battle of Kings Mountain was a decisive battle between the Patriot and Loyalist militias in the Southern campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The battle took place on October 7, 1780, nine miles south of the present-day town of Kings Mountain, North Carolina in rural York County, South Carolina, where the Patriot militia defeated the Loyalist militia commanded by British Major Patrick Ferguson of the 71st Foot. Ferguson had arrived in North Carolina in early September 1780 with the purpose of recruiting for the Loyalist militia and protecting the flank of Lord Cornwallis' main force. Ferguson issued a challenge to the rebel militias to lay down their arms or suffer the consequences. In response, the Patriot militias led by James Johnston, William Campbell, John Sevier, Joseph McDowell and Isaac Shelby rallied for an attack on Ferguson. Receiving intelligence on the oncoming attack, Ferguson decided to retreat to the safety of Lord Cornwallis' army. However, the Patriots caught up with the Loyalists at Kings Mountain on the border with South Carolina. Achieving a complete surprise, the Patriot militiamen attacked and surrounded the Loyalists, inflicting heavy casualties. After an hour of battle, Ferguson was fatally shot while trying to break the rebel line, after which his men surrendered. Eager to avenge Banastre Tarleton's alleged massacre of the militiamen at the Battle of Waxhaws, the Patriots gave no quarter until the rebel officer’s reestablished control over their men. Although victorious, the Patriots had to retreat quickly from the area for fear of Cornwallis' advance.

The battle was a pivotal moment in the Southern campaign. The surprising victory over the American Loyalist militia came after a string of rebel defeats at the hands of Lord Cornwallis, and greatly raised the Patriots' morale. With Ferguson dead and his Loyalist militia destroyed, Cornwallis was forced to abandon his plan to invade North Carolina and retreated into South Carolina.

   

Cowpens - The Battle of Cowpens (January 17, 1781) was a decisive victory by the Continental Army forces under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan in the Southern campaign of the American Revolutionary War over the British Army led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton. It was a turning point in the reconquest of South Carolina from the British. It took place in northwestern Cherokee County, South Carolina, north of the town of Cowpens.

Guilford Courthouse - The Battle of Guilford Court House was a battle fought on March 15, 1781, at a site which is now in Greensboro, the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, during the American Revolutionary War. A 2,100-man British force under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis defeated Major General Nathanael Greene's 4,500 Americans. The British Army, however, sustained such heavy casualties that the result was a strategic victory for the Americans. Despite the relatively small numbers of troops involved, the battle is considered pivotal to the American victory in the Revolution. Before the battle, the British appeared to have had great success in conquering much of Georgia and South Carolina with the aid of strong Loyalist factions, and thought that North Carolina might be within their grasp. In fact, the British were in the process of heavy recruitment in North Carolina when this Battle (for all intents and purposes) put an end to their recruiting drive. In the wake of the battle, Greene moved into South Carolina, while Cornwallis chose to march into Virginia and attempt to link up with roughly 3,500 men under British Major General Phillips and American turncoat Benedict Arnold. These decisions allowed Greene to unravel British control of the South, while leading Cornwallis to Yorktown and eventual surrender to Major General George Washington and Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau.

