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The
American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution which occurred in
colonial North America between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the
Thirteen Colonies defeated the British in the
American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the
United States of America.
The
American colonials proclaimed "
no taxation without representation" starting with the
Stamp Act Congress
in 1765. They had no representatives in the British Parliament and so
rejected Parliament's authority to tax them. Protests steadily escalated
to the
Boston Massacre in 1770 and the
burning of the Gaspee in
Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the
Boston Tea Party in December 1773. The British responded by closing
Boston Harbor and enacting a
series of punitive laws which effectively rescinded
Massachusetts Bay Colony's
rights of self-government. The other colonies rallied behind
Massachusetts, and a group of American Patriot leaders set up their own
government in late 1774 at the
Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance of Britain; other colonists retained their allegiance to the Crown and were known as
Loyalists or
Tories.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when
King George's forces attempted to destroy American military supplies at
Lexington and Concord
on April 19, 1775. The conflict quickly escalated into war, during
which the Patriots (and later their French allies) fought the British
and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Each colony formed a
Provincial Congress which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism, and recruited a
Continental Army led by General
George Washington. The Continental Congress declared King George a tyrant who trampled the colonists'
rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies
free and independent states on July 2, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of
liberalism and
republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal.
The Patriots unsuccessfully
attempted to invade Quebec during the winter of 1775–76, expecting like-minded colonists in British Canada to rally to the cause. The newly created Continental Army
forced the British military out of Boston in March 1776, but
the British captured New York City
and its strategic harbor that summer, which they held for the duration
of the war. The Royal Navy blockaded ports and captured other cities for
brief periods, but they failed to destroy Washington's forces. The
Continental Army captured a British army at the
Battle of Saratoga
in October 1777, and France then entered the war as an ally of the
United States. Britain then refocused its war to make France the main
enemy. Britain also attempted to hold the Southern states with the
anticipated aid of Loyalists, and the war moved south.
Charles Cornwallis captured an army at
Charleston, South Carolina
in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist
civilians to take effective control of the territory. Finally, a
combined American and French force captured a second British army
at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively ending the war. The
Treaty of Paris
was signed September 3, 1783, formally ending the conflict and
confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire.
The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of
the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British
retaining control of Canada, and Spain taking Florida.
Among the significant results of the Revolution were American
independence and friendly economic trade with Britain. The Americans
adopted the
United States Constitution, establishing a strong national government which included an elected
executive, a
national judiciary, and an elected bicameral
Congress representing states in the
Senate and the population in the
House of Representatives. Around 60,000 Loyalists migrated to other British territories, particularly to
British North America (Canada), but the great majority remained in the United States.
Origin
1651–1748: Early seeds
As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the
American colonies, and Parliament passed the
Navigation Acts on October 9 to provide the plantation colonies of the south with a profitable export market. The Acts prohibited British producers from growing tobacco and also encouraged shipbuilding, particularly in the
New England colonies. Some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists,
but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious,
as the merchants most directly affected were also the most politically
active.
King Philip's War
ended in 1678, which the New England colonies fought without any
military assistance from England, and this contributed to the
development of a unique identity separate from that of the British
people. But
King Charles II
determined to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized
administration in the 1680s to regulate trade to more effectively
benefit the homeland. The New England colonists fiercely opposed his efforts, and the Crown nullified their colonial charters in response. Charles' successor
James II finalized these efforts in 1686, establishing the consolidated
Dominion of New England.
Dominion rule triggered bitter resentment throughout New England; the
enforcement of the unpopular Navigation Acts and the curtailing of local
democracy angered the colonists. New Englanders were encouraged, however, by a
change of government in England which saw James II effectively abdicate, and a
populist uprising in New England overthrew Dominion rule on April 18, 1689.
Colonial governments reasserted their control after the revolt, and
successive governments made no more attempts to restore the Dominion.
Subsequent English governments continued in their efforts to tax certain goods, passing acts regulating the trade of
wool,
hats, and
molasses.
The Molasses Act of 1733 was particularly egregious to the colonists,
as a significant part of colonial trade relied on molasses. The taxes
severely damaged the New England economy and resulted in a surge of
smuggling, bribery, and intimidation of customs officials. Colonial wars fought in America were also a source of considerable tension. The British captured the fortress of
Louisbourg during
King George's War
but then ceded it back to France in 1748. New England colonists
resented their losses of lives, as well as the effort and expenditure
involved in subduing the fortress, only to have it returned to their
erstwhile enemy.
It may be said as truly that the
American Revolution was an aftermath of the Anglo-French conflict in the
New World carried on between 1754 and 1763.
The
Royal Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries of the lands west of Quebec and west of a line running along the crest of the
Allegheny Mountains,
making them Indian territory and barred to colonial settlement for two
years. The colonists protested, and the boundary line was adjusted in a
series of treaties with
Indian tribes. In 1768, the
Iroquois agreed to the
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and the
Cherokee agreed to the
Treaty of Hard Labour followed in 1770 by the
Treaty of Lochaber.
The treaties opened most of Kentucky and West Virginia to colonial
settlement. The new map was drawn up at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1768 which moved the line much farther to the west, from the green line
to the red line on the map at right.
1764–1766: Taxes imposed and withdrawn
Notice of Stamp Act of 1765 in newspaper
Prime Minister
George Grenville
asserted in 1762 that the whole revenue of the custom houses in America
amounted to one or two thousand pounds a year, and that the English
exchequer was paying between seven and eight thousand pounds a year to
collect. Adam Smith wrote in
The Wealth of Nations
that Parliament "has never hitherto demanded of [the American colonies]
anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by
their fellow subjects at home."
As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate
trade in the American colonies. On October 9, 1651, they passed the
Navigation Acts to pursue a
mercantilist policy intended to ensure that trade enriched Great Britain but prohibited trade with any other nations. Parliament also passed the
Sugar Act,
decreasing the existing customs duties on sugar and molasses but
providing stricter measures of enforcement and collection. That same
year, Grenville proposed direct taxes on the colonies to raise revenue,
but he delayed action to see whether the colonies would propose some way
to raise the revenue themselves.
Parliament finally passed the
Stamp Act
in March 1765, which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first
time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets were
required to have the stamps—even decks of playing cards. The colonists
did not object that the taxes were high; they were actually low.
They objected to their lack of representation in the Parliament, which
gave them no voice concerning legislation that affected them.
Benjamin Franklin
testified in Parliament in 1766 that Americans already contributed
heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said that local governments had
raised, outfitted, and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as
Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries
doing so in the
French and Indian War alone.
London had to deal with 1,500 politically well-connected British Army
soldiers. The decision was to keep them on active duty with full pay,
but they had to be stationed somewhere. Stationing a standing army in
Great Britain during peacetime was politically unacceptable, so the
decision was made to station them in America and have the Americans pay
them. The soldiers had no military mission; they were not there to
defend the colonies because there was no threat to the colonies.
The
Sons of Liberty
formed that same year in 1765, and they used public demonstrations,
boycotts, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws
were unenforceable. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of
the vice admiralty court and looted the home of chief justice
Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the
Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October. Moderates led by
John Dickinson drew up a "
Declaration of Rights and Grievances" stating that taxes passed without representation violated their
rights as Englishmen, and colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British merchandise.
