American Revolutionary War
| American Revolutionary War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Revolution | |||||||||
 Clockwise from top left: Surrender of Lord Cornwallis after the Siege of Yorktown, Battle of Trenton, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Battle of Long Island, and the Battle of Guilford Court House | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
Co-belligerents Combatants |
Treaty belligerents | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a military conflict that was part of the broader American Revolution, where American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army.
During the war, American Patriot forces had the support of France and Spain, while the British and Loyalist forces hired Hessian soldiers from Germany for assistance. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which resulted in Great Britain ultimately recognizing the independence and sovereignty of the United States.
The American colonies were established by royal charter in the 17th and 18th centuries. After the British Empire gained dominance in North America with victory over the French in the Seven Years' War in 1763, tensions and disputes arose between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies over a variety of issues, including the Stamp and Townshend Acts. The resulting British military occupation led to the Boston Massacre in 1770, which strengthened American Patriots' desire for independence from Britain. Among further tensions, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts in mid-1774. A British attempt to disarm the Americans and the resulting Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 ignited the war. In June, the Second Continental Congress formalized Patriot militias into the Continental Army and appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. The British Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion in August 1775. The stakes of the war were formalized with passage of the Lee Resolution by the Congress in Philadelphia on July 2, 1776, and the unanimous ratification of the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4, 1776.
After a successful siege, Washington's forces drove the British Army out of Boston in March 1776, and British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign. Howe captured New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton, which restored Patriot confidence. In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. After Saratoga, France signed a commercial agreement with the rebels, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois who were largely allied with the British. Indian raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans.
Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the south. Despite some initial success, British general Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American force in Yorktown in September and October 1781. Cornwallis was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in America. In April 1782, the North ministry was replaced by a new British government, which accepted American independence and began negotiating the Treaty of Paris, ratified on September 3, 1783. Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States of America, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Britain's conflicts with France and Spain and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida and East Florida to Spain.[43][44]
Prelude to revolution
The French and Indian War, part of the wider global conflict known as the Seven Years' War, ended with the 1763 Peace of Paris, which expelled France from their possessions in New France.[45] Acquisition of territories in Atlantic Canada and West Florida, inhabited largely by French or Spanish-speaking Catholics, led British authorities to consolidate their hold by populating them with English-speaking settlers. Preventing conflict between settlers and Indian tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains also avoided the cost of an expensive military occupation.[46]
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was designed to achieve these aims by refocusing colonial expansion north into Nova Scotia and south into Florida, with the Mississippi River as the dividing line between British and Spanish possessions in America. Settlement was tightly restricted beyond the 1763 limits, and claims west of this line, including by Virginia and Massachusetts, were rescinded despite the fact that each colony argued that their boundaries extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.[46]
The vast exchange of territory ultimately destabilized existing alliances and trade networks between settlers and Indians in the west, while it proved impossible to prevent encroachment beyond the Proclamation Line.[47] With the exception of Virginia and others deprived of rights to western lands, the colonial legislatures agreed on the boundaries but disagreed on where to set them. Many settlers resented the restrictions entirely, and enforcement required permanent garrisons along the frontier, which led to increasingly bitter disputes over who should pay for them.[48]
Taxation and legislation
Although directly administered by the Crown, acting through a local governor, the colonies were largely governed by native-born property owners. While external affairs were managed by London, colonial militia were funded locally but with the ending of the French threat in 1763, the legislatures expected less taxation, not more. At the same time, the huge debt incurred by the Seven Years' War and demands from British taxpayers for cuts in government expenditure meant Parliament expected the colonies to fund their own defense.[48]
The 1763 to 1765 Grenville ministry instructed the Royal Navy to cease trading smuggled goods and enforce customs duties levied in American ports.[48] The most important was the 1733 Molasses Act; routinely ignored before 1763, it had a significant economic impact since 85% of New England rum exports were manufactured from imported molasses. These measures were followed by the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, which imposed additional taxes on the colonies to pay for defending the western frontier.[49] In July 1765, the Whigs formed the First Rockingham ministry, which repealed the Stamp Act and reduced tax on foreign molasses to help the New England economy, but re-asserted Parliamentary authority in the Declaratory Act.[50]
However, this did little to end the discontent; in 1768, a riot started in Boston when the authorities seized the sloop Liberty on suspicion of smuggling.[51] Tensions escalated further in March 1770 when British troops fired on rock-throwing civilians, killing five in what became known as the Boston Massacre.[52] The Massacre coincided with the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts by the Tory-based North Ministry, which came to power in January 1770 and remained in office until 1781. North insisted on retaining duty on tea to enshrine Parliament's right to tax the colonies; the amount was minor, but ignored the fact it was that very principle Americans found objectionable.[53]
Tensions escalated following the destruction of a customs vessel in the June 1772 Gaspee Affair, then came to a head in 1773. A banking crisis led to the near-collapse of the East India Company, which dominated the British economy; to support it, Parliament passed the Tea Act, giving it a trading monopoly in the Thirteen Colonies. Since most American tea was smuggled by the Dutch, the act was opposed by those who managed the illegal trade, while being seen as yet another attempt to impose the principle of taxation by Parliament.[54] In December 1773, a group called the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk natives dumped 342 crates of tea into the Boston Harbor, an event later known as the Boston Tea Party. The British Parliament responded by passing the so-called Intolerable Acts, aimed specifically at Massachusetts, although many colonists and members of the Whig opposition considered them a threat to liberty in general. This led to increased sympathy for the Patriot cause locally, in the British Parliament, and in the London press.[55]
Break with the British Crown
Throughout the 18th century, the elected lower houses in the colonial legislatures gradually wrested power from their royal governors.[56] Dominated by smaller landowners and merchants, these assemblies now established ad-hoc provincial legislatures, variously called congresses, conventions, and conferences, effectively replacing royal control. With the exception of Georgia, twelve colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to agree on a unified response to the crisis.[57] Many of the delegates feared that an all-out boycott would result in war and sent a Petition to the King calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts.[58] However, after some debate, on September 17, 1774, Congress endorsed the Massachusetts Suffolk Resolves and on October 20 passed the Continental Association; based on a draft prepared by the First Virginia Convention in August, the association instituted economic sanctions and a full boycott of goods against Britain.[59]
While denying its authority over internal American affairs, a faction led by James Duane and future Loyalist Joseph Galloway insisted Congress recognize Parliament's right to regulate colonial trade.[59][u] Expecting concessions by the North administration, Congress authorized the extralegal committees and conventions of the colonial legislatures to enforce the boycott; this succeeded in reducing British imports by 97% from 1774 to 1775.[60] However, on February 9 Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and instituted a blockade of the colony.[61] In July, the Restraining Acts limited colonial trade with the British West Indies and Britain and barred New England ships from the Newfoundland cod fisheries. The increase in tension led to a scramble for control of militia stores, which each assembly was legally obliged to maintain for defense.[62] On April 19, a British attempt to secure the Concord arsenal culminated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War.[63]
Political reactions
,_by_John_Trumbull.jpg)
After the Patriot victory at Concord, moderates in Congress led by John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, offering to accept royal authority in return for George III mediating in the dispute.[64] However, since the petition was immediately followed by the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth viewed the offer as insincere; he refused to present the petition to the king, which was therefore rejected in early September.[65] Although constitutionally correct, since George could not oppose his own government, it disappointed those Americans who hoped he would mediate in the dispute, while the hostility of his language annoyed even Loyalist members of Congress.[64] Combined with the Proclamation of Rebellion, issued on August 23 in response to the Battle at Bunker Hill, it ended hopes of a peaceful settlement.[66]
Backed by the Whigs, Parliament initially rejected the imposition of coercive measures by 170 votes, fearing an aggressive policy would simply drive the Americans towards independence.[67] However, by the end of 1774 the collapse of British authority meant both Lord North and George III were convinced war was inevitable.[68] After Boston, Gage halted operations and awaited reinforcements; the Irish Parliament approved the recruitment of new regiments, while allowing Catholics to enlist for the first time.[69] Britain also signed a series of treaties with German states to supply additional troops.[70] Within a year, it had an army of over 32,000 men in America, the largest ever sent outside Europe at the time.[71] The employment of German soldiers against people viewed as British citizens was opposed by many in Parliament and by the colonial assemblies; combined with the lack of activity by Gage, opposition to the use of foreign troops allowed the Patriots to take control of the legislatures.[72]
Declaration of Independence
Support for independence was boosted by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published on January 10, 1776, and argued for American self-government and was widely reprinted.[73] To draft the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress appointed the Committee of Five, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.[74] The declaration was written almost exclusively by Jefferson, who wrote it largely in isolation between June 11 and June 28, 1776, in a three-story residence at 700 Market Street in Philadelphia.[75]
Identifying inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies as "one people", the declaration simultaneously dissolved political links with Britain, while including a long list of alleged violations of "English rights" committed by George III. This is also one of the foremost times that the colonies were referred to as "United States", rather than the more common United Colonies.[76]
On July 2, Congress voted for independence and published the declaration on July 4,[77] which George Washington read to his troops in New York City on July 9.[78] At this point, the revolution ceased to be an internal dispute over trade and tax policies and had evolved into a civil war, since each state represented in Congress was engaged in a struggle with Britain, but also split between American Patriots and American Loyalists.[79] Patriots generally supported independence from Britain and a new national union in Congress, while Loyalists remained faithful to British rule. Estimates of numbers vary, one suggestion being the population as a whole was split evenly between committed Patriots, committed Loyalists, and those who were indifferent.[80] Others calculate the split as 40% Patriot, 40% neutral, 20% Loyalist, but with considerable regional variations.[81]
At the onset of the war, the Second Continental Congress realized defeating Britain required foreign alliances and intelligence-gathering. The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed for "the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain and other parts of the world". From 1775 to 1776, the committee shared information and built alliances through secret correspondence, as well as employing secret agents in Europe to gather intelligence, conduct undercover operations, analyze foreign publications, and initiate Patriot propaganda campaigns.[82] Paine served as secretary, while Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, sent to France to recruit military engineers,[83] were instrumental in securing French aid in Paris.[84]
War breaks out
The Revolutionary War included two principal campaign theaters within the Thirteen Colonies, and a smaller but strategically important third one west of the Appalachian Mountains. Fighting began in the Northern Theater and was at its most severe from 1775 to 1778. American Patriots achieved several strategic victories in the South. The Americans defeated the British Army at Saratoga in October 1777, and the French, seeing the possibility for an American Patriot victory in the war, formally entered the war as an American ally.[85]
During 1778, Washington prevented the British army from breaking out of New York City, while militia under George Rogers Clark conquered Western Quebec, supported by Francophone settlers and their Indian allies, which became the Northwest Territory. The war became a stalemate in the north in 1779, so the British initiated their southern strategy, which aimed to mobilize Loyalist support in the region and occupy American Patriot-controlled territory north to Chesapeake Bay. The campaign was initially successful, with the British capture of Charleston being a major setback for southern Patriots; however, a Franco-American force surrounded the British army at Yorktown and their surrender in October 1781 effectively ended fighting in America.[80]
Early engagements
On April 14, 1775, Sir Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief, North America since 1763 and also Governor of Massachusetts from 1774, received orders to take action against the Patriots. He decided to destroy militia ordnance stored at Concord, Massachusetts, and capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were considered the principal instigators of the rebellion. The operation was to begin around midnight on April 19, in the hope of completing it before the American Patriots could respond.[86][87] However, Paul Revere learned of the plan and notified Captain Parker, commander of the Concord militia, who prepared to resist the attempted seizure.[88] The first action of the war, commonly referred to as the shot heard round the world, was a brief skirmish at Lexington, followed by the full-scale Battles of Lexington and Concord. British troops suffered around 300 casualties before withdrawing to Boston, which was then besieged by the militia.[89]
In May 1775, 4,500 British reinforcements arrived under Generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Sir Henry Clinton.[90] On June 17, they seized the Charlestown Peninsula at the Battle of Bunker Hill, a frontal assault in which they suffered over 1,000 casualties.[91] Dismayed at the costly attack which had gained them little,[92] Gage appealed to London for a larger army to suppress the revolt,[93] but instead was replaced as commander by Howe.[91]
On June 14, 1775, Congress took control of American Patriot forces outside Boston, and Congressional leader John Adams nominated Washington as commander-in-chief of the newly formed Continental Army.[94] Washington previously commanded Virginia militia regiments in the French and Indian War,[95] and on June 16, Hancock officially proclaimed him "General and Commander in Chief of the army of the United Colonies."[96] He assumed command on July 3, preferring to fortify Dorchester Heights outside Boston rather than assaulting it.[97] In early March 1776, Colonel Henry Knox arrived with heavy artillery acquired in the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga.[98] Under cover of darkness, on March 5, Washington placed these on Dorchester Heights,[99] from where they could fire on the town and British ships in Boston Harbor. Fearing another Bunker Hill, Howe evacuated the city on March 17 without further loss and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, while Washington moved south to New York City.[100]
Beginning in August 1775, American privateers raided towns in Nova Scotia, including Saint John, Charlottetown, and Yarmouth. In 1776, John Paul Jones and Jonathan Eddy attacked Canso and Fort Cumberland respectively. British officials in Quebec began negotiating with the Iroquois for their support,[101] while US envoys urged them to remain neutral.[102] Aware of Native American leanings toward the British and fearing an Anglo-Indian attack from Canada, Congress authorized a second invasion in April 1775.[103] After the defeat at the Battle of Quebec on December 31,[104] the Americans maintained a loose blockade of the city until they retreated on May 6, 1776.[105] A second defeat at Trois-Rivières on June 8 ended operations in Quebec.[106]
British pursuit was initially blocked by American naval vessels on Lake Champlain until victory at Valcour Island on October 11 forced the Americans to withdraw to Fort Ticonderoga, while in December an uprising in Nova Scotia sponsored by Massachusetts was defeated at Fort Cumberland.[107] These failures impacted public support for the Patriot cause,[108] and aggressive anti-Loyalist policies in the New England colonies alienated the Canadians.[109]
In Virginia, an attempt by Governor Lord Dunmore to seize militia stores on April 20, 1775, led to an increase in tension, although conflict was avoided for the time being.[110] This changed after the publication of Dunmore's Proclamation on November 7, 1775, promising freedom to any slaves who fled their Patriot masters and agreed to fight for the Crown.[111] British forces were defeated at Great Bridge on December 9 and took refuge on British ships anchored near the port of Norfolk. When the Third Virginia Convention refused to disband its militia or accept martial law, Dunmore ordered the Burning of Norfolk on January 1, 1776.[112]
The siege of Savage's Old Fields began on November 19 in South Carolina between Loyalist and Patriot militias,[113] and the Loyalists were subsequently driven out of the colony in the Snow Campaign.[114] Loyalists were recruited in North Carolina to reassert British rule in the South, but they were decisively defeated in the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge.[115] A British expedition sent to reconquer South Carolina launched an attack on Charleston in the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776,[116] but it failed and left the South under Patriot control until 1780.[117]
A shortage of gunpowder led Congress to authorize a naval expedition against the Bahamas to secure ordnance stored there.[118] On March 3, 1776, an American squadron under the command of Esek Hopkins landed at the east end of Nassau and encountered minimal resistance at Fort Montagu. Hopkins' troops then marched on Fort Nassau. Hopkins had promised governor Montfort Browne and the civilian inhabitants of the area that their lives and property would not be in any danger if they offered no resistance, to which they complied. Hopkins captured large stores of powder and other munitions that was so great he had to impress an extra ship in the harbor to transport the supplies back home, when he departed on March 17.[119] A month later, after a brief skirmish with HMS Glasgow, they returned to New London, Connecticut, the base for American naval operations during the Revolution.[120]
British New York counter-offensive
After regrouping at Halifax in Nova Scotia, Howe was determined to take the fight to the Americans.[121] He set sail for New York in June 1776 and began landing troops on Staten Island near the entrance to New York Harbor on July 2. The Americans rejected Howe's informal attempt to negotiate peace on July 30;[122] Washington knew that an attack on the city was imminent and realized that he needed advance information to deal with disciplined British regular troops.
