American Revolutionary War

This article is about military actions primarily. For origins and aftermath, see American Revolution.

American Revolutionary War
Left, Continental infantry at Redoubt 10, Yorktown; Washington rallying the broken center at Monmouth; USS Bonhomme Richard captured HMS Serapis
Date April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783 (8 years, 4 months and 15 days) Location Eastern North America, North Atlantic Ocean, the West Indies Result American-Allied victory: Treaty of Paris (1783) British recognition of American independence End of the First British Empire Territorial changes Great Britain cedes the US east of the Mississippi R.; south of the Great Lakes & St. Lawrence R. to Spanish Florida
Belligerents
United States Thirteen States: New Hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Vermont Republic France Co-belligerents Bourbon Spain Dutch Republic Combatants American Indians Oneida Tuscarora Catawba Lenape Chickasaw Choctaw Mahican Mi'kmaq Abenaki Cheraw Seminole Pee Dee Lumbee	Great Britain Loyalists Combatants Germans Mercenaries/Auxiliaries Hesse-Kassel Hesse-Hanau Waldeck Brunswick Ansbach Anhalt-Zerbst American Indians Onondaga Mohawk Cayuga Seneca Mi'kmaq Cherokee Odawa Muscogee Susquehannock Shawnee
Commanders and leaders
Peyton Randolph John Hancock Benjamin Franklin George Washington Horatio Gates Nathanael Greene Henry Knox John Sullivan Benedict Arnold Lafayette George Rogers Clark Bernardo de Gálvez Rochambeau full list...	King George III Lord North Lord Shelburne Lord George Germain Thomas Gage William Howe Henry Clinton John Burgoyne Charles Cornwallis Benedict Arnold Henry Hamilton Banastre Tarleton full list...
Strength
United States:  Army & Militia:   40,000 (average)   200,000 (total)  French Army: Total unknown  Navy:   53 frigates & sloops  State Navies:   106 ships (total)  French Navy: task-force   fleets, escorts  American Indians:   Unknown	Great Britain:  Army:   48,000 peak American   deployment  German troops:   29,875 (total)  Loyalist troops:   25,000 (total)  Navy:   task-force fleets,   blockading squadrons  American Indians   13,000
Casualties and losses
United States:   6,800 dead in battle   6,100 wounded   17,000 disease dead 25–70,000 war dead 130,000 small-pox dead France:   2,112 dead total French & Spanish overseas: France overseas:   4,888 dead; 19 ships-of-the-line & 32 frigates (global) Spain overseas: From 1779, Spain allied with France in its war against Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez (1779); it made a separate peace with Britain at the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of Versailles (1783). Spain gained East Florida, West Florida and Minorca. Participation in the Anglo-French War (1779–83) cost the Spanish Empire 5,000 dead total globally, 371 in British West Florida, and 4,000 dead in British prison ships. Globally, it lost 8 ships-of-the-line, and 11 frigates. Netherlands overseas: Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.	Great Britain:  5,500 battle-deaths Germans:   7,774 total dead   1,800 dead in battle   4,888 deserted Loyalists:   7,000 total dead   1,700 dead in battle   5,300 dead of disease Army overseas:   ~9,372 dead in battle   27,000 disease Navy overseas:   1,243 dead in battle   18,500 dead of disease   42,000 deserted   20 ships-of-the-line   70 frigates   2,200 merchantsr   75 privateers British Army & Navy, “Atlantic War of 1775-1783”, Total:   43,633 dead from all causes

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), also known as the American War of Independence, was initiated by the thirteen original colonies in Congress against the Kingdom of Great Britain over their objection to Parliament's direct taxation and its lack of colonial representation. From their founding in the 1600s, the colonies were largely left to govern themselves. When France left North America in 1763, the British Empire expanded, and the elected part of the colonial legislatures challenged how the new expenses should be paid. The new 1765 Stamp Act provoked an unrest that led to the 1773 Boston Tea Party. When Parliament answered with punitive measures on Massachusetts, twelve colonies responded with the First Continental Congress to boycott British goods.

