The American Revolution
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
<p>Fought from 1775 to 1781, the American Revolution (aka "The American Revolutionary War" and "The War for American Independence") refers only to the war for the independence of <i>parts of</i> the British parts of North America. The effort was successful and the final treaty in which Great Britain recognized the full independence of the United States of America was signed in 1783. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4">Causes</font></b></font></p>
<p>The English established their colonies in the Western Hemisphere early in the 1600s. Frequently they neglected to supervise the colonies too closely over the next 150 years, which often left many English-speaking inhabitants of these colonies with a strong sense of being colonists first and subjects of the English monarch second. Whether they were loyal to the crown or not, it was commonplace for colonists to think of English people as foreigners. </p>
<p>Colonists in the largest colonies—the 13 situated along the Atlantic coast between Spanish Florida and French Canada—also had aspirations for growth and economic expansion westward into lands inhabited only by Native Americans, called Indians, whose rights were little respected by the colonists. </p>
<p>In 1763 the British, with some from American militias in the Western Hemisphere, won a war against the Spanish and French and took possession of Florida and Canada as part of the war's settlement. From this point on, official British policy as directed by the Board of Trade and Plantation in London was to discourage (and then outlaw) the settlement of western interior lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. </p>
<p>Americans who had planned to establish their fortunes by developing western lands, including many who had legally established claims to that land as a result of military service or trades with the American Indians, were upset at this set back to their aspirations. British policy was motivated by distrust of Americans (a few of whom had traded with the enemy during the war), a desire to keep them as close to the coast as possible, and the perception that the Indian allies who helped them against the French in the war ought to be let alone. </p>
<p>Over the next five years British policy, set by the Board of Trade and Parliament, antagonized and frustrated American economic and political aspirations. The most objectionable laws according to the Americans were:
<ul>
<li><b>The Proclamation of 1763 </b>- limiting American settlement to east of the Appalachians and giving the western lands to Catholic Canada
<li><b> The Sugar Act </b> (1764) - taxing textiles, coffee, wines, and indigo and prohibiting the sale of French wines
<li><b> The Currency Act </b> (1765) - prohibiting the cash-poor colonies from issuing paper money
<li><b> The Stamp Act </b> (1765) - placing a licensing fee on newspapers, playing cards, court papers, and marriage, death, and birth certificates (overturned with the Declaratory Act)
<li><b> The Declaratory Act </b> (1766) - proclaiming Parliament's right to pass laws governing America without input from the Americans
<li><b>The Townshend Revenue Acts </b> (1767) - taxing paper, tea, glass, lead, and paints, and establishing a board of customs commissioners in Boston, Massachusetts
<li><b>The Tea Act </b> (1773) - reestablishing the tea tax after American boycotts forced repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770
<li><b>The Boston Port Act</b>, <b>The Massachusetts Regulating Act</b> and <b>The Government Act</b> (1774) - ending limited self-rule in the most rebellious of the American colonies and closing down the Port of Boston
<li><b>The Administration of Justice Act </b> (1774) - protecting Crown officials from being sued in American courts</ul>
<p>The two sides in this conflict, Parliament and the American colonial leadership, fell quickly into intractable positions. Parliament in London raised taxes to pay the substantial debt that it incurred in protecting the American colonies through several wars and wished to establish that laws established from the motherland were supreme. The Americans however proclaimed their rights as Englishmen not to be taxed by a political body in which they had no representation. </p>
<p>In truth, however, the Americans were not at all interested in getting representation in Parliament in London. They wanted what later generations would refer to as "home rule." Fearing they would be outvoted in Parliament and believing that a legislature removed from its jurisdiction would feel free to act tyrannically (an assumption borne out by London's behavior during those years), they considered the 13 state legislatures to be their own microparliaments and the only legitimate source for levying taxes. They also felt that they paid more than their share of the national debt through the excise and port fees that British shipping merchants passed on to them. </p>
<p>Both sides believed they were in the right and neither side showed any inclination toward compromise. As tensions escalated in the 1770s a number of examples of civil and not-so-civil disobedience demonstrated American displeasure with British colonial rule. The most important of these were: </p>
<ul>
<li><b> The Virginia Resolves </b> (1769) - in which Virginia gentry, followed later by other colonial leaders, organized an effective boycott of taxable luxury items
<li><b> The Boston Massacre </b> (1770) - when Patriot crowds harassed a platoon of British regulars fervently until the troops fired into the unarmed crown (pitchforks not counted) and killed five of them
<li><b> The Gaspee Incident </b> (1772) - in which a British customs schooner run aground off Rhode Island was plundered by colonists
<li><b> The Boston Tea Party </b> (1773) - protests against the Tea Act led to a tragic waste of Earl Grey's best brew. Similar "parties" were held in Providence and New York.
