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American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, stood to benefit if the American Revolution evolved into a protracted war. Their thirteen colonial state populations were largely prosperous and depended on local production for food and supplies rather than on imports from Britain, which took six to twelve weeks to arrive by cross-Atlantic shipping. The thirteen colonies were spread across most of North American Atlantic seaboard, stretching 1,000 miles. Most colonial farms were remote from the seaports, and control of four or five major ports did not give Britain control over American inland areas. Each state had established internal distribution systems. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Each of the thirteen colonies also had a long-established system of local militia, which were combat-tested in support of British regulars thirteen years before to secure an expanded British Empire. Together, these militias denied France's claims to North America west of the Mississippi River in the French and Indian War. The thirteen colonial state legislatures independently funded and controlled their local militias. In the American Revolution, they trained and provided Continental Line regiments to the regular army, each with their own state officer corps. Motivation was also a major asset: each colonial capital had its own newspapers and printers, and the Patriots enjoyed more popular support than the Loyalists. Britain hoped that the Loyalists would do much of the fighting, but found that the Loyalists did not engage as significantly as they had hoped. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | When the Revolutionary War began, the Second Continental Congress lacked a professional army or navy, but each colony maintained local militias. Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually did not have uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time and lacked the training and discipline of more experienced soldiers. Local county militias were reluctant to travel far from home and they were unavailable for extended operations. To compensate for this, the Continental Congress established a regular force known as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, which proved to be the origin of the modern United States Army, and appointed Washington as its commander-in-chief. However, it suffered significantly from the lack of an effective training program and from largely inexperienced officers and sergeants, offset by a few senior officers. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Each state legislature appointed officers for both county and state militias and their regimental Continental line officers; although Washington was required to accept Congressional appointments, he was still permitted to choose and command his own generals, such as Nathanael Greene; his chief of artillery, Henry Knox; and Alexander Hamilton, the chief of staff. One of Washington's most successful general officer recruits was Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress and Washington used both his regulars and state militias throughout the war; when properly employed, the combination allowed them to overwhelm smaller British forces, as they did in battles at Concord, Boston, Bennington, and Saratoga. Both sides used partisan warfare, but the state militias effectively suppressed Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Washington designed the overall military strategy of the Revolutionary War in cooperation with Congress, established the principle of civilian supremacy in military affairs, personally recruited his senior officer corps, and kept the states focused on a common goal. For the first three years until after fall of Philadelphia and the six-month encampment at Valley Forge, the Continental Army was largely supplemented by local state militias. Washington initially employed the inexperienced officers and untrained troops in Fabian strategies rather than risk frontal assaults against Britain's professional soldiers and officers. Over the course of the entire war, Washington lost more battles than he won, but he never surrendered his troops and maintained a fighting force in the face of British field armies and never gave up fighting for the American cause. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | By prevailing European standards, the armies in America were relatively small, limited by lack of supplies and logistics. The British were constrained by the logistical difficulty of transporting troops across the Atlantic and their dependence on local supplies. Throughout the war, Washington never directly commanded more than 17,000 men, and the combined Franco-American army in the decisive American victory at Yorktown was only about 19,000. At the beginning of 1776, Patriot forces consisted of 20,000 men with two-thirds of them in the Continental Army and the other third in the various state militias. About 250,000 American men served as regulars or as militia for the revolutionary cause over eight years during wartime, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at any time. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | On the whole, American officers never equaled their British opponents in tactics and maneuvers, and they lost most of the pitched battles. The great successes at Boston (1776), Saratoga (1777), and Yorktown (1781) were won by trapping the British far from base with a greater number of troops. After 1778, however, Washington's army was transformed into a more disciplined and effective force, mostly as a product of Baron von Steuben's military training. Immediately after the Continental Army emerged from Valley Forge in June 1778, it proved its ability to match the military capabilities of the British at the Battle of Monmouth, including a black Rhode Island regiment fending off a British bayonet attack and then counter charging the British for the first time as part of Washington's army. After the Battle of Monmouth, Washington came to realize that saving entire towns was not necessary, but preserving his army and keeping the revolutionary spirit alive was more important. Washington informed Henry Laurens, then president of the Second Continental Congress, "that the possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail them little." |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Although the Continental Congress was responsible for the war effort and provided supplies to the troops, Washington took it upon himself to pressure Congress and the state legislatures to provide the essentials of war; there was never nearly enough. Congress evolved in its committee oversight and established the Board of War, which included members of the military. Because the Board of War was also a committee ensnared with its own internal procedures, Congress also created the post of Secretary of War, appointing Major General Benjamin Lincoln to the position in February 1781. Washington worked closely with Lincoln to coordinate civilian and military authorities and took charge of training and supplying the army. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | During the first summer of the war, Washington began outfitting schooners and other small seagoing vessels to prey on ships supplying the British in Boston. The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, and appointed Esek Hopkins as its first commander; for most of the war, the Continental Navy included only a handful of small frigates and sloops, supported by numerous privateers. On November 10, 1775, Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Marines, which ultimately evolved into, and was named, the United States Marine Corps. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | John Paul Jones became the first American naval hero when he captured HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters. The last such victory was by the frigate USS Alliance, commanded by Captain John Barry. On March 10, 1783, the Alliance outgunned HMS Sybil in a 45-minute duel while escorting Spanish gold from Havana to the Congress in Philadelphia. After Yorktown, all US Navy ships were sold or given away; it was the first time in America's history that it had no fighting forces on the high seas. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Congress primarily commissioned privateers to reduce costs and to take advantage of the large proportion of colonial sailors found in the British Empire. In total, they included 1,700 ships that successfully captured 2,283 enemy ships to damage the British effort and to enrich themselves with the proceeds from the sale of cargo and the ship itself. About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the Americans had no major international allies, since most nation-states watched and waited to see how developments unfolded in the conflict in British America. Over time, the Continental Army established its military credibility, defeating or holding their own against British regulars and their hired Hessians known to all European great powers. Battles such as the Battle of Bennington, the Battles of Saratoga, and even defeats such as the Battle of Germantown, proved decisive in gaining the attention and support of powerful European nations, including France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic; the Dutch, impressed by these American victories and conflicts, moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies to overtly supporting them. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The decisive American victory at Saratoga convinced France, which was already a long-time rival of Britain, to offer the Americans the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The two nations also agreed to a defensive Treaty of Alliance to protect their trade and also guaranteed American independence from Britain. To engage the United States as a French ally militarily, the treaty was conditioned on Britain initiating a war on France to stop it from trading with the U.S. Spain and the Dutch Republic were invited to join by both France and the United States in the treaty, but neither was responsive to the request. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | On June 13, 1778, France declared war on Great Britain, and it invoked the French military alliance with the U.S., which ensured additional U.S. private support for French possessions in the Caribbean. Washington worked closely with the soldiers and navy that France would send to America, primarily through Lafayette on his staff. French assistance made critical contributions required to defeat General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The British military had considerable experience of fighting in North America, most recently during the Seven Years' War which forced France to give up New France in 1763. However, in previous conflicts they benefited from local logistics, as well as support from the colonial militia, which was not available in the American Revolutionary War. Reinforcements had to come from Europe, and maintaining large armies over such distances was extremely complex; ships could take three months to cross the Atlantic, and orders from London were often outdated by the time they arrived. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Prior to the conflict, the colonies were largely autonomous economic and political entities, with no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance. This meant that, unlike Europe where the fall of a capital city often ended wars, that in America continued even after the loss of major settlements such as Philadelphia, the seat of Congress, New York, and Charleston. British power was reliant on the Royal Navy, whose dominance allowed them to resupply their own expeditionary forces while preventing access to enemy ports. However, the majority of the American population was agrarian, rather than urban; supported by the French navy and blockade runners based in the Dutch Caribbean, their economy was able to survive. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The geographical size of the colonies and limited manpower meant the British could not simultaneously conduct military operations and occupy territory without local support. Debate persists over whether their defeat was inevitable; one British statesman described it as "like trying to conquer a map". While Ferling argues Patriot victory was nothing short of a miracle, Ellis suggests the odds always favored the Americans, especially after Howe squandered the chance of a decisive British success in 1776, an "opportunity that would never come again". The US military history speculates the additional commitment of 10,000 fresh troops in 1780 would have placed British victory "within the realm of possibility". |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The expulsion of France from North America in 1763 led to a drastic reduction in British troop levels in the colonies; in 1775, there were only 8,500 regular soldiers among a civilian population of 2.8 million. The bulk of military resources in the Americas were focused on defending sugar islands in the Caribbean; Jamaica alone generated more revenue than all thirteen American colonies combined. With the end of the Seven Years' War, the permanent army in Britain was also cut back, which resulted in administrative difficulties when the war began a decade later. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Over the course of the war, there were four separate British commanders-in-chief. The first was Thomas Gage, appointed in 1763, whose initial focus was establishing British rule in former French areas of Canada. Rightly or wrongly, many in London blamed the revolt on his failure to take firm action earlier, and he was relieved after the heavy losses incurred at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts. His replacement was Sir William Howe, a member of the Whig faction in Parliament who opposed the policy of coercion advocated by Lord North; Cornwallis, who later surrendered at Yorktown, was one of many senior officers who initially refused to serve in North America. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The 1775 campaign showed the British overestimated the capabilities of their own troops and underestimated the colonial militia, requiring a reassessment of tactics and strategy. However, it allowed the Patriots to take the initiative and British authorities rapidly lost control over every colony. Howe's responsibility is still debated; despite receiving large numbers of reinforcements, Bunker Hill seems to have permanently affected his self-confidence and lack of tactical flexibility meant he often failed to follow up opportunities. Many of his decisions were attributed to supply problems, such as the delay in launching the New York campaign and failure to pursue Washington's beaten army. Having lost the confidence of his subordinates, he was recalled after Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Following the failure of the Carlisle Commission, British policy changed from treating the Patriots as subjects who needed to be reconciled to enemies who had to be defeated. In 1778, Howe was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton, appointed instead of Carleton who was considered overly cautious. Regarded as an expert on tactics and strategy, like his predecessors Clinton was handicapped by chronic supply issues. As a result, he was largely inactive in 1779 and much of 1780; in October 1780, he warned Germain of "fatal consequences" if matters did not improve. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | In addition, Clinton's strategy was compromised by conflict with political superiors in London and his colleagues in North America, especially Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot, replaced in early 1781 by Rodney. He was neither notified nor consulted when Germain approved Cornwallis's invasion of the south in 1781 and delayed sending him reinforcements believing the bulk of Washington's army was still outside New York City. After the surrender at Yorktown, Clinton was relieved by Carleton, whose major task was to oversee the evacuation of Loyalists and British troops from Savannah, Charleston, and New York City. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | During the 18th century, states commonly hired foreign soldiers, including Britain. During the Seven Years' War, foreign soldiers comprised 10% of the British army and their use caused little debate. When it became clear additional troops were needed to suppress the revolt in America, it was decided to employ professional German soldiers. There were several reasons for this, including public sympathy for the Patriot cause, an historical reluctance to expand the British army and the time needed to recruit and train new regiments. An alternate source was readily available in the Holy Roman Empire, where many smaller states had a long tradition of renting their armies to the highest bidder. The most important was Hesse-Kassel, known as "the Mercenary State". |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The first supply agreements were signed by the North administration in late 1775; over the next decade, more than 40,000 Germans fought in North America, Gibraltar, South Africa and India, of whom 30,000 served in the American War. Often generically referred to as "Hessians", they included men from many other states, including Hanover and Brunswick. Sir Henry Clinton recommended recruiting Russian troops whom he rated very highly, having seen them in action against the Ottomans; however, negotiations with Catherine the Great made little progress. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | Unlike previous wars their use led to intense political debate in Britain, France, and even Germany, where Frederick the Great refused to provide passage through his territories for troops hired for the American war. In March 1776, the agreements were challenged in Parliament by Whigs who objected to "coercion" in general, and the use of foreign soldiers to subdue "British subjects". The debates were covered in detail by American newspapers, which reprinted key speeches and in May 1776 they received copies of the treaties themselves. Provided by British sympathizers, these were smuggled into North America from London by George Merchant, a recently released American prisoner. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The prospect of foreign German soldiers being used in the colonies bolstered support for independence, more so than taxation and other acts combined; the King was accused of declaring war on his own subjects, leading to the idea there were now two separate governments. By apparently showing Britain was determined to go to war, it made hopes of reconciliation seem naive and hopeless, while the employment of what was regarded as "foreign mercenaries" became one of the charges levelled against George III in the Declaration of Independence. The Hessian reputation within Germany for brutality also increased support for the Patriot cause among German American immigrants. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Strategy and commanders | The presence of over 150,000 German Americans meant both sides felt the German soldiers might be persuaded to desert; one reason Clinton suggested employing Russians was that he felt they were less likely to defect. When the first German troops arrived on Staten Island in August 1776, Congress approved the printing of handbills, promising land and citizenship to any willing to join the Patriot cause. The British launched a counter-campaign claiming deserters could well be executed for meddling in a war that was not theirs. Desertion among the Germans occurred throughout the war, with the highest rate of desertion occurring during the time between the surrender at Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris. German regiments were central to the British war effort; of the estimated 30,000 sent to America, some 13,000 became casualties. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Wealthy Loyalists convinced the British government that most of the colonists were sympathetic toward the Crown; consequently, British military planners relied on recruiting Loyalists, but had trouble recruiting sufficient numbers as the Patriots had widespread support. Nevertheless, they continued to deceive themselves on their level of American support as late as 1780, a year before hostilities ended. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war. Although Loyalists constituted about twenty percent of the colonial population, they were concentrated in distinct communities. Many of them lived among large plantation owners in the Tidewater region and South Carolina who produced cash crops in tobacco and indigo comparable to global markets in Caribbean sugar. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | When the British began probing the backcountry in 1777–1778, they were faced with a major problem: any significant level of organized Loyalist activity required a continued presence of British regulars. The available manpower that the British had in America was insufficient to protect Loyalist territory and counter American offensives. The Loyalist militias in the South were constantly defeated by neighboring Patriot militia. The most critical combat between the two partisan militias was at the Battle of Kings Mountain; the Patriot victory irreversibly impaired any further Loyalist militia capability in the South. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | When the early war policy was administered by General William Howe, the Crown's need to maintain Loyalist support prevented it from using the traditional revolt suppression methods. The British cause suffered when their troops ransacked local homes during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779 that enraged both Patriots and Loyalists. After Congress rejected the Carlisle Peace Commission in 1778 and Westminster turned to "hard war" during Clinton's command, neutral colonists in the Carolinas often allied with the Patriots whenever brutal combat broke out between Tories and Whigs. Conversely, Loyalists gained support when Patriots intimidated suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | A Loyalist militia unit—the British Legion—provided some of the best troops in British service; it received a commission in the British Army. It was a mixed regiment of 250 dragoons and 200 infantry supported by batteries of flying artillery. It was commanded by Banastre Tarleton and gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies for "brutality and needless slaughter".In May 1779 the British Legion was one of five regiments that formed the American Establishment. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Women played various roles during the Revolutionary War; they often accompanied their husbands when permitted to do so. For example, throughout the war Martha Washington was known to visit and provide aid to her husband George at various American camps, and Frederika Charlotte Riedesel documented the Saratoga campaign. Women often accompanied armies as camp followers to sell goods and perform necessary tasks in hospitals and camps. They were a necessary part of eighteenth-century armies, and numbered in the thousands during the war. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Women also assumed military roles: aside from military tasks like treating the wounded or setting up camp, some dressed as men to directly support combat, fight, or act as spies on both sides of the Revolutionary War. Anna Maria Lane joined her husband in the Army and wore men's clothes by the time the Battle of Germantown happened. The Virginia General Assembly later cited her bravery: she fought while dressed as a man and "performed extraordinary military services, and received a severe wound at the battle of Germantown ... with the courage of a soldier". |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington is said to have ridden to alert militia forces of Putnam County, New York, and Danbury, Connecticut, to warn them of the British's approach; she has been called the "female Paul Revere". A report in The New England Quarterly says there is little evidence backing the story, and whether the ride occurred is questioned. A few others disguised themselves as men. Deborah Sampson fought until her gender was discovered and discharged as a result; Sally St. Clair was killed in action during the war. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | When war began, the population of the Thirteen Colonies included an estimated 500,000 slaves, predominantly used as labor on Southern plantations. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to any Patriot-owned slaves willing to bear arms. Although the announcement helped to fill a temporary manpower shortage, white Loyalist prejudice meant recruits were eventually redirected to non-combatant roles. The Loyalists' motive was to deprive Patriot planters of labor rather than to end slavery; Loyalist-owned slaves were returned. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | The 1779 Philipsburg Proclamation issued by Clinton extended the offer of freedom to Patriot-owned slaves throughout the colonies. It persuaded entire families to escape to British lines, many of which were employed on farms to grow food for the army by removing the requirement for military service. While Clinton organized the Black Pioneers, he also ensured fugitive slaves were returned to Loyalist owners with orders that they were not to be punished for their attempted escape. As the war progressed, service as regular soldiers in British units became increasingly common; Black Loyalists formed two regiments of the Charleston garrison in 1783. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Estimates of the numbers who served the British during the war vary from 25,000 to 50,000, excluding those who escaped during wartime. Thomas Jefferson estimated that Virginia may have lost 30,000 slaves in total escapes. In South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (about 30 percent of the enslaved population) either fled, migrated, or died, which significantly disrupted the plantation economies both during and after the war. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Black Patriots were barred from the Continental Army until Washington convinced Congress in January 1778 that there was no other way to replace losses from disease and desertion. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment formed in February included former slaves whose owners were compensated; however, only 140 of its 225 soldiers were black and recruitment stopped in June 1788. Ultimately, around 5,000 African Americans served in the Continental Army and Navy in a variety of roles, while another 4,000 were employed in Patriot militia units, aboard privateers, or as teamsters, servants, and spies. After the war, a small minority received land grants or Congressional pensions in old age; many others were returned to their masters post-war despite earlier promises of freedom. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | As a Patriot victory became increasingly likely, the treatment of Black Loyalists became a point of contention; after the surrender of Yorktown in 1781, Washington insisted all escapees be returned but Cornwallis refused. In 1782 and 1783, around 8,000 to 10,000 freed blacks were evacuated by the British from Charleston, Savannah, and New York; some moved onto London, while 3,000 to 4,000 settled in Nova Scotia, where they founded settlements such as Birchtown. White Loyalists transported 15,000 enslaved blacks to Jamaica and the Bahamas. The free Black Loyalists who migrated to the British West Indies included regular soldiers from Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and those from Charleston who helped garrison the Leeward Islands. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Most Native Americans east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many tribes were divided over how to respond to the conflict. A few tribes were friendly with the colonists, but most Natives opposed the union of the Colonies as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Natives fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes who deployed around 1,500 men. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Early in July 1776, Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the short-lived Washington District of North Carolina. Their defeat splintered both Cherokee settlements and people, and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, who perpetuated the Cherokee–American wars against American settlers for decades after hostilities with Britain ended. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | Muscogee and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Muscogee destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Muscogee warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the siege of Savannah. Many Native Americans were involved in the fight between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and along the British side of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Muscogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw fought in major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the siege of Pensacola. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | The Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the American Revolutionary War, whatever side they took; the Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga tribes sided with the British; members of the Mohawks fought on both sides; and many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the Americans. To retaliate against raids on American settlement by Loyalists and their Indian allies, the Continental Army dispatched the Sullivan Expedition on a punitive expedition throughout New York to debilitate the Iroquois tribes that had sided with the British. Mohawk leaders Joseph Louis Cook and Joseph Brant sided with the Americans and the British respectively, which further exacerbated the split. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolution as civil war | In the western theater of the American Revolutionary War, conflicts between settlers and Native Americans led to lingering distrust. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Great Britain ceded control of the disputed lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, but the Indian inhabitants were not a part of the peace negotiations. Tribes in the Northwest Territory joined as the Western Confederacy and allied with the British to resist American settlement, and their conflict continued after the Revolutionary War as the Northwest Indian War. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | Lord North, Prime Minister since 1770, delegated control of the war in North America to Lord George Germain and the Earl of Sandwich, who was head of the Royal Navy from 1771 to 1782. Defeat at Saratoga in 1777 made it clear the revolt would not be easily suppressed, especially after the Franco-American alliance of February 1778, and French declaration of war in June. With Spain also expected to join the conflict, the Royal Navy needed to prioritize either the war in America or in Europe; Germain advocated the former, Sandwich the latter. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | British negotiators now proposed a second peace settlement to Congress. The terms presented by the Carlisle Peace Commission included acceptance of the principle of self-government. Parliament would recognize Congress as the governing body, suspend any objectionable legislation, surrender its right to local colonial taxation, and discuss including American representatives in the House of Commons. In return, all property confiscated from Loyalists would be returned, British debts honored, and locally enforced martial law accepted. However, Congress demanded either immediate recognition of independence or the withdrawal of all British troops; they knew the commission were not authorized to accept these, bringing negotiations to a rapid end. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | When the commissioners returned to London in November 1778, they recommended a change in policy. Sir Henry Clinton, the new British Commander-in-Chief in America, was ordered to stop treating the rebels as enemies, rather than subjects whose loyalty might be regained. Those standing orders would be in effect for three years until Clinton was relieved. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | North initially backed the Southern strategy attempting to exploit divisions between the mercantile north and slave-owning south, but after the defeat of Yorktown, he was forced to accept the fact that this policy had failed. It was clear the war was lost, although the Royal Navy forced the French to relocate their fleet to the Caribbean in November 1781 and resumed a close blockade of American trade. The resulting economic damage and rising inflation meant the US was now eager to end the war, while France was unable to provide further loans; Congress could no longer pay its soldiers. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | On February 27, 1782, a Whig motion to end the offensive war in America was carried by 19 votes. North now resigned, obliging the king to invite Lord Rockingham to form a government; a consistent supporter of the Patriot cause, he made a commitment to U.S. independence a condition of doing so. George III reluctantly accepted and the new government took office on March 27, 1782; however, Rockingham died unexpectedly on July 1, and was replaced by Lord Shelburne who acknowledged American independence. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | When Lord Rockingham, the Whig leader and friend of the American cause was elevated to Prime Minister, Congress consolidated its diplomatic consuls in Europe into a peace delegation at Paris. All were experienced in Congressional leadership. The dean of the delegation was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. He had become a celebrity in the French Court, but he was also an Enlightenment scientist with influence in the courts of European great powers in Prussia, England's former ally, and Austria, a Catholic empire like Spain. Since the 1760s, Franklin had been an organizer of British American inter-colony cooperation, and then served as a colonial lobbyist to Parliament in London. John Adams of Massachusetts had been consul to the Dutch Republic and was a prominent early New England Patriot. John Jay of New York had been consul to Spain and was a past president of the Continental Congress. As consul to the Dutch Republic, Henry Laurens of South Carolina had secured a preliminary agreement for a trade agreement. He had been a successor to John Jay as president of Congress and with Franklin was a member of the American Philosophical Society. Although active in the preliminaries, he was not a signer of the conclusive treaty. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | The Whig negotiators for Lord Rockingham and his successor, Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, included long-time friend of Benjamin Franklin from his time in London, David Hartley and Richard Oswald, who had negotiated Laurens' release from the Tower of London. The Preliminary Peace signed on November 30 met four key Congressional demands: independence, territory up to the Mississippi, navigation rights into the Gulf of Mexico, and fishing rights in Newfoundland. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | British strategy was to strengthen the U.S. sufficiently to prevent France from regaining a foothold in North America, and they had little interest in these proposals. However, divisions between their opponents allowed them to negotiate separately with each to improve their overall position, starting with the American delegation in September 1782. The French and Spanish sought to improve their position by creating the U.S. dependent on them for support against Britain, thus reversing the losses of 1763. Both parties tried to negotiate a settlement with Britain excluding the Americans; France proposed setting the western boundary of the U.S. along the Appalachians, matching the British 1763 Proclamation Line. The Spanish suggested additional concessions in the vital Mississippi River Basin, but required the cession of Georgia in violation of the Franco-American alliance. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | Facing difficulties with Spain over claims involving the Mississippi River, and from France who was still reluctant to agree to American independence until all her demands were met, John Jay promptly told the British that he was willing to negotiate directly with them, cutting off France and Spain, and Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, in charge of the British negotiations, agreed. Key agreements for the United States in obtaining peace included recognition of United States independence, including recognition that the U.S. would gain all of the area east of the Mississippi River, north of Florida and south of Canada, and the granting of fishing rights in the Grand Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; the United States and Great Britain were each given perpetual access to the Mississippi River. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Britain's "American war" and peace | An Anglo-American Preliminary Peace was formally entered into in November 1782, and Congress endorsed the settlement on April 15, 1783. It announced the achievement of peace with independence, and the conclusive treaty was signed on September 2, 1783, in Paris, effective the following day on September 3, 1783, when Britain signed its treaty with France. John Adams, who helped draft the treaty, claimed it represented "one of the most important political events that ever happened on the globe". Ratified respectively by Congress and Parliament, the final versions were exchanged in Paris the following spring. On November 25, the last British troops remaining in the U.S. were evacuated from New York to Halifax. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Washington expressed astonishment that the Americans had won a war against a leading world power, referring to the American victory as "little short of a standing miracle". The conflict between British subjects with the Crown against those with the Congress had lasted over eight years from 1775 to 1783. The last uniformed British troops departed their last East Coast port cities in Savannah, Charleston, and New York City, by November 25, 1783, which marked the end of British occupation in the new United States. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | On April 9, 1783, Washington issued orders that he had long waited to give, that "all acts of hostility" were to cease immediately. That same day, by arrangement with Washington, General Guy Carleton issued a similar order to British troops. British troops, however, were not to evacuate until a prisoner of war exchange occurred, an effort that involved much negotiation and would take some seven months to effect. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | As directed by a Congressional resolution of May 26, 1783, all non-commissioned officers and enlisted were furloughed "to their homes" until the "definitive treaty of peace", when they would be automatically discharged. The U.S. armies were directly disbanded in the field as of Washington's General Orders on Monday, June 2, 1783. Once the Treaty of Paris was signed with Britain on September 3, 1783, Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and left to retire at Mount Vernon. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | The expanse of territory that was now the U.S. was ceded from its colonial mother country alone. It included millions of sparsely settled acres south of the Great Lakes line between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, much of which was part of Canada. The tentative colonial migration west became a flood during the years of the Revolutionary War. Kentucky County, Virginia, for instance, had a 1775 population of 150. By 1790, 15 years later, its population had grown to over 73,000. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Britain's extended post-war policy for the U.S. continued to try to establish an Indian barrier state below the Great Lakes as late as 1814 during the War of 1812. The formally acquired western American lands continued to be populated by a dozen or so American Indian tribes that had been British allies for the most part. Though British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the U.S., Natives were not referred to in the British cession to the U.S. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | While tribes were not consulted by the British for the treaty, in practice the British refused to abandon the forts on territory they formally transferred. Instead, they provisioned military allies for continuing frontier raids and sponsored the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795), including erecting an additional British Fort Miami in Maumee, Ohio. British sponsorship of local warfare on the U.S. continued until the Anglo-American Jay Treaty, authored by Alexander Hamilton went into effect on February 29, 1796. At the same time, the Spanish also sponsored war within the U.S. by Indian proxies in its Southwest Territory ceded by France to Britain, then Britain to the Americans. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Of the European powers with American colonies adjacent to the newly created U.S., Spain was most threatened by American independence, and it was correspondingly the most hostile to it. Its territory adjacent to the U.S. was relatively undefended, so Spanish policy developed a combination of initiatives. Spanish soft power diplomatically challenged the British territorial cession west to the Mississippi River and the previous northern boundaries of Spanish Florida. It imposed a high tariff on American goods, then blocked American settler access to the port of New Orleans. Spanish hard power extended war alliances and arms to Southwestern natives to resist American settlement. A former Continental Army General, James Wilkinson settled in Kentucky County, Virginia in 1784, and there he fostered settler secession from Virginia during the conflict with the Spanish-allied Chickamauga Cherokee. Beginning in 1787, he received pay as Spanish Agent 13, and subsequently expanded his efforts to persuade American settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains to secede from the United States, first in the Washington administration and later again in the Jefferson administration. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | The total loss of life throughout the conflict is largely unknown. As was typical in wars of the era, diseases such as smallpox claimed more lives than battle. Between 1775 and 1782, a smallpox epidemic broke out throughout North America, killing an estimated 130,000 among all its populations during those years. Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Up to 70,000 American Patriots died during active military service. Of these, approximately 6,800 were killed in battle, while at least 17,000 died from disease. The majority of the latter died while prisoners of war of the British, mostly in the prison ships in New York Harbor. The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | The French suffered 2,112 killed in combat in the United States. The Spanish lost a total of 124 killed and 247 wounded in West Florida. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | A British report in 1781 puts their total Army deaths at 6,046 in North America (1775–1779). Approximately 7,774 Germans died in British service in addition to 4,888 deserters; among those labeled German deserters, however, it is estimated that 1,800 were killed in combat. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | The American Revolution established the United States with its numerous civil liberties and set an example to overthrow both monarchy and colonial governments. The United States has the world's oldest written constitution, and the constitutions of other free countries often bear a striking resemblance to the U.S. Constitution, often word-for-word in places. It inspired revolutions in France, Haiti, Latin America, and elsewhere in the modern era. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Although the Revolution eliminated many forms of inequality, it did little to change the status of women, despite the role they played in winning independence. Most significantly, it failed to end slavery which continued to be a serious social and political issue and caused divisions that would ultimately end in civil war. While many were uneasy over the contradiction of demanding liberty for some, yet denying it to others, the dependence of southern states on slave labor made abolition too great a challenge. Between 1774 and 1780, many of the states banned the importation of slaves, but the institution itself continued. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | In 1782, Virginia passed a law permitting manumission and over the next eight years more than 10,000 slaves were given their freedom. With support from Benjamin Franklin, in 1790 the Quakers petitioned Congress to abolish slavery; the number of abolitionist movements greatly increased, and by 1804 all the northern states had outlawed it. However, even many like Adams who viewed slavery as a 'foul contagion' opposed the 1790 petition as a threat to the Union. In 1808, Jefferson passed legislation banning the importation of slaves, but allowed the domestic slave trade to continue, arguing the federal government had no right to regulate individual states. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | The body of historical writings on the American Revolution cite many motivations for the Patriot revolt that ultimately led to the nation's independence and establishment. American Patriots stressed the denial of their constitutional rights as Englishmen, especially "no taxation without representation." Contemporaries credit the American Enlightenment with laying the intellectual, moral, and ethical foundations for the American Revolution among the Founding Fathers, who were influenced by the classical liberalism of John Locke and other enlightenment age writers and philosophers. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Aftermath | Two Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on Revolutionary-era American thinking, but historians David Lundberg and Henry F. May contend that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read than were his political Treatises. Historians since the 1960s have emphasized that the Patriot constitutional argument was made possible by the emergence of a sense of American nationalism that united the Thirteen Colonies. In turn, that nationalism was rooted in a Republican value system that demanded consent of the governed and deeply opposed aristocratic control. In Britain, on the other hand, republicanism was largely a fringe ideology since it challenged the aristocratic control of the British monarchy and political system. Political power was not controlled by an aristocracy or nobility in the 13 colonies; instead, the colonial political system was based on the winners of free elections, which were open at the time to the majority of white men. In analysis of the Revolution, historians in recent decades have often cited three motivations behind it: |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Revolutionary War commemoration stamps | After the first U.S. postage stamp was issued in 1849, the U.S. Postal Service frequently issued commemorative stamps celebrating the various people and events of the Revolutionary War. The first such stamp was the Liberty Bell issue of 1926 on the 150th anniversary of American independence. |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Topics of the Revolution |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Social history of the Revolution |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Others in the American Revolution |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Lists of Revolutionary military |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Thirteen Colony economy |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Legacy and related |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | See also | Bibliographies |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Further reading | A selection of works relating to the war not listed above; |