The Regulation - The War of the Regulation (or the Regulator Movement) was an uprising in the North American British colonies of North and South Carolina, lasting from about 1765 to 1771, in which citizens took up arms against colonial officials. Though the rebellion did not change the power structure, some historians consider it a catalyst to the American Revolutionary War. The origins of the War of Regulation stem from a dramatic population increase in North and South Carolina during the 1760s, following migration from the larger eastern cities to the rural west. The inland section of the colonies had once been predominantly composed of planters with an agricultural economy. Merchants and lawyers began to move west, upsetting the social and political structure. They were joined by new Scots-Irish immigrants, who populated the backcountry. At the same time, the local inland agricultural community suffered from a deep economic depression, due to severe droughts throughout the previous decade. The loss of crops cost farmers not only their direct food source, but also their primary means of an income, which led many to rely on the goods being brought by newly arrived merchants. As income was cut off, the local planters often fell into debt. The merchants, in turn, relied on lawyers and the court to settle disputes. Debts were not uncommon at the time, but from 1755 to 1765, the cases brought to the docket increased nearly sixteen-fold, from seven annually to 111 in Orange County, North Carolina alone. Such court cases could often lead to planters losing their homes and property, so they grew to resent the presence of the newcomers. The shift in population and politics eventually led to an imbalance within the colony's courthouses, where the newly arrived and well-educated lawyers used their superior knowledge of the law to their sometimes unjust advantage. A small clique of wealthy officials formed and became an exclusive inner circle in charge of the legal affairs of the area. The group was seen as a 'courthouse ring', or a small bunch of officials who grabbed most of the political power for themselves. In 1764, several thousand people from North Carolina, mainly from Orange, Anson, and Granville counties in the western region, were extremely dissatisfied with the wealthy North Carolina officials, whom they considered cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical and corrupt. Local sheriffs collected taxes, as supported by the courts; the sheriffs and courts had sole control over their local regions. Many of the officers were very greedy and often would band together with other local officials for their own personal gain. The entire system depended on the integrity of local officials, many of whom engaged in extortion; taxes collected often enriched the tax collectors directly. At times, sheriffs would intentionally remove records of their tax collection in order to go back to residents to ask for more taxes.

The system was endorsed by the colonial governor, who feared losing the support of the various county officials. The effort to eliminate this system of government became known as the Regulator uprising, War of the Regulation, or the Regulator War. The most heavily affected areas were said to be those of Rowan, Anson, Orange, Granville, and Cumberland counties. It was a struggle between mostly lower-class citizens, who made up the majority of the backcountry population of North and South Carolina, and the wealthy planter elite, who comprised about 5% of the population, yet maintained almost total control of the government. The stated primary aim of the Regulators was to form an honest government and reduce taxation. The wealthy businessmen/politicians who ruled North Carolina at this point saw this as a grave threat to their power. Ultimately, they brought in the militia to crush the rebellion and hanged its leaders. It is estimated that out of the 8,000 people living in Orange County at the time, some 6-7,000 supported the Regulators. Although the "War of the Regulators" is considered by some to be one of the first acts of the American Revolutionary War, it was waged against corrupt local officials and not against the English king or Crown. Many anti-Regulators became Patriots during the American Revolution, such as William Hooper and Francis Nash; while many Regulators became Loyalists.

East India Company - The East India Company (EIC), originally chartered as the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, and more properly called the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), was an English, and later (from 1707) British joint-stock company, formed to pursue trade with the East Indies but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent, Qing Dynasty China, North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpeter, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Company's shares. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown to assume direct control of India in the new British Raj. The company was dissolved in 1874 as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act passed one year earlier, as the Government of India Act had by then rendered it vestigial, powerless, and obsolete. The official government machinery of British India had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its presidency armies.

 Sample Quiz

1. The chapter introduction tells the story of the Battle of Bunker Hill to make the point that:

A) Americans won their revolution by pitting dedicated amateur soldiers against the might of Britain's professional redcoats.

B) Initially the war went badly for the Americans, testing their commitment to liberty and independence.

C) A key question in that battle and throughout the war was whether Americans would really fight to win their independence.

D) Declaring independence was one thing, but after the Declaration, actually fighting against the authority of one's own king was quite another.

2. During the first year of the Revolution, American war aims shifted from a desire for redress of grievances to a demand for complete independence. All of the following influenced this shift EXCEPT:

            A) The impact of Tom Paine's Common Sense.

            B) Washington's refusal to command the Continental Army until independence was declared.

            C) Congressional actions that would be appropriate only to an independent government.

D) British attempts to crush American resistance by force at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill.

3. The Declaration of Independence based the case for independence on:

            A) The violations of colonials' "rights as Englishmen."

            B) Parliament's infringements of American liberty.

            C) George III's infringements of American liberty.

            D) The argument that monarchical government violated both reason and the Bible.

 4. What was the most dominant common characteristic among the diverse group of people who remained loyal to Britain?

            A) They were devout Christians who believed the Bible commanded obedience to authority.

B) They were old-stock wealthy planters and merchants from the coastal areas whose families had long prospered under British rule.