The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking
authority throughout all British possessions and thus entitled to levy
any tax without colonial approval.
They argued that the colonies were legally British corporations
subordinate to the British parliament, and they pointed to numerous
instances where Parliament had made laws in the past that were binding
on the colonies. Parliament insisted that the colonies effectively enjoyed a "
virtual representation" as most British people did, as only a small minority of the British population elected representatives to Parliament, but Americans such as
James Otis maintained that they were not "virtually represented" at all.
The
Rockingham
government came to power in July 1765, and Parliament debated whether
to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it. Benjamin
Franklin made the case for repeal, explaining that the colonies had
spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood defending the empire in a
series of wars against the French and Indians, and that further taxes to
pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a rebellion.
Parliament agreed and repealed the tax on February 21, 1766, but they
insisted in the
Declaratory Act of March 1766 that they retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". The repeal nonetheless caused widespread celebrations in the colonies.
1767–1773: Townshend Acts and the Tea Act
In 1767, the Parliament passed the
Townshend Acts
which placed duties on a number of staple goods, including paper,
glass, and tea, and established a Board of Customs in Boston to more
rigorously execute trade regulations. The new taxes were enacted on the
belief that Americans only objected to internal taxes and not to
external taxes such as custom duties. The Americans, however, argued
against the constitutionality of the act because its purpose was to
raise revenue and not regulate trade.
Colonists responded by organizing new boycotts of British goods. These
boycotts were less effective, however, as the Townshend goods were
widely used.
In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay
issued a circular letter
to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance. The
governor dissolved the assembly when it refused to rescind the letter.
Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of
the sloop
Liberty, owned by
John Hancock,
for alleged smuggling. Customs officials were forced to flee, prompting
the British to deploy troops to Boston. A Boston town meeting declared
that no obedience was due to parliamentary laws and called for the
convening of a convention. A convention assembled but only issued a mild
protest before dissolving itself. In January 1769, Parliament responded
to the unrest by reactivating the
Treason Act 1543
which called for subjects outside the realm to face trials for treason
in England. The governor of Massachusetts was instructed to collect
evidence of said treason, and the threat caused widespread outrage,
though it was not carried out.
On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of
British soldiers. The crowd grew threatening, throwing snowballs, rocks,
and debris at them. One soldier was clubbed and fell.
There was no order to fire, but the soldiers fired into the crowd
anyway. They hit 11 people; three civilians died at the scene of the
shooting, and two died after the incident. The event quickly came to be
called the
Boston Massacre. The soldiers were tried and acquitted (defended by
John Adams),
but the widespread descriptions soon began to turn colonial sentiment
against the British. This began a downward spiral in the relationship
between Britain and the Province of Massachusetts.
A new ministry under
Lord North
came to power in 1770, and Parliament withdrew all taxes except the tax
on tea, giving up its efforts to raise revenue while maintaining the
right to tax. This temporarily resolved the crisis, and the boycott of
British goods largely ceased, with only the more radical patriots such
as
Samuel Adams continuing to agitate.
In June 1772, American
patriots, including
John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations in what became known as the
Gaspee Affair. The affair was investigated for possible treason, but no action was taken.
In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed
salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been
paid by local authorities. This would reduce the influence of colonial
representatives over their government. Samuel Adams in Boston set about
creating new Committees of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all
13 colonies and eventually provided the framework for a rebel
government. Virginia, the largest colony, set up its Committee of
Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas
Jefferson served.
A total of about 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on "Committees of
Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of
the leadership in their communities. Loyalists were excluded. The
committees became the
leaders
of the American resistance to British actions, and largely determined
the war effort at the state and local level. When the First Continental
Congress decided to boycott British products, the colonial and local
Committees took charge, examining merchant records and publishing the
names of merchants who attempted to defy the boycott by importing
British goods.
In 1773,
private letters were published
in which Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson claimed that the
colonists could not enjoy all English liberties, and Lieutenant Governor
Andrew Oliver
called for the direct payment of colonial officials. The letters'
contents were used as evidence of a systematic plot against American
rights, and discredited Hutchinson in the eyes of the people; the
Assembly petitioned for his recall.
Benjamin Franklin,
postmaster general for the colonies, acknowledged that he leaked the
letters, which led to him being berated by British officials and fired
from his job.
Meanwhile, Parliament passed the
Tea Act to lower the price of taxed tea exported to the colonies to help the
East India Company
undersell smuggled Dutch tea. Special consignees were appointed to sell
the tea to bypass colonial merchants. The act was opposed by those who
resisted the taxes and also by smugglers who stood to lose business.
In most instances, the consignees were forced to resign and the tea was
turned back, but Massachusetts governor Hutchinson refused to allow
Boston merchants to give in to pressure. A town meeting in Boston
determined that the tea would not be landed, and ignored a demand from
the governor to disperse. On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led by
Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke the appearance of American Indians,
boarded the ships of the
British East India Company
and dumped £10,000 worth of tea from their holds (approximately
£636,000 in 2008) into Boston Harbor. Decades later, this event became
known as the
Boston Tea Party and remains a significant part of American patriotic lore.
1774–1775: Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act
The British government responded by passing several Acts which came to be known as the
Intolerable Acts, which further darkened colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the
Massachusetts Government Act which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings. The second act was the
Administration of Justice Act
which ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be
arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies. The third Act was the
Boston Port Act,
which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated
for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party. The fourth Act was the
Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner.
In response, Massachusetts patriots issued the
Suffolk Resolves
and formed an alternative shadow government known as the "Provincial
Congress" which began training militia outside British-occupied Boston. In September 1774, the
First Continental Congress
convened, consisting of representatives from each colony, to serve as a
vehicle for deliberation and collective action. During secret debates,
conservative
Joseph Galloway
proposed the creation of a colonial Parliament that would be able to
approve or disapprove of acts of the British Parliament, but his idea
was not accepted. The Congress instead endorsed the proposal of John
Adams that Americans would obey Parliament voluntarily but would resist
all taxes in disguise. Congress called for a boycott beginning on 1
December 1774 of all British goods; it was enforced by new committees
authorized by the Congress.
Military hostilities begin
Join, or Die by Benjamin Franklin was recycled to encourage the former colonies to unite against British rule.
Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775
and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest
their leaders, leading to the
Battles of Lexington and Concord
on 19 April 1775. The Patriots laid siege to Boston, expelled royal
officials from all the colonies, and took control through the
establishment of
Provincial Congresses. The
Battle of Bunker Hill
followed on June 17, 1775. It was a British victory—but at a great
cost: about 1,000 British casualties from a garrison of about 6,000, as
compared to 500 American casualties from a much larger force. The Second Continental Congress was divided on the best course of action, but eventually produced the
Olive Branch Petition, in which they attempted to come to an accord with
King George. The king, however, issued a
Proclamation of Rebellion which stated that the states were "in rebellion" and the members of Congress were traitors.
The war that arose was in some ways a classic
insurgency As
Benjamin Franklin wrote to
Joseph Priestley
in October 1775: "Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed
150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a head ... During the same
time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data his
mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary
to kill us all.".