American Revolutionary War | 771 | Primary sources | Many primary sources are available at Princeton University Law School's Avalon Project and at the Library of Congress' Digital Collections. Original editions for titles related to the American Revolutionary War are also available online at Internet Archive and HathiTrust digital library. |
Ampere | 772 | The ampere (/ˈæmpɛər/ AM-pair, US: /ˈæmpɪər/ AM-peer; symbol: A), often shortened to amp, is the unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI). One ampere is equal to 1 coulomb moving past a point in 1 second, or 6.241509074×10 elementary charge moving past a point in 1 second. It is named after French mathematician and physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), considered the father of electromagnetism along with Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted. |
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Ampere | 772 | As of the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, the ampere is defined by fixing the elementary charge e to be exactly 1.602176634×10 C (coulomb), which means an ampere is an electric current equivalent to 10 elementary charges moving every 1.602176634 seconds or 6.241509074×10 elementary charges moving in a second. Prior to the redefinition the ampere was defined as the current passing through 2 parallel wires 1 metre apart that produces a magnetic force of 2×10 newtons per metre. |
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Ampere | 772 | The earlier CGS system has two units of current, one structured similar to the SI's and the other using Coulomb's law as a fundamental relationship, with the unit of charge defined by measuring the force between two charged metal plates. The unit of current is then defined as one unit of charge per second. In SI, the unit of charge, the coulomb, is defined as the charge carried by one ampere during one second. |
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Ampere | 772 | History | The ampere is named for French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), who studied electromagnetism and laid the foundation of electrodynamics. In recognition of Ampère's contributions to the creation of modern electrical science, an international convention, signed at the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity, established the ampere as a standard unit of electrical measurement for electric current. |
Ampere | 772 | History | The ampere was originally defined as one tenth of the unit of electric current in the centimetre–gram–second system of units. That unit, now known as the abampere, was defined as the amount of current that generates a force of two dynes per centimetre of length between two wires one centimetre apart. The size of the unit was chosen so that the units derived from it in the MKSA system would be conveniently sized. |
Ampere | 772 | History | The "international ampere" was an early realization of the ampere, defined as the current that would deposit 0.001118 grams of silver per second from a silver nitrate solution. Later, more accurate measurements revealed that this current is 0.99985 A. |
Ampere | 772 | History | Since power is defined as the product of current and voltage, the ampere can alternatively be expressed in terms of the other units using the relationship I = P/V, and thus 1 A = 1 W/V. Current can be measured by a multimeter, a device that can measure electrical voltage, current, and resistance. |
Ampere | 772 | History | Until 2019, the SI defined the ampere as follows: |
Ampere | 772 | History | The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed one metre apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2×10 newtons per metre of length. |
Ampere | 772 | History | Ampère's force law states that there is an attractive or repulsive force between two parallel wires carrying an electric current. This force is used in the formal definition of the ampere. |
Ampere | 772 | History | The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, was then defined as "the quantity of electricity carried in 1 second by a current of 1 ampere". Conversely, a current of one ampere is one coulomb of charge going past a given point per second: |
Ampere | 772 | History | In general, charge Q was determined by steady current I flowing for a time t as Q = It. |
Ampere | 772 | History | This definition of the ampere was most accurately realised using a Kibble balance, but in practice the unit was maintained via Ohm's law from the units of electromotive force and resistance, the volt and the ohm, since the latter two could be tied to physical phenomena that are relatively easy to reproduce, the Josephson effect and the quantum Hall effect, respectively. |
Ampere | 772 | History | Techniques to establish the realisation of an ampere had a relative uncertainty of approximately a few parts in 10, and involved realisations of the watt, the ohm and the volt. |
Ampere | 772 | History | The 2019 redefinition of the SI base units defined the ampere by taking the fixed numerical value of the elementary charge e to be 1.602176634×10 when expressed in the unit C, which is equal to A⋅s, where the second is defined in terms of ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom. |
Ampere | 772 | History | The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, "is the quantity of electricity carried in 1 second by a current of 1 ampere". Conversely, a current of one ampere is one coulomb of charge going past a given point per second: |
Ampere | 772 | History | In general, charge Q is determined by steady current I flowing for a time t as Q = I t. |
Ampere | 772 | History | Constant, instantaneous and average current are expressed in amperes (as in "the charging current is 1.2 A") and the charge accumulated (or passed through a circuit) over a period of time is expressed in coulombs (as in "the battery charge is 30000 C"). The relation of the ampere (C/s) to the coulomb is the same as that of the watt (J/s) to the joule. |
Ampere | 772 | Units derived from the ampere | The international system of units (SI) is based on 7 SI base units the second, metre, kilogram, kelvin, ampere, mole, and candela representing 7 fundamental types of physical quantity, or "dimensions", (time, length, mass, temperature, electric current, amount of substance, and luminous intensity respectively) with all other SI units being defined using these. These SI derived units can either be given special names e.g. watt, volt, lux, etc. or defined in terms of others, e.g. metre per second. The units with special names derived from the ampere are: |
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