<li><b>The First Continental Congress </b> (1774) - convened extralegally and against royal sanction to organize a more unified boycott and resistance to Britain's colonial policy, eventually issuing the <b> Declaration and Resolves </b>
</ul>
<p>The upshot of all this feuding was that Parliament, supported by King George III, came to believe resistance could only be broken by force of arms—and the Americans came to believe their rights could only be secured by force of arms. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> The War Its Ownself</font></b></font></p>
<p>So the shooting was only a matter of time. The British military governor in Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, aware that local colonial militia were training for self defense, sent an army regiment from Boston toward the townships of Lexington and Concord to capture a weapons magazine and arrest resistance leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in April 1775. Warned by midnight riders, only one of whom was Paul Revere, Adams and Hancock escaped and journeyed to the convening of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. </p>
<p>Meanwhile the British troops ran into a patch of citizens' militia (aka, "the Minutemen") at Lexington Bridge and the two sides began shooting at one another. Who fired the first shot remains an unsolved and totally unimportant mystery. Other militia gathered from around the countryside, eventually forcing the British to retreat back to fortress Boston under a barrage of withering sniper fire. </p>
<p>Within weeks hundreds and eventually thousands of militia troops from neighboring townships gathered to lay siege to Boston (as ordered by the Massachusetts provincial congress) and force the British to leave the town. In June 1775 the Continental Congress elected George Washington to take organize and command of American forces and relieve Boston. Over the next year and a half a few efforts were made by Congress and Crown officials to negotiate a peaceful settlement, but neither side ever agreed to compromises sufficient to their opponents' purposes. </p>
<p>The siege of Boston was the main scene of conflict for the first year of fighting, save for a few port skirmishes, naval actions, and frontier sniping. In March 1776 the British fled Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia—a colony too overwhelmed by occupiers to participate in the rebellion—and General Washington moved his forces west to New York City, expecting that to be the next scene of the fighting. </p>
<p>He was correct and over a series of battles from July to October 1776, a massive British army led by General William Howe hammered the stuffing out of Washington's Patriots, driving them out of New York. Washington's only military accomplishment in losing New York was in keeping his outnumbered army from being totally wiped out. New York City endured a brutal and decidedly <i>un</i>cricket seven-year occupation. </p>
<p>In July 1776 the Continental Congress formally issued its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. American refusal to revoke this declaration at a secret conference between General Howe and American leaders Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in September 1776 signaled the end of serious efforts at peaceful negotiations and the beginning of a full scale war. </p>
<p>About this time, terrible military performance, dwindling recruitment, and loss of supply and materiel began to threaten the collapse of the American military. Only Washington's publicity-seeking sneak attack on German mercenaries at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey on Christmas Day in 1776 allowed the American cause to survive a harsh winter season. </p>
<p>American morale was further bolstered by a huge, unexpected victory in October 1777 at Saratoga, New York, led by Benedict Arnold and a reluctant Horatio Gates. For the most part, however, Howe's troops clobbered the Americans on all fronts during the spring and fall 1777 campaigns. By the next winter most of New York state, parts of the southern states, and the cities of Philadelphia and New York were occupied. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> The French are Useful</font></b></font></p>
<p>Inspired by the stunning American victory at Saratoga, France's King Louis XVII ponied up with a lot of troops and cash in February 1778 to help out the American cause and, oh by the way, tie up the British army while France and Spain attacked them elsewhere around the world. Also in February the fat German homosexual drill sergeant Friedrich von Stueben passed himself off as a baron and ex-general and arrived at the Continental Army's winter headquarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>Von Stueben's training of the American troops vastly increased the fighting abilities and morale of the Continental Army, as proved at the Battle of Monmouth in March 1778. The newest British commander, General Henry Clinton, attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia and was met in the field by Washington's troops led by an inept General Charles Lee. In the 20th Century evidence emerged suggesting Lee was actually working in collusion with the British to frustrate the American cause. But at the time it was believed he merely screwed up when he ordered a pointless and inexplicable retreat in the middle of the battle. </p>
<p>Arriving just in the nick, Washington and his aid General Gilbert the Marquis Lafayette managed to rally their fleeing troops, improvise a classic high-ground defense, and deliver a complete but not quite mortal blow to Clinton's army, which managed to complete its retreat to New York City. Lee went on to be exonerated on charges of cowardice. </p>