C) They owed their livelihood and social status to crown appointments, and thus were unmoved by constitutional arguments.

            D) They were fearful of divisions and instability within American society.

5. Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the newly created Continental Army for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

            A) His wealth and political connections.

            B) He was young enough to lead a campaign.

            C) He was a southerner.

            D) He was a celebrated veteran of the Seven Years' War.

6. Most republican leaders:

            A) Wanted a professional military establishment.

            B) Wanted a large standing army.

            C) Wanted "citizen-soldiers" to form the backbone of the common defense.

            D) Wanted to institute a military draft.

 7. After evacuating Boston, the British army took the initiative, launching a successful assault on:

            A) New York City.

            B) Philadelphia.

            C) The Carolina backcountry.

            D) The Jersey shore.

  

8. British occupation of New York and Philadelphia:

            A) Strengthened support for the rebellion.

            B) Made civilians realize the hopelessness of the revolutionary cause.

            C) Created additional support for the Crown.

            D) Led to a series of riots.

  

9. All of the following describe the American relationship with the French EXCEPT:

            A) The French provided secret aid as a way to gain revenge against the British.

B) The French offered an overt alliance in hopes they could regain their lost North American possessions.

C) The Americans sought French aid despite unsettling memories of recently fighting against them.

D) The Americans negotiated a treaty with the British, and then persuaded their French allies to go along.

10. Which of the following best explains the reason for French involvement in the American Revolution?

            A) They expected to be able to regain territory in North America.

            B) They sympathized with the republican principles by which the Americans fought.

C) The successful British occupation of Philadelphia convinced them that the Americans were losing and needed help.

D) Hungry for revenge, they feared the Americans would reconcile with Britain, their historic enemy.

 11. The Continental Army:

            A) Primarily consisted of respectable propertied farmers and artisans by 1777.

            B) Consistently received sufficient food and supplies from Congress.

C) Mutinied in 1781 and marched on Philadelphia, demanding better food and clothing as well as back pay.

            D) Gained discipline through the continued efforts of their American officers.

12. in the war for independence, most Native Americans:

            A) Sided with the rebels.

            B) Generally maintained neutrality, although a few tribes sided with the rebels.

            C) Generally maintained neutrality, although a few tribes sided with the British.

            D) Sided with the British until Clark took Vincennes.

  

13. The British believed the war could be won in the South for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

            A) The presence of strong loyalist support in the backcountry.

            B) The hatred of New England throughout the region.

            C) The resentment of planters on the seaboard.

D) The fear of slave rebellions would prevent the rebels from concentrating all of their military force against the British.

  

14. What was the role of African Americans in the revolution?

A) As the war dragged on, blacks-especially northern free blacks-were increasingly welcome to enlist.

            B) Americans generally avoided arming blacks, but the British eagerly recruited runaway slaves.

C) Though still enslaved, they rallied around the revolutionary rhetoric of freedom, uniformly supporting the American cause.

D) Very few slaves escaped to freedom; those who did found themselves welcomed in the North, the West Indies, or Canada.

 15. Which is the best statement of why the British signed the Peace Treaty granting American independence?

            A) The Americans had driven their army out of North America.

            B) The French had driven their navy from the high seas.

C) The timing of the occasional American victories led to a global situation where the British needed to salvage the rest of their empire by cutting their American losses.

D) They had sent a commission offering peace on pre-war terms, which the Congress accepted in all particulars except refusing to remain in the empire.

16. The Battle of Bunker Hill showed that:

            A) the colonists still lacked the essential will to fight.

            B) the Americans were almost certain to win their independence.

            C) the British had underestimated General Washington's military skills.

            D) American colonists would fight and die in their dispute with the British.

17. In the Declaration of Independence:

            A) King George III is blamed for a long list of abuses against the colonies.

            B) Parliament is blamed for the breakdown of relations with the colonies.

            C) the colonists still held out an "Olive Branch Petition" to King George III.

            D) George Washington was named as acting President.

18. In the Carolinas, Loyalists were most numerous among the:

            A) ordinary folk living in the backcountry.

            B) propertyless day laborers in the port cities.

            C) wealthiest planters in the coastal regions.