In the winter of 1775, the Americans
invaded Canada under generals
Benedict Arnold and
Richard Montgomery,
expecting to rally sympathetic colonists there. The attack was a
failure; many Americans who weren't killed were either captured or died
of smallpox.
In March 1776, the Continental Army forced the British to
evacuate Boston,
with George Washington as the commander of the new army. The
revolutionaries now fully controlled all thirteen colonies and were
ready to declare independence. There still were many Loyalists, but they
were no longer in control anywhere by July 1776, and all of the Royal
officials had fled.
Creating new state constitutions
Following the
Battle of Bunker Hill
in June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the
Boston city limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the
defensive with no protection from the British army. In all 13 colonies,
Patriots had overthrown their existing governments, closing courts and
driving away British officials. They had elected conventions and
"legislatures" that existed outside any legal framework; new
constitutions were drawn up in each state to supersede royal charters.
They declared that they were states, not colonies.
On January 5, 1776,
New Hampshire
ratified the first state constitution. In May 1776, Congress voted to
suppress all forms of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created
authority. Virginia,
South Carolina, and New Jersey created their constitutions before July 4.
Rhode Island and
Connecticut simply took their existing
royal charters and deleted all references to the crown.
The new states were all committed to republicanism, with no inherited
offices. They decided what form of government to create, and also how to
select those who would craft the constitutions and how the resulting
document would be ratified. On 26 May 1776,
John Adams wrote James Sullivan from Philadelphia:
Depend upon it, sir, it is
dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation,
as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters.
There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a
vote. Lads from twelve to twenty one will think their rights not enough
attended to, and every man, who has not a farthing, will demand an equal
voice with any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and
destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks, to one common
level[.]
- Property qualifications for voting and even more substantial
requirements for elected positions (though New York and Maryland lowered
property qualifications)
- Bicameral legislatures, with the upper house as a check on the lower
- Strong governors with veto power over the legislature and substantial appointment authority
- Few or no restraints on individuals holding multiple positions in government
- The continuation of state-established religion
In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, the resulting constitutions embodied:
- universal manhood suffrage, or minimal property requirements for
voting or holding office (New Jersey enfranchised some property-owning
widows, a step that it retracted 25 years later)
- strong, unicameral legislatures
- relatively weak governors without veto powers, and with little appointing authority
- prohibition against individuals holding multiple government posts
The radical provisions of Pennsylvania's constitution lasted only 14
years. In 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature,
called a new constitutional convention, and rewrote the constitution.
The new constitution substantially reduced universal male suffrage, gave
the governor veto power and patronage appointment authority, and added
an upper house with substantial wealth qualifications to the unicameral
legislature. Thomas Paine called it a constitution unworthy of America.
Independence and Union
In April 1776, the
North Carolina Provincial Congress issued the
Halifax Resolves explicitly authorizing its delegates to vote for independence.
By June, nine Provincial Congresses were ready for independence; one by
one, the last four fell into line: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
and New York.
Richard Henry Lee
was instructed by the Virginia legislature to propose independence, and
he did so on June 7, 1776. On June 11, a committee was created to draft
a document explaining the justifications for separation from Britain.
After securing enough votes for passage, independence was voted for on
July 2.
The
Declaration of Independence was drafted largely by
Thomas Jefferson and presented by the committee; it was unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4,
and each colony became independent and autonomous. The next step was to
form a union to facilitate international relations and alliances.
The Second Continental Congress approved the "
Articles of Confederation"
for ratification by the states on November 15, 1777; the Congress
immediately began operating under the Articles' terms, providing a
structure of shared sovereignty during prosecution of the war and
facilitating international relations and alliances with France and
Spain. The articles were ratified on March 1, 1781. At that point, the
Continental Congress was dissolved and a new government of the
United States in Congress Assembled took its place on the following day, with
Samuel Huntington as presiding officer.
Defending the Revolution
British return: 1776–1777
According to British historian
Jeremy Black,
the British had significant advantages, including a highly trained
army, the world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public
finance that could easily fund the war. However, they seriously
misunderstood the depth of support for the American Patriot position and
ignored the advice of General Gage, misinterpreting the situation as
merely a large-scale riot. The British government believed that they
could overawe the Americans by sending a large military and naval force,
forcing them to be loyal again:
Convinced that the Revolution was
the work of a full few miscreants who had rallied an armed rabble to
their cause, they expected that the revolutionaries would be
intimidated .... Then the vast majority of Americans, who were loyal but
cowed by the terroristic tactics ... would rise up, kick out the
rebels, and restore loyal government in each colony.
Washington forced the British out of Boston in the spring of 1776,
and neither the British nor the Loyalists controlled any significant
areas. The British, however, were massing forces at their naval base at
Halifax, Nova Scotia. They returned in force in July 1776, landing in New York and defeating Washington's Continental Army in August at the
Battle of Brooklyn. Following that victory, they requested a meeting with representatives from Congress to negotiate an end to hostilities.
A delegation including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met British admiral
Richard Howe on
Staten Island in New York Harbor on September 11 in what became known as the
Staten Island Peace Conference.
Howe demanded that the Americans retract the Declaration of
Independence, which they refused to do, and negotiations ended. The
British then
seized New York City
and nearly captured Washington's army. They made New York their main
political and military base of operations, holding it until
November 1783. The city became the destination for Loyalist refugees and a focal point of Washington's
intelligence network.
The British also took New Jersey, pushing the Continental Army into Pennsylvania. Washington
crossed the Delaware River back into New Jersey in a surprise attack in late December 1776 and defeated the
Hessian and British armies at
Trenton and
Princeton,
thereby regaining control of most of New Jersey. The victories gave an
important boost to Patriots at a time when morale was flagging, and they
have become iconic events of the war.
In 1777, the British sent Burgoyne's invasion force from Canada
south to New York to seal off New England. Their aim was to isolate New
England, which the British perceived as the primary source of agitation.
Rather than move north to support Burgoyne, the British army in New
York City went to Philadelphia in a major case of mis-coordination,
capturing it from Washington. The invasion army under
Burgoyne was much too slow and became trapped in northern New York state. It surrendered after the
Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. From early October 1777 until November 15, a siege distracted British troops at
Fort Mifflin,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and allowed Washington time to preserve the
Continental Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters
at
Valley Forge.
Prisoners
In August 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the
Crown if they took up arms against royal authority. There were thousands
of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands following their
surrender at the
Battles of Saratoga
in October 1777. Lord Germain took a hard line, but the British
generals on American soil never held treason trials and treated captured
American soldiers as prisoners of war.
The dilemma was that tens of thousands of Loyalists were under American
control and American retaliation would have been easy. The British
built much of their strategy around using these Loyalists.
The British maltreated the prisoners whom they held, resulting in more
deaths to American prisoners of war than from combat operations. At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners.
American alliances after 1778
The capture of a British army at Saratoga encouraged the French to
formally enter the war in support of Congress, and Benjamin Franklin
negotiated a permanent military alliance in early 1778; France thus
became the first foreign nation to officially recognize the Declaration
of Independence. On February 6, 1778, the United States and France
signed the
Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the
Treaty of Alliance.
William Pitt
spoke out in Parliament urging Britain to make peace in America and to
unite with America against France, while British politicians who had
sympathized with colonial grievances now turned against the Americans
for allying with Britain's rival and enemy.