<p>Shortly thereafter French troops arrived in America and the war effort shifted to the south. From December 1778 to October 1780 British forces in the South under General Charles Cornwallis won important fights through Georgia and the Carolinas. In October 1780 Washington replaced the militarily challenged Horatio Gates with General Nathaniel Greene, who utilized less European and more Vietcong-like tactics to wear down Cornwallis's army. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> When War Quits Being so Fun</font></b></font></p>
<p>In 1780 the main French army under General Count de Rochambeau was bottled up in Rhode Island by a British naval blockade. In the New York theatre of war, where Clinton's forces from Manhattan threatened Washinton's remaining stronghold in the Hudson Valley—West Point, New York—an attempt to win over the key fortress through another American traitor, General Benedict Arnold, almost succeeded. Arnold soon defected to the British side and proved to be one of the harshest British generals in terms of waging war against civilian targets. </p>
<p>In January 1781 rebellions among disgruntled American conscripts—due mostly to nonpayment and lack of supplies and food—threatened the Army's cohesion again. Washington suppressed the mutinies through cajolings, whippings, speeches, promises of eventual payment, and, in one case, hanging two leading mutineers. The charm was wearing off from the war. </p>
<p>After months of trying to arrange for Rochambeau to help him liberate New York City, Washington began to formulate his final plans for the relief of the city in May and June, 1781. Then word arrived in August from Nathaniel Greene in the South that he finally had Cornwallis on the run—only Cornwallis was running north through Virginia with plans to pillage and plunder his way up to join forces with Clinton's main army at New York. Facing Cornwallis in Virginia were smaller forces under Generals Lafayette, von Stueben, and Anthony Wayne. </p>
<p>Washington dropped his plans for invading Manhattan immediately and force-marched his and Rochambeau's troops south, where they found Cornwallis holed up on a peninsula near Yorktown, Virginia. After a month-long seige, during which Cornwallis's hopes for relief from the Royal Navy were dashed because this was the only time in the entire war that Admiral Count De Grasse's French navy had control of the coast, Washington's combine American and French forces attacked Cornwallis's position at Yorktown and forced a surrender in October 1781. </p>
<p>In a classic display of passive aggressive pettiness, Cornwallis feigned a migraine headache and refused to come out to personally surrender to Washington. Once his army turned in their weapons to the Americans, he had them march back to New York to the song, "The World Turn'd Upside Down." Sheesh. Peace negotiations and the peaceful transfer of New York City and Charlestown would take another two years to complete, but from Yorktown on, the major fighting part of the war was over. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4">Causes</font></b></font></p>
<p>The English established their colonies in the Western Hemisphere early in the 1600s. Frequently they neglected to supervise the colonies too closely over the next 150 years, which often left many English-speaking inhabitants of these colonies with a strong sense of being colonists first and subjects of the English monarch second. Whether they were loyal to the crown or not, it was commonplace for colonists to think of English people as foreigners. </p>
<p>Colonists in the largest colonies—the 13 situated along the Atlantic coast between Spanish Florida and French Canada—also had aspirations for growth and economic expansion westward into lands inhabited only by Native Americans, called Indians, whose rights were little respected by the colonists. </p>
<p>In 1763 the British, with some from American militias in the Western Hemisphere, won a war against the Spanish and French and took possession of Florida and Canada as part of the war's settlement. From this point on, official British policy as directed by the Board of Trade and Plantation in London was to discourage (and then outlaw) the settlement of western interior lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. </p>
<p>Americans who had planned to establish their fortunes by developing western lands, including many who had legally established claims to that land as a result of military service or trades with the American Indians, were upset at this set back to their aspirations. British policy was motivated by distrust of Americans (a few of whom had traded with the enemy during the war), a desire to keep them as close to the coast as possible, and the perception that the Indian allies who helped them against the French in the war ought to be let alone. </p>
<p>Over the next five years British policy, set by the Board of Trade and Parliament, antagonized and frustrated American economic and political aspirations. The most objectionable laws according to the Americans were:
<ul>
<li><b>The Proclamation of 1763 </b>- limiting American settlement to east of the Appalachians and giving the western lands to Catholic Canada
<li><b> The Sugar Act </b> (1764) - taxing textiles, coffee, wines, and indigo and prohibiting the sale of French wines
<li><b> The Currency Act </b> (1765) - prohibiting the cash-poor colonies from issuing paper money
<li><b> The Stamp Act </b> (1765) - placing a licensing fee on newspapers, playing cards, court papers, and marriage, death, and birth certificates (overturned with the Declaratory Act)
<li><b> The Declaratory Act </b> (1766) - proclaiming Parliament's right to pass laws governing America without input from the Americans