In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington to create a Continental Army and oversee the capture of Boston. When their Olive Branch Petition to King and Parliament was rejected, the Patriots attacked British Quebec but failed. In July 1776, Congress unanimously passed the Declaration of Independence. Hopes of a quick settlement were increased by a substantial element within Parliament who opposed Lord North's "coercion policy" in the colonies. However the new British commander in chief, General Sir William Howe launched a counter-offensive, capturing New York City. Washington retaliated with harassing attacks at Trenton and Princeton. Howe's 1777–1778 Philadelphia campaign captured that city, but the British were defeated at Saratoga in October 1777. At Valley Forge that winter, Washington built a professional army. American victory at Saratoga had dramatic consequences for the war. A few of the European "Enlightened rulers", especially the Dutch with a former colony in New York, supported the American rebellion with funds, provisions and arms via Sint Eustatius, a Dutch port in the Leeward Islands. But at the American victory at Saratoga capturing a British army, the French feared an early "American settlement" that would strengthen Britain.

Saratoga proved the Continental Army was capable of winning independence. The French saw an opportunity to weaken their British rivals and gain a new trading partner that would be militarily dependent on them. They made two treaties with Congress, the first for trade, and the second to protect that trade in the 1788 Treaty of Alliance. In 1779, the war by Congress for independence from Britain, gained more collateral help. The forty-five year-old Bourbon Family Pact between French and Spanish royalty was activated by their Aranjuez Convention. They began a war for global imperial expansion against Britain, including a Spanish Gibraltar. The Bourbons were cobelligerents with Congress against Britain for the next eighteen months.

In North America, Spanish Louisiana Governor Bernardo Gálvez routed British forces from Spanish territory. The Spanish and American privateers supplied the 1779 Virginia militia conquest of Western Quebec (later the US Northwest Territory). Gálvez then expelled British forces from Mobile and Pensacola, cutting off British military assistance to American Indian allies in the interior southeast. Howe's replacement, General Sir Henry Clinton, then mounted a 1778 "Southern strategy" from Charleston. After initial success taking Savannah, their losses at King's Mountain and Cowpens led to the British southern army retreat to Yorktown where it was besieged by Franco-American forces. A decisive French naval victory brought the October 1781 surrender of the second British army lost in the American Revolution. Shooting war between Britain and France allied with Spain continued for another two years.

But at Yorktown, the British lost their will to contest American independence. The Tory government fell, replaced by Whig Lord Rockingham. George III promised American independence, and Anglo-American talks began. The Preliminary Peace was signed in November, and in December 1782, George III spoke from the British throne for US independence, trade, and peace between the two countries. In April 1783, Congress accepted the British-proposed treaty that met its peace demands including independence, British evacuation, territory to the Mississippi River, river navigation, and Newfoundland fishing rights. On September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed between Great Britain and the United States. Formal exchange of the treaties ratified by both Congress and Parliament were exchanged in Paris the following spring.

Background and political developments

Main article: American Revolution

Map of North American local tribes and their languages, Algonkin in pink, Iroquoian in purple, Muskegan in red

British and Spanish claims at 1763, French & Spanish cessions to Britain in pink, France to Spain in yellow

In the three years 1607–1609, English Jamestown, French Quebec and Spanish Santa Fe were established as North American outposts of three European powers in their ongoing conflict and imperial competition. At the edges of each North American sphere of influence, frontier settlements were interspersed in a babble of languages. From the first English settlement in Virginia north were Algonkin, Iroquoian, Siouan, French and English. Southerly were Iroquoian speakers in the Appalachian Mountains, Souian on the Atlantic coast, Muskegan in the southeast to the Mississippi, Spanish at the Gulf, and English on the seaboard. Just west of the Mississippi River were Siouan, French and Spanish.

Early English settlement in Virginia and Massachusetts under Elizabeth I and successor James I pointedly recruited veterans from European religious wars in the Eighty Years' War, such as Virginia's Captain John Smith. These brought “hard war” tactics against every foe, whether native, nation-state or pirate, and they effectively schooled their successors in each British North American colony.