The Spanish and the Dutch became allies of the French in 1779 and
1780 respectively, forcing the British to fight a global war without
major allies and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the
Atlantic. Britain began to view the American war for independence as
merely one front in a wider war,
and the British chose to withdraw troops from America to reinforce the
sugar-producing Caribbean colonies, which were more lucrative to British
investors. British commander Sir
Henry Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and returned to New York City. General Washington intercepted him in the
Battle of Monmouth Court House,
the last major battle fought in the north. After an inconclusive
engagement, the British retreated to New York City. The northern war
subsequently became a stalemate, as the focus of attention shifted to
the smaller southern theater.
Hessian troops hired out to the British by their German sovereigns
The British move South, 1778–1783
The British strategy in America now concentrated on a campaign in the
southern states. With fewer regular troops at their disposal, the
British commanders saw the "southern strategy" as a more viable plan, as
they perceived the south as strongly Loyalist with a large population
of recent immigrants and large numbers of slaves who might be captured
or run away to join the British.
Beginning in late December 1778, they captured
Savannah and controlled the
Georgia coastline. In 1780, they launched a fresh invasion and
took Charleston, as well. A significant victory at the
Battle of Camden
meant that royal forces soon controlled most of Georgia and South
Carolina. The British set up a network of forts inland, hoping that the
Loyalists would rally to the flag.
Not enough Loyalists turned out, however, and the British had to fight
their way north into North Carolina and Virginia with a severely
weakened army. Behind them, much of the territory that they had already
captured dissolved into a chaotic guerrilla war, fought predominantly
between bands of Loyalists and American militia, which negated many of
the gains that the British had previously made.
Surrender at Yorktown (1781)
The British army under Cornwallis marched to
Yorktown, Virginia, where they expected to be rescued by a British fleet. The fleet did arrive, but so did a larger French fleet. The French were victorious in the
Battle of the Chesapeake,
and the British fleet returned to New York for reinforcements, leaving
Cornwallis trapped. In October 1781, the British surrendered their
second invading army of the war under a siege by the combined French and
Continental armies commanded by Washington.
The end of the war
Historians continue to debate whether the odds were long or short for American victory.
John E. Ferling says that the odds were so long that the American victory was "almost a miracle". On the other hand,
Joseph Ellis
says that the odds favored the Americans, and asks whether there ever
was any realistic chance for the British to win. He argues that this
opportunity came only once, in the summer of 1776, and the British
failed that test. Admiral Howe and his brother General Howe "missed
several opportunities to destroy the Continental Army .... Chance, luck,
and even the vagaries of the weather played crucial roles." Ellis's
point is that the strategic and tactical decisions of the Howes were
fatally flawed because they underestimated the challenges posed by the
Patriots. Ellis concludes that, once the Howe brothers failed, the
opportunity "would never come again" for a British victory.
Support for the conflict had never been strong in Britain, where
many sympathized with the Americans, but now it reached a new low.
King George wanted to fight on, but his supporters lost control of
Parliament and they launched no further offensives in America. War erupted between America and Britain three decades later with the
War of 1812, which firmly established the permanence of the United States and its complete autonomy.
Washington did not know whether the British might reopen
hostilities after Yorktown. They still had 26,000 troops occupying New
York City, Charleston, and Savannah, together with a powerful fleet. The
French army and navy departed, so the Americans were on their own in
1782–83. The treasury was empty, and the unpaid soldiers were growing restive, almost to the point of mutiny or possible
coup d'état. Washington dispelled the unrest among officers of the
Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783, and Congress subsequently created the promise of a five years bonus for all officers.
Paris peace treaty
During negotiations in Paris, the American delegation discovered that
France supported American independence but no territorial gains, hoping
to confine the new nation to the area east of the Appalachian
Mountains. The Americans opened direct secret negotiations with London,
cutting out the French. British Prime Minister
Lord Shelburne was in charge of the British negotiations, and he saw a chance to make the United States a valuable economic partner.
The US obtained all the land east of the Mississippi River, south of
Canada, and north of Florida. It gained fishing rights off Canadian
coasts, and agreed to allow British merchants and Loyalists to recover
their property. Prime Minister Shelburne foresaw highly profitable
two-way trade between Britain and the rapidly growing United States,
which did come to pass. The blockade was lifted and all British
interference had been driven out, and American merchants were free to
trade with any nation anywhere in the world.
The British largely abandoned their American Indian allies, who
were not a party to this treaty and did not recognize it until they were
defeated militarily by the United States. However, the British did sell
them munitions and maintain forts in American territory until the
Jay Treaty of 1795.
Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain. The war revealed the limitations of Britain's
fiscal-military state
when they discovered that they suddenly faced powerful enemies with no
allies, and they were dependent on extended and vulnerable transatlantic
lines of communication. The defeat heightened dissension and escalated
political antagonism to the King's ministers. Inside Parliament, the
primary concern changed from fears of an over-mighty monarch to the
issues of representation, parliamentary reform, and government
retrenchment. Reformers sought to destroy what they saw as widespread
institutional corruption,
and the result was a crisis from 1776 to 1783. The peace in 1783 left
France financially prostrate, while the British economy boomed thanks to
the return of American business. The crisis ended after 1784 thanks to
the King's shrewdness in outwitting
Charles James Fox (the leader of the
Fox-North Coalition), and renewed confidence in the system engendered by the leadership of Prime Minister
William Pitt. Some historians suggest that loss of the American colonies enabled Britain to deal with the
French Revolution with more unity and better organization than would otherwise have been the case. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa with subsequent exploration leading to the rise of the
Second British Empire.
Finance
Britain's war against the Americans, the French, and the Spanish cost
about £100 million, and the Treasury borrowed 40-percent of the money
that it needed. Heavy spending brought France to the
verge of bankruptcy and revolution,
while the British had relatively little difficulty financing their war,
keeping their suppliers and soldiers paid, and hiring tens of thousands
of German soldiers.
Britain had a sophisticated financial system based on the wealth of
thousands of landowners who supported the government, together with
banks and financiers in London. The British tax system collected about
12 percent of the GDP in taxes during the 1770s.
In sharp contrast, Congress and the American states had no end of difficulty financing the war.
In 1775, there was at most 12 million dollars in gold in the colonies,
not nearly enough to cover current transactions, let alone finance a
major war. The British made the situation much worse by imposing a tight
blockade on every American port, which cut off almost all imports and
exports. One partial solution was to rely on volunteer support from
militiamen and donations from patriotic citizens.
Another was to delay actual payments, pay soldiers and suppliers in
depreciated currency, and promise that it would be made good after the
war. Indeed, the soldiers and officers were given land grants in 1783 to
cover the wages that they had earned but had not been paid during the
war. The national government did not have a strong leader in financial
matters until 1781, when
Robert Morris was named
Superintendent of Finance of the United States. Morris used a French loan in 1782 to set up the private
Bank of North America to finance the war. He reduced the
civil list,
saved money by using competitive bidding for contracts, tightened
accounting procedures, and demanded the national government's full share
of money and supplies from the individual states.
Congress used four main methods to cover the cost of the war, which cost about 66 million dollars in specie (gold and silver).