On August 12, 1776, Patriot Thomas Knowlton was given orders to form an elite group for reconnaissance and secret missions. Knowlton's Rangers, which included Nathan Hale, became the Army's first intelligence unit.[123][v] When Washington was driven off Long Island, he soon realized that he would need more than military might and amateur spies to defeat the British. He was committed to professionalizing military intelligence. With aid from Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington launched the six-man Culper spy ring.[126][w] The efforts of Washington and the Culper Spy Ring substantially increased the effective allocation and deployment of Continental regiments in the field.[126] Throughout the war, Washington spent more than 10 percent of his total military funds on military intelligence operations.[127]
Washington split the Continental Army into positions on Manhattan and across the East River in western Long Island.[128] On August 27 at the Battle of Long Island, Howe outflanked Washington and forced him back to Brooklyn Heights, but he did not attempt to encircle Washington's forces.[129] Through the night of August 28, Knox bombarded the British. Knowing they were up against overwhelming odds, Washington ordered the assembly of a war council on August 29; all agreed to retreat to Manhattan. Washington quickly had his troops assembled and ferried them across the East River to Manhattan on flat-bottomed freight boats without any losses in men or ordnance, leaving General Thomas Mifflin's regiments as a rearguard.[130]
Howe met with a delegation from the Second Continental Congress at the September Staten Island Peace Conference, but it failed to conclude peace, largely because the British delegates only had the authority to offer pardons and could not recognize independence.[131] On September 15, Howe seized control of New York City when the British landed at Kip's Bay and unsuccessfully engaged the Americans at the Battle of Harlem Heights the following day.[132] On October 18, Howe failed to encircle the Americans at the Battle of Pell's Point, and the Americans withdrew. Howe declined to close with Washington's army on October 28 at the Battle of White Plains, and instead attacked a hill that was of no strategic value.[133]
Washington's retreat isolated his remaining forces and the British captured Fort Washington on November 16. The British victory there amounted to Washington's most disastrous defeat with the loss of 3,000 prisoners.[134] The remaining American regiments on Long Island fell back four days later.[135] General Henry Clinton wanted to pursue Washington's disorganized army, but he was first required to commit 6,000 troops to capture Newport, Rhode Island, to secure the Loyalist port.[136][x] General Charles Cornwallis pursued Washington, but Howe ordered him to halt, leaving Washington unmolested.[138]
The outlook following the defeat at Fort Washington appeared bleak for the American cause. The reduced Continental Army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 men and was reduced further when enlistments expired at the end of the year.[139] Popular support wavered, and morale declined. On December 20, 1776, the Continental Congress abandoned the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia and moved to Baltimore, where it remained for over two months, until February 27, 1777.[140] Loyalist activity surged in the wake of the American defeat, especially in New York state.[141]
In London, news of the victorious Long Island campaign was well received with festivities held in the capital. Public support reached a peak,[142] and King George III awarded the Order of the Bath to Howe.[143] Strategic deficiencies among Patriot forces were evident: Washington divided a numerically weaker army in the face of a stronger one, his inexperienced staff misread the military situation, and American troops fled in the face of enemy fire. The successes led to predictions that the British could win within a year.[144] In the meantime, the British established winter quarters in the New York City area and anticipated renewed campaigning the following spring.[145]
Patriot resurgence
.jpg)
Two weeks after Congress withdrew to Baltimore, on the night of December 25–26, 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware River, leading a column of Continental Army troops from today's Bucks County, Pennsylvania, located about 30 miles upriver from Philadelphia, to today's Mercer County, New Jersey, in a logistically challenging and dangerous operation.
Meanwhile, the Hessians were involved in numerous clashes with small bands of Patriots and were often aroused by false alarms at night in the weeks before the actual Battle of Trenton. By Christmas they were tired and weary, while a heavy snowstorm led their commander, Colonel Johann Rall, to assume no attack of any consequence would occur.[146] At daybreak on the 26th, the American Patriots surprised and overwhelmed Rall and his troops, who lost over 20 killed including Rall,[147] while 900 prisoners, German cannons and much supply were captured.[148]
The Battle of Trenton restored the American army's morale, reinvigorated the Patriot cause,[149] and dispelled their fear of what they regarded as Hessian "mercenaries".[150] A British attempt to retake Trenton was repulsed at Assunpink Creek on January 2;[151] during the night, Washington outmaneuvered Cornwallis, then defeated his rearguard in the Battle of Princeton the following day. The two victories helped convince the French that the Americans were worthy military allies.[152]
After his success at Princeton, Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, where he remained until May[153] and received Congressional direction to inoculate all Patriot troops against smallpox.[154][y] With the exception of a minor skirmishing between the two armies which continued until March,[156] Howe made no attempt to attack the Americans.[157]
British northern strategy fails
The 1776 campaign demonstrated that regaining New England would be a prolonged affair, which led to a change in British strategy. This involved isolating the north from the rest of the country by taking control of the Hudson River, allowing them to focus on the south where Loyalist support was believed to be substantial.[158] In December 1776, Howe wrote to the Colonial Secretary Lord Germain, proposing a limited offensive against Philadelphia, while a second force moved down the Hudson from Canada.[159] Germain received this on February 23, 1777, followed a few days later by a memorandum from Burgoyne, then in London on leave.[160]
Burgoyne supplied several alternatives, all of which gave him responsibility for the offensive, with Howe remaining on the defensive. The option selected required him to lead the main force south from Montreal down the Hudson Valley, while a detachment under Barry St. Leger moved east from Lake Ontario. The two would meet at Albany, leaving Howe to decide whether to join them.[160] Reasonable in principle, this did not account for the logistical difficulties involved and Burgoyne erroneously assumed Howe would remain on the defensive; Germain's failure to make this clear meant he opted to attack Philadelphia instead.[161]
Burgoyne set out on June 14, 1777, with a mixed force of British regulars, professional German soldiers and Canadian militia, and captured Fort Ticonderoga on July 5. As General Horatio Gates retreated, his troops blocked roads, destroyed bridges, dammed streams, and stripped the area of food.[162] This slowed Burgoyne's progress and forced him to send out large foraging expeditions; on one of these, more than 700 British troops were captured at the Battle of Bennington on August 16.[163] St Leger moved east and besieged Fort Stanwix; despite defeating an American relief force at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, he was abandoned by his Indian allies and withdrew to Quebec on August 22.[164] Now isolated and outnumbered by Gates, Burgoyne continued onto Albany rather than retreating to Fort Ticonderoga, reaching Saratoga on September 13. He asked Clinton for support while constructing defenses around the town.[165]
Morale among his troops rapidly declined, and an unsuccessful attempt to break past Gates at the Battle of Freeman Farms on September 19 resulted in 600 British casualties.[166] When Clinton advised he could not reach them, Burgoyne's subordinates advised retreat; a reconnaissance in force on October 7 was repulsed by Gates at the Battle of Bemis Heights, forcing them back into Saratoga with heavy losses. By October 11, all hope of escape had vanished; persistent rain reduced the camp to a "squalid hell" of mud and starving cattle, supplies were dangerously low and many of the wounded in agony.[167] Burgoyne capitulated on October 17; around 6,222 soldiers, including German forces commanded by General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, surrendered their arms before being taken to Boston, where they were to be transported to England.[168]
After securing additional supplies, Howe made another attempt on Philadelphia by landing his troops in Chesapeake Bay on August 24.[169] He now compounded failure to support Burgoyne by missing repeated opportunities to destroy his opponent, defeating Washington at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, then allowing him to withdraw in good order.[170] After dispersing an American detachment at Paoli on September 20, Cornwallis occupied Philadelphia on September 26, with the main force of 9,000 under Howe based just to the north at Germantown.[171] Washington attacked them on October 4, but was repulsed.[172]
To prevent Howe's forces in Philadelphia being resupplied by sea, the Patriots erected Fort Mifflin and nearby Fort Mercer on the east and west banks of the Delaware respectively, and placed obstacles in the river south of the city. This was supported by a small flotilla of Continental Navy ships on the Delaware, supplemented by the Pennsylvania State Navy, commanded by John Hazelwood. An attempt by the Royal Navy to take the forts in the October 20 to 22 Battle of Red Bank failed;[173][174] a second attack captured Fort Mifflin on November 16, while Fort Mercer was abandoned two days later when Cornwallis breached the walls.[175] His supply lines secured, Howe tried to tempt Washington into giving battle, but after inconclusive skirmishing at the Battle of White Marsh from December 5 to 8, he withdrew to Philadelphia for the winter.[176]
On December 19, the Americans followed suit and entered winter quarters at Valley Forge; while Washington's domestic opponents contrasted his lack of battlefield success with Gates' victory at Saratoga,[177] foreign observers such as Frederick the Great were equally impressed with Germantown, which demonstrated resilience and determination.[178] Over the winter, poor conditions, supply problems and low morale resulted in 2,000 deaths, with another 3,000 unfit for duty due to lack of shoes.[179] However, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben took the opportunity to introduce Prussian Army drill and infantry tactics to the entire Continental Army; he did this by training "model companies" in each regiment, who then instructed their home units.[180] Despite Valley Forge being only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, an action some critics argue could have ended the war.[181]
Foreign intervention
Like his predecessors, French foreign minister Vergennes considered the 1763 Peace a national humiliation and viewed the war as an opportunity to weaken Britain. He initially avoided open conflict, but allowed American ships to take on cargoes in French ports, a technical violation of neutrality.[182] Although public opinion favored the American cause, Finance Minister Turgot argued they did not need French help to gain independence, and war was too expensive. Instead, Vergennes persuaded Louis XVI to secretly fund a government front company to purchase munitions for the Patriots, carried in neutral Dutch ships and imported through Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean.[183]
Many Americans opposed a French alliance, fearing to "exchange one tyranny for another", but this changed after a series of military setbacks in early 1776. As France had nothing to gain from the colonies reconciling with Britain, Congress had three choices; making peace on British terms, continuing the struggle on their own, or proclaiming independence, guaranteed by France. Although the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 had wide public support, Adams was among those reluctant to pay the price of an alliance with France, and over 20% of Congressmen voted against it.[184] Congress agreed to the treaty with reluctance and as the war moved in their favor increasingly lost interest in it.[185]
Silas Deane was sent to Paris to begin negotiations with Vergennes, whose key objectives were replacing Britain as the United States' primary commercial and military partner while securing the French West Indies from American expansion.[186] These islands were extremely valuable; in 1772, the value of sugar and coffee produced by Saint-Domingue on its own exceeded that of all American exports combined.[187] Talks progressed slowly until October 1777, when British defeat at Saratoga and their apparent willingness to negotiate peace convinced Vergennes only a permanent alliance could prevent the "disaster" of Anglo-American rapprochement. Assurances of formal French support allowed Congress to reject the Carlisle Peace Commission and insist on nothing short of complete independence.[188]
On February 6, 1778, France and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce regulating trade between the two countries, followed by a defensive military alliance against Britain, the Treaty of Alliance. In return for French guarantees of American independence, Congress undertook to defend their interests in the West Indies, while both sides agreed not to make a separate peace; conflict over these provisions would lead to the 1798 to 1800 Quasi-War.[185] Charles III of Spain was invited to join on the same terms but refused, largely due to concerns over the impact of the Revolution on Spanish colonies in the Americas. Spain had complained on multiple occasions about encroachment by American settlers into Louisiana, a problem that could only get worse once the United States replaced Britain.[189]
Although Spain ultimately made important contributions to American success, in the Treaty of Aranjuez, Charles agreed only to support France's war with Britain outside America, in return for help in recovering Gibraltar, Menorca and Spanish Florida.[190] The terms were confidential since several conflicted with American aims; for example, the French claimed exclusive control of the Newfoundland cod fisheries, a non-negotiable for colonies like Massachusetts.[191] One less well-known impact of this agreement was the abiding American distrust of 'foreign entanglements'; the U.S. would not sign another treaty with France until their NATO agreement of 1949.[185] This was because the US had agreed not to make peace without France, while Aranjuez committed France to keep fighting until Spain recovered Gibraltar, effectively making it a condition of U.S. independence without the knowledge of Congress.[192]
To encourage French participation in the struggle for independence, the U.S. representative in Paris, Silas Deane promised promotion and command positions to any French officer who joined the Continental Army. Such as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, whom Congress via Dean appointed a major general,[193][194] on July 31, 1777.[195]
When the war started, Britain tried to borrow the Dutch-based Scots Brigade for service in America, but pro-Patriot sentiment led the States General to refuse.[196] Although the Republic was no longer a major power, prior to 1774 they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, a conflict that proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.[197] The Dutch were also excluded from the First League of Armed Neutrality, formed by Russia, Sweden and Denmark in March 1780 to protect neutral shipping from being stopped and searched for contraband by Britain and France.[198]
The British government failed to take into account the strength of the American merchant marine and support from European countries, which allowed the colonies to import munitions and continue trading with relative impunity. While well aware of this, the North administration delayed placing the Royal Navy on a war footing for cost reasons; this prevented the institution of an effective blockade and restricted them to ineffectual diplomatic protests.[199] Traditional British policy was to employ European land-based allies to divert the opposition, a role filled by Prussia in the Seven Years' War; in 1778, they were diplomatically isolated and faced war on multiple fronts.[200]
Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight.[201] He did not welcome war with France, but he believed the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to believe in ultimate victory over France.[202] Britain could not find a powerful ally among the Great Powers to engage France on the European continent.[203] Britain subsequently changed its focus into the Caribbean theater,[204] and diverted major military resources away from America.[205]
Vergennes's colleague stated, "For her honour, France had to seize this opportunity to rise from her degradation ... If she neglected it, if fear overcame duty, she would add debasement to humiliation, and become an object of contempt to her own century and to all future peoples".[206]
Stalemate in the North
At the end of 1777, Howe resigned and was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778; with French entry into the war, he was ordered to consolidate his forces in New York.[205] On June 18, the British departed Philadelphia with the reinvigorated Americans in pursuit; the Battle of Monmouth on June 28 was inconclusive but boosted Patriot morale. Washington had rallied Charles Lee's broken regiments, the Continentals repulsed British bayonet charges, the British rear guard lost perhaps 50 per-cent more casualties, and the Americans held the field at the end of the day. That midnight, the newly installed Clinton continued his retreat to New York.[207]
A French naval force under Admiral Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing was sent to assist Washington; deciding New York was too formidable a target, in August they launched a combined attack on Newport, with General John Sullivan commanding land forces.[208] The resulting Battle of Rhode Island was indecisive; badly damaged by a storm, the French withdrew to avoid putting their ships at risk.[209] Further activity was limited to British raids on Chestnut Neck and Little Egg Harbor in October.[210]
In July 1779, the Americans captured British positions at Stony Point and Paulus Hook.[211] Clinton unsuccessfully tried to tempt Washington into a decisive engagement by sending General William Tryon to raid Connecticut.[212] In July, a large American naval operation, the Penobscot Expedition, attempted to retake Maine, then part of Massachusetts, but was defeated.[213]
Persistent Iroquois raids in New York and Pennsylvania led to the punitive Sullivan Expedition from July to September 1779. Involving more than 4,000 patriot soldiers, the scorched earth campaign destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and 160,000 bushels (4,000 mts) of maize, leaving the Iroquois destitute and destroying the Iroquois confederacy as an independent power on the American frontier. However, the military expedition did not result in peace. 5,000 Iroquois fled to Canada. Supplied and supported by the British, they continued their raids.[214][215][216]
During the winter of 1779–1780, the Continental Army suffered greater hardships than at Valley Forge.[217] Morale was poor, public support fell away in the long war, the Continental dollar was virtually worthless, the army was plagued with supply problems, desertion was common, and mutinies occurred in the Pennsylvania Line and New Jersey Line regiments over the conditions in early 1780.[218]
In June 1780, Clinton sent 6,000 men under Wilhelm von Knyphausen to retake New Jersey, but they were halted by local militia at the Battle of Connecticut Farms; although the Americans withdrew, Knyphausen felt he was not strong enough to engage Washington's main force and retreated.[219] A second attempt two weeks later ended in a British defeat at the Battle of Springfield, effectively ending their ambitions in New Jersey.[220] In July, Washington appointed Benedict Arnold commander of West Point; his attempt to betray the fort to the British failed due to incompetent planning, and the plot was revealed when his British contact John André was captured and later executed.[221] Arnold escaped to New York and switched sides, an action justified in a pamphlet addressed "To the Inhabitants of America"; the Patriots condemned his betrayal, while he found himself almost as unpopular with the British.[222]
War in the South
The Southern Strategy was developed by Lord Germain, based on input from London-based Loyalists, including Joseph Galloway. They argued that it made no sense to fight the Patriots in the north where they were strongest, while the New England economy was reliant on trade with Britain, regardless of who governed it. On the other hand, duties on tobacco made the South far more profitable for Britain, while local support meant securing it required small numbers of regular troops. Victory would leave a truncated United States facing British possessions in the south, Canada to the north, and Ohio on their western border; with the Atlantic seaboard controlled by the Royal Navy, Congress would be forced to agree to terms. However, assumptions about the level of Loyalist support proved wildly optimistic.[223]
Germain accordingly ordered Augustine Prévost, the British commander in East Florida, to advance into Georgia in December 1778. Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, an experienced officer taken prisoner earlier in the war before being exchanged for Ethan Allen, captured Savannah on December 29, 1778. He recruited a Loyalist militia of nearly 1,100, many of whom allegedly joined only after Campbell threatened to confiscate their property.[224] Poor motivation and training made them unreliable troops, as demonstrated in their defeat by Patriot militia at the Battle of Kettle Creek on February 14, 1779, although this was offset by British victory at Brier Creek on March 3.[225]
In June 1779, Prévost launched an abortive assault on Charleston, before retreating to Savannah, an operation notorious for widespread looting by British troops that enraged both Loyalists and Patriots. In October, a joint French and American operation under d'Estaing and General Benjamin Lincoln failed to recapture Savannah.[226] Prévost was replaced by Lord Cornwallis, who assumed responsibility for Germain's strategy; he soon realized estimates of Loyalist support were considerably over-stated, and he needed far larger numbers of regular forces.[227]
Reinforced by Clinton, Cornwallis's troops captured Charleston in May 1780, inflicting the most serious Patriot defeat of the war; over 5,000 prisoners were taken and the Continental Army in the south effectively destroyed. On May 29, Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton's mainly Loyalist force routed a Continental Army force nearly three times its size under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford at the Battle of Waxhaws. The battle is controversial for allegations of a massacre, which were later used as a recruiting tool by the Patriots.[228]
Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to oversee the south; despite their success, the two men left barely on speaking terms, with dire consequences for the future conduct of the war.[229] The Southern strategy depended on local support, but this was undermined by a series of coercive measures. Previously, captured Patriots were sent home after swearing not to take up arms against the king; they were now required to fight their former comrades, while the confiscation of Patriot-owned plantations led formerly neutral "grandees" to side with them.[230] Skirmishes at Williamson's Plantation, Cedar Springs, Rocky Mount, and Hanging Rock signaled widespread resistance to the new oaths throughout South Carolina.[231]
In July 1780, Congress appointed Gates commander in the south; he was defeated at the Battle of Camden on August 16, leaving Cornwallis free to enter North Carolina.[232] Despite battlefield success, the British could not control the countryside and Patriot attacks continued; before moving north, Cornwallis sent Loyalist militia under Major Patrick Ferguson to cover his left flank, leaving their forces too far apart to provide mutual support.[233] In early October, Ferguson was defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain, dispersing organized Loyalist resistance in the region.[234] Despite this, Cornwallis continued into North Carolina hoping for Loyalist support, while Washington replaced Gates with General Nathanael Greene in December 1780.[235]
Greene divided his army, leading his main force southeast pursued by Cornwallis; a detachment was sent southwest under Daniel Morgan, who defeated Tarleton's British Legion at Cowpens on January 17, 1781, nearly eliminating it as a fighting force.[236] The Patriots now held the initiative in the south, with the exception of a raid on Richmond led by Benedict Arnold in January 1781.[237] Greene led Cornwallis on a series of countermarches around North Carolina; by early March, the British were exhausted and short of supplies and Greene felt strong enough to fight the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15. Although victorious, Cornwallis suffered heavy casualties and retreated to Wilmington, North Carolina, seeking supplies and reinforcements.[238]
The Patriots now controlled most of the Carolinas and Georgia outside the coastal areas; after a minor reversal at the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill, they recaptured Fort Watson and Fort Motte on April 15.[239] On June 6, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens captured Augusta, leaving the British in Georgia confined to Charleston and Savannah.[240] The assumption Loyalists would do most of the fighting left the British short of troops and battlefield victories came at the cost of losses they could not replace. Despite halting Greene's advance at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on September 8, Cornwallis withdrew to Charleston with little to show for his campaign.[241]
Western campaign
From the beginning of the war, Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, allowed the Americans to import supplies and munitions into New Orleans, then ship them to Pittsburgh.[242] This provided an alternative transportation route for the Continental Army, bypassing the British blockade of the Atlantic Coast.[243]
The trade was organized by Oliver Pollock, a successful merchant in Havana and New Orleans, who was appointed U.S. commercial agent.[244] It also helped support the American campaign in the west.
