{"id":66,"date":"2023-03-06T23:14:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T23:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-2-6\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T19:23:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T19:23:17","slug":"module-2-6","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-2-6\/","title":{"raw":"2.6 War for Independence","rendered":"2.6 War for Independence"},"content":{"raw":"The war began at Lexington and Concord, more than a year before Congress declared independence. In 1775, the British believed that the mere threat of war and a few minor incursions to seize supplies would be enough to cow the colonial rebellion. Those minor incursions, however, turned into a full-out military conflict. Despite an early American victory at Boston, the new states faced the daunting task of taking on the world\u2019s largest military.<\/span>\r\n
\r\n\r\nIn the summer of 1776, the British forces that had abandoned Boston arrived at New York. The largest expeditionary force in British history, including tens of thousands of German mercenaries known as Hessians, followed soon after. New York was the perfect location to launch expeditions aimed at seizing control of the Hudson River and isolating New England from the rest of the continent. Also, New York contained many loyalists, particularly among its merchant and Anglican communities. In October, the British finally launched an attack on Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Continental Army took severe losses before retreating through New Jersey.1<\/sup><\/a> With the onset of winter, Washington needed something to lift morale and encourage reenlistment. Therefore, he launched a successful surprise attack on the Hessian camp at Trenton on Christmas Day by ferrying the few thousand men he had left across the Delaware River under the cover of night. The victory won the Continental Army much-needed supplies and a morale boost following the disaster at New York.2<\/sup><\/a>\r\n

An even greater success followed in upstate New York. In 1777, British general John Burgoyne led an army from Canada to secure the Hudson River. In upstate New York, he was to meet up with a detachment of General William Howe\u2019s forces marching north from Manhattan. However, Howe abandoned the plan without telling Burgoyne and instead sailed to Philadelphia to capture the new nation\u2019s capital. The Continental Army defeated Burgoyne\u2019s men at Saratoga, New York.3<\/sup><\/a> This victory proved a major turning point in the war. Benjamin Franklin had been in Paris trying to secure a treaty of alliance with the French. However, the French were reluctant to back what seemed like an unlikely cause. News of the victory at Saratoga convinced the French that the cause might not have been as unlikely as they had thought. A Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on February 6, 1778. The treaty effectively turned a colonial rebellion into a global war as fighting between the British and French soon broke out in Europe and India.4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"In In this 1782 cartoon, the British lion faces a spaniel (Spain), a rooster (France), a rattlesnake (America), and a pug dog (Netherlands). Though the caption predicts Britain\u2019s success, it illustrates that Britain faced challenges\u2014and therefore drains on their military and treasury\u2014from more than just the American rebels. J. Barrow, The British Lion Engaging Four Powers, 1782. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHowe had taken Philadelphia in 1777 but returned to New York once winter ended. He slowly realized that European military tactics would not work in North America. In Europe, armies fought head-on battles in attempt to seize major cities. However, in 1777, the British had held Philadelphia and New York and yet still weakened their position. Meanwhile, Washington realized after New York that the largely untrained Continental Army could not win head-on battles with the professional British army. So he developed his own logic of warfare that involved smaller, more frequent skirmishes and avoided major engagements that would risk his entire army. As long as he kept the army intact, the war would continue, no matter how many cities the British captured.\r\n\r\nIn 1778, the British shifted their attentions to the South, where they believed they enjoyed more popular support. Campaigns from Virginia to South Carolina and Georgia captured major cities, but the British simply did not have the manpower to retain military control. And upon their departures, severe fighting ensued between local patriots and loyalists, often pitting family members against one another. The War in the South was truly a civil war.5<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nBy 1781, the British were also fighting France, Spain, and Holland. The British public\u2019s support for the costly war in North America was quickly waning. The Americans took advantage of the British southern strategy with significant aid from the French army and navy. In October, Washington marched his troops from New York to Virginia in an effort to trap the British southern army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis. Cornwallis had dug his men in at Yorktown awaiting supplies and reinforcements from New York. However, the Continental and French armies arrived first, quickly followed by a French navy contingent, encircling Cornwallis\u2019s forces and, after laying siege to the city, forcing his surrender. The capture of another army left the British without a new strategy and without public support to continue the war. Peace negotiations took place in France, and the war came to an official end on September 3, 1783.6<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Lord Lord Cornwallis\u2019s surrender signaled the victory of the American revolutionaries over what they considered to be the despotic rule of Britain. This moment would live on in American memory as a pivotal one in the nation\u2019s origin story, prompting the United States government to commission artist John Trumbull to create this painting of the event in 1817. John Trumbull, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, 1820. Wikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAmericans celebrated their victory, but it came at great cost. Soldiers suffered through