<li><b>The Townshend Revenue Acts </b> (1767) - taxing paper, tea, glass, lead, and paints, and establishing a board of customs commissioners in Boston, Massachusetts
<li><b>The Tea Act </b> (1773) - reestablishing the tea tax after American boycotts forced repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770
<li><b>The Boston Port Act</b>, <b>The Massachusetts Regulating Act</b> and <b>The Government Act</b> (1774) - ending limited self-rule in the most rebellious of the American colonies and closing down the Port of Boston
<li><b>The Administration of Justice Act </b> (1774) - protecting Crown officials from being sued in American courts</ul>
<p>The two sides in this conflict, Parliament and the American colonial leadership, fell quickly into intractable positions. Parliament in London raised taxes to pay the substantial debt that it incurred in protecting the American colonies through several wars and wished to establish that laws established from the motherland were supreme. The Americans however proclaimed their rights as Englishmen not to be taxed by a political body in which they had no representation. </p>
<p>In truth, however, the Americans were not at all interested in getting representation in Parliament in London. They wanted what later generations would refer to as "home rule." Fearing they would be outvoted in Parliament and believing that a legislature removed from its jurisdiction would feel free to act tyrannically (an assumption borne out by London's behavior during those years), they considered the 13 state legislatures to be their own microparliaments and the only legitimate source for levying taxes. They also felt that they paid more than their share of the national debt through the excise and port fees that British shipping merchants passed on to them. </p>
<p>Both sides believed they were in the right and neither side showed any inclination toward compromise. As tensions escalated in the 1770s a number of examples of civil and not-so-civil disobedience demonstrated American displeasure with British colonial rule. The most important of these were: </p>
<ul>
<li><b> The Virginia Resolves </b> (1769) - in which Virginia gentry, followed later by other colonial leaders, organized an effective boycott of taxable luxury items
<li><b> The Boston Massacre </b> (1770) - when Patriot crowds harassed a platoon of British regulars fervently until the troops fired into the unarmed crown (pitchforks not counted) and killed five of them
<li><b> The Gaspee Incident </b> (1772) - in which a British customs schooner run aground off Rhode Island was plundered by colonists
<li><b> The Boston Tea Party </b> (1773) - protests against the Tea Act led to a tragic waste of Earl Grey's best brew. Similar "parties" were held in Providence and New York.
<li><b>The First Continental Congress </b> (1774) - convened extralegally and against royal sanction to organize a more unified boycott and resistance to Britain's colonial policy, eventually issuing the <b> Declaration and Resolves </b>
</ul>
<p>The upshot of all this feuding was that Parliament, supported by King George III, came to believe resistance could only be broken by force of arms—and the Americans came to believe their rights could only be secured by force of arms. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> The War Its Ownself</font></b></font></p>
<p>So the shooting was only a matter of time. The British military governor in Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, aware that local colonial militia were training for self defense, sent an army regiment from Boston toward the townships of Lexington and Concord to capture a weapons magazine and arrest resistance leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in April 1775. Warned by midnight riders, only one of whom was Paul Revere, Adams and Hancock escaped and journeyed to the convening of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. </p>
<p>Meanwhile the British troops ran into a patch of citizens' militia (aka, "the Minutemen") at Lexington Bridge and the two sides began shooting at one another. Who fired the first shot remains an unsolved and totally unimportant mystery. Other militia gathered from around the countryside, eventually forcing the British to retreat back to fortress Boston under a barrage of withering sniper fire. </p>
<p>Within weeks hundreds and eventually thousands of militia troops from neighboring townships gathered to lay siege to Boston (as ordered by the Massachusetts provincial congress) and force the British to leave the town. In June 1775 the Continental Congress elected George Washington to take organize and command of American forces and relieve Boston. Over the next year and a half a few efforts were made by Congress and Crown officials to negotiate a peaceful settlement, but neither side ever agreed to compromises sufficient to their opponents' purposes. </p>
<p>The siege of Boston was the main scene of conflict for the first year of fighting, save for a few port skirmishes, naval actions, and frontier sniping. In March 1776 the British fled Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia—a colony too overwhelmed by occupiers to participate in the rebellion—and General Washington moved his forces west to New York City, expecting that to be the next scene of the fighting. </p>
<p>He was correct and over a series of battles from July to October 1776, a massive British army led by General William Howe hammered the stuffing out of Washington's Patriots, driving them out of New York. Washington's only military accomplishment in losing New York was in keeping his outnumbered army from being totally wiped out. New York City endured a brutal and decidedly <i>un</i>cricket seven-year occupation. </p>
