Revolutionary War
Independence
King George III
Revolutionary War
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A classic war with professional armies
A civil war
A guerilla war
Pitted Indians allied with the British against
the Americans
• Opportunity for freedom for enslaved Africans
or for fighting alongside white Americans
Combatants
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British
Americans
Loyalists
Slaves
French
Indians
Battle of Bunker Hill
• June 16, 1775
• 2,500 British troops under General William
Howe
• 1,400 Americans
• British are victors
– British: 226 dead, over 800 wounded
– Americans: 140 dead, 271 wounded, 30 captured
British General William Howe
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Continental Army
Quebec
• Late 1775, the Americans launched an
expedition to conquer the cities of Montreal
and Quebec before British reinforcements
could arrive
• General Montgomery took Montreal in
September of 1775
• Montgomery and General Benedict Arnold
failed to take Quebec, and smallpox ravaged
their ranks.
American officers
Colonel Benedict Arnold
General Richard Montgomery
Battle of Long Island
• Main action of the first year came in New York
• The British won the battle of Long Island in late August,
Washington evacuated his troops to Manhattan Island
• knowing it would be hard to hold Manhattan, he moved
north to two forts along the Hudson River;
• two armies engaged in limited skirmishing for two
months before British General Howe finally captured
Fort Washington and Fort Lee;
• Washington retreated through New Jersey and
into Pennsylvania; Howe again decided not to
pursue.
• New Jersey—On December 25, Washington
crossed the Delaware River and made a quick
capture of German soldiers at Trenton;
• Major victory for Americans and lifted the
morale of the troops.
Crossing the Delaware
The Hudson River Valley
• In 1777, Burgoyne assumed command of an
army of 7,800 soldiers in Canada and began
the northern squeeze on the Hudson River
valley
• also had 1,000 “camp followers,” 400 Indian
warriors, and 400 horses;
• captured Fort Ticonderoga with ease in July
British Leaders
General John Burgoyne
Mohawk chief Joseph Brant
To the South
• Burgoyne’s army slowly moved South,
expecting reinforcements
• rather than meet Burgoyne to isolate New
England, however, General Howe sailed south
to attack Philadelphia.
Ft. Stanwix
• reinforcements encountered Americans who
refused to surrender
• the British laid siege to the fort with the help
of Palatine German militiamen and Oneida
Indians
• Mohawk chief Joseph Brant led an ambush on
the Germans and Oneidas in a narrow ravine
called Oriskany, killing nearly 500 out of 840 of
them;
Indian v. Indian, German v. German
• these were multiethnic battles with a high mortality
rate;
• the British retreated at Fort Stanwix, depriving
Burgoyne of reinforcements.
Battle of Saratoga
• Burgoyne camped at the small village of
Saratoga;
• American General Horatio Gates began
moving his army toward Saratoga;
• the British won the first battle of Saratoga, but
the Americans won the second;
• forced Burgoyne to surrender to American
forces on October 17, 1777.
Valley Forge
• General Washington moved his troops into
Valley Forge outside Philadelphia for the
winter
• 2,000 men died of disease
• 2,000 men deserted
• Washington blamed the citizenry for lack of
support and of supplies
French Alliance
• American victory at Saratoga convinced France
to enter the war
• Formal alliance signed 1778
• French had been covertly providing weapons
and military advisers to the Americans well
before 1778.
Southern Strategy and the End of the
War
• Georgia and South Carolina
• British forces abandoned New England and
focused on the South
• they believed the South’s large slave
population would desert to the British and
disrupt the southern society and economy
• also believed Georgia and South Carolina were
loyalist strongholds.
Siege of Charleston
• Easy Victory in Georgia—Fell easily at the end of
December 1778;
• the bulk of the Continental army was still in New York
and New Jersey.
• British laid siege for five weeks; took Charleston in May
1870;
• General Charles Cornwallis established military rule of
South Carolina by mid-summer.
• Battle of Camden—American troops arrived to strike
back at Cornwallis by August 1780, the most
devastating defeat of the war for the Americans.
Yorktown
• minor victories allowed Cornwallis to imagine
he was succeeding in Virginia;
• moved toward Yorktown near the Chesapeake
Bay to wait for backup.
• French Intervention—The French fleet beat
British backup to the Chesapeake Bay;
• a five-day naval battle left the French navy in
clear control of the coast;
Surrender at Yorktown
• proved a decisive factor in
ending the war because
French ships prevented any
rescue of Cornwallis’s army.
• Surrender—Cornwallis and
his 7,500 troops faced a
combined French and
American army of 16,000;
• French and Americans
bombarded British
fortifications at Yorktown
for twelve days;
• Cornwallis surrendered on
October 19, 1781.