The American Revolutionary War forever changed the course of Western Civilization. It lead directly to the creation of the United States. This program will trace the course of the Revolutionary War using animated maps to indicate the strategies and movements of armies and the locations of important events.
While Spain was a waning power, England's star was rising. She now dominated North America. Her first act in this new role was to contain the American colonies, her allies and partners in the recent war. In 1763, young King George the Third proclaimed a line running along the Appalachian mountains, limiting the colonies from further expansion west.
In the rest of the colonies, the rural population, which doubled in size every generation, raised grains and livestock. Two fifths of this produce was sold for cash, making the per-capita income of Americans the highest in the world. In New England, timber and some ironworks supported ship-building, fishing, and whaling. The city of Boston, in the colony of Massachusetts, was the most important port of the colonies.
In the years following the French and Indian War, the British insisted that the colonies be taxed for part of the cost of that war, as well as the cost of current defense. The colonies, unrepresented in Parliament, resisted this increase in British rule, as well as British control of trade, expansion west, and other colonial activities. Massachusetts was the leader in this agitation, followed by Virginia. Protest culminated in the "Boston Tea Party" of 1773, which provoked the British to declare Boston a non-port and quarter additional troops in the city.
One came in April of 1775. A British expedition set out at night, intending to capture arms stored in Concord. They were observed, however, by the patriot Paul Revere, who rode ahead to warn the countryside. Thus the British troops, who marched first to Lexington, were met by minutemen and the shot was fired heard round the world. When they arrived at Concord itself, more militias had gathered, and after another battle, the British were forced to retreat back to Boston, with additional militias arriving to join the pursuit. With this act of defiance, and the shedding of English blood, the American Revolutionary War began.
Preview More and more militias arrived to surround Boston in a siege. Meanwhile, in the central city of the colonies, Philadelphia, in the colony of Pennsylvania, a Continental Congress voted George Washington commander-in-chief of the new army. Washington rode to Boston, enlisted and trained the militias into an army, rendered the harbor untenable, and thus forced the British to evacuate the city and sail to Halifax in Novia Scotia.
Washington surmised that the British would quickly return to occupy the port of New York City, in the state of New York, which includes Long Island. Therefore he rushed his army of 20,000 men to New York to build defensive systems against the anticipated attack. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a Declaration was signed on July 4, 1776, proclaiming the thirteen united states of America as an independent nation. On that same day the British landed in New York.
The British strategy was to isolate New England, the heart of the rebellion. They would occupy New York and link up with a force marching south from Canada, thus cutting off New England from the rest of the colonies. For this plan to succeed, the British needed only a decisive victory over Washington's fledgeling army. As the British prepared for invasion, the Americans held their own council of war. This council was strongly influenced by Nathanael Greene, who argued that the outcome of the Revolution depended upon keeping an army in the field. The council agreed to fight a defensive war, protract the conflict and exhaust the British.
In order to defend New York, Washington fortified the Brooklyn Heights which commanded the approaches to the city. In August the British invaded Long Island, and met the Americans south of Brooklyn. By clever maneuvering, the British outflanked the American position. Complete victory was in sight, but a heavy fog permitted Washington to withdraw his troops to New York. The Americans retreated up the isle of Manhattan, battling the British in the Harlem Heights and again in White Plains, after which Washington divided his army and lost part of it. Washington gave up New York, and with a remnant of his army he retreated south to protect the seat of government in Philadelphia. He was pursued across the state of New Jersey by a British army under Lord Cornwallis, stopping at the Delaware River, which divides New Jersey from Pennsylvania.
On December 7, Washington's troops crossed the Delaware River, and they quickly prepared defenses. The British followed, but to Washington's great relief, they suspended operations without attempting a crossing. Instead, they went into winter quarters in the three nearest towns, including Princeton and Trenton.
Washington was in dire straits. Many of his remaining men would leave at the first of the year. He needed a win. Therefore, on Christmas eve, Washington recrossed the Delaware amid chunks of ice floating downstream. Two other groups of his army refused to cross. Once on the other side he captured Trenton, which was garrisoned by German mercenaries. 900 German prisoners were taken by the American army. Lord Cornwallis quickly marched down from Princeton, but Washington and his men slipped out of town, and marched to Princeton where they devastated Cornwallis' rear guard. The Americans then took up a strong winter position in the interior of New Jersey, while the British abandoned most of the state and returned to New York.
Now faced with an expanded war with France, soon joined by Spain, the British rethough their strategy for North America. Their focus turned to the southern colonies, where the loyalists were thought to be in the majority. England would abandon Philadelphia and retreat to New York in the north; but in the south she would occupy major southern ports. Expeditions would be sent from these coastal enclaves into the interior to pacify the countryside and rally the loyalists.
The colonies in the south were Georgia, in the far south, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. In 1778 a British force sailed from New York to Savannah, Georgia, and it quickly captured that port. An expedition up the Savannah river captured Augusta, and Georgia was back in the British Empire.
In 1780 a second British force sailed from New York to Charlseton in South Carolina. This port was captured after a bitter seige, and a determined British army under Lord Cornwallis, the most aggressive of the British field commanders, set out from it to conquer the Carolinas. Cornwallis conquered land, but he could not defeat the American forces in the south, which were small, mobile groups. The rebels lost battle after battle, retreating to the hills and mountains only to return again. After a flurry of activity in Virginia, Cornwallis retreated to Yorktown on the Virginia coast to establish a British base for future operations.
The seige of Yorktown by combined French and American forces was conducted to meet the European standards. Without hope of reinforcement or evacuation by sea, Cornwallis surrendered his army within a few weeks. This defeat was of sufficient size for the British government to cease operations in the colonies.
The American Revolutionary War successfully subdued the belligerent European powers on this continent. France regained nothing despite her crucial role; England was defeated and withdrew to Canada, where many loyalists emigrated, and New Spain remained distant and non-threatening. The thirteen colonies, now the United States, thus had ample time to form a new nation, one founded not on the divine right of Kings, but on a Constitution to be arrived at democratically and voted into power.
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