<p>In July 1776 the Continental Congress formally issued its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. American refusal to revoke this declaration at a secret conference between General Howe and American leaders Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in September 1776 signaled the end of serious efforts at peaceful negotiations and the beginning of a full scale war. </p>
<p>About this time, terrible military performance, dwindling recruitment, and loss of supply and materiel began to threaten the collapse of the American military. Only Washington's publicity-seeking sneak attack on German mercenaries at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey on Christmas Day in 1776 allowed the American cause to survive a harsh winter season. </p>
<p>American morale was further bolstered by a huge, unexpected victory in October 1777 at Saratoga, New York, led by Benedict Arnold and a reluctant Horatio Gates. For the most part, however, Howe's troops clobbered the Americans on all fronts during the spring and fall 1777 campaigns. By the next winter most of New York state, parts of the southern states, and the cities of Philadelphia and New York were occupied. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> The French are Useful</font></b></font></p>
<p>Inspired by the stunning American victory at Saratoga, France's King Louis XVII ponied up with a lot of troops and cash in February 1778 to help out the American cause and, oh by the way, tie up the British army while France and Spain attacked them elsewhere around the world. Also in February the fat German homosexual drill sergeant Friedrich von Stueben passed himself off as a baron and ex-general and arrived at the Continental Army's winter headquarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>Von Stueben's training of the American troops vastly increased the fighting abilities and morale of the Continental Army, as proved at the Battle of Monmouth in March 1778. The newest British commander, General Henry Clinton, attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia and was met in the field by Washington's troops led by an inept General Charles Lee. In the 20th Century evidence emerged suggesting Lee was actually working in collusion with the British to frustrate the American cause. But at the time it was believed he merely screwed up when he ordered a pointless and inexplicable retreat in the middle of the battle. </p>
<p>Arriving just in the nick, Washington and his aid General Gilbert the Marquis Lafayette managed to rally their fleeing troops, improvise a classic high-ground defense, and deliver a complete but not quite mortal blow to Clinton's army, which managed to complete its retreat to New York City. Lee went on to be exonerated on charges of cowardice. </p>
<p>Shortly thereafter French troops arrived in America and the war effort shifted to the south. From December 1778 to October 1780 British forces in the South under General Charles Cornwallis won important fights through Georgia and the Carolinas. In October 1780 Washington replaced the militarily challenged Horatio Gates with General Nathaniel Greene, who utilized less European and more Vietcong-like tactics to wear down Cornwallis's army. </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#FF6600" size="4"> When War Quits Being so Fun</font></b></font></p>
<p>In 1780 the main French army under General Count de Rochambeau was bottled up in Rhode Island by a British naval blockade. In the New York theatre of war, where Clinton's forces from Manhattan threatened Washinton's remaining stronghold in the Hudson Valley—West Point, New York—an attempt to win over the key fortress through another American traitor, General Benedict Arnold, almost succeeded. Arnold soon defected to the British side and proved to be one of the harshest British generals in terms of waging war against civilian targets. </p>
<p>In January 1781 rebellions among disgruntled American conscripts—due mostly to nonpayment and lack of supplies and food—threatened the Army's cohesion again. Washington suppressed the mutinies through cajolings, whippings, speeches, promises of eventual payment, and, in one case, hanging two leading mutineers. The charm was wearing off from the war. </p>
<p>After months of trying to arrange for Rochambeau to help him liberate New York City, Washington began to formulate his final plans for the relief of the city in May and June, 1781. Then word arrived in August from Nathaniel Greene in the South that he finally had Cornwallis on the run—only Cornwallis was running north through Virginia with plans to pillage and plunder his way up to join forces with Clinton's main army at New York. Facing Cornwallis in Virginia were smaller forces under Generals Lafayette, von Stueben, and Anthony Wayne. </p>
<p>Washington dropped his plans for invading Manhattan immediately and force-marched his and Rochambeau's troops south, where they found Cornwallis holed up on a peninsula near Yorktown, Virginia. After a month-long seige, during which Cornwallis's hopes for relief from the Royal Navy were dashed because this was the only time in the entire war that Admiral Count De Grasse's French navy had control of the coast, Washington's combine American and French forces attacked Cornwallis's position at Yorktown and forced a surrender in October 1781. </p>
<p>In a classic display of passive aggressive pettiness, Cornwallis feigned a migraine headache and refused to come out to personally surrender to Washington. Once his army turned in their weapons to the Americans, he had them march back to New York to the song, "The World Turn'd Upside Down." Sheesh. Peace negotiations and the peaceful transfer of New York City and Charlestown would take another two years to complete, but from Yorktown on, the major fighting part of the war was over. </p>