Congress made issues of paper money in 1775–1780 and in 1780–81. The
first issue amounted to 242 million dollars. This paper money would
supposedly be redeemed for state taxes, but the holders were eventually
paid off in 1791 at the rate of one cent on the dollar. By 1780, the
paper money was "not worth a Continental", as people said.
The skyrocketing inflation was a hardship on the few people who had
fixed incomes, but 90 percent of the people were farmers and were not
directly affected by it. Debtors benefited by paying off their debts
with depreciated paper. The greatest burden was borne by the soldiers of
the Continental Army whose wages were usually paid late and declined in
value every month, weakening their morale and adding to the hardships
of their families.
Beginning in 1777, Congress repeatedly asked the states to
provide money, but the states had no system of taxation and were of
little help. By 1780, Congress was making requisitions for specific
supplies of corn, beef, pork, and other necessities, an inefficient
system which barely kept the army alive.
Starting in 1776, the Congress sought to raise money by loans from
wealthy individuals, promising to redeem the bonds after the war. The
bonds were redeemed in 1791 at face value, but the scheme raised little
money because Americans had little specie, and many of the rich
merchants were supporters of the Crown. The French secretly supplied the
Americans with money, gunpowder, and munitions to weaken Great Britain;
the subsidies continued when France entered the war in 1778, and the
French government and Paris bankers lent large sums to the American war
effort. The Americans struggled to pay off the loans; they ceased
making interest payments to France in 1785 and defaulted on installments
due in 1787. In 1790, however, they resumed regular payments on their
debts to the French, and settled their accounts with the French government in 1795 by selling the debt to James Swan, an American banker.
Concluding the Revolution
Creating a "more perfect union" and guaranteeing rights
The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity. The
national government was still operating under the Articles of
Confederation and settled the issue of the western territories, which
the states ceded to Congress. American settlers moved rapidly into those
areas, with Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee becoming states in the
1790s.
However, the national government had no money either to pay the
war debts owed to European nations and the private banks, or to pay
Americans who had been given millions of dollars of promissory notes for
supplies during the war. Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander
Hamilton, and other veterans feared that the new nation was too fragile
to withstand an international war, or even internal revolts such as the
Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts. They convinced Congress to call the
Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and named their party the Federalist party. The Convention adopted a new
Constitution which provided for a much stronger federal government, including an effective executive in a
check-and-balance system with the judiciary and legislature.
The Constitution was ratified in 1788, after a fierce debate in the
states over the proposed new government. The new government under
President George Washington took office in New York in March 1789.
James Madison
spearheaded Congressional amendments to the Constitution as assurances
to those cautious about federal power, guaranteeing many of the
inalienable rights that formed a foundation for the revolution, and Rhode Island was the final state to ratify the Constitution in 1791.
National debt
The national debt fell into three categories after the American
Revolution. The first was the $12 million owed to foreigners, mostly
money borrowed from France. There was general agreement to pay the
foreign debts at full value. The national government owed $40 million
and state governments owed $25 million to Americans who had sold food,
horses, and supplies to the Patriot forces. There were also other debts
which consisted of
promissory notes
issued during the war to soldiers, merchants, and farmers who accepted
these payments on the premise that the new Constitution would create a
government that would pay these debts eventually.
The war expenses of the individual states added up to $114 million, compared to $37 million by the central government.
In 1790, Congress combined the remaining state debts with the foreign
and domestic debts into one national debt totaling $80 million at the
recommendation of first Secretary of the Treasury
Alexander Hamilton.
Everyone received face value for wartime certificates, so that the
national honor would be sustained and the national credit established.
Ideology and factions
The population of the Thirteen States was not homogeneous in
political views and attitudes. Loyalties and allegiances varied widely
within regions and communities and even within families, and sometimes
shifted during the Revolution.
Ideology behind the Revolution
The American Enlightenment was a critical precursor of the American
Revolution. Chief among the ideas of the American Enlightenment were the
concepts of natural law, natural rights, consent of the governed,
individualism, property rights, self-ownership, self-determination,
liberalism, republicanism, and defense against corruption. A growing
number of American colonists embraced these views and fostered an
intellectual environment which led to a new sense of political and
social identity.
Liberalism
John Locke's
(1632–1704) ideas on liberty influenced the political thinking behind
the revolution, especially through his indirect influence on English
writers such as
John Trenchard,
Thomas Gordon, and
Benjamin Hoadly, whose political ideas had a strong influence on the American Patriots.
Locke is often referred to as "the philosopher of the American
Revolution" due to his work in the Social Contract and Natural Rights
theories that underpinned the Revolution's political ideology. Locke's
Two Treatises of Government
published in 1689 was especially influential. He argued that all humans
were created equally free, and governments therefore needed the
"consent of the governed". In late eighteenth-century America, belief was still widespread in "equality by creation" and "rights by creation".
Republicanism
The American ideology called "republicanism" was inspired by the
Whig party in Great Britain which openly criticized the corruption within the British government. Americans were increasingly embracing republican values, seeing Britain as corrupt and hostile to American interests. The colonists associated political corruption with luxury and inherited aristocracy, which they condemned.
The Founding Fathers were strong advocates of republican values, particularly
Samuel Adams,
Patrick Henry,
John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson,
Thomas Paine,
George Washington,
James Madison, and
Alexander Hamilton,
which required men to put civic duty ahead of their personal desires.
Men had a civic duty to be prepared and willing to fight for the rights
and liberties of their countrymen. John Adams wrote to
Mercy Otis Warren
in 1776, agreeing with some classical Greek and Roman thinkers: "Public
Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only
Foundation of Republics." He continued:
There must be a positive Passion
for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory,
established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican
Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be
Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride
themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions,
and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections,
when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society.
Thomas Paine published his pamphlet
Common Sense
in January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was widely
distributed and often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly
to spreading the ideas of republicanism and liberalism together,
bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Great Britain and encouraging
recruitment for the Continental Army. Paine offered a solution for Americans alarmed by the threat of tyranny.
Protestant Dissenters and the Great Awakening
Protestant churches that had separated from the Church of England
(called "dissenters") were the "school of democracy", in the words of
historian Patricia Bonomi. Before the Revolution, the
Southern Colonies and three of the
New England Colonies had officially established churches: Congregational in
Massachusetts Bay,
Connecticut, and
New Hampshire, and Anglican in
Maryland,
Virginia,
North-Carolina,
South Carolina, and
Georgia.
New York,
New Jersey,
Pennsylvania,
Delaware, and the
Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations had no officially established churches. Church membership statistics from the period are unreliable and scarce,
but what little data exists indicates that Anglicans were not in the
majority, not even in the colonies where the Church of England was the
established church, and they probably did not comprise even 30 percent
of the population (with the possible exception of Virginia).
President
John Witherspoon of the College of New Jersey (now
Princeton University)
wrote widely circulated sermons linking the American Revolution to the
teachings of the Bible. Throughout the colonies, dissenting Protestant
ministers (Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian) preached
Revolutionary themes in their sermons, while most Church of England
clergymen preached loyalty to the king, the titular head of the English
state church.
Religious motivation for fighting tyranny transcended socioeconomic
lines to encompass rich and poor, men and women, frontiersmen and
townsmen, farmers and merchants.
