1765-1783

•The American Revolution (1775-83) is also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence.•-The conflict arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.•-Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence.•-France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict.•-After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.

Background•- In 1763, the British Empire emerged as the victor of the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). Although the victory greatly expanded the empire’s imperial holdings, it also left it with a massive national debt, and the British government looked to its North American colonies as an untapped source of revenue.•-Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies• 1. Stamp Act of 1765,

2. the Townshend Tariffs of 1767 3. the Tea Act of 1773

-These acts were met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects.

•-Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre.•-Their resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in which colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance to British rule.•- The Boston Tea Party caused considerable property damage and infuriated the British government. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts of 1774, which colonists came to call the Intolerable Acts.

Prelude to War•- The colony of Massachusetts was seen by King George III and his ministers as the hotbed of disloyalty. •-After the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773), Parliament responded with the Intolerable Acts (1774), a series of punitive measures that were intended to cow the restive population into obedience.•- The 1691 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was abrogated, and the colony’s elected ruling council was replaced with a military government under Gen. Thomas Gage, the commander of all British troops in North America.•Beginning in the late summer of 1774, Gage attempted to suppress the warlike preparations throughout New England by seizing stores of weapons and powder. Although the colonials were initially taken by surprise, they soon mobilized.

•- On April 14, 1775, Gage received a letter from Dartmouth informing him that Massachusetts had been declared to be in a state of open revolt and ordering him to

“arrest and imprison the principal Actors and Abettors in the [Massachusetts] Provincial Congress.”

-On April 16 Revere rode to Concord, a town 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Boston, to advise local compatriots to secure their military stores in advance of British troop movements.•- Two nights later Revere rode from Charlestown—where he confirmed that the local Sons of Liberty had seen the two lanterns that were posted in Boston’s Old North Church, signaling a British approach across the Charles River—to Lexington to warn that the British were on the march.•- Some 700 British troops spent the evening of April 18, 1775, forming ranks on Boston Common, with orders to seize the colonial armory at Concord. The lengthy public display ensured that Gage had lost any chance at secrecy,

•- By the time the soaked infantrymen arrived in Lexington at approximately 5:00 am, 77 minutemen were among those who had assembled on the village green. Officers on both sides ordered their men to hold their positions but not to fire their weapons.•- It is unclear who fired “the shot heard ’round the world,” but it sparked a skirmish that left eight Americans dead. The colonial force evaporated, and the British moved on to Concord, where they were met with determined resistance from hundreds of militiamen.

Political Response•-In response to the passage of the intolerable acts, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia, John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown.•-This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent, and issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury.

DECLARING INDEPENDENCE (1775-76)•-When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates–including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson–voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief.•-On June 17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. •-By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain.•-On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson.

Declaration of Independence

•-Thomas Jefferson was a student of Enlightenment philosophy and studied the work of John Locke, one of the preeminent Enlightenment political philosophers of the late 17th century.•-The Declaration of Independence outlines Colonial grievances under the natural rights that Locke set forth: life, liberty, and property (substituted with "pursuit of happiness" in Declaration).•-According to Locke, it was the duty of the government to protect these rights and should government fail to do so, then it was the right of the people to resist or even dissolve that government.• 1. Life: • 2. Liberty: • 3. Property:

SARATOGA: REVOLUTIONARY WAR TURNING POINT (1777-78)

•-British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack, aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies.•- To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army aimed to march south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay.•-Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm (known as the first Battle of Saratoga).

•-After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17.•-The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778.

REVOLUTIONARY WAR DRAWS TO A CLOSE (1781-83)

•-In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780.•-British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates’ American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King’s Mountain in early October.•-By the fall of 1781, Greene’s American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay.•-Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19

The United States Government (Articles of Confederation

•-The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain.•-The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, on November 15, 1777.

•-The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments.

•-The Albany Plan an earlier, pre-independence attempt at joining the colonies into a larger union, had failed in part because the individual colonies were concerned about losing power to another central insitution.

•-As the American Revolution gained momentum, however, many political leaders saw the advantages of a centralized government that could coordinate the Revolutionary War.

•-The Articles created a sovereign, national government, and, as such, limited the rights of the states to conduct their own diplomacy and foreign policy.

•-The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments.•-The Albany Plan an earlier, pre-independence attempt at joining the colonies into a larger union, had failed in part because the individual colonies were concerned about losing power to another central institution.•-As the American Revolution gained momentum, however, many political leaders saw the advantages of a centralized government that could coordinate the Revolutionary War.•-The Articles created a sovereign, national government, and, as such, limited the rights of the states to conduct their own diplomacy and foreign policy.

•- However, this proved difficult to enforce, as the national government could not prevent the state of Georgia from pursuing its own independent policy regarding Spanish Florida, attempting to occupy disputed territories and threatening war if Spanish officials did not work to curb Indian attacks or refrain from harboring escaped slaves.•-In addition, the Articles did not allow Congress sufficient authority to enforce provisions of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that allowed British creditors to sue debtors for pre-Revolutionary debts, an unpopular clause that many state governments chose to ignore.•-The weakness of the Articles is best highlighted in the inability of the Government to deal with Shay’s rebellion.