In February 1778, an expedition of militia to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River was halted by adverse weather.[245] Later in the year, a second campaign was undertaken to seize the Illinois Country from the British. Virginia militia, Canadien settlers, and Indian allies commanded by Colonel George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia on July 4 and then secured Vincennes, though Vincennes was recaptured by Quebec Governor Henry Hamilton. In early 1779, the Virginians counter-attacked in the siege of Fort Vincennes and took Hamilton prisoner. Clark secured western British Quebec as the American Northwest Territory in the Treaty of Paris brought the Revolutionary War to an end.[246]
When Spain joined France's war against Britain in the Anglo-French War in 1779, their treaty specifically excluded Spanish military action in North America. Later that year, however, Gálvez initiated offensive operations against British outposts.[247] First, he cleared British garrisons in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fort Bute, and Natchez, Mississippi, and captured five forts.[248] In doing so, Gálvez opened navigation on the Mississippi River north to the American settlement in Pittsburgh.[249]
On May 25, 1780, British Colonel Henry Bird invaded Kentucky as part of a wider operation to clear American resistance from Quebec to the Gulf Coast. Their Pensacola advance on New Orleans was repelled by Spanish Governor Gálvez's offensive on Mobile. Simultaneous British attacks were repulsed on St. Louis by the Spanish Lieutenant Governor de Leyba, and on the Virginia County courthouse in Cahokia, Illinois, by Lieutenant Colonel Clark. The British initiative under Bird from Detroit was ended at the rumored approach of Clark.[z] The scale of violence in the Licking River Valley, was extreme "even for frontier standards." It led to English and German settlements, who joined Clark's militia when the British and their hired German soldiers withdrew to the Great Lakes.[250] The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success in the Battle of Piqua but did not end Indian raids.[251]
French soldier Augustin de La Balme led a Canadian militia in an attempt to capture Detroit, but they dispersed when Miami natives led by Little Turtle attacked the encamped settlers on November 5.[252][aa] The war in the west stalemated with the British garrison sitting in Detroit and the Virginians expanding westward settlements north of the Ohio River in the face of British-allied Indian resistance.[254]
In 1781, Galvez and Pollock campaigned east along the Gulf Coast to secure West Florida, including British-held Mobile and Pensacola.[255] The Spanish operations impaired the British supply of armaments to British Indian allies, which effectively suspended a military alliance to attack settlers between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains.[256][ab]
In 1782, large scale retaliations between settlers and Native Americans in the region included the Gnadenhutten massacre and the Crawford expedition. The 1782 Battle of Blue Licks was one of the last major engagements of the American Revolutionary War. News of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States arrived late that year. By this time, about 7% of Kentucky settlers had been killed in battles against Native Americans, contrasted with 1% of the population killed in the Thirteen Colonies. Lingering resentments led to continued fighting in the west after the war officially ended.
British defeat
Clinton spent most of 1781 based in New York City; he failed to construct a coherent operational strategy, partly due to his difficult relationship with Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot.[257] In Charleston, Cornwallis independently developed an aggressive plan for a campaign in Virginia, which he hoped would isolate Greene's army in the Carolinas and cause the collapse of Patriot resistance in the South. This strategy was approved by Lord Germain in London, but neither of them informed Clinton.[258]
Washington and Rochambeau, meanwhile, discussed their options. Washington wanted to attack the British in New York, and Rochambeau wanted to attack them in Virginia, where Cornwallis's forces were less established and arguably easier to defeat.[259] Washington eventually gave way, and Lafayette took a combined Franco-American force into Virginia,[260] but Clinton misinterpreted his movements as preparations for an attack on New York. Concerned by a perceived threat to his positions in New York, he instructed Cornwallis to establish a fortified sea base, where the Royal Navy could evacuate British troops to help defend New York.[261]
When Lafayette entered Virginia, Cornwallis complied with Clinton's orders and withdrew to Yorktown, where he constructed strong defenses and awaited evacuation.[262] An agreement by the Spanish Navy to defend the French West Indies allowed Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse to relocate to the Atlantic seaboard, a move Arbuthnot did not anticipate.[257] This provided Lafayette naval support, while the failure of previous combined operations at Newport and Savannah meant their coordination was planned more carefully.[263] Despite repeated urging from his subordinates, Cornwallis made no attempt to engage Lafayette before he could establish siege lines.[264] Expecting to be withdrawn within a few days, he also abandoned the outer defenses, which were promptly occupied by the besiegers and hastened British defeat.[265]
On August 31, a Royal Navy fleet under Thomas Graves left New York for Yorktown.[266] After landing troops and munitions for the besiegers on August 30, de Grasse remained in Chesapeake Bay and intercepted him on September 5; although the Battle of the Chesapeake was indecisive in terms of losses, Graves was forced to retreat, leaving Cornwallis isolated.[267] An attempted breakout over York River at Gloucester Point failed due to bad weather.[268] Under heavy bombardment with dwindling supplies, Cornwallis felt his situation was hopeless and on October 16 sent emissaries to General Washington to negotiate their surrender; after twelve hours of negotiations, the terms of surrender were finalized the following day.[269] Responsibility for defeat was the subject of fierce public debate between Cornwallis, Clinton, and Germain. Despite criticism from his junior officers, Cornwallis retained the confidence of his peers and later held a series of senior government positions. Clinton ultimately took most of the blame and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity.[270]
Subsequent to Yorktown, American forces were assigned to supervise the armistice between Washington and Clinton made to facilitate British departure following the January 1782 law of Parliament forbidding any further British offensive action in North America. British-American negotiations in Paris led to signed preliminary agreements in November 1782, which acknowledged U.S. independence. The enacted Congressional war objective, a British withdrawal from North America and cession of these regions to the U.S., was completed in stages in East Coast cities.[271]
In the U.S. South, Generals Greene and Wayne loosely invested the withdrawing British at Savannah and Charleston, where they observed the British remove their troops from Charleston on December 14, 1782.[272] Loyalist provincial militias of whites and free blacks and Loyalists with slaves were transported to Nova Scotia and the British West Indies.[ac] Native American allies of the British and some freed blacks were left to escape unaided through the American lines.
Washington moved his army to New Windsor on the Hudson River about sixty miles north of New York City,[273] and there the substance of the Continental Army was furloughed home with officers at half pay until the Treaty of Paris formally ended the war on September 3, 1783. At that time, Congress decommissioned the regiments of Washington's Continental Army and began issuing land grants to veterans in the Northwest Territory for their war service. The last British occupation of New York City ended on November 25, 1783, with the departure of Clinton's replacement, General Sir Guy Carleton.[274]
Strategy and commanders
To win their insurrection, Washington and the Continental Army needed to outlast the British will to continue the fight. To restore their British America empire, the British had to defeat the Continental Army in the early months, and compel Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to dissolve and retract its claim to self-governance.[276] Historian Terry M. Mays of The Citadel identifies three separate types of warfare during the Revolutionary War. The first was a colonial conflict in which objections to imperial trade regulation were as significant as taxation policy. The second was a civil war with all Thirteen Colonies split between American Patriots, American Loyalists, and those who preferred to remain neutral in the revolution and war. Particularly in the south, many battles were fought between Patriots and Loyalists with no British involvement, leading to divisions that continued after independence was achieved.[277]
The third element was a global war between France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, with America serving as one of several different war theaters.[277] After entering the Revolutionary War in 1778, France provided the Americans money, weapons, soldiers, and naval assistance, while French troops fought under U.S. command in North America. While Spain did not formally join the war in America, they provided access to the Mississippi River and captured British possessions on the Gulf of Mexico that denied bases to the Royal Navy, retook Menorca and besieged Gibraltar in Europe.[278]
Although the Dutch Republic was no longer a major power prior to 1774, they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits by shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, and the conflict proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.[279] The Dutch were also excluded from the First League of Armed Neutrality formed by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark in March 1780 that protected neutral ships from being stopped and searched for contraband by Britain and France.[198] While of limited effect, these interventions forced the British to divert men and resources away from North America.[80]
American strategy
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.[280]
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.[280] 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.[14]
Continental Army
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.[281] 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.[282]
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 Greene; his chief of artillery, Knox; and Alexander Hamilton, the chief of staff.[283] One of Washington's most successful general officer recruits was Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual.[282] 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.[281][ad]
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.[286] 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.[287] 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.[288]
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,[289] and the combined Franco-American army in the decisive American victory at Yorktown was only about 19,000.[290] 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.[291]
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.[283] 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.[282] 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.[292] 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,[ae] "that the possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail them little."[294]
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.[295] Congress evolved in its committee oversight and established the Board of War, which included members of the military.[296] 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.[297][282]
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.[298] The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, and appointed Esek Hopkins as its first commander;[299] for most of the war, the Continental Navy included only a handful of small frigates and sloops, supported by numerous privateers.[300] On November 10, 1775, Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Marines, which ultimately evolved into, and was named, the United States Marine Corps.[285]
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.[301] 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.[302] 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.[303]
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.[304][af] About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war.[16]
France
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.[306]
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.[307]
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.[ag] 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 Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.[310][ah]
British strategy
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.[312] 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.[313]
Prior to the conflict, the colonies were largely autonomous economic and political entities, with no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance.[314] 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.[315] 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.[316]
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".[317] While Ferling argues Patriot victory was nothing short of a miracle,[318] 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".[319] 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".[320]
British Army
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.[321] 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.[322] 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.[323]
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.[324] 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.[325]
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.[326] However, it allowed the Patriots to take the initiative and British authorities rapidly lost control over every colony.[327] 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.[328] 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.[329] Having lost the confidence of his subordinates, he was recalled after Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga.[330]
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.[331] In 1778, Howe was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton, appointed instead of Carleton who was considered overly cautious.[332] Regarded as an expert on tactics and strategy,[330] like his predecessors Clinton was handicapped by chronic supply issues.[333] 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.[334]
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.[257] 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.[335] 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.[336]
German troops
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.[337] 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.[338] 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".[339]
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.[340] Often generically referred to as "Hessians", they included men from many other states, including Hanover and Brunswick.[341] 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.[342]
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.[343] 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".[344] 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.[345]
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.[346][347] 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.[343] The Hessian reputation within Germany for brutality also increased support for the Patriot cause among German American immigrants.[348]
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.[349] 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.[350] German regiments were central to the British war effort; of the estimated 30,000 sent to America, some 13,000 became casualties.[351]
Revolution as civil war
Loyalists
Wealthy Loyalists convinced the British government that most of the colonists were sympathetic toward the Crown;[352] consequently, British military planners relied on recruiting Loyalists, but had trouble recruiting sufficient numbers as the Patriots had widespread support.[281][ai] Nevertheless, they continued to deceive themselves on their level of American support as late as 1780, a year before hostilities ended.[353]
Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war.[31] Although Loyalists constituted about twenty percent of the colonial population,[81] 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.[81]
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.[354] The available manpower that the British had in America was insufficient to protect Loyalist territory and counter American offensives.[355] 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.[238]
When the early war policy was administered by Howe, the Crown's need to maintain Loyalist support prevented it from using the traditional revolt suppression methods.[356] The British cause suffered when their troops ransacked local homes during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779 that enraged both Patriots and Loyalists.[226] 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.[357] Conversely, Loyalists gained support when Patriots intimidated suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering.[358]
A Loyalist militia unit—the British Legion—provided some of the best troops in British service; it received a commission in the British Army.[359] It was a mixed regiment of 250 dragoons and 200 infantry supported by batteries of flying artillery.[360][aj] It was commanded by Tarleton and gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies for "brutality and needless slaughter".[361][better source needed]In May 1779 the British Legion was one of five regiments that formed the American Establishment.[362]
Women
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,[363] and Frederika Charlotte Riedesel documented the Saratoga campaign.[364] 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.[365]
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.[366] 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".[367]
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".[368] A report in The New England Quarterly says there is little evidence backing the story,[369] and whether the ride occurred is questioned.[369][370][371][372] 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.[367]
African Americans
,_by_Jean-Baptiste-Antoine_DeVerger.png)
When war began, the population of the Thirteen Colonies included an estimated 500,000 slaves, predominantly used as labor on Southern plantations.[373] 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.[374]
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.[375] 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.[376]
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.[377] 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.[378]
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.[379] 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.[380]
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.[381] 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.[376]
Native Americans
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.[33]
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.[382]
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.[383] 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.[384]
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.[385]
In the western theater of the American Revolutionary War, conflicts between settlers and Native Americans led to lingering distrust.[386] 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.[387] 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.[388]
Britain's "American war" and peace
Changing Prime Ministers
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.[389]
British negotiators now proposed a second peace settlement to Congress.[390] 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.[391]
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.[331] Those standing orders would be in effect for three years until Clinton was relieved.[392]
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.[393] 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.[394] 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.[395]
On February 27, 1782, a Whig motion to end the offensive war in America was carried by 19 votes.[396] 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.[397]
American Congress signs a 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 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.[271]
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.[271] 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.[271]
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.[399] 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.[400] 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.[401] 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.[401]
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.[402] 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.[403][404]
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.[405] On November 25, the last British troops remaining in the U.S. were evacuated from New York to Halifax.[406]
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".[407] 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.[408]
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, 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.[409]
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.[410] 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.[271]
Territory
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.[411]
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.[387] Though British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the U.S.,[412] Natives were not referred to in the British cession to the U.S.[413]
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 Hamilton, went into effect on February 29, 1796.[413][ak] 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.[411]
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.[al] 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.[415] 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.[415]
Casualties and losses
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.[41][am] Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions.[416]
Up to 70,000 American Patriots died during active military service.[417] 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.[418][an] The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000.[419]
The French suffered 2,112 killed in combat in the United States.[420][ao] The Spanish lost a total of 124 killed and 247 wounded in West Florida.[421][ap]
A British report in 1781 puts their total Army deaths at 6,046 in North America (1775–1779).[41][aq] 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.[13][ar]
Legacy
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.[429]
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.[430]
In 1782, Virginia passed a law permitting manumission and over the next eight years more than 10,000 slaves were given their freedom.[431] With support from Benjamin Franklin, in 1790 the Quakers petitioned Congress to abolish slavery;[432] the number of abolitionist movements greatly increased, and by 1804 all the northern states had outlawed it.[433] However, even many like Adams who viewed slavery as a 'foul contagion' opposed the 1790 petition as a threat to the Union.[434] 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.[435]
Prior to the American Revolution, slavery was legal and it was normal, around the world. And, it had been that way for thousands of years. The American Revolution changed that. American freedom is what made slavery into an issue. As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before," but the Revolution "forced it to be a public question from there forward."[436][437]
Historiography
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.[438] 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.