Just a decade before the Revolution, the North American French and Indian War spread to Europe and their imperial territories as the Seven Years’ War. At the 1763 Peace of Paris ending it, France was removed from North America, Spain expanded north and east to the Mississippi River, and the British formally abandoned the Stuart King colonial charters “from sea to sea”, accepting a western boundary of the “middle of the Mississippi River” with free navigation on it “to the open sea”. The Europeans changed their maps and everything on the American continent was disrupted: military alliances, trade networks, and any former economic stability. The coming American Revolutionary War was set amidst this already unsettled world.

Taxation and legislation

19th c. print of the 1774 Boston Tea Party

From their founding in the 17th century, the colonies were largely allowed to govern themselves; unlike the Spanish Americas, native-born property owners were allowed to participate in colonial government. Although London managed external affairs, the colonists funded militia for defense against New France and their indigenous allies. Once this threat ended with the eviction of France from North America in 1763, disputes arose between Parliament and the colonies as to how these expenses should be paid. With Britain's enlarged North American empire, the earlier Navigation Acts were expanded from mercantile regulation and repurposed for additional revenue.

Parliament sought to expand British American settlement north into Nova Scotia and south into Florida as a hedge against French and Spanish designs respectively. At the Proclamation Line of 1763, British policy was to limit Indian warfare to increase their trade revenue directly to the Crown. But maintaining the frontier peace for interior trade required policing against illicit colonial settlement. And that required British garrisons in the formerly French forts ceded by the Indians. Limiting colonial westward expansion was to be paid for by the Americans themselves by the 1764 Sugar Act and the 1765 Stamp Act.

Loyalist customs official tarred and feathered by Sons of Liberty.

Most of the frontier garrison expense was to be paid by the Sugar Act, which also renewed provisions of the old 1733 Molasses Act. The economic effect was crippling for New England.

When the British royal authorities seized the sloop Liberty in 1768 on suspicion of smuggling, it triggered a riot in Boston. Relations between Parliament and the colonies worsened after Lord North became Prime Minister in January 1770, an office he held until just after the British defeat at Yorktown. He pursued tougher policies, including a threat to charge colonists with treason, although there was no support for this in Parliament; tensions then escalated in March 1770 when British troops fired on rock-throwing civilians in Boston.

After the 1772 Gaspee Affair when a customs vessel was destroyed in Rhode Island, Parliament repealed all taxes other than that on tea. Partly designed to undercut illegal imports, it was also recognized as another attempt to assert their right to tax the colonies, so it did nothing to quiet opposition. Following the Sons of Liberty protest at the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, Parliament passed a series of measures called the Intolerable Acts. While intended to narrowly punish Massachusetts, they were widely viewed as a threat to the liberty of all the colonies and gained widespread support among the Patriots in America and among the Whig Opposition in Parliament.

Colonial response

P. Henry, 2nd Virginia Convention
“Give me liberty or give me death!”

The elected members in the Royal colonial legislatures, those who represented the smaller landowners in the lower-house assemblies, responded by establishing ad hoc provincial legislatures, variously called Congresses, Conventions and Conferences. They effectively removed Crown control within their respective colonies. Twelve sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to develop a joint American response to the crisis. It passed a compact declaring a trade boycott against Britain.

While the Congress also affirmed that Parliament had no authority over internal American matters, they also acquiesced to trade regulations for the benefit of the empire. Awaiting some measure of reconciliation from Parliament and the King's Tory government, Congress authorized the extralegal committees and conventions of the colonial legislatures to enforce the Congressional boycott. In the event, the boycott was effective, as imports from Britain dropped by 97% in 1775 compared to 1774.

Washington nominated commander
by Adams, 1st Continental Congress

Parliament refused to yield to Congressional proposals. In 1775, it declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and enforced a blockade of the colony. It then passed the Restraining Acts of 1775 aimed at limiting colonial trade to the British West Indies and the British Isles. New England ships were barred from the Newfoundland cod fisheries. These increasing tensions led to a mutual scramble for ordnance between royal governors and the elected assemblies. British raids on colonial powder magazines pushed the assemblies towards open war. Each assembly was required by law to defend them for the purpose of providing arms and ammunition for frontier defense. Thomas Gage was appointed the British Commander-in-Chief for North America. As military governor of Massachusetts he was ordered to disarm the local militias on April 14, 1775. On April 19, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought between Massachusetts militia and British regulars, with scores of casualties.