            D) members of Anglican congregations.

                       

19. Hessian soldiers participated in the American Revolution:

            A) as voluntary supporters of the British cause.

            B) as paid mercenaries for the British.

            C) as voluntary supporters of the American cause.

            D) as paid mercenaries for the Americans.

20. "Women of the Army" were:

            A) women who dressed up as men in order to fight.

B) wives of the Continental Army soldiers who fought on the home front by tending farms, mills, shops, etC)

C) relatively poor women who followed the Continental Army, performing chores such as cooking and nursing.

            D) wealthy women who nursed wounded soldiers

21. The Continentals who crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776 were:

            A) evacuating Philadelphia as it was being overrun by the British forces.

            B) deserting the army because of miserable conditions.

            C) ambushed by the British and hanged for treason.

            D) led by George Washington and en route to a successful surprise attack.

22. The French decided to actively support the Americans against the British:

            A) because of their admiration for the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

B) after the surrender of British forces at Saratoga convinced the French the Continentals could win.

C) after the fall of New York to the British convinced the French the Continentals were on the verge of defeat.

            D) as soon as the Seven Years' War came to an end.

23. The last major phase in the fighting of the American Revolutionary War took place in:

            A) Canada.

            B) New England.

            C) the Middle States.

            D) the South.

24. During the American Revolution, African-American slaves:

            A) were unwilling to fight for either the British or the Continentals.

B) fought for the British when promised their freedom, but not for the Continentals, whom they distrusted.

            C) fought only for the Continentals.

            D) were willing to fight for whichever side promised them freedom.

25. Benedict Arnold defected to the British cause:

            A) when he became convinced the Continentals could not win.

            B) because he despised the French.

C) due to his personal debt and his feeling that the Continental Congress had not treated the Continental Army fairly.

            D) when George Washington became Commander-in-Chief.

           

26. Which of the following is TRUE about the British surrender at Yorktown?

A) The British decided after Yorktown to redouble their efforts to put down the American Revolution.

B) It proved that the colonials were the decisive factors in winning independence, not the largely symbolic French effort.

            C) It might not have been necessary had the British navy arrived in time.

            D) It proved the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare.

27. The text suggests that a fundamental question at the outset of the Revolution was, “Will they fight?” Different individuals answered this in different ways. Which of the following does NOT accurately state one of the answers?

A) Northern Anglicans, recent emigrants from England, and losers in earlier intracolonial conflicts tended to remain loyal to the British.

B) Most middle-class American revolutionaries preferred to join the Continental Army rather than merely become part of their local militias.

C) The war to protect liberty and property was, ironically, waged by those classes of Americans who werepoor and least free.

D) In the latter part of the war, brutal civil war between loyalist and rebel bands raged across the South.

28. Actions taken by the Continental Congress before the Declaration of Independence that seemed to be the actions of an independent government included all EXCEPT:

A) drafting the Olive Branch petition.

B) creation of a Continental Army.

C) dealing with Canada.

D) opening American trade to other nations.

29. The first, briefer section of the Declaration of Independence dealt with_________________ , while the second included________________.

A) American grievances; reasons for now becoming independent of the English

B) the general right of revolution based on natural rights; the specific offenses of King George III by which England forfeited its right to rule Americans

C) the announcement of American independence; the reasons why such a declaration must be made at this time

D) the assertion that all men are created equal; the rights of life, liberty, and happiness as justifications for severing ties with England

30. The ranks of loyalists included:

A) a disproportionate number of New Englanders.

B) a majority of southern Anglicans.

C) a large number of recent emigrants from the British Isles.

D) middle-class artisans in the port towns of the middle colonies.

31. Spinning bees and dressing down in homespun:

A) were ways in which poor women were forced to support the Army.

B) were tactics used by loyalists to demonstrate that independence would lower the American standard of living.

C) contributed to the solidarity of resistance by displaying fewer differences in appearance between rich and poor.

D) helped to raise money and provide clothing for the Continental Army.

32. George Washington’s desire to create a professional military establishment:

A) was at first undermined by the republican fear of standing armies.

B) was eventually fulfilled by the power of the Second Continental Congress to draft soldiers.