The Declaration of Independence also referred to the "Laws of Nature
and of Nature's God" as justification for the Americans' separation from
the British monarchy. Most eighteenth-century Americans believed that
the entire universe ("nature") was God's creation
and he was "Nature's God". Everything was part of the "universal order
of things" which began with God and was directed by his providence.
Accordingly, the signers of the Declaration professed their "firm
reliance on the Protection of divine Providence", and they appealed to
"the Supreme Judge for the rectitude of our intentions".
George Washington was firmly convinced that he was an instrument of providence, to the benefit of the American people and of all humanity.
Historian
Bernard Bailyn
argues that the evangelicalism of the era challenged traditional
notions of natural hierarchy by preaching that the Bible teaches that
all men are equal, so that the true value of a man lies in his moral
behavior, not in his class. Kidd argues that religious
disestablishment,
belief in God as the source of human rights, and shared convictions
about sin, virtue, and divine providence worked together to unite
rationalists and evangelicals and thus encouraged a large proportion of
Americans to fight for independence from the Empire. Bailyn, on the
other hand, denies that religion played such a critical role. Alan Heimert argues that
New Light
anti-authoritarianism was essential to furthering democracy in colonial
American society, and set the stage for a confrontation with British
monarchical and aristocratic rule.
Class and psychology of the factions
John Adams concluded in 1818:
The Revolution was effected before
the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the
people .... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments,
and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.
In the mid-20th century, historian
Leonard Woods Labaree
identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them
essentially conservative, opposite to the characteristics of the
Patriots.
Loyalists tended to feel that resistance to the Crown was morally
wrong, while the Patriots thought that morality was on their side. Loyalists were alienated when the Patriots resorted to violence, such as burning houses and
tarring and feathering.
Loyalists wanted to take a centrist position and resisted the Patriots'
demand to declare their opposition to the Crown. Many Loyalists had
maintained strong and long-standing relations with Britain, especially
merchants in port cities such as New York and Boston.
Many Loyalists felt that independence was bound to come eventually, but
they were fearful that revolution might lead to anarchy, tyranny, or
mob rule. In contrast, the prevailing attitude among Patriots was a
desire to seize the initiative. Labaree also wrote that Loyalists were pessimists who lacked the confidence in the future displayed by the Patriots.
Historians in the early 20th century such as
J. Franklin Jameson examined the class composition of the Patriot cause, looking for evidence of a class war inside the revolution. More recent historians have largely abandoned that interpretation, emphasizing instead the high level of ideological unity. Both Loyalists and Patriots were a "mixed lot",
but ideological demands always came first. The Patriots viewed
independence as a means to gain freedom from British oppression and
taxation and to reassert their basic rights. Most yeomen farmers,
craftsmen, and small merchants joined the Patriot cause to demand more
political equality. They were especially successful in Pennsylvania but
less so in New England, where John Adams attacked Thomas Paine's
Common Sense for the "absurd democratical notions" that it proposed.
King George III
The war became a personal issue for
the king,
fueled by his growing belief that British leniency would be taken as
weakness by the Americans. He also sincerely believed that he was
defending Britain's constitution against usurpers, rather than opposing
patriots fighting for their natural rights.
Patriots
Those who fought for independence were called "Patriots", "Whigs",
"Congress-men", or "Americans" during and after the war. They included a
full range of social and economic classes but were unanimous regarding
the need to defend the rights of Americans and uphold the principles of
republicanism in rejecting monarchy and aristocracy, while emphasizing
civic virtue by citizens. Newspapers were strongholds of patriotism
(although there were a few Loyalist papers) and printed many pamphlets,
announcements, patriotic letters, and pronouncements.
According to historian Robert Calhoon, 40– to 45-percent of the
white population in the Thirteen Colonies supported the Patriots' cause,
15– to 20-percent supported the Loyalists, and the remainder were
neutral or kept a low profile.
Mark Lender analyzes why ordinary people became insurgents against the
British, even if they were unfamiliar with the ideological reasons
behind the war. He concludes that such people held a sense of rights
which the British were violating, rights that stressed local autonomy,
fair dealing, and government by consent. They were highly sensitive to
the issue of tyranny, which they saw manifested in the British response
to the Boston Tea Party. The arrival in Boston of the British Army
heightened their sense of violated rights, leading to rage and demands
for revenge. They had faith that God was on their side. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were mostly well-educated, of British stock, and of the Protestant faith.
Loyalists
American Patriots mobbing a Loyalist in 1775–76
The consensus of scholars is that about 15– to 20-percent of the white population remained loyal to the British Crown.
Those who actively supported the king were known at the time as
"Loyalists", "Tories", or "King's men". The Loyalists never controlled
territory unless the British Army occupied it. They were typically
older, less willing to break with old loyalties, and often connected to
the Church of England; they included many established merchants with
strong business connections throughout the Empire, as well as royal
officials such as Thomas Hutchinson of Boston. There were 500 to 1,000
black loyalists,
slaves who escaped to British lines and joined the British army. Most
died of disease, but Britain took the survivors to Canada as free men.
The revolution could divide families, such as
William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and royal governor of the
Province of New Jersey who remained loyal to the Crown throughout the war. He and his father never spoke again. Recent immigrants who had not been fully Americanized were also inclined to support the King, such as
Flora MacDonald, a Scottish settler in the backcountry.
After the war, the most of the approximately 500,000 Loyalists
remained in America and resumed normal lives. Some became prominent
American leaders, such as
Samuel Seabury.
Approximately 46,000 Loyalists relocated to Canada; others moved to
Britain (7,000), Florida, or the West Indies (9,000). The exiles
represented approximately two percent of the total population of the
colonies. Nearly all black loyalists left for Nova Scotia, Florida, or England, where they could remain free. Loyalists who left the South in 1783 took thousands of their slaves with them to be slaves in the British West Indies.
Neutrals
A minority of uncertain size tried to stay neutral in the war. Most
kept a low profile, but the Quakers were the most important group to
speak out for neutrality, especially in Pennsylvania. The Quakers
continued to do business with the British even after the war began, and
they were accused of supporting British rule, "contrivers and authors of
seditious publications" critical of the revolutionary cause. Most Quakers remained neutral, although
a sizeable number nevertheless participated to some degree.
Role of women
Women contributed to the American Revolution in many ways and were
involved on both sides. Formal politics did not include women, but
ordinary domestic behaviors became charged with political significance
as Patriot women confronted a war which permeated all aspects of
political, civil, and domestic life. They participated by boycotting
British goods, spying on the British, following armies as they marched,
washing, cooking, and mending for soldiers, delivering secret messages,
and even fighting disguised as men in a few cases, such as
Deborah Samson.
Mercy Otis Warren held meetings in her house and cleverly attacked Loyalists with her creative plays and histories.
Many women also acted as nurses and helpers, tending to the soldiers'
wounds and buying and selling goods for them. Some of these camp
followers even participated in combat, such as Madam John Turchin who
led her husband's regiment into battle.
Above all, women continued the agricultural work at home to feed their
families and the armies. They maintained their families during their
husbands' absences and sometimes after their deaths.