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.[439] 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.[440] 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:[441]
- The Atlantic history view places the American story in a broader context, including subsequent revolutions in France and Haiti. It tends to reintegrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire.[442][443][444]
- The "new social history" approach looks at community social structure to find cleavages that were magnified into colonial cleavages.
- The ideological approach that centers on republicanism in the United States.[445] Republicanism dictated there would be no royalty, aristocracy or national church but allowed for continuation of the British common law, which American lawyers and jurists understood and approved and used in their everyday practice. Historians have examined how the rising American legal profession adopted British common law to incorporate republicanism by selective revision of legal customs and by introducing more choices for courts.[446][447]
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.[448]
- Selected issues:
-
The Liberty Bell stamp, issued on the 150th anniversary of American independence in 1926 -
150th anniversary of the Battles of Saratoga stamp featuring Burgoyne's surrender, issued in 1927 -
Washington at prayer at Valley Forge stamp, issued in 1928 -
150th anniversary of the Siege of Yorktown stamp featuring Rochambeau, Washington, and de Grasse, issued in 1931
See also
- 1776 in the United States: events, births, deaths, and other years
- Timeline of the American Revolution
Topics of the Revolution
- Committee of safety (American Revolution)
- Diplomacy in the American Revolutionary War
- Financial costs of the American Revolutionary War
- Flags of the American Revolution
- Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War
Social history of the Revolution
- Black Patriot
- Christianity in the United States#American Revolution
- The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution
- History of Poles in the United States#American Revolution
- List of clergy in the American Revolution
- List of Patriots (American Revolution)
- Quakers in the American Revolution
- Scotch-Irish Americans#American Revolution
Others in the American Revolution
Lists of Revolutionary military
- List of American Revolutionary War battles
- List of British Forces in the American Revolutionary War
- List of Continental Forces in the American Revolutionary War
- List of infantry weapons in the American Revolution
- List of United States militia units in the American Revolutionary War
Thirteen Colony economy
- Economic history of the US: Colonial economy to 1780
- Shipbuilding in the American colonies
- Slavery in the United States
- American Revolution Statuary
- Commemoration of the American Revolution
- Founders Online
- Independence Day (United States)
- The Last Men of the Revolution
- List of plays and films about the American Revolution
- Museum of the American Revolution
- Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution
- United States Bicentennial
- United States Semiquincentennial
- List of wars of independence
Bibliographies
Notes
- ^ Two independent "COR" Regiments, the Congress's Own Regiments, were recruited among British Canadiens. The 1st Canadian Regiment formed by James Livingston of Chambly, Quebec;[1] and the 2nd Canadian Regiment formed by Moses Hazen of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.[2]
- ^ Augustin de La Balme independently marched on Detroit under a French flag with British Canadien militia recruited from western Quebec (Illinois County, Virginia) at the county seat of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes.[3]
- ^ (until 1779)
- ^ Sixty-five percent of Britain's German auxiliaries employed in North America were from Hesse-Kassel (16,000) and Hesse-Hanau (2,422), flying this same flag.[6]
- ^ Twenty percent of Britain's German auxiliaries employed in North America were from Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (5,723),[7] flying this flag.[8]
- ^ The British hired over 30,000 professional soldiers from various German states who served in North America from 1775 to 1782.[10] Commentators and historians often refer to them as mercenaries or auxiliaries, terms that are sometimes used interchangeably.[9]
- ^ (from 1779)
- ^ Arnold served on the American side from 1775 to 1780; after defecting, he served on the British side from 1780 to 1783.
- ^ 1780–1783
- ^ The total in active duty service for the American Cause during the American Revolutionary War numbered 200,000.[14]
- ^ 5,000 sailors (peak),[15] manning privateers, an additional 55,000 total sailors[16]
- ^ In 1780, General Rochambeau landed in Rhode Island with an independent command of about 6000 troops,[19] and in 1781 Admiral de Grasse landed nearly 4000 troops who were detached to Lafayette's Continental Army surrounding British General Cornwallis in Virginia at Yorktown.[20] An additional 750 French troops participated with the Spanish assault on Pensacola.[21]
- ^ For five months in 1778 from July to November, the French deployed a fleet to assist American operations off of New York, Rhode Island and Savannah commanded by Admiral d'Estaing, with little result.[22] In September 1781, Admiral de Grasse left the West Indies to defeat the British fleet off Virginia at the Battle of the Chesapeake, then offloaded 3,000 troops and siege cannon to support Washington's siege of Yorktown.[23]
- ^ Governor Bernardo de Gálvez deployed 500 Spanish regulars in his New Orleans-based attacks on British-held locations west of the Mississippi River in Spanish Luisiana.[25] In later engagements, Galvez had 800 regulars from New Orleans to assault Mobile, reinforced by infantry from regiments of Jose de Ezpeleta from Havana. In the assault on Pensacola, the Spanish Army contingents from Havana exceeded 9,000.[26] For the final days of the siege at Pensacola siege, Admiral Jose Solano's fleet landed 1,600 crack infantry veterans from that of Gibraltar.[21]
- ^ Admiral Jose Solano's fleet arrived from the Mediterranean Sea to support the Spanish conquest of English Pensacola, West Florida.[21]
- ^ British 121,000 (global 1781)[27] "Of 7,500 men in the Gibraltar garrison in September (including 400 in hospital), some 3,430 were always on duty".[28]
- ^ Royal Navy 94 ships-of-the-line global, 104 frigates global,[29] 37 sloops global,[29] 171,000 sailors[30]
- ^ Contains a detailed listing of American, French, British, German, and Loyalist regiments; indicates when they were raised, the main battles, and what happened to them. Also includes the main warships on both sides, and all the important battles.
- ^ Beyond the 2112 deaths recorded by the French Government fighting for U.S. independence, additional men died fighting Britain in a war waged by France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic from 1778 to 1784, "overseas" from the American Revolution as posited by a British scholar[specify] in his "War of the American Revolution".[38]
- ^ Clodfelter reports that the total deaths among the British and their allies numbered 15,000 killed in battle or died of wounds. These included estimates of 3000 Germans, 3000 Loyalists and Canadians, 3000 lost at sea, and 500 Native Americans killed in battle or died of wounds.[36]
- ^ "Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: ... they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, ...: But, ... we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bonafide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation internal or external, [without the consent of American subjects]." quoted from the Declarations and Resolves of the First Continental Congress October 14, 1774.
- ^ To learn when and where the attack would occur Washington asked for a volunteer among the Rangers to spy on activity behind enemy lines in Brooklyn. Young Nathan Hale stepped forward, but he was only able to provide Washington with nominal intelligence at that time.[124] On September 21, Hale was recognized in a New York City tavern, and was apprehended with maps and sketches of British fortifications and troop positions in his pockets. Howe ordered that he be summarily hung as a spy without trial the next day.[125]
- ^ Tallmadge's cover name became John Bolton, and he was the architect of the spy ring.[126]
- ^ The American prisoners were subsequently sent to the infamous prison ships in the East River, where more American soldiers and sailors died of disease and neglect than died in every battle of the war combined.[137]
- ^ The mandate came by way of Benjamin Rush, chair of the Medical Committee. Congress had directed that all troops who had not previously survived smallpox infection be inoculated. In explaining himself to state governors, Washington lamented that he had lost "an army" to smallpox in 1776 by the "Natural way" of immunity.[155]
- ^ Bird's expedition numbered 150 British soldiers, several hundred Loyalists, and 700 Shawnee, Wyandot, and Ottawa auxiliaries. The force skirted into the eastern regions of Patriot-conquered western Quebec that had been annexed as Illinois County, Virginia. His target was Virginia militia stationed at Lexington. As they approached downriver on the Ohio River, rumor among the natives spread that the feared Colonel Clark had discovered their approach. Bird's natives and Loyalists abandoned their mission 90 miles upriver to loot settlements at the Licking River. At the surrender of Ruddles Station, safe passage to families was promised, but 200 were massacred by Indian raiders. Grenier maintains that "The slaughter the Indians and rangers perpetrated was unprecedented".
- ^ Most Native Americans living in the area remembered the French better than any of the British they had met. Despite the British military nearby, the Miami people sought to avoid fighting with either Virginian Clark or Frenchman La Balme. On La Balme's horseback advance on Detroit, he paused two weeks to ruin a local French trader and loot surrounding Miami towns. La Balme might have treated them as allies, but he pushed Little Turtle into warrior leadership, converting most Miami tribes into British military allies, and launching the military career of one of the most successful opponents of westward settlement over the next 30 years.[253]
- ^ Governor Bernardo de Gálvez is only one of eight men made honorary US citizens for his service in the American Cause. see Bridget Bowman (29 December 2014). "Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid's Very Good Year". Roll Call. The Economist Group. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
- ^ In Nova Scotia, a province that had been a Massachusetts county in the 1600s, British settlement of freed black Loyalists from the American Revolutionary War secured its Canadian claim there. Britain continued its last "Bourbon War" with the French and Spanish primarily amidst their mutually conflicting territorial claims adjacent the Caribbean Sea, including Jamaica, adjacent the Mediterranean Sea including Gibraltar and Isla Mallorca, and adjacent the Indian Ocean during the Second Mysore War.
- ^ Three branches of the United States Military trace their roots to the American Revolutionary War; the Army comes from the Continental Army; the Navy comes from the Continental Navy, appointing Esek Hopkins as the Navy's first commander.[284] The Marine Corps links to the Continental Marines, created by Congress on November 10, 1775.[285]
- ^ Laurens was president of the Second Continental Congress at this time.[293]
- ^ In what was known as the Whaleboat War, American privateers mainly from New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Connecticut attacked and robbed British merchant ships and raided and robbed coastal communities of Long Island reputed to have Loyalist sympathies.[305]
- ^ King George III feared that the war's prospects would make it unlikely he could reclaim the North American colonies.[308] During the later years of the Revolution, the British were drawn into numerous other conflicts about the globe.[309]
- ^ The final elements for US victory over Britain and US independence was assured by direct military intervention from France, as well as ongoing French supply and commercial trade over the final three years of the war.[311]
- ^ On militia see Boatner 1974, p. 707;
Weigley 1973, ch. 2 - ^ "British Legion Infantry strength at Cowpens was between 200 and 271 enlisted men". However, this statement is referenced to a note on pp. 175–176, which says, "The British Legion infantry at Cowpens is usually considered to have had about 200–250 men, but returns for the 25 December 1780 muster show only 175. Totals obtained by Cornwallis, dated 15 January, show that the whole legion had 451 men, but approximately 250 were dragoons". There would therefore appear to be no evidence for putting the total strength of the five British Legion light infantry companies at more than 200.[360]
- ^ For the thirteen years prior to the Anglo-American commercial Jay Treaty of 1796 under President George Washington, the British maintained five forts in New York state: two forts at northern Lake Champlain, and three beginning at Fort Niagara stretching east along Lake Ontario. In the Northwest Territory, they garrisoned Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac.[414]
- ^ There had been native-born Spanish (hidalgo) uprisings in several American colonies during the American Revolution, contesting mercantilist reforms of Carlos III that had removed privileges inherited from the Conquistadors among encomiendas, and they also challenged Jesuit dominance in the Catholic Church there. American ship captains were known to have smuggled banned copies of the Declaration of Independence into Spanish Caribbean ports, provoking Spanish colonial discontent.
- ^ In addition to as many as 30% deaths in port cities, and especially high rates among the closely confined prisoner-of-war ships, scholars have reported large numbers lost among the Mexican population, and large percentage losses among the American Indian along trade routes, Atlantic to Pacific, Eskimo to Aztec.
- ^ If the upper limit of 70,000 is accepted as the total net loss for the Patriots, it would make the conflict proportionally deadlier than the American Civil War. Uncertainty arises from the difficulties in accurately calculating the number of those who succumbed to disease, as it is estimated at least 10,000 died in 1776 alone.[13]
- ^ Elsewhere around the world, the French lost another approximately 5,000 total dead in conflicts 1778–1784.[420]
- ^ During the same time period in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch suffered around 500 total killed, owing to the minor scale of their conflict with Britain.[421]
- ^ British returns in 1783 listed 43,633 rank and file deaths across the British Armed Forces.[422] In the first three years of the Anglo-French War (1778), British list 9,372 soldiers killed in battle across the Americas; and 3,326 in the West Indies (1778–1780).[41] In 1784, a British lieutenant compiled a detailed list of 205 British officers killed in action during British conflicts outside of North America, encompassing Europe, the Caribbean, and the East Indies.[423] Extrapolations based upon this list puts British Army losses in the area of at least 4,000 killed or died of wounds outside of its North American engagements.[13]
- ^ Around 171,000 sailors served in the Royal Navy during British conflicts worldwide 1775–1784; approximately a quarter of whom had been pressed into service. Around 1,240 were killed in battle, while an estimated 18,500 died from disease (1776–1780).[424] The greatest killer at sea was scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.[425] It was not until 1795 that scurvy was eradicated from the Royal Navy after the Admiralty declared lemon juice and sugar were to be issued among the standard daily grog rations of sailors.[426] Around 42,000 sailors deserted worldwide during the era.[30] The impact on merchant shipping was substantial; 2,283 were taken by American privateers.[304] Worldwide 1775–1784, an estimated 3,386 British merchant ships were seized by enemy forces during the war among Americans, French, Spanish, and Dutch.[427]
Citations
- Year dates enclosed in [brackets] denote year of original printing
- ^ Smith 1907, p. 86
- ^ Everest 1977, p. 38
- ^ Seineke 1981, p. 36, fn
- ^ Tortora, Daniel J. (February 4, 2015). "Indian Patriots from Eastern Massachusetts: Six Perspectives". Journal of the American Revolution.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Bell 2015, Essay
- ^ Axelrod 2014, p. 66
- ^ Eelking 1893, p. 66
- ^ "Duchy of Brunswick until 1918 (Germany)". www.crwflags.com. Flags of the World. Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Atwood 2002, pp. 1, 23
- ^ Lowell 1884, pp. 14–15
- ^ A cease-fire in America was proclaimed by Congress on April 11, 1783, under a cease-fire agreement between Great Britain and France on January 20, 1783. The final peace treaty was signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified on January 14, 1784, in the U.S., with final ratification exchanged in Europe on May 12, 1784. Hostilities in India continued until July 1783.
- ^ Simms 2009, pp. 615–618
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Duncan, L. 1931, p. 371
- ^ Jump up to: a b Lanning 2009, pp. 195–196
- ^ Jump up to: a b Greene & Pole 2008, p. 328
- ^ Jump up to: a b U.S. Merchant Marine 2012, "Privateers and Mariners"
- ^ Simmons 2003
- ^ Paullin 1906, pp. 315–316
- ^ Keiley 1912, "Rochambeau"
- ^ "Rochambeau", Dictionary of American Biography
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Beerman 1979, p. 181
- ^ Britannica 1911, "C. H. Estaing"
- ^ "F. J. P. de Grasse", Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Dull 1987, p. 110
- ^ Gayarré 1867, pp. 125–126
- ^ Beerman 1979, pp. 177–179
- ^ Rinaldi, "British Army 1775–1783"
- ^ Chartrand 2006, p. 63
- ^ Jump up to: a b Winfield 2007
- ^ Jump up to: a b Mackesy 1993 [1964], pp. 6, 176
- ^ Jump up to: a b Savas & Dameron 2006, p. xli
- ^ Knesebeck 2017 [1845], p. 9
- ^ Jump up to: a b Greene & Pole 2008, p. 393
- ^ Burrows 2008a, "Patriots or Terrorists"
- ^ Peckham (ed.) 1974
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Clodfelter 2017, pp. 133–134
- ^ Rignault 2004, pp. 20, 53
- ^ Clodfelter 2017, pp. 75, 135
- ^ Otfinoski 2008, p. 16
- ^ Archuleta 2006, p. 69
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d Clodfelter 2017, p. 134
- ^ Burrows 2008b, Forgotten Patriots
- ^ Lawrence S. Kaplan, "The Treaty of Paris, 1783: A Historiographical Challenge", International History Review, Sept 1983, Vol. 5 Issue 3, pp 431–442
- ^ Wallace 2015, "American Revolution"
- ^ Calloway 2007, p. 4
- ^ Jump up to: a b Lass 1980, p. 3.