C) diminished quickly because he came to rely almost wholly on the militia.

D) rose quickly because he concentrated on offensive military strategy rather than on discipline.

33. At first, the bulk of the Continental Army was recruited from the_______________  , but eventually most Continental soldiers were _________________.

A) New England states; from the middle states plus Virginia

B) lower classes; solidly middle class

C) militias; drawn from the poorest and least free

D) farmers conscripted by the provincial congresses and state legislatures; volunteers

34. The initial fighting in the war occurred in New England; most engagements in the two years after the Declaration of Independence took place in _______________________ ; the conflict in the later war years raged across _______________________________.

A) the Chesapeake; the Hudson valley

B) the Chesapeake; the Carolinas and Georgia

C) the middle states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania); the Carolinas and Virginia

D) the port towns in the middle states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania); the backcountry

35. The Continental Army gained a key victory over the British at __________________ , which demonstrated its ability as a fighting force and won support for its cause in the region.

A) Trenton

B) New York

C) Brandywine Creek

D) Germantown

36. In carrying out the war in America, British leadership made key mistakes, including all of these EXCEPT:

A) alienating the civilian population.

B) overestimating the extent of loyalist support.

C) underestimating the effectiveness of local rebel militia.

D) forming large regiments of escaped slaves.

                                          

37. “Saratoga changed everything,” says your text. This refers to the fact that:

A) Britain’s success meant they retained control of the seas after all.

B) Britain’s defeat led to a treaty of alliance with France, opening a new phase of the war.

C) Britain’s defeat meant they abandoned all hope of subduing the rebellion and opened negotiations for peace and American independence.

D) the military standoff forced General Howe to turn toward Philadelphia instead of linking up with General Burgoyne.

38. Which of the following best explains why the French fought against Britain in the American Revolution?

A) They expected to be able to regain territory in North America.

B) They sympathized with the republican principles by which the Americans fought.

C) The successful British occupation of Philadelphia convinced them that the Americans were losing and needed help.

D) They feared that the Americans would reconcile with Britain, their historic enemy.

39. Despite great triumphs on the battlefield and at the diplomatic bargaining table, the Continental Army suffered at Valley Forge because:

A) Congress and the civilians responsible for providing for the Army were disorganized and corrupt.

B) the military leadership, in order to instill true discipline, drilled the soldiers beyond their endurance.

C) the winter was unusually harsh and the Army was compelled to camp outdoors.

D) the soldiers were never told of the victories elsewhere.

40. Which statement about the regulars of the Continental Army is true?

A) Most of the soldiers were older propertied farmers with families whose substantial farms, left to the care of wives and children in their long absence, fell into disrepair.

B) Despite the hardships, Continental soldiers—who had enlisted for the sake of liberty—refused the temptations of desertion and mutiny that plagued the hired armies of Europe.

C) While local partisans in the South often ran at the first encounter with the enemy, the Continental Army proved its mettle in a series of victories in the Carolinas and Georgia.

D) In social composition and military tactics, the American army came to resemble European armies.

41. The British shifted to a southern strategy after 1778 because:

A) they felt they could exploit slave unrest.

B) they felt they could exploit loyalist support.

C) they had been driven out of their beachheads in northern cities.

D) the Continental Army was tied down defending the North.

42. For the southern backcountry, the Revolutionary War meant:

A) relative calm due to isolation from the fighting.

B) bitter, bloody partisan civil war.

C) suffering from slave uprisings as well as guerrilla war.

D) a series of significant victories by the Continental Army.

43. The slave revolts so dreaded by southern whites never materialized during the fight in the South. The possible reasons why this was so included all the following EXCEPT:

A) the partisan war made collective resistance and escape too great a risk.

B) greater white precautions discouraged potential black rebels.

C) the boldest slaves were drawn off into the armies.

D) the British encouraged escape and enlistment in the British army instead of an uprising against their masters.

44. George Washington’s victory at Yorktown came as a joint achievement of the Continental Army and:

A) the French Army.

B) the French Navy.

C) militia from the area.

D) all of the above.

45. In the end, what is the best answer to the question posed by the British: Would Americans fight for freedom?

A) Yes, but only according to Indian-style guerrilla warfare.