brutal winters with inadequate resources. During the single winter at Valley Forge in 1777\u20131778, over 2,500 Americans died from disease and exposure. Life was not easy on the home front either. Women on both sides of the conflict were frequently left alone to care for their households. In addition to their existing duties, women took on roles usually assigned to men on farms and in shops and taverns. Abigail Adams addressed the difficulties she encountered while \u201cminding family affairs\u201d on their farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. Abigail managed the planting and harvesting of crops, in the midst of severe labor shortages and inflation, while dealing with several tenants on the Adams property, raising her children, and making clothing and other household goods. In order to support the family economically during John\u2019s frequent absences and the uncertainties of war, Abigail also invested in several speculative schemes and sold imported goods.7<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nWhile Abigail remained safely out of the fray, other women were not so fortunate. The Revolution was not only fought on distant battlefields. It was fought on women\u2019s very doorsteps, in the fields next to their homes. There was no way for women to avoid the conflict or the disruptions and devastations it caused. As the leader of the state militia during the Revolution, Mary Silliman\u2019s husband, Gold, was absent from their home for much of the conflict. On the morning of July 7, 1779, when a British fleet attacked nearby Fairfield, Connecticut, it was Mary who calmly evacuated her household, including her children and servants, to North Stratford. When Gold was captured by loyalists and held prisoner, Mary, six months pregnant with their second child, wrote letters to try to secure his release. When such appeals were ineffectual, Mary spearheaded an effort, along with Connecticut Governor, John Trumbull, to capture a prominent Tory leader to exchange for her husband\u2019s freedom.8<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"722\"]\"Jean-Baptiste-Antoine American soldiers came from a variety of backgrounds and had numerous reasons for fighting with the American army. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, a French sublieutenant at the Battle of Yorktown, painted this watercolor soon after that battle and chose to depict four men in men military dress: an African American soldier from the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, a man in the homespun of the militia, another wearing the common \u201chunting shirt\u201d of the frontier, and the French soldier on the end. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, \u201cAmerican soldiers at the siege of Yorktown,\u201d 1781. Wikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nSlaves and free black Americans also impacted (and were impacted by) the Revolution. The British were the first to recruit black (or \u201cEthiopian\u201d) regiments, as early as Dunmore\u2019s Proclamation of 1775 in Virginia, which promised freedom to any slaves who would escape their masters and join the British cause. At first, Washington, a slaveholder himself, resisted allowing black men to join the Continental Army, but he eventually relented. In 1775, Peter Salem\u2019s master freed him to fight with the militia. Salem faced British Regulars in the battles at Lexington and Bunker Hill, where he fought valiantly with around three dozen other black Americans. Salem not only contributed to the cause, he earned the ability to determine his own life after his enlistment ended. Salem was not alone, but many more slaves seized on the tumult of war to run away and secure their own freedom directly. Historians estimate that between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand slaves deserted their masters during the war.9<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nMen and women together struggled through years of war and hardship. For patriots (and those who remained neutral), victory brought new political, social, and economic opportunities, but it also brought new uncertainties. The war decimated entire communities, particularly in the South. Thousands of women throughout the nation had been widowed. The American economy, weighed down by war debt and depreciated currencies, would have to be rebuilt following the war. State constitutions had created governments, but now men would have to figure out how to govern. The opportunities created by the Revolution had come at great cost, in both lives and fortune, and it was left to the survivors to seize those opportunities and help forge and define the new nation-state.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Another Another John Trumbull piece commissioned for the Capitol in 1817, this painting depicts what would be remembered as the moment the new United States became a republic. On December 23, 1783, George Washington, widely considered the hero of the Revolution, resigned his position as the most powerful man in the former thirteen colonies. Giving up his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army insured that civilian rule would define the new nation, and that a republic would be set in place rather than a dictatorship. John Trumbull, General George Washington Resigning His Commission, c. 1817-1824. From the Architect of the Capitol.<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nFor more information, please watch the following related videos:<\/span>\r\n

\r\n\r\nCrashCourse. Teas, Taxes, and the American Revolution: Crash Course World History #28. Produced by John Green. August 2, 2012, Video,<\/a> 11:26.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HlUiSBXQHCw[\/embed]\r\n\r\nIf you receive an error saying the video can't be authenticated, use this link: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HlUiSBXQHCw<\/a>.\r\n\r\nHistory Unshelved. The Revolution: Boston, Bloody Boston. Produced by the History Channel. 2006. Video,<\/a> 45:13.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QParA8h9UY4[\/embed]\r\n\r\nIf you receive an error saying the video cannot be authenticated, use this link:\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QParA8h9UY4<\/a>.\r\n\r\nWGBH Educational Foundation. The Coming of Independence: A Biography of America. Produced by Anneberg Learner. 2000. Video.<\/a> 25.52.\r\n\r\n