American women were integral to the success of the boycott of British goods,
as the boycotted items were largely household articles such as tea and
cloth. Women had to return to knitting goods and to spinning and weaving
their own cloth—skills that had fallen into disuse. In 1769, the women
of Boston produced 40,000 skeins of yarn, and 180 women in
Middletown, Massachusetts wove 20,522 yards (18,765 m) of cloth. Many women gathered food, money, clothes, and other supplies during the war to help the soldiers.
A woman's loyalty to her husband could become an open political act,
especially for women in America committed to men who remained loyal to
the King. Legal divorce, usually rare, was granted to Patriot women
whose husbands supported the King.
Other participants
Coin minted for
John Adams
in 1782 to celebrate The Netherlands' recognition of the United States
as an independent nation, one of three coins minted for him; all three
are in the coin collection of the
Teylers Museum
France and Spain
In early 1776, France set up a major program of aid to the Americans,
and the Spanish secretly added funds. Each country spent one million
"livres tournaises" to buy munitions. A dummy corporation run by
Pierre Beaumarchais
concealed their activities. American Patriots obtained some munitions
through the Dutch Republic, as well as French and Spanish ports in the
West Indies. Heavy expenditures and a weak taxation system pushed France toward bankruptcy.
Spain did not officially recognize the U.S. but it separately declared war on Britain on June 21, 1779.
Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, general of the Spanish forces in
New Spain,
also served as governor of Louisiana. He led an expedition of colonial
troops to force the British out of Florida and to keep open a vital
conduit for supplies.
American Indians
Most American Indians rejected pleas that they remain neutral and
instead supported the British Crown. The great majority of the 200,000
Indians east of the Mississippi distrusted the Colonists and supported
the British cause, hoping to forestall continued colonial expansion into
their territories. Those tribes closely involved in trade tended to side with the Patriots, although political factors were important, as well.
Most Indians did not participate directly in the war, except for warriors and bands associated with four of the
Iroquois
tribes in New York and Pennsylvania which allied with the British. The
British did have other allies, especially in the upper Midwest. They
provided Indians with funding and weapons to attack American outposts.
Some Indians tried to remain neutral, seeing little value in joining
what they perceived to be a European conflict, and fearing reprisals
from whichever side they opposed. The
Oneida and
Tuscarora tribes among the Iroquois of central and western New York supported the American cause. The British provided arms to Indians who were led by Loyalists in war parties to raid frontier settlements from the
Carolinas to New York. They killed many settlers on the frontier, especially in Pennsylvania and New York's Mohawk Valley.
In 1776,
Cherokee war parties attacked American Colonists all along the southern frontier of the uplands throughout the
Washington District, North Carolina (now Tennessee) and the Kentucky wilderness area. They would launch raids with roughly 200 warriors, as seen in the
Cherokee–American wars; they could not mobilize enough forces to invade Colonial areas without the help of allies, most often the
Creek. The
Chickamauga Cherokee under
Dragging Canoe allied themselves closely with the British, and fought on for an additional decade after the Treaty of Paris was signed.
Joseph Brant of the powerful
Mohawk
tribe in New York was the most prominent Indian leader against the
Patriot forces. In 1778 and 1780, he led 300 Iroquois warriors and 100
white Loyalists in multiple attacks on small frontier settlements in New
York and Pennsylvania, killing many settlers and destroying villages,
crops, and stores. The Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga of the Iroquois Confederacy also allied with the British against the Americans.
In 1779, the Americans forced the hostile Indians out of upstate New York when Washington sent an army under
John Sullivan which destroyed 40 empty Iroquois villages in central and western New York. The
Battle of Newtown
proved decisive, as the Patriots had an advantage of three-to-one, and
it ended significant resistance; there was little combat otherwise.
Sullivan systematically burned the empty villages and destroyed about
160,000 bushels of corn that composed the winter food supply. Facing
starvation and homeless for the winter, the Iroquois fled to Canada. The
British resettled them in Ontario, providing land grants as
compensation for some of their losses.
At the peace conference following the war, the British ceded
lands which they did not really control, and they did not consult their
Indian allies. They transferred control to the United States of all the
land east of the Mississippi and north of Florida. Calloway concludes:
Burned villages and crops, murdered
chiefs, divided councils and civil wars, migrations, towns and forts
choked with refugees, economic disruption, breaking of ancient
traditions, losses in battle and to disease and hunger, betrayal to
their enemies, all made the American Revolution one of the darkest
periods in American Indian history.
The British did not give up their forts until 1796 in the eastern
Midwest, stretching from Ohio to Wisconsin; they kept alive the dream of
forming a satellite Indian nation there, which they called a Neutral
Indian Zone. That goal was one of the causes of the
War of 1812.
Black Americans
Crispus Attucks was an iconic patriot; he was fatally shot by British soldiers in the
Boston Massacre of 1770 and is thus considered the first American killed in the Revolution
Free blacks in the North and South fought on both sides of the
Revolution, but most fought for the Patriots. Gary Nash reports that
there were about 9,000 black Patriots, counting the Continental Army and
Navy, state militia units, privateers, wagoneers in the Army, servants
to officers, and spies.
Ray Raphael notes that thousands did join the Loyalist cause, but "a
far larger number, free as well as slave, tried to further their
interests by siding with the patriots."
Crispus Attucks was shot dead by British soldiers in the
Boston Massacre in 1770 and is considered the first American casualty of the Revolutionary War.
Many black slaves sided with the Loyalists. Tens of thousands in
the South used the turmoil of war to escape, and the southern plantation
economies of South Carolina and Georgia were disrupted in particular.
During the Revolution, the British tried to turn slavery against the
Americans. Historian
David Brion Davis explains the difficulties with a policy of wholesale arming of the slaves:
But England greatly feared the effects of any such move on its own West Indies,
where Americans had already aroused alarm over a possible threat to
incite slave insurrections. The British elites also understood that an
all-out attack on one form of property could easily lead to an assault
on all boundaries of privilege and social order, as envisioned by
radical religious sects in Britain's seventeenth-century civil wars.
Davis underscores the British dilemma: "Britain, when confronted by
the rebellious American colonists, hoped to exploit their fear of slave
revolts while also reassuring the large number of slave-holding
Loyalists and wealthy Caribbean planters and merchants that their slave
property would be secure". The Colonists, however, accused the British of encouraging slave revolts.
American advocates of independence were commonly lampooned in
Great Britain for what was termed their hypocritical calls for freedom,
while many of their leaders were planters who held hundreds of slaves.
Samuel Johnson snapped, "how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of the Negroes?" Benjamin Franklin countered by criticizing the British self-congratulation about "the freeing of one Negro" named
Somersett while they continued to permit the overall slave trade.
Phyllis Wheatley was a black poet who popularized the image of
Columbia to represent America. She came to public attention when her
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773.
The effects of the war were more dramatic in the South. In Virginia, royal governor Lord
Dunmore
recruited black men into the British forces with the promise of
freedom, protection for their families, and land grants. Tens of
thousands of slaves escaped to British lines throughout the South,
causing dramatic losses to slaveholders and disrupting cultivation and
harvesting of crops. For instance,
South Carolina
was estimated to have lost about 25,000 slaves to flight, migration, or
death—amounting to a third of its slave population. From 1770 to 1790,
the black proportion of the population (mostly slaves) in South Carolina
dropped from 60.5 percent to 43.8 percent, and from 45.2 percent to
36.1 percent in Georgia.