B) Yes, but only on their own terms.

C) No, not unless they were fighting to defend their own personal property.

D) No, they would not.

46. The common attire of the frontier, the “hunting shirt”:

A) was made of woven cloth imported from England.

B) united the gentry with ordinary men of the backcountry.

C) separated the ordinary men from the gentry.

D) showed sympathy with the mother country, England.

Practice Test

1. Britain enjoyed all of the following advantages in the Revolution EXCEPT:

A.     the greatest navy and the best-equipped army in the world.

B.     superior industrial resources.

C.     greater commitment to the conflict.

D.     a coherent structure of command.

E.      None of these answers is correct.

2. The Declaration of Independence stated that governments were formed to:

A.     give men an opportunity to exert power.

B.     reward loyal servants of the state.

C.     promote democracy.

D.     control every aspect of human thought and action.

E.      protect a person's life, freedom, and right to pursue happiness.

3. During the American Revolution, the "women of the army":

A.     assisted in the support of regular troops.

B.     played traditional female roles and were not involved in combat.

C.     served to maintain traditional gender distinctions.

D.     were prostitutes.

E.      often inadvertently betrayed the position of Washington's army.

4. When George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, he was intent on surprising:

A.     American Loyalists.

B.     Indians.

C.     Hessians.

D.     British regulars.

E.      William Howe.

5. After the initial surge of patriotism, American troops:

A.     came primarily from volunteers.

B.     immediately came under the control of the federal government.

C.     came from both conscription and payment of bounties.

D.     were primarily paid substitutes.

E.      increasingly were composed of friendly Indians and freed slaves.

6. John Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga:

A.     convinced the French that they should help the Americans.

B.     caused the British to consider giving up the fight.

C.     made George Washington a military hero.

D.     had little effect on the war in the long run.

E.      led the British to concede New England to the Americans.

7. After a year of war, the British realized:

A.     they had a better chance of success in the South where Tory support was stronger.

B.     the war had become more than just a local phenomenon around Boston.

C.     the American invasion of Canada had taken away a substantial amount of British territory.

D.     that they could win the war by taking Boston.

E.      they could win with a naval blockade.

8. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1783:

A.     the United States gained formal British recognition of American independence.

B.     Spain received Gibraltar from the English.

C.     the United States received all territory east of the Rocky Mountains.

D.     France received Canada from the English.

E.      England was forced to pay reparations to the new American nation.

9. In the Battle of Bunker Hill:

A.     the Patriots suffered light casualties and won the battle.

B.     the British suffered heavy casualties.

C.     Benedict Arnold was wounded.

D.     the British surrendered their main forces to the Patriots.

E.      the Patriots refused to withdraw and were all killed.

10. The British were forced to surrender at Yorktown because:

A.     Clinton ordered Cornwallis to surrender.

B.     Washington was able to defeat the British in the field.

C.     Americans were finally better trained than the British.

D.     the British commander underestimated the size of Washington's army.

E.      French troops and a French fleet helped trap the British.

11. Loyalist sentiment was thought to be stronger in the South than in the North.

A.     True

B.     False

12. Native Americans were pleased with the outcome of the Revolution because it reduced the desire of colonists for western land.

A.     True

B.     False

13. The rebelling colonies had access to sufficient local resources to fight a successful revolution.

A.     True

B.     False

14. The Battle of Saratoga (1777) was both a turning point in the Revolutionary War and a victory for the colonists.

A.     True

B.     False

15. France was an American ally during the Revolutionary War, but it did not provide the Americans with significant amounts of money or munitions.

A.     True

B.     False

16. When the ________ shifted from secret aid to outright alliance with the Americans, the British declared war.

French

17.  Despite many hardships, many women vigorously supported the revolutionary cause in a variety of ways. The _______________ joined in harassing those who opposed the rebel cause.

Daughters of Liberty

18. British strategy changed several times: First they sought to show force in New England, then to take cities in the middle colonies, then finally to regain their colonies in the ________ by drawing on American supporters.

South

19. Americans won a decisive victory at ________ that not only repulsed an invasion from Canada, but changed the whole strategic picture of the war.