- ^ Lass 1980, p. 4.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Calloway 2007, p. 12
- ^ Watson and Clark 1960, pp. 183–184
- ^ Watson and Clark 1960, pp. 116, 187
- ^ Morgan 2012, p. 40
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 23
- ^ Morgan 2012, p. 52
- ^ Greene & Pole 2008, pp. 155–156
- ^ Ammerman 1974, p. 15
- ^ Olsen 1992, pp. 543–544
- ^ Ferling 2003, p. 112
- ^ Ferling 2015, p. 102
- ^ Jump up to: a b Greene & Pole 2008, p. 199
- ^ Paine, Kramnick (Ed.) 1982, p. 21
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 62–64
- ^ Axelrod 2009, p. 83
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, p. 76
- ^ Jump up to: a b O'Shaughnessy 2013, p. 25
- ^ Brown 1941, pp. 29–31
- ^ Ketchum 2014a, p. 211
- ^ Maier 1998, p. 25
- ^ Ferling 2003, pp. 123–124
- ^ Lecky 1892, vol. 3, pp. 162–165
- ^ Davenport 1917, pp. 132–144
- ^ Smith, D. 2012, pp. 21–23
- ^ Miller, J. 1959, pp. 410–12
- ^ Maier 1998, pp. 33–34
- ^ McCullough 2005, pp. 119–122
- ^ "The Declaration House Through Time", National Park Services
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 112, 118
- ^ Maier 1998, pp. 160–61
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, p. 29
- ^ Mays 2019, p. 2
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Mays 2019, p. 3
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Greene & Pole 2008, p. 235
- ^ CIA 2007, "Intelligence Until WWII"
- ^ Clary, 2007, pp. 86–87
- ^ Rose A. 2014 [2006], p. 43
- ^ Mays 2019, p. 8
- ^ Ferling, 2007, p. 29
- ^ Fischer, p. 85
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 129–19[page needed]
- ^ Ketchum 2014a, pp. 18, 54
- ^ Ketchum 2014a, pp. 2–9
- ^ Jump up to: a b Higginbotham 1983 [1971], pp. 75–77
- ^ Ketchum 2014a, pp. 183, 198–209
- ^ Rankin 1987, p. 63
- ^ Chernow, 2010, p. 186
- ^ Taylor 2016, pp. 141–142
- ^ Chernow, 2010, p. 187
- ^ McCullough 2005, p. 53
- ^ Frothingham 1903, pp. 100–101
- ^ Ferling 2003, p. 183
- ^ Alden 1969, pp. 188–190
- ^ Smith, J. 1907 vol. 1, p. 293
- ^ Glatthaar 2007, pp. 91, 93
- ^ Greene & Pole 2008, pp. 504–505
- ^ Randall 1990, pp. 38–39
- ^ Lanctot 1967, pp. 141–246
- ^ Stanley 2006, pp. 127–128
- ^ Smith, J. 1907 vol. 1, p. 242
- ^ Watson and Clark 1960, p. 203
- ^ Lefkowitz 2007, pp. 264–265
- ^ Selby 2007, p. 2
- ^ Levy 2007, p. 74
- ^ Russell 2000, p. 73
- ^ McCrady 1901, p. 89
- ^ Landrum 1897, pp. 80–81
- ^ Wilson 2005, p. 33
- ^ Hibbert 2008, p. 106
- ^ Bicheno 2014, pp. 154, 158
- ^ Field 1898, p. 104
- ^ Field 1898, pp. 114–118
- ^ Field 1898, pp. 120–125
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 78–76
- ^ Ketchum 2014 [1973], p. 104
- ^ Johnston 1897, p. 61
- ^ Burke 1975, p. 134
- ^ Baker 2014, Chap. 11
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Baker 2014, Chap. 12
- ^ CIA 2011, Historical Document
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 89, 381
- ^ Adams 1963 [1895–96], p. 657
- ^ McCullough 2005, pp. 184–186
- ^ McGuire 2011, pp. 165–166
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 102–107
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 102–111
- ^ Ketchum 2014 [1973], pp. 111, 130
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 109–125
- ^ McCullough 2005, p. 122
- ^ Lowenthal 2009, pp. 61, 131
- ^ Tucker 2002, pp. 22–23
- ^ Schecter 2003, pp. 266–267
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 138–142
- ^ Morris, R.B. Morris 1983 (1965) , p. 139
- ^ McCullough 2005, p. 195
- ^ Ketchum 2014 [1973], pp. 191, 269
- ^ Adams 1963 [1895–96], pp. 650–670
- ^ Schecter 2003, pp. 259–263
- ^ Stryker, 1898, p. 122
- ^ Fischer, 2006, pp. 248, 255
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 206–208, 254
- ^ Wood 1995, pp. 72–74
- ^ Mauch 2003, p. 416
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, p. 307
- ^ McCullough 2005, p. 290
- ^ Lengel 2005, p. 208
- ^ Washington 1932, "Writings" v. 7, pp. 38, 130–131
- ^ Washington 1932, "Writings" v. 7, pp. 131, 130
- ^ Fischer, D. 2004, pp. 345–358
- ^ Lecky 1891 Vol. 4, p. 57
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 79–80
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 81–82
- ^ Jump up to: a b Ketchum 1997, p. 84
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 85–86
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 244–249
- ^ Gabriel 2012, p. x
- ^ Ketchum 1997, p. 332
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 337–339
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 368–369
- ^ Ferling, 2007, pp. 238–239
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 421–424
- ^ Stedman 1794, Vol. 1, pp. 317–319
- ^ Adams 1911, p. 43
- ^ Ward, C. 1952, pp. 361–362
- ^ Taaffe 2003, pp. 95–100
- ^ Daughan, 2011, pp. 148–155
- ^ McGeorge, 1905, pp. 4–8
- ^ Cadwalader 1901, p. 20
- ^ Cadwalader 1901, p. 22
- ^ Cadwalader 1901, pp. 22, 27
- ^ Fiske 1891, p. 332
- ^ Chernow 2010 (2011), pp. 327–328
- ^ Lockhart 2008, p.?
- ^ Risch, 1981, pp. 322, 417–418
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 117
- ^ Jones 2002, pp. 5–6
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 117–119
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Chambers 1999
- ^ Chambers 2004
- ^ Eclov 2013 pp. 23–24
- ^ Stockley 2001, pp. 11–14
- ^ Renouf, Stephen. "Spain in the American Revolution" (PDF). Spain Society; SAR. sar.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
- ^ Davenport 1917, pp. 145–146
- ^ Davenport 1917, p. 146
- ^ Weeks 2013, p. 27
- ^ Chernow, 2010, p. 298
- ^ Horn, 1989, pp. 24–25, 30
- ^ Axelrod, 2009, pp. 234–235
- ^ Edler 2001 [1911], pp. 28–32
- ^ Scott 1988, pp. 572–573
- ^ Jump up to: a b Grainger 2005, p. 10
- ^ Syrett 1998, p. 2
- ^ Syrett 1998, pp. 18–19
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 294
- ^ Syrett 1998, p. 17
- ^ Scott 1990, pp. 264–272
- ^ Syrett 1998, p. 18
- ^ Jump up to: a b Higginbotham 1983 [1971], pp. 175–188
- ^ Piers Mackesy The war for America 1775–1783
- ^ Chernow 2010 (2011), p. 343
- ^ Morrissey 2004, pp. 77–78
- ^ Daughan 2011 [2008], pp. 174–176
- ^ Goos
- ^ Hazard 1829, p. 54
- ^ Nelson 1999, p. 170
- ^ Bicheno 2014, p. 149
- ^ Fischer, J. 2008, p. 86
- ^ Soodalter, Ron (July 8, 2011). "Massacre & Retribution: The 1779-1780 Sullivan Expedition". History Net. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
- ^ "The Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779". National Park Service. Retrieved April 8, 2024.
- ^ Tolson 2008, "Washington's Savvy Won the Day"
- ^ Chandler 2017, pp. 363–380
- ^ Fleming 2005 [1973], pp. 174–175
- ^ Fleming 2005 [1973], pp. 232, 302
- ^ Palmer 2010, pp. 340–342
- ^ Palmer 2010, pp. 376–377
- ^ Pearson 1993, pp. 16–19
- ^ Wilson 2005, p. 87
- ^ Morrill 1993, pp. 46–50
- ^ Jump up to: a b Wilson 2005, p. 112
- ^ Pearson 1993, pp. 22–23
- ^ Piecuch 2004, pp. 4–8
- ^ Borick 2003, pp. 127–128
- ^ Gordon and Keegan 2007, pp. 101–102
- ^ Gordon and Keegan 2007, pp. 88–92
- ^ Rankin 2011 [1996], p.
- ^ Buchanan 1997, p. 202
- ^ Ferling, 2007, pp. 459–461
- ^ Buchanan 1997, p. 275
- ^ Golway 2005, pp. 238–242
- ^ Peterson 1975 [1970], pp. 234–238
- ^ Jump up to: a b Buchanan 1997, p. 241
- ^ Greene, F. 1913, pp. 234–237
- ^ Reynolds 2012, pp. 255–277
- ^ Pancake 1985, p. 221
- ^ Narrett 2015, p. 81
- ^ Chavez 2002, p. 108
- ^ Narrett 2015, p. 71
- ^ Nester 2004, p. 194
- ^ Harrison 2001, pp. 58–60
- ^ Chávez 2002, p. 170
- ^ Don Jaun Carlos I 1979, speech
- ^ Deane 2018, "Spanish New Orleans helped America"
- ^ Grenier 2005, p. 159
- ^ Nelson 1999, p. 118
- ^ Gaff 2004, p. 85
- ^ Hogeland 2017, pp. 88–89
- ^ Skaggs 1977, p. 132
- ^ Raab 2007, p. 135
- ^ O'Brien 2008, p. 124
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Ferling 2007, p. 444
- ^ Ketchum 2014b, pp. 423, 520
- ^ Ketchum 2014b, p. 139
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 526–529
- ^ Grainger 2005, pp. 43–44
- ^ Taylor 2016, pp. 293–295
- ^ Dull 2015 [1975], pp. 247–248
- ^ Ketchum 2014b, p. 205
- ^ Lengel 2005, p. 337
- ^ Middleton 2014, pp. 29–43
- ^ Black 1992, p. 110
- ^ Dale 2005, pp. 36–37
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 534–535
- ^ Middleton 2014, pp. 370–372
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Ferling 2003, pp. 378–379
- ^ Fiske 1902, p. 516
- ^ Fleming 2006, p. 194
- ^ Fleming 2006, p. 312
- ^ USMA History Dept., Map: "American Revolution Principal Campaigns"
- ^ Mays 2019, pp. 1–2
- ^ Jump up to: a b Mays 2019, pp. 2–3
- ^ Davenport 1917, p. 168
- ^ Scott 1988, pp. 572–573
- ^ Jump up to: a b Greene & Pole 2008, pp. 36–39
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Black 2001 [1991], p. 59
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d Ferling 2007, pp. 286–287
- ^ Jump up to: a b Higginbotham 1987, Chap. 3
- ^ Miller 1997, pp. 11–12, 16
- ^ Jump up to: a b Smith, D. 2012, pp. iv, 459
- ^ Lengel 2005, pp. 365–371
- ^ Ellis 2004, pp. 92–109
- ^ Rose, A. 2014 [2006], pp. 258–261
- ^ Boatner 1974, p. 264
- ^ Duffy 2005 [1987], p. 13
- ^ Crocker 2006, p. 51
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 294–295
- ^ Jillson and Wilson, 1994, p. 77
- ^ Chernow, 2010, p. 344
- ^ Carp 1990, p. 220
- ^ Freeman and Harwell (ed.), p. 42
- ^ Bell 2005, pp. 3–4"
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 360
- ^ Miller 1997 [1977], pp. 11–12, 16
- ^ Higginbotham 1987 [1971], pp. 331–346
- ^ Higginbotham 1983 [1971], pp. 331–346
- ^ Thomas 2017, "Last Naval Battle"
- ^ Daughan 2011 [2008], p. 240
- ^ Jump up to: a b , "Privateers"
- ^ Philbrick 2016, p. 237
- ^ Trevelyan 1912a, p. 249
- ^ Morgan 2012 [1956], pp. 82–83
- ^ Ketchum 1997, p. 447
- ^ Ketchum 1997, pp. 405–448
- ^ Davis 1975, pp. 203, 303, 391
- ^ Higginbotham 1983 [1971], pp. 188–198
- ^ Cave 2004, pp. 21–22
- ^ Greene & Pole 2008, pp. 298, 306
- ^ Rossman 2016, p. 2
- ^ Curtis 1926, pp. 148–149
- ^ Greene & Pole 2008, pp. 42, 48
- ^ Curtis 1926, p. 148
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 562–577
- ^ Ellis 2013, p. xi
- ^ Stewart, R. 2005, vol. 4, p. 103
- ^ Clode 1869, Vol. 1, p. 268
- ^ Billias 1969, p. 83
- ^ Clayton 2014, p. 65
- ^ O'Shaunessy 2013, p. 86
- ^ Ketchum 1997, p. 76
- ^ Ketchum 2014a, p. 208
- ^ Miller 1959, pp. 410–412
- ^ Fleming 2006, p. 44
- ^ Davies, K. 1972, vol. 12 – 1776, 5:93, Howe to Germain, June 7 and July 7, 1776
- ^ Jump up to: a b O'Shaunessy 2013, p. 216
- ^ Jump up to: a b Hibbert 2000, pp. 160–161
- ^ O'Shaunessy 2013, p.
- ^ Davies, K. 1972, vol. 15 – 1778, 5:96, Clinton to Germain, September 15, 1778
- ^ Davies, K. 1972, vol. 18 – 1780, 5:100, Clinton to Germain, October 31, 1780
- ^ Ketchum 2014b, pp. 208–210
- ^ Cashin 2005, "Revolutionary War in Georgia"
- ^ Baer 2015, p. 115
- ^ Baer 2015, p. 117
- ^ Showalter 2007, "Best armies money could buy"
- ^ Baer 2015, pp. 111–112
- ^ Fetter 1980, p. 508
- ^ Baer 2015, pp. 118–119
- ^ Jump up to: a b Schmidt 1958, pp. 208–209
- ^ Baer 2015, pp. 121, 141–142
- ^ Baer 2015, pp. 143–144
- ^ Baer 2015, pp. 136–143
- ^ O'Saughnessy, 2004, p. 20
- ^ Baer 2015, p. 142
- ^ Mauch 2003, p. 415
- ^ Atwood, 2002, p. 194
- ^ Lowell 1884, pp. 20–21, 282–283
- ^ Ritcheson 1973, p. 6
- ^ Lecky 1892 vol. 3, p. 139
- ^ Black 2001 [1991], p. 12
- ^ Black 2001 [1991], pp. 13–14
- ^ Black 2001 [1991], p. 14
- ^ Black 2001 [1991], pp. 14–16 [16], 35, 38
- ^ Calhoon 1973, p. [page needed]
- ^ Buchanan 1997, p. 327
- ^ Jump up to: a b Babits 2011, p. 41
- ^ Bass 1957, pp. 548–550
- ^ Katcher 1973, p. 101
- ^ Chernow, 2010, p. 215
- ^ Berkin 2005, p. 84
- ^ Dunkerly 2014, "Camp Followers"
- ^ Howat 2017, "Women Spies"
- ^ Jump up to: a b Historical Essay 2009
- ^ Hunt 2015, pp. 188–222
- ^ Jump up to: a b Eschner, Kat (April 26, 2017). "Was There Really a Teenage, Female Paul Revere?". Smithsonian. Retrieved July 6, 2022.
- ^ Hunt, Paula D. (June 2015). "Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere: The Making of a Revolutionary War Heroine". The New England Quarterly. 88 (2): 187–222. doi:10.1162/TNEQ_a_00452. ISSN 0028-4866. S2CID 57569643.
- ^ Tucker, Abigail (March 2022). "Did the Midnight Ride of Sibyl Ludington Ever Happen?". Smithsonian. Retrieved July 6, 2022.
- ^ Lewis, Jone Johnson (August 15, 2019). "Sybil Ludington, Possible Female Paul Revere". ThoughtCo. Retrieved July 6, 2022.