British forces gave transportation to 10,000 slaves when they evacuated
Savannah and
Charleston, carrying through on their promise. They evacuated and resettled more than 3,000
Black Loyalists
from New York to Nova Scotia, Upper Canada, and Lower Canada. Others
sailed with the British to England or were resettled as freedmen in the
West Indies of the Caribbean. But slaves carried to the Caribbean under
control of Loyalist masters generally remained slaves until British
abolition in its colonies in 1834. More than 1,200 of the Black
Loyalists of Nova Scotia later resettled in the British colony of Sierra
Leone, where they became leaders of the
Krio
ethnic group of Freetown and the later national government. Many of
their descendants still live in Sierra Leone, as well as other African
countries.
Effects of the Revolution
Loyalist expatriation
Tens of thousands of Loyalists left the United States following the war, and Maya Jasanoff estimates as many as 70,000.
Some migrated to Britain, but the great majority received land and
subsidies for resettlement in British colonies in North America,
especially
Quebec (concentrating in the
Eastern Townships),
Prince Edward Island, and
Nova Scotia. Britain created the colonies of Upper Canada (
Ontario) and
New Brunswick
expressly for their benefit, and the Crown awarded land to Loyalists as
compensation for losses in the United States. Britain wanted to develop
the frontier of Upper Canada on a British colonial model. Nevertheless,
approximately 85-percent of the Loyalists stayed in the United States
as American citizens, and some of the exiles later returned to the U.S.
Interpretations
Interpretations vary concerning the effect of the Revolution. Historians such as
Bernard Bailyn,
Gordon Wood, and
Edmund Morgan
view it as a unique and radical event which produced deep changes and
had a profound effect on world affairs, such as an increasing belief in
the principles of the Enlightenment. These were demonstrated by a
leadership and government that espoused protection of natural rights,
and a system of laws chosen by the people.
John Murrin, by contrast, argues that the definition of "the people" at
that time was mostly restricted to free men who passed a property
qualification.
This view argues that any significant gain of the revolution was
irrelevant in the short term to women, black Americans and slaves, poor
white men, youth, and American Indians.
Gordon Wood states:
- The American Revolution was integral to the changes occurring in
American society, politics and culture .... These changes were radical,
and they were extensive .... The Revolution not only radically changed
the personal and social relationships of people, including the position
of women, but also destroyed aristocracy as it'd been understood in the
Western world for at least two millennia.
Edmund Morgan has argued that, in terms of long-term impact on American society and values:
- The Revolution did revolutionize social relations. It did
displace the deference, the patronage, the social divisions that had
determined the way people viewed one another for centuries and still
view one another in much of the world. It did give to ordinary people a
pride and power, not to say an arrogance, that have continued to shock
visitors from less favored lands. It may have left standing a host of
inequalities that have troubled us ever since. But it generated the
egalitarian view of human society that makes them troubling and makes
our world so different from the one in which the revolutionists had
grown up.
Inspiring all colonies
After the Revolution, genuinely democratic politics became possible in the former colonies.
The rights of the people were incorporated into state constitutions.
Concepts of liberty, individual rights, equality among men and hostility
toward corruption became incorporated as core values of liberal
republicanism. The greatest challenge to the old order in Europe was the
challenge to inherited political power and the democratic idea that
government rests on the
consent of the governed.
The example of the first successful revolution against a European
empire, and the first successful establishment of a republican form of
democratically elected government, provided a model for many other
colonial peoples who realized that they too could break away and become
self-governing nations with directly elected representative government.
The Revolution had a strong, immediate influence in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France. Many British and Irish
Whigs spoke in favor of the American cause. In Ireland, the Protestants
who controlled Ireland demanded self-rule. Under the leadership of
Henry Grattan, the so-called "
Patriots"
forced the reversal of mercantilist prohibitions against trade with
other British colonies. The King and his cabinet in London could not
risk another rebellion on the American model, and made a series of
concessions to the Patriot faction in Dublin. Armed Protestant volunteer
units were set up to protect against an invasion from France. As in
America, so too in Ireland the King no longer had a monopoly of lethal
force.
The Revolution, along with the
Dutch Revolt (end of the 16th century) and the 17th century
English Civil War,
was among the examples of overthrowing an old regime for many Europeans
who later were active during the era of the French Revolution, such as
the
Marquis de Lafayette. The American Declaration of Independence influenced the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.
The spirit of the Declaration of Independence led to laws ending
slavery in all the Northern states and the Northwest Territory, with New
Jersey the last in 1804. States such as New Jersey and New York adopted
gradual emancipation, which kept some people as slaves for more than
two decades longer.
Status of American women
The democratic ideals of the Revolution inspired changes in the roles of women.
The concept of
republican motherhood was inspired by this period and reflects the importance of
Republicanism as the dominant American ideology.
It assumed that a successful republic rested upon the virtue of its
citizens. Women were considered to have the essential role of instilling
their children with values conducive to a healthy republic. During this
period, the wife's relationship with her husband also became more
liberal, as love and affection instead of obedience and subservience
began to characterize the ideal marital relationship. In addition, many
women contributed to the war effort through fundraising and running
family businesses without their husbands.
The traditional constraints gave way to more liberal conditions
for women. Patriarchy faded as an ideal; young people had more freedom
to choose their spouses and more often used birth control to regulate
the size of their families. Society emphasized the role of mothers in
child rearing, especially the patriotic goal of raising republican
children rather than those locked into aristocratic value systems. There
was more permissiveness in child-rearing. Patriot women married to
Loyalists who left the state could get a divorce and obtain control of
the ex-husband's property.
Whatever gains they had made, however, women still found themselves
subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disfranchised and
usually with only the role of mother open to them. But, some women
earned livelihoods as midwives and in other roles in the community not
originally recognized as significant by men.
Abigail Adams
expressed to her husband, the president, the desire of women to have a
place in the new republic: "I desire you would remember the Ladies, and
be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put
such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands."
The Revolution sparked a discussion on the rights of woman and an
environment favorable to women's participation in politics. Briefly the
possibilities for women's rights were highly favorable, but a backlash
led to a greater rigidity that excluded women from politics.
For more than thirty years, however, the 1776
New Jersey State Constitution
gave the vote to "all inhabitants" who had a certain level of wealth,
including unmarried women and blacks (not married women because they
could not own property separately from their husbands), until in 1807,
when that state legislature passed a bill interpreting the constitution
to mean universal
white male suffrage, excluding paupers.
Status of African Americans
In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state
legislatures and individuals took actions to free numerous slaves, in
part based on revolutionary ideals. Northern states passed new
constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically
abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where
slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century
to abolish slavery by a gradual method; in New York, the last slaves
were freed in 1827.
While no southern state abolished slavery, for a period
individual owners could free their slaves by personal decision, often
providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court
papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves
cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a
reward for service. Records also suggest that some slaveholders were
freeing their own
mixed-race children, born into slavery to slave mothers.
Commemorations
The American Revolution has a central place in the American memory as the story of the nation's founding. It is covered in the schools, memorialized by a
national holiday, and commemorated in innumerable monuments. George Washington's estate at
Mount Vernon was one of the first national pilgrimages for tourists and attracted 10,000 visitors a year by the 1850s.
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