Political reactions

Main articles: Olive Branch Petition and United States Declaration of Independence

After fighting began, Congress launched an Olive Branch Petition in another attempt to avert war. George III rejected the offer as insincere because Congress also made contingency plans for muskets and gunpowder. The King answered militia resistance at Bunker Hill with a Proclamation of Rebellion, which further provoked the Patriot faction in Congress. Parliament rejected coercive measures on the colonies by 170 votes. The tentative Whig majority there feared an aggressive policy would drive the Americans towards independence. Tories stiffened their resistance to compromise, and the King himself began micromanaging the war effort. The Irish Parliament pledged to send troops to America, and Irish Catholics were allowed to enlist in the army for the first time.

The initial hostilities in Boston caused a pause in British activity, they remained in New York City awaiting more troops. That inactive response gave the Patriots a political advantage in the colonial assemblies, and the British lost control over every former colony. The army in the British Isles had been deliberately kept small since 1688 to prevent abuses of power by the King. To prepare for war overseas, Parliament signed treaties of subsidy with small German states for additional troops. Within a year it had sent an army of 32,000 men to America.

At the onset of the war, the Second Continental Congress realized that they would need foreign alliances and intelligence-gathering capability to defeat a world power like Britain. To this end, they formed the Committee of Secret Correspondence which operated from 1775 to 1776 for "the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain and other parts of the world". Through secret correspondence the Committee shared information and forged alliances with persons in France, England and throughout America. It employed secret agents in Europe to gather foreign intelligence, conduct undercover operations, analyze foreign publications, and initiate American propaganda campaigns to gain Patriot support. Members included Thomas Paine, the committee's secretary, and Silas Deane who was instrumental in securing French aid in Paris.

The Committee of Five for the Declaration
Adams, Sherman, Livingston,
Jefferson, Franklin (l-r presenting)

Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense boosted public support for independence throughout the thirteen colonies, and it was widely reprinted. At the rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, Congress appointed the Committee of Five consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston to draft a Declaration of Independence to politically separate the United States from Britain. The document argued for government by consent of the governed on the authority of the people of the thirteen colonies as "one people", along with a long list indicting George III as violating English rights. On July 2, Congress voted for independence, and it published the declaration on July 4 which George Washington read to assembled troops in New York City on July 9. Later that evening a mob tore down a lead statue of the King, which was later melted down into musket balls.

At this point, the American Revolution passed from its "colonial war" stage as thirteen colonies in Congress contesting the economic rules of empire with the Mother Country, to a second stage, one of civil war. The self-proclaimed states through their delegates assembled in Congress engaged in a military, political, and economic struggle against Great Britain. Politically and militarily, there were in every colony and county, a mix of Patriots (Whigs) and Loyalists (Tories) who now went to war against their neighbors.

Patriots were those who supported independence from Britain in their states and a new national union in Congress. Loyalists remained faithful to British imperial rule. Loyalists were usually minorities in each population, the appointed colonial officials, licensed merchants, Anglican churchmen, and the politically traditional. They were concentrated around port cities, on the New England Iroquois frontier and in the South near Cherokee settlement. Tories saw any subjects of the King who pretended to remove their ruler for whatever reasons as committing treason, and George III was encouraged to convict those responsible with the death penalty.

War in America

Further information: Invasion of Quebec (1775) and Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War § Early operations, 1775–1778

As the American Revolutionary War was to unfold in North America, there were two principal campaign theaters within the thirteen states, and a smaller but strategically important one west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River and north to the Great Lakes. The full-on military campaigning began in the states north of Maryland, and fighting was most frequent and severest there between 1775 and 1778. Patriots achieved several strategic victories in the South, the British lost their first army at Saratoga, and the French entered the war as a US ally.

After wintering at Valley Forge, from the 1778 Battle of Monmouth, Washington stalemated British initiatives into a series of raids, containing the British army in New York City. In 1778, Spanish-supplied Virginia Col. George Rogers Clark, Francophone settlers and their Indian allies conquered Western Quebec, the US Northwest Territory. Starting in 1779, the British initiated a southern strategy to begin at Savannah, gather Loyalist support, and reoccupy