Saratoga

20. Written mainly by Jefferson, the ________ both justified why Americans no longer considered themselves English and denied England any authority in the colonies.

Declaration of Independence

21.  ________, through astute diplomacy, both won an ally for America and negotiated the treaty that gave Americans their independence.

Benjamin Franklin

22. The British commander forced to surrender at Yorktown was ________.

Lord Cornwallis

23.  ________, a competent Continental officer who became disillusioned with the American cause despite a key role in several American military successes, went over to the British side and ended up fighting rebels in Virginia.

Benedict Arnold

24. The "________" was an appeal from the Second Continental Congress affirming American loyalty to King George III.

Olive Branch Petition

25. The British commander in the Battle of Saratoga was ________.

John Burgoyne

26. Many American colonists were enraged when the British began trying to recruit German mercenaries known as ________.

Hessians

27. The final and decisive American victory was the surrender of the British force trapped at ________.

Yorktown

Chapter Test

1. In order to gain the support of moderates and conservatives the Second Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition," which affirmed American loyalty to George III.

A.     True

B.     False

2.  Most men preferred to fight as "regular" troops in the Continental Army, with a guarantee of a cash bounty and a yearly clothing issue, than as "irregular" troops in the local militias.

A.     True

B.     False

3. Women, sometimes by choice, but more often by necessity, flocked to the camps of the Patriot armies during the Revolutionary War.

A.     True

B.     False

4. The Olive Branch Petition which was sent to the colonists by King George III offering them an opportunity to affirm their loyalty to the crown, was rejected by the Second Continental Congress.

A.     True

B.     False

5. The principal Americans who negotiated the peace terms with the British were:

A.     Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

B.     Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and John Adams.

C.     John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and Samuel Huntington.

D.     Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

E.      Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay.

6. In spite of rhetoric proclaiming "all men are created equal," slavery survived in America for nearly a century after the Revolution because whites:

A.     harbored racist assumptions about the natural inferiority of blacks.

B.     never considered it immoral or wrong.

C.     feared free blacks would return to Africa.

D.     refused to consider plans to compensate slaveholders for gradual emancipation of slaves.

E.      believed slave labor enhanced American states in world trade.

7. What was the role of the colonial militias?

A.     They played a decisive role in several major battles.

B.     They kept the slave population in line.

C.     They maintained political control in areas not occupied by British troops.

D.     They consisted mainly of African Americans.

E.      They would sometimes switch sides if they did not get paid.

8. In the final phase (1778-81) of the American Revolution, the British:

A.     mounted its largest military assault against the Continental Army.

B.     badly overestimated the support of American Loyalists.

C.     made a focused effort to win public support in the northern colonies.

D.     concentrated its efforts on capturing individual Patriots.

E.      began a policy of "total war" that resulted in several cities being burned to the ground.

9. Most of America's war materials came from:

A.     American manufacturers.

B.     the seizure of British forts and the surrender of British armies.

C.     the capture of supply ships by American privateers.

D.     foreign aid.

E.      the Springfield armory.

10. Which of the following actions on the part of the Britain increased American colonists' support for the war?

A.     seizing colonial merchant ships on the high seas

B.     offering freedom to any slaves who would join the British

C.     shelling of Norfolk, Virginia, reducing the town to smoldering rubble

D.     All of the above

11. During the American Revolution, enslaved African Americans in the colonies:           

A.     joined the British army in large numbers to fight against their American masters.

B.     attempted to escape bondage by different means, including escaping to the North, and serving in the revolutionary or British armies.

C.     were offered their freedom by Americans if they fought against the British.

D.     tried to help Loyalists escape to Canada in exchange for their freedom.

E.      were not significantly affected by the conflict.

12. At the start of the Revolution, American advantages over the British included a:

A.     greater commitment to the war.

B.     larger number of troops.

C.     better equipped navy.

D.     more coherent military command structure.

E.      better relationship with Native American tribes.

13. The areas that least supported the Revolution were the middle colonies and the southern colonies.

A.     True

B.     False

14. The rebelling colonies had access to sufficient local resources to fight a successful revolution.

A.     True

B.     False