- ^ Nash 2012, p. 251
- ^ Nash, 2005, pp. 167–168
- ^ Canada' Digital Collections "Black Loyalists"
- ^ Jump up to: a b Bibko, 2016, pp. 68–69
- ^ Bibko, 2016, p. 59
- ^ Kolchin 1994, p. 73
- ^ Lanning 2012, p. 75
- ^ Alexander 2010, p. 356
- ^ Bibko, 2016, p. 61
- ^ Finger 2001, pp. 43–64
- ^ Ward, H. 1999, p. 198
- ^ O'Brien 2008, pp. 123–126
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 200–203
- ^ Reid, D. 2017, p.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Carroll 2001, p. 24
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 354–355
- ^ Syrett 1998, pp. 18–22
- ^ Hibbert 2000, p. 160
- ^ Whiteley 1996, p. 175
- ^ Greene & Pole 2008, p. 325
- ^ Hibbert 2008, p. 333
- ^ Davis, L. and Engerman 2006, p. 64
- ^ Rappleye 2010, pp. 300–313
- ^ Namier and Brooke 1985, p. 246
- ^ Ward and Prothero 1925, p. 458
- ^ Morris, R.B. Morris 1983 [1965], pp. 435–436
- ^ Black 2011, pp. 117–118
- ^ Harvey 2004, pp. 531–532
- ^ Jump up to: a b Cogliano 2003, p. 85
- ^ Morris, 1983 [1965], pp. 221–323, 331–333
- ^ Dull 1987 [1975], pp. 144–151
- ^ Morris, 1983 [1965], pp. 218–221
- ^ Kaplan, L. 1983, "Treaty of Paris"
- ^ Ketchum 2014b, p. 287
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 562
- ^ Ferling 2007, pp. 557–558
- ^ Ferling 2007, p. 553
- ^ Armour 1941, p. 350
- ^ Jump up to: a b Herring 2011 [2008], p. 41
- ^ Treaty of Greenville 1795, U.S. Congress and "Tribes Northwest of the Ohio River"
- ^ Jump up to: a b Benn 1993, p. 17
- ^ Herring 2011 [2008], p. 45
- ^ Jump up to: a b Herring 2011 [2008], p. 46
- ^ Ellis 2004, p. 87
- ^ Peckham 1974, p.
- ^ Burrows 2008b, p.[page needed]
- ^ Chambers 1999 p. 849
- ^ Jump up to: a b Dawson 2017, "Frenchmen who died"
- ^ Jump up to: a b White 2010, "Essay"
- ^ Burke 1785, p.
- ^ Inman 1903, pp. 203–205
- ^ Debret 1781, p. 269
- ^ NIH GARD 2016, "Scurvy"
- ^ Vale 2013, p. 160
- ^ Conway 1995, p. 191
- ^ McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, pp. 6–7, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. ISBN 0700602844.
- ^ Bailyn, 2007, pp. 35, 134–149
- ^ Morgan, 2012 [1956], pp. 96–97
- ^ Morgan, 2012 [1956], p. 97
- ^ Middlekauff, 2007 [1982], p. 557
- ^ Wood, 1992, pp. 3–8, 186–187
- ^ Wood, 2017, p. 348
- ^ Wood, 2017, p. 416
- ^ Brown, Christopher. PBS Video "Liberty! The American Revolution," Episode 6, "Are We to be a Nation?," Twin Cities Television, Inc. 1997.
- ^ Brown, Christopher Leslie. Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, pp. 105–6. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2006. 978-0-8078-3034-5.
- ^ Paul David Nelson, "British Conduct of the American Revolutionary War: A Review of Interpretations." Journal of American History 65.3 (1978): 623–653. online
- ^ See David Lundberg and Henry F. May, "The Enlightened Reader in America", American Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2 (1976): 267.
- ^ Tyrrell, Ian (1999). "Making Nations/Making States: American Historians in the Context of Empire". Journal of American History. 86 (3): 1015–1044. doi:10.2307/2568604. JSTOR 2568604.
- ^ Robin Winks, ed. Historiography (1999) 5:95
- ^ Cogliano, Francis D. (2010). "Revisiting the American Revolution". History Compass. 8 (8): 951–963. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00705.x.
- ^ Eliga H. Gould, Peter S. Onuf, eds. Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World (2005)
- ^ Gould, Eliga H. (1999). "A virtual nation: Greater Britain and the imperial legacy of the American Revolution". American Historical Review. 104 (2): 476–489. doi:10.2307/2650376. JSTOR 2650376.
- ^ David Kennedy; Lizabeth Cohen (2015). American Pageant. Cengage Learning. p. 156. ISBN 978-1305537422.
- ^ Ellen Holmes Pearson. "Revising Custom, Embracing Choice: Early American Legal Scholars and the Republicanization of the Common Law", in Gould and Onuf, eds. Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World (2005) pp. 93–113
- ^ Anton-Hermann Chroust, Rise of the Legal Profession in America (1965) vol. 2.
- ^ Houseman; Kloetzel (2019). Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers. Amos Media Company. ISBN 978-0894875595.
Stamps listed in chronological order
Bibliography
- Abrams, Creighton W. (July 16, 2014). "The Yorktown Campaign, October 1781". National Museum, United States Army, Army Historical Foundation. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
- Adams, Charles Francis (1911). Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society: Campaign of 1777. Vol. 44. Massachusetts Historical Society.
- —— (1963) [1895–1896]. Jameson, J. Franklin (ed.). The American historical review. New York: Kraus Reprints.
- —— (1969). A History of the American Revolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0306803666.
- Alden, John R. (1976). American Revolution, Seventeen Seventy Five to Seventeen Eighty-Three. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0061330117.
- —— (2010). Encyclopedia of African American History. ABC-CLIO. p. 356. ISBN 978-1851097746.
- Allison, David K; Ferreiro, Larrie D., eds. (2018). The American Revolution: A World War. Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 978-1588346599.
- Ammerman, David (1974). In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0813905259.
- Armour, Alexander W. (October 1941). "Revolutionary War Discharges". William and Mary Quarterly. 21 (4). Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture: 344–360. doi:10.2307/1920145. JSTOR 1920145.
- Archuleta, Roy A. (2006). Where We Come from. Where We Come From,collect. p. 69. ISBN 978-1424304721.
- Atwood, Rodney (2002). The Hessians: Mercenaries from Hessen-Kassel in the American Revolution. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521526371.
- Axelrod, Alan (2009). The Real History of the American Revolution: A New Look at the Past. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 978-1402768163.
- —— (2014). Mercenaries: A guide to Private Armies and Private Military Companies. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1608712489.
- Babits, Lawrence E. (2011). A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807887660.
- Bailyn, Bernard (2007). To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0307429780.
- Baer, Friederike (Winter 2015). "The Decision to Hire German Troops in the War of American Independence: Reactions in Britain and North America, 1774–1776". Early American Studies. 13 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 111–150. doi:10.1353/eam.2015.0003. JSTOR 24474906. S2CID 143134975.
- Baker, Mark Allen (2014). Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut: From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN 978-1626194076.
- Bass, Robert D. (October 1957). "The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson". The North Carolina Historical Review. 34 (4). North Carolina Office of Archives and History: 548–550. JSTOR 23517100.
- Beerman, Eric (October 1979). ""Yo Solo" Not "Solo": Juan Antoniao Riano". The Florida Historical Quarterly. Florida Historical Society. ISSN 0015-4113. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
- Belcher, Henry (1911). The first American Civil War, first period 1775–1778. Vol. 1. London, MacMillan.
- Bell, William Gardner (2005). Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775–2005: Portraits & Biographical Sketches of the United States Army's Senior Officer. Government Printing Office. ISBN 978-0160873300.
- Bellot, LJ (1960). Canada v Guadeloupe in Britain's old colonial empire: the Peace of Paris of 1763 (PDF) (PhD). Rice Institute.
- Bemis, Samuel Flagg; Ferrell, Robert H. (1958). The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy. Pageant Book Company.
- Benn, Carl (1993). Historic Fort York, 1793–1993. Toronto: Dundurn Press Ltd. 1. ISBN 0920474799.
- Berkin, Carol (2005). Revolutionary Mothers. Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 1400041635.
- Bibko, Julia (2016). "The American Revolution and the Black Loyalist Exodus". History: A Journal of Student Research. 1 (1). Archived from the original on April 12, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
- Bicheno, Hugh (2014). Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0007390915.
- Billias, George Athan (1969). George Washington's Opponents: British Generals and Admirals in the American Revolution. University of California.
- Black, Jeremy (1992). "Naval Power, Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1775–1791". In Michael Duffy (ed.). Parameters of British Naval Power, 1650–1850. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press. pp. 95–120, here: 105. ISBN 978-0859893855.
- —— (2001) [1991]. War for America: The Fight for Independence, 1775–1783. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0750928083.
- —— (2011). Fighting for America: The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519–1871. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253005618.
- Boatner, Mark M. (1974) [1966]. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution'. D. McKay Company. ISBN 978-0679504405.
- Borick, Carl P. (2003). A Gallant Defense: the Siege of Charleston, 1780. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570034879. OCLC 5051139.
- Britannica.com "François Joseph Paul, count de Grasse". Britannica.com. 2021. p. Wikisourse.
- Brown, Weldon A (1941). Empire Or Independence A Study in the Failure Of Reconciliation 1774–1783. Kennikat Press.
- Buchanan, John (1997). The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0471164029.
- —— (1860). O'Callaghan, E. B. (ed.). Orderly book of Lieut. Gen. John Burgoyne, from his entry into the state of New York until his surrender at Saratoga, 16th Oct. 1777. Albany, N.Y., J. Munsell.
- Burke, Edmond, ed. (1785). Annual Register: World Events, 1783. London: Jay Dodsley.
- Burrows, Edwin G. (Fall 2008). "Patriots or Terrorists". American Heritage. 58 (5). Archived from the original on March 23, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2014.
- —— (2008). Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0786727049.
- Butterfield, Consul W. (1903). History of George Rogers Clark's Conquest of the Illinois and the Wabash Towns 1778–1779. Columbus, Ohio: Heer.
online at Hathi Trust
- Cadwalader, Richard McCall (1901). Observance of the One Hundred and Twenty-third Anniversary of the Evacuation of Philadelphia by the British Army: Fort Washington and the Encampment of White Marsh, November 2, 1777. Press of the New Era Printing Company. pp. 20–28. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
- Calhoon, Robert McCluer (1973). The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760–1781. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. ISBN 978-0801490088.
The Founding of the American Republic Series
- Calloway, Colin G. (2007). The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195331271.
- Cannon, John; Crowcroft, Robert (2015). The Oxford Companion to British History (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199677832.
- Carp, E. Wayne (1990). To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-0807842690.
- Carroll, Francis M. (2001). A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783–1842. U of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802083586.
- Cashin, Edward J. (March 26, 2005). "Revolutionary War in Georgia". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
Revolution & Early Republic, 1775–1800
- Cave, Alfred A. (2004). The French and Indian War. Westport, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0313321689.
- Chambers, John Whiteclay II, ed. (1999). The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195071986.
- Chandler, Jonathan (2017). "To become again our brethren': Desertion and community during the American Revolutionary War, 1775–83". Historical Research. 90 (March 2017). Oxford University Press: 363–380. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.12183. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- Chávez, Thomas E. (2002). Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift. UNM Press. ISBN 978-0826327956.
- Chartrand, René (2006). Gibraltar 1779–1783: The Great Siege. Bloomsbury US. ISBN 978-1841769776.
- Chernow, Ron (2010). Washington: A Life. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1594202667.
- Clayton, Anthony (2014). The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the present. Routledge. ISBN 978-1317864448.
- Clode, Charles M. (1869). The military forces of the crown; their administration and government. Vol. 1. London, J. Murray.
- Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4th ed.). McFarland. ISBN 978-1476625850.
- Conway, Stephen (2002). The British Isles and the War of American Independence. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0199254552.
- Cogliano, Francis D. (2003). Revolutionary America, 1763–1815: A Political History. Francis and Taylor. ISBN 978-1134678693.
- Corwin, Edward Samuel (1916). French policy and the American Alliance of 1778. Princeton University Press.
online at Internet Archive
- Crocker, H.W. (2006). Don't Tread On Me: A 400-year History of American at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting. Three Rivers Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-1400053643.
- Curtis, Edward E. (1926). The Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution, Conclusion. Yale University Press.
- Dale, Anderson (2005). The Battle of Yorktown. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0836853933.
- Daughan, George (2011) [2008]. If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – from the Revolution to the War of 1812. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465025145. OCLC 701015376.
- Davenport, Frances G; Paullin, Charles O. (1917). European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies. Vol. IV. Washington, D.C. Carnegie Institution of Washington.
- Davies, K.G., ed. (1972–1981). Documents of the American Revolution, 1779–1783. Vol. 16 has title:Documents of the American Revolution, 1779–1780. Vol. 12, 15, 17, 18. Shannon: Irish University Press. ISBN 978-0716520856. OCLC 836225.
Colonial Office Series: Great Britain, America and Canada
- Davis, Lance E; Engerman, Stanley L (2006). Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History since 1750. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1139458481.
- Davis, Burke (1975). George Washington and the American Revolution. Random House. ISBN 978-0394463889.
- Dictionary of American Biography "Jean Baptiste Donatien De Vimeur Rochambeau". Gale in Context. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1936. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
- Deane, Mark (May 14, 2018). "That time when Spanish New Orleans helped America win independence". WGNO-ABC-TV. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
Exhibit at the Cabildo Museum, 'Recovered Memories: Spain, New Orleans, and the Support for the American Revolution'
- Debrett, J., ed. (1781). Parliamentary Register, House of Commons, Fifteenth Parliament of Great Britain. Vol. 1. Printed for J. Almon.
- Donne, W. Bodham, ed. (1867). The correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North from 1768 to 1783. Vol. 2. J. Murray.
online at Hathi Trust
- Duffy, Christopher (2005) [1987]. The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 1715–1789. Routledge. ISBN 978-1135794583.
- Dull, Jonathan R (2015) [1975]. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774–1787. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691069203. OCLC 1500030.
- —— (1987). A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300038866.
- Duncan, Louis Caspar (1931). Medical Men in the American Revolution, 1775–1783. Medical field service school.
- Dunkerly, Robert M. (April 2, 2014). "8 Fast Facts about Camp Followers". Journal of the American Revolution. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
- Eelking, Max von (1893). The German Allied Troops in the North American War of Independence, 1776–1783. Translated from German by J. G. Rosengarten. Joel Munsell's Sons, Albany, NY. LCCN 72081186.
- Eclov, Jon Paul (2013). Informal Alliance: Royal Navy And U.S. Navy Co-Operation Against Republican France During The Quasi-War And Wars Of The French Revolution (PhD). University of North Dakota.
- Edler, Friedrich (2001) [1911]. The Dutch Republic and The American Revolution. University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 0898752698.
- Ellis, Joseph J. (2004). His Excellency: George Washington. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. ISBN 978-1400032532.
- —— (2013). Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence. Random House. ISBN 978-0307701220.
- Encyclopædia Britannica . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 09 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 789.
- Everest, Allan Seymour (1977). Moses Hazen and the Canadian Refugees in the American Revolution. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0815601296.
- Faust, Albert Bernhardt (1909). The German element in the United States. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co.
- Ferling, John (2003). A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199728701.
- —— (2007). Almost a Miracle. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199758470.
- —— (2015). Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It. Bloomsbury Publishing, US. ISBN 978-1620401736.
- Fernández y Fernández, Enrique (2004) [1885]. Spain's Contribution to the independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0826327949.
- Field, Edward (1898). Esek Hopkins, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy During the American Revolution, 1775 to 1778: Master Mariner, politician, Brigadier General, Naval Officer, and Philanthropist. Preston & Rounds Company.
- Finger, John (2001). Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253108722.
- Fischer, David Hackett (2004). Washington's Crossing. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195170344.
- Fischer, Joseph R. (2008). A Well-Executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570038372.
- Fiske, John (1891). The American Revolution: In Two Volumes. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press.
- —— (1902). Harpers' Encyclopaedia of United States History. Vol. 9. Harper & brothers.
- Fleming, Thomas (2005) [1973]. Barbara J. Mitnick (ed.). New Jersey in the American Revolution. Rivergate Books, Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0813536022.
- —— (2006). Washington's Secret War. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0060829629.
- Fortescue, John (1902). A history of the British army. Vol. 3.
- Freeman, Douglas Southall; Harwell, Richard Barksdale (2011). Washington. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1439105337.
An abridgement in one volume by Richard Harwell of the seven-volume biography of George Washington
- French, Allen (1932). General Gage's Informers. University of Michigan Press.
- Frothingham, Richard (1903). History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill: also an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument. Little, Brown, & Company – via Google Books ebook.
- Gabriel, Michael P. (2012). The Battle of Bennington: Soldiers and Civilians. The History Press. ISBN 978-1609495152.
- Gaff, Alan D. (2004). Bayonets in the Wilderness. Anthony Waynes Legion in the Old Northwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806135854.
- George III, his Britannic Majesty; Commissioners of the United States of America. "Preliminary Articles of Peace" (30 November 1782). 18th Century; British-American Diplomacy. Yale Law School Avalon Project. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- Glattharr, Joseph T. (2007). Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. Hill & Wang. ISBN 978-0809046003.
- Golway, Terry (2005). Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution. Henry Holt and Company, LLC. ISBN 0805070664.
- Goos, Norman. "A Very Large British Military Investment for Very Little Practical Profit" (PDF). Sons of the American Revolution. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- Gordon, John W.; Keegan, John (2007). South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570034800.
- Grainger, John D. (2005). The Battle of Yorktown, 1781: A Reassessment. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1843831372.
- Greene, Francis Vinton (1913). General Greene. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
- Greene, Jack P.; Pole, J.R. (2008) [2000]. A Companion to the American Revolution. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0470756447.
Collection of essays focused on political and social history.
- Grenier, John (2005). The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1139444705.
- Gutman, Alejandro; Avanzati, Beatriz (2013). Native North American Languages Distribution (Map). A. Gutman & B. Avanzati. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
- Harrington, Hugh T. (January 2013). "The strange oddessy of George Merchant". Journal of the American Revolution.
- Harrison, Lowell Hayes (2001). George Rogers Clark and the War in the West. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0813190143.
- Harvey, Robert (2004). A Few Bloody Noses: The American Revolutionary War. Robinson. ISBN 978-1841199528.
- Hazard, Samuel (1829). Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania. Vol. 4. W.F. Geddes.
- Herring, George C. (2011) [2008]. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199765539.
Oxford History of the United States Book 12
- Hibbert, Christopher (2000). George III: A Personal History. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465027248.
- —— (2008). Redcoats and Rebels. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1844156993.
- Higginbotham, Don (1983) [1971]. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789. Northeastern University Press. ISBN 0930350448.
- —— (1987). George Washington and the American Military Tradition. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820324005.
- Hoffman, Ronald (1981). Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813908649.
- Hogeland, William (2017). Autumn of the Black Snake. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374107345.
- Horn, Pierre L. (1989). Marquis de Lafayette. New York : Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-1555468132.
- Howat, Kenna (November 9, 2017). "Revolutionary Spies: Women Spies of the American Revolution". National Women's History Museum. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
- Hubbard, Robert Ernest (2017). Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-1476664538.
- Hunt, Paula D. (June 2015). "Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere: The Making of a Revolutionary War Heroine". The New England Quarterly. 88 (2): 187–222. doi:10.1162/tneq_a_00452. ISSN 0028-4866. S2CID 57569643.
- Ingrao, Charles W. (2003). The Hessian Mercenary State: Ideas, Institutions, and Reform Under Frederick II, 1760–1785. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521533225.
- Inman, George (1903). "Losses of the Military and Naval Forces Engaged in the War of the American Revolution". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. XXVII, no. 1. pp. 176–205.
open access online at Internet Archive
- Jackson, Kenneth T.; Dunbar, David S. (2005). Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231109093.
- James, James Alton (2013). The Life of George Rogers Clark. Literary Licensing. ISBN 978-1494118921.
- Jasanoff, Maya (2012). Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-1400075478.
- Jefferson, Thomas (2018). Julian P. Boyd (ed.). The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4: October 1780 to February 1781. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691184692.
- Johnston, Henry Phelps (1897). The Battle of Harlem Heights. Columbia University Press.
- Jones, Howard (2002). Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913. Scholarly Resources Inc. p. 5. ISBN 978-0842029162.
- Kaminski, John P., ed. (1995). A Necessary Evil?: Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0945612339.
- Kaplan, Lawrence S. (September 1983). "The Treaty of Paris, 1783: A Historiographical Challenge". International History Review. 5 (3). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 431–442. doi:10.1080/07075332.1983.9640322. JSTOR 40105317.
- Katcher, Philip (1973). Encyclopedia of British, Provincial, and German Army Units, 1775–1783. Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0811705424.
- Keiley, Jarvis (1912). . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Kelly, James; Smith, Barbara Clark (2007). Jamestown, Quebec, Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings. Smithsonian. ISBN 978-1588342416.
- Kennedy, Frances H. (2014). The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook. Oxford UP. p. 163. ISBN 978-0199324224.
- Ketchum, Richard M (2014) [1973]. The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton. Henry Holt and Company (reprint of 1973). ISBN 978-1466879515.
- —— (1997). Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0805046816.
- —— (2014). Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1466879508.
- —— (2014). Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1466879539.
- Kolchin, Peter (1994). American Slavery: 1619–1877. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0809015542., p. 73
- Knesebeck, Ernst von dem (2017) [1845]. Geschichte der kurhannoverschen Truppen: in Gibraltar, Menorca und Ostindien. Im Verlage der Helwingschen Hof-Buchhandlung. ISBN 978-9925057382.
- Kupperman, Karen Ordahl (2009). The Jamestown Project. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674027022.
- Lanctot, Gustave (1967). Canada and the American Revolution 1774–1783. Translated by Cameron, Margaret M. Harvard University Press. OCLC 70781264.
- Landrum, John Belton O'Neall (1897). Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina. Greenville, SC: Shannon. OCLC 187392639.
- Lanning, Michael (2009). American Revolution 100: The Battles, People, and Events of the American War for Independence, Ranked by Their Significance. Sourcebooks. pp. 195–196. ISBN 978-1402241703.
- Lanning, Michael (2012). Defenders Of Liberty: African Americans in the Revolutionary War. Citadel Press. ISBN 978-1559725132.
- Lass, William (1980). Minnesota's Boundary with Canada: Its Evolution Since 1783. Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-0873511537.
- Lecky, William Edward Hartpole (1892). A History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 3. London: Longmans, Green.
- —— (1891). A History of England. Vol. 4. pp. 70–78.
- Lefkowitz, Arthur S. (2007). Benedict Arnold's Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War. Savas Beatie. ISBN 978-1932714036.
- Lengel, Edward (2005). General George Washington. New York: Random House Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0812969504.
- Lockhart, Paul Douglas (2010). The Drillmaster at Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army. Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0061451645.
- Louis XVI, his most Christian King; Commissioners of the United States of America. "Treaty of Alliance" (6 February 1778). 18th Century. Yale Law School Avalon Project.
- Lowell, Edward Jackson (1884). The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war. New York: Harper & Brothers.
- Lowenthal, Larry (2009). Hell on the East River: British Prison Ships in the American Revolution. Purple Mountain Press. ISBN 978-0916346768.
- Mackesy, Piers (1993) [1964]. The War for America: 1775–1783. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281929.– Highly regarded examination of British strategy and leadership. An introduction by John W. Shy with his biographical sketch of Mackesy.
- Mahan, Alfred Thayer (1890). The influence of sea power upon history, 1660–1783. Boston : Little, Brown and Company.
- —— (1898). Major Operations of the Royal Navy, 1762–1783: Being Chapter XXXI in The Royal Navy. A History. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 46778589.
- —— (2020) [1913]. The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0486842103.
- Maier, Pauline (1998). American scripture: making the Declaration of Independence. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0679779087.
- Mauch, Christof (Winter 1998). "Images of America—Political Myths—Historiography: "Hessians" in the War of Independence". Amerikastudien / American Studies. 48 (3). Universitätsverlag WINTER Gmbh: 411–423. JSTOR 41157873.
- Mays, Terry M. (2016). Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1538119723.
- McCrady, Edward (1901). The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775–1780. New York, The Macmillan Company; London, Macmillan & Co., ltd.
- McCullough, David (2005). 1776. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0743287708.
- McGeorge, Wallace (1905). The battle of Red Bank, resulting in the defeat of the Hessians and the destruction of the British frigate Augusta, Oct. 22 and 23, 1777. Camden, New Jersey, Sinnickson Chew, printers.
- McGuire, Thomas J. (2011). Stop the Revolution: America in the Summer of Independence and the Conference for Peace. Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0811745086.
- Middlekauff, Robert (2007) [1982]. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199740925.
- Middleton, Richard (2014). "Naval Resources and the British Defeat at Yorktown, 1781". The Mariner's Mirror. 100 (1): 29–43. doi:10.1080/00253359.2014.866373. S2CID 154569534.
- Miller, Hunter, ed. (1931). Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America: 1776–1818 (Documents 1–40). Vol. II. U.S. Government Printing Office.
- Miller, John C. (1959). Origins of the American Revolution. Stanford UP. ISBN 978-0804705936.
- Mitchell, Barbara A. (Autumn 2012). "America's Spanish Savior: Bernardo de Gálvez". MHQ (Military History Quarterly): 98–104.
- Montero, Francisco Maria (1860). Historia de Gibraltar y de su campo (in Spanish). Imprenta de la Revista Médica. p. 356.
- Morgan, Edmund S. (2012) [1956]. The Birth of the Republic: 1763–1789 (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226923420.
foreword by Joseph J. Ellis
- Morley, Vincent (2002). Irish Opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783. Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-1139434560.
- Morrill, Dan (1993). Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. Nautical & Aviation Publishing. ISBN 978-1877853210.
- Morris, Richard B. (1983) [1965]. The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence. ISBN 978-1299106598.
- Morris, Richard B.; Morris, Jeffrey B., eds. (1982). Encyclopedia of American History (6th ed.). Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0061816055.
with Henry Steele Commager as chief consulting editor
- Morrissey, Brendan (1997). Yorktown 1781: The World Turned Upside Down. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1855326880.
- Mulhall, Michael G. (1884) [1884]. Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics. George Boutleddge and Sons, London.
- Namier, Lewis; Brooke, John (1985). The House of Commons 1754–1790. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-04363-0420-0.
- Nash, Gary B. (2012). "Chapter: The African Americans Revolution". In Gray, Edward G.; Kamensky, Jane (eds.). Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution. Oxford University Press. pp. 250–270. ISBN 978-0199746705.
Oxford Handbooks
- Nash, Gary (2005). The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. Viking Books. ISBN 978-0670034208.
- Nelson, Larry L. (1999). A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754–1799. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0873387002.
- Nester, William R. (2004). The Frontier War for American Independence. Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0811700771.
- O'Brien, Greg (2008). Pre-removal Choctaw history: exploring new paths. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806139166. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
- Olsen, Alison G (1992). "Eighteenth-Century Colonial Legislatures and Their Constituents". The Journal of American History. 79 (2): 543–567. doi:10.2307/2080046. JSTOR 2080046.
- Otfinoski, Steven (2008). The New Republic. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 978-0761429388.
- O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson (Spring 2004). "If Others Will Not Be Active, I Must Drive": George III and the American Revolution". Early American Studies. 2 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 1–46. doi:10.1353/eam.2007.0037. JSTOR 23546502. S2CID 143613757.
- —— (2013). The Men Who Lost America. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300191073.
- Paine, Thomas (1982). Kramnick, Isaac (ed.). Common Sense. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0140390162.
- Pancake, John (1985). This Destructive War. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0817301910.
- Palmer, Dave Richard (2010). George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1596981645.
- Pares, Richard (1963) [1936]. War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739–1763. F. Cass Press.
online at Hathi Trust
- Paterson, Thomas G.; et al. (2009). American Foreign Relations, Volume 1: A History to 1920. Cengage Learning. pp. 13–15. ISBN 978-0547225647.
- Paullin, Charles (1906). The navy of the American Revolution: its administration, its policy and its achievements Oscar. The Burrows Brothers Co.
paullin massachusetts navy.
- Pearson, Jesse T (2005). The Failure of British Strategy during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War, 1780–81 (PDF) (Thesis). Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 28, 2021.
- Peckham, Howard Henry (1974). The Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226653181.
- Peterson, Merrill D. (1975) [1970]. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195019094.
- Philbrick, Nathaniel (2016). Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0698153233.
- Piecuch, Jim (October 2004). "Massacre or Myth? Banastre Tarleton at the Waxhaws, May 29, 1780" (PDF). Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. 1 (2). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.
- Pybus, Cassandra (2005). "Jefferson's Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution". The William and Mary Quarterly. 62 (2): 243–264. doi:10.2307/3491601. JSTOR 3491601.
- Raab, James W. (2007). Spain, Britain and the American Revolution in Florida, 1763–1783. McFarland. p. 135. ISBN 978-0786432134.
- Randall, Willard Sterne (Summer 1990). "Benedict Arnold at Quebec". MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History. 2 (40): 38–39. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
- Rankin, Hugh F. (1987). Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those who Fought and Lived it. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-03068-03079.
- —— (2011) [1996]. Memory F. Blackwelder (ed.). The North Carolina Continentals. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-1258093402.
- Rappleye, Charles (2010). Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1416570912.
- Reeve, John L. (2009). "British Naval Strategy: War on a Global Scale". In Hagan, Kenneth J.; McMaster, Michael T.; Stoker, Donald (eds.). Strategy in the American War of Independence: A Global Approach. Routledge. ISBN 978-1134210398.
- Reid, Darren R. (June 19, 2017). "Anti-Indian Radicalisation in the Early American West, 1774–1795". Journal of the American Revolution.
- Reid, John Phillip (1987). The Authority to Tax: Constitutional History of the American Revolution. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299112905.
- Renaut, Francis P. (1922). Le Pacte de famille et l'Amérique: La politique coloniale franco-espagnole de 1760 à 1792. Paris.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Reynolds, William R. Jr. (2012). Andrew Pickens: South Carolina Patriot in the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0786466948.
- Rignault, Daniel P. (2004). The History of the French Military Medical Corps. Translated by DeBakey, Michael E. Ministère de la défense, Service de santé des armées. NLM 101659674.
- Rinaldi, Richard A. "The British Army 1775–1783". Yumpu. Archived from the original on August 17, 2021. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
- Risch, Erna (1981). Supplying Washington's Army. Center of Military History, United States Army.
- Ritcheson, Charles R. (1973). ""Loyalist Influence" on British Policy Toward the United States After the American Revolution". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 7 (1). Johns Hopkins University Press: 1–17. doi:10.2307/3031609. JSTOR 3031609.
- Robinson Library "Battle of Monmouth Courthouse". Robinson Library. Self-published. Archived from the original on February 13, 2012. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
- Rose, Alexander (2014) [2006]. Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553392593.
- Rose, Michael (2013). Washington's War: From Independence To Iraq. Orion Publishers. ISBN 978-1780227108.
- Rossman, Vadim (2016). Capital Cities: Varieties and Patterns of Development and Relocation. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1317562856.
- Russell, David Lee (2000). The American Revolution in the Southern colonies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0786407835. OCLC 248087936.
- Savas, Theodore P.; Dameron, J. David (2006). A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution. Savas Beatie LLC. ISBN 978-1611210118.
- Scheer, George F.; Rankin, Hugh F. (1959). Rebels and Redcoats. New American library. ASIN B000ZLZW9I.
- Schecter, Barnet (2003). The Battle for New York: The city at the heart of the American Revolution. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0142003336.
- Schmidt, H. D. (1958). "'The Hessian mercenaries: the career of a political cliche". History. 43 (149). Wiley: 207–212. doi:10.1111/j.1468-229X.1958.tb02208.x. JSTOR 24404012.
- Scott, Hamish M (1988). "Sir Joseph Yorke, Dutch Politics and the Origins of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War". The Historical Journal. 31 (3): 571–589. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00023499. JSTOR 2639757. S2CID 154619712.
- Scott, Hamish M. (1990). British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198201953.
- Showalter, Dennis (2007). "Hessians: The Best Armies Money Could Buy". Military History Magazine/HistoryNet. Retrieved October 3, 2020.
- Schwamenfeld, Steven W. (2007). "The Foundation of British Strength": National Identity and the British Common Soldier (PHD). Florida State University.
- Seineke, Kathrine Wagner (1981). George Rogers Clark: Adventure in the Illinois and Selected Documents of the American Revolution at the Frontier Posts. Polyanthos. ISBN 9992016531.
- Selby, John E. (2007). The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783. Colonial Williamsburg. ISBN 978-0879352332.
- Simmons, Edwin Howard (2003). The United States Marines: A History (4th ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591147905.
- Simms, Brendan (2009). Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0140289848.
- Skaggs, David Curtis (1977). The Old Northwest in the American Revolution: An Anthology. State Historical Society of Wisconsin. ISBN 978-0870201646.
- Smith, David (2012). New York 1776: The Continentals' First Battle. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1782004431.
- Smith, Justin Harvey (1907). Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony: Canada and the American Revolution. Vol. 1. New York & London: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
- —— (1907). Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony: Canada and the American Revolution. Vol. 1. New York & London: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
- Franklin, Benjamin; Lee, Arthur; Adams, John (1829). Sparks, Jared (ed.). The diplomatic correspondence of the American Revolution. Vol. 1. Boston: Hale, Gray & Bowen.
- Stanley, George (1973). Canada Invaded 1775–1776. Toronto: Hakkert. ISBN 978-0888665782. OCLC 4807930.
- Stedman, Charles (1794). The history of the origin, progress, and termination of the American war. Vol. 1. Dublin : Printed for Messrs. P. Wogan, P. Byrne, J. Moore, and W. Jones.
- Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1885–1900). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.
- Stewart, Richard W., ed. (2005). American Military History Volume 1 The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775–1917. Vol. 4. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army. ISBN 0160723620.
- Stockley, Andrew (2001). Britain and France at the Birth of America: The European Powers and the Peace Negotiations of 1782–1783. University of Exeter Press. ISBN 978-0859896153.
- Stone, Bailey (1994). The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global Historical Interpretation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521445702.
- Syrett, David (1998). The Royal Navy in European Waters During the American Revolutionary War. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570032387.
- Stryker, William Scudder (1898). The Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
- Taafe, Stephen R. (2003). The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777–1778. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700612673.
- Taylor, Alan (2016). American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804. WW Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393253870.
- Tellier, L.-N. (2009). Urban World History: an Economic and Geographical Perspective. Quebec: PUQ. ISBN 978-2760522091.
- Thomas, Molly (November 9, 2017). "The Last Naval Battle of the American Revolution". Florida Frontiers Article, The Florida Historical Society. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
- Tolson, Jay (June 27, 2008). "How George Washington's Savvy Won the Day:Despite his share of errors, the commander in chief prevailed as a strategist and a politician". Retrieved September 29, 2020.
- Trevelyan, George Otto (1912). George the Third and Charles Fox: the concluding part of The American revolution. Longmans, Green, and Company.
Archived online at HathiTrust.org
- —— (1912). History of the American Revolution. Vol. IV. Longmans, Green & Co.
- Tucker, Mary (March 1, 2002). Washington Crossing the Delaware. Lorenz Educational Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-0787785642.
- U.S. Census Bureau (September 1975). "Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970; Colonial and Pre-Federal Statistics".
Bicentennial Edition
- U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (December 5, 2007). "An Overview of American Intelligence Until World War II". US Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on March 11, 2008.
Featured Story Archive, Historical Document
- U.S. Congress. "Treaty of Greenville 1795" (3 August 1795). Document Collection: 18th Century, 1700–1799. Yale Law School Avalon Project.
- U.S. Military Academy History Department. "Principal Campaigns of the War, 1775–1783" [map]. The American Revolutionary War, Series: Campaign Atlases of the United States Army. West Point, New York: United States Military Academy, History Department. 20 October 2020.
- Vale, Brian (March 22, 2013). "The Conquest of Scurvy in the Royal Navy 1793–1800: A Challenge to Current Orthodoxy". The Mariner's Mirror. 94, 2008 (2): 160–175. doi:10.1080/00253359.2008.10657052. S2CID 162207993.
- Walker, James W. St. (1992). The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802074027.
- Wallace, Willard M. (1954). Traitorous Hero: The Life and Fortunes of Benedict Arnold. New York: Harper & Brothers. ISBN 978-1199083234.
- ——; Ray, Michael (September 21, 2015). American Revolution. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
American Revolution, (1775–83), insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain's North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America.
{{cite book}}:|website=ignored (help) - Ward, A.W.; Prothero, G.W. (1925). Cambridge Modern History, vol.6 (18th Century). University of Oxford, The University Press.
Digital Library of India Item 2015.107358
- Ward, Christopher (1952). The War of the Revolution (2 volumes). New York: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1616080808.
History of land battles in North America
- Ward, Harry M. (1999). The war for independence and the transformation of American society. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1857286564.
- Washington, George (1932). Fitzpatrick, John C. (ed.). The Writings of George Washington: from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745–1799. Vol. 7 January 13, 1777 – April 30, 1777. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.
George Washington Bicentennial Edition in 35 volumes
- Watson, J. Steven; Clark, Sir George (1960). The Reign of George III, 1760–1815. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198217138. Archived from the original on May 24, 2012. Retrieved August 24, 2017.
- Weeks, William (2015) [2013]. The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107536227.
- Weigley, Russell F. (1977). The American Way of War. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253280299.
- White, Matthew (2010). "Spanish casualties in The American Revolutionary war". Necrometrics.
- Whiteley, Peter (1996). Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America. Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 978-1852851453.
- Wilson, David K (2005). The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775–1780. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1570035739. OCLC 232001108.
- Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1714–1792. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1844157006. (See also:British Warships in the Age of Sail)
- Wood, Gordon S. (1992). 'The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 978-0307758965.
- Wood, Gordon S. (2017). Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Penguin Press, New York. ISBN 978-0735224711.
- Wood, W. J. (2003) [1995]. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775–1781. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306806179.
- Yaniz, Jose I. (2009). "The Role of Spain in the American Revolution: An Unavoidable Mistake" (PDF). Marine Corps University. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 24, 2020.
- Websites without authors
- Franklin, Bruce H (November 30, 2015). "Which Side Benefitted the Most from the Native Americans". Journal of the American Revolution. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
- Canada's Digital Collections Program "The Philipsburg Proclamation". Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People. Industry Canada: Canada's Digital Collections Program. Archived from the original on November 17, 2007. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
- History.org Aron, Paul (2020) [2005]. "Women's Service with the Revolutionary Army : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site". The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
- Maryland State House ""The Road to Peace, A Chronology: 1779–1784". William L. Clements Library / The Maryland State House. 2007. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
- The History Place "An Unlikely Victory 1777–1783". The History Place. Retrieved September 16, 2020.
American Revolution timeline
- Totallyhistory.com "Red Coats". Totallyhistory.com. 2012. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
- U.S. Merchant Marine "Privateers and Mariners in the Revolutionary War". U.S. Merchant Marine. 2012. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
- U.S. National Archives "Continental Congress: Remarks on the Provisional Peace Treaty". U.S. National Archives. 1783. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
- Valley Forge National Historic Park "Overview of History and Significance of Valley Forge". Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania. August 12, 2019 [2007].
- Yale Law School, Massachusetts Act "Great Britain : Parliament – The Massachusetts Government Act; May 20, 1774". Yale Law School: The Avalon Project. 2008.
Further reading
A selection of works relating to the war not listed above;
- Allison, David, and Larrie D. Ferreiro, eds. The American Revolution: A World War (Smithsonian, 2018) excerpt
- Bancroft, George (1854–1878). History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent – eight volumes.
Volumes committed to the American Revolution: Vol. 7; Vol. 8; Vol. 9; Vol. 10 - Bobrick, Benson. Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution. Penguin, 1998 (paperback reprint)
- British Army (1916) [7 August 1781]. Proceedings of a Board of general officers of the British army at New York, 1781. New-York Historical Society. Collections. The John Watts de Peyster publication fund series, no. 49. New York Historical Society.
The board of inquiry was convened by Sir Henry Clinton into Army accounts and expenditures
- Burgoyne, John (1780). A state of the expedition from Canada : as laid before the House of commons. London : Printed for J. Almon.
- Butterfield, Lyman H. (June 1950). "Psychological Warfare in 1776: The Jefferson-Franklin Plan to Cause Hessian Desertions". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 94 (3). American Philosophical Society: 233–241. JSTOR 3143556.
- Cate, Alan C. (2006). Founding Fighters: The Battlefield Leaders Who Made American Independence. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0275987078.
- Caughey, John W. (1998). Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana 1776–1783. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1565545175.
- Chartrand, Rene. The French Army in the American War of Independence (1994). Short (48 pp), very well illustrated descriptions.
- Christie, Ian R.; Labaree, Benjamin W. (1976). Empire or independence, 1760–1776. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0714816142.
- Clarfield, Gerard (1992). United States Diplomatic History: From Revolution to Empire. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0130292322.
- Clode, Charles M. (1869). The military forces of the crown; their administration and government. Vol. 2. London, J. Murray.
- Commager, Henry Steele and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six': The Story of the American Revolution as told by Participants. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958). online
- Conway, Stephen. The War of American Independence 1775–1783. Publisher: E. Arnold, 1995. ISBN 0340625201. 280 pp.
- Creigh, Alfred (1871). History of Washington County. B. Singerly. p. 49.
ann hupp indian.
- Cook, Fred J. (1959). What Manner of Men. William Morrow and Co. 59-11702.
Allan McLane, Chapter VIII, pp. 275–304
- Davies, Wallace Evan (July 1939). "Privateering around Long Island during the Revolution". New York History. 20 (3). Fenimore Art Museum: 283–294. JSTOR 23134696.
- Downes, Randolph C. (1940). Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0822952017.
- Duncan, Francis (1879). History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. London: John Murray.
- Ferling, John E. (2002) [2000]. Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195134094.
- Fleming, Thomas (1970). The Perils of Peace. New York: The Dial Press. ISBN 978-0061139116.
- Foner, Eric, "Whose Revolution?: The history of the United States' founding from below" (review of Woody Holton, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, Simon & Schuster, 2021, 800 pp.), The Nation, vol. 314, no. 8 (18–25 April 2022), pp. 32–37. Highlighted are the struggles and tragic fates of America's Indians and Black slaves. For example, "In 1779 [George] Washington dispatched a contingent of soldiers to upstate New York to burn Indian towns and crops and seize hostages 'of every age and sex.' The following year, while serving as governor of Virginia, [Thomas] Jefferson ordered troops under the command of George Rogers Clark to enter the Ohio Valley and bring about the expulsion or 'extermination' of local Indians." (pp. 34–35.)
- Fortescue, John (1902). A history of the British army. Vol. 3.
- Fredriksen, John C. (2006). Revolutionary War Almanac Almanacs of American wars Facts on File library of American history. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0816074686.
- Freedman, Russell (2008). Washington at Valley Forge. Holiday House. ISBN 978-0823420698.
- Fremont-Barnes, Gregory; Ryerson, Richard A, eds. (2006). Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1851094080.
- Frey, Sylvia R (1982). The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292780408.
- Gilbert, Alan (2012). Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226101552.
- Grant, John N. (1973). "Black Immigrants into Nova Scotia, 1776–1815". The Journal of Negro History. 58 (3): 253–270. doi:10.2307/2716777. JSTOR 2716777. S2CID 150064269.
- Jensen, Merrill (2004). The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution 1763–1776. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-0872207059.
- Johnston, Henry Phelps (1881). The Yorktown Campaign and the Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781. New York: Harper & Bros. p. 34. OCLC 426009.
- Hagist, Don N. (Winter 2011). "Unpublished Writings of Roger Lamb, Soldier of the American War of Independence". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 89 (360). Society for Army Historical Research: 280–290. JSTOR 44232931.
- Kaplan, Rodger (January 1990). "The Hidden War: British Intelligence Operations during the American Revolution". The William and Mary Quarterly. 47 (1). Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture: 115–138. doi:10.2307/2938043. JSTOR 2938043.
- Kepner, K. (February 1945). "A British View of the Siege of Charleston, 1776". The Journal of Southern History. 11 (1). Southern Historical Association: 93–103. doi:10.2307/2197961. JSTOR 2197961.
- Kilmeade, Brian.; Yaeger, Don (2013). George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0698137653.
- Knight, Peter (2003). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 184–185. ISBN 978-1576078129.
- Kohn, George C. (2006). Dictionary of Wars (3rd ed.). Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1438129167.
- Kwasny, Mark V. Washington's Partisan War, 1775–1783. Kent, Ohio: 1996. ISBN 0873385462. Militia warfare.
- Larabee, Leonard Woods (1959). Conservatism in Early American History. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0151547456.
Great Seal Books
- Lemaître, Georges Édouard (2005). Beaumarchais. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1417985364.
- Levy, Andrew (2007). The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter. Random House Trade Paperbacks. p. 74. ISBN 978-0375761041.
- Library of Congress "Revolutionary War: Groping Toward Peace, 1781–1783". Library of Congress. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
- Lloyd, Earnest Marsh (1908). A review of the history of infantry. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.
- May, Robin. The British Army in North America 1775–1783 (1993). Short (48pp), very well illustrated descriptions.
- McGrath, Nick. "Battle of Guilford Courthouse". George Washington's Mount Vernon: Digital Encyclopedia. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
- Middleton, Richard (July 2013). "The Clinton–Cornwallis Controversy and Responsibility for the British Surrender at Yorktown". History. 98 (3). Wiley Publishers: 370–389. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.12014. JSTOR 24429518.
- —— (2014). The War of American Independence, 1775–1783. London: Pearson. ISBN 978-0582229426.
- Miller, Ken (2014). Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities During the War for Independence. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801454943.
- Nash, Gary B.; Carter Smith (2007). Atlas Of American History. Infobase Publishing. p. 64. ISBN 978-1438130132.
- National Institute of Health "Scurvy". National Institute of Health. November 14, 2016. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center
- Neimeyer, Charles Patrick. America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (1995) JSTOR j.ctt9qg7q2
- Nicolas, Paul Harris (1845). Historical record of the Royal Marine Forces, Volume 2. London: Thomas and William Boone.
port praya suffren 1781.
- Ortiz, J.D. "General Bernardo Galvez in the American Revolution". Retrieved September 9, 2020.
- Perkins, James Breck (2009) [1911]. France in the American Revolution. Cornell University Library. ASIN B002HMBV52.
- Peters, Richard, ed. (1846). A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875: Treaty of Alliance with France 1778, "Article II". Library of Congress archives.
- Ramsay, David (1819). Universal History Americanised: Or, An Historical View of the World, from the Earliest Records to the Year 1808. Vol. 4. Philadelphia : M. Carey & Son.
- Reich, Jerome R. (1997). British friends of the American Revolution. M.E. Sharpe. p. 121. ISBN 978-0765631435.
- Ridpath, John Clark (1915). The new complete history of the United States of America. Vol. 6. Cincinnati: Jones Brothers. OCLC 2140537.
- Royal Navy Museum "Ships Biscuits – Royal Navy hardtack". Royal Navy Museum. Archived from the original on October 31, 2009. Retrieved January 14, 2010.
- Sawyer, C.W. (1910). Firearms in American History. Boston: C.W. Sawyer.
online at Hathi Trust
- Schiff, Stacy (2006). A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. Macmillan. p. 5. ISBN 978-1429907996.
- Scribner, Robert L. (1988). Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813907482.
- Selig, Robert A. (1999). Rochambeau in Connecticut, Tracing His Journey: Historic and Architectural Survey. Connecticut Historical Commission.
- Smith, Merril D. (2015). The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 374. ISBN 978-1440830280.
- Southey, Robert (1831). The life of Lord Nelson. Henry Chapman Publishers. ISBN 978-0665213304.
- Stoker, Donald, Kenneth J. Hagan, and Michael T. McMaster, eds. Strategy in the American War of Independence: a global approach (Routledge, 2009) excerpt.
- Symonds, Craig L. A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution (1989), newly drawn maps emphasizing the movement of military units
- Trew, Peter (2006). Rodney and the Breaking of the Line. Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1844151431.
- Trickey, Erick. "The Little-Remembered Ally Who Helped America Win the Revolution". Smithsonian Magazine January 13, 2017. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson (1920). The frontier in American history. New York: H. Holt and company.
- Volo, M. James (2006). Blue Water Patriots: The American Revolution Afloat. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0742561205.
- U.S. Army, "The Winning of Independence, 1777–1783" American Military History Volume I, 2005.
- U.S. National Park Service "Springfield Armory". Nps.gov. April 25, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
- Weir, William (2004). The Encyclopedia of African American Military History. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1615928316.
- Whaples, Robert (March 1995). "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions". The Journal of Economic History. 55 (1): 144. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.482.4975. doi:10.1017/S0022050700040602. JSTOR 2123771. S2CID 145691938.
There is an overwhelming consensus that Americans' economic standard of living on the eve of the Revolution was among the highest in the world.
- Whaples, Robert (March 1995). "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions". The Journal of Economic History. 55 (1): 144. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.482.4975. doi:10.1017/S0022050700040602. JSTOR 2123771. S2CID 145691938.
There is an overwhelming consensus that Americans' economic standard of living on the eve of the Revolution was among the highest in the world.
- Wood, Gordon (1969). The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Williamsburg, VA: Institute of Early American History and Culture. p. 653. ISBN 978-0393006445.
- Zeller-Frederick, Andrew A. (April 18, 2018). "The Hessians Who Escaped Washington's Trap at Trenton". Journal of the American Revolution. Bruce H. Franklin.
Citing William M. Dwyer and Edward J. Lowell, The Hessians: And the Other German Auxiliaries in the Revolutionary War, 1970
- Zlatich, Marko; Copeland, Peter. General Washington's Army (1): 1775–78 (1994). Short (48pp), very well illustrated descriptions.
- ——. General Washington's Army (2): 1779–83 (1994). Short (48pp), very well illustrated descriptions.
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.
- Declaration of Independence (Report). National Archives, Washington D.C.: Continental Congress of the United States. 1776.
- Emmerich, Adreas. The Partisan in War, a treatise on light infantry tactics written in 1789.
Bibliographies online
- Library of Congress Guide to the American Revolution
- Bibliographies of the War of American Independence compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History
- Political bibliography from Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
External links
- "The American Revolutionary War" Archived April 15, 2023, at the Wayback Machine at United States Military Academy
- American Revolutionary War
- Conflicts in 1775
- Conflicts in 1776
- Conflicts in 1777
- Conflicts in 1778
- Conflicts in 1779
- Conflicts in 1780
- Conflicts in 1781
- Conflicts in 1782
- Conflicts in 1783
- Global conflicts
- Rebellions against the British Empire
- Wars between the United Kingdom and the United States
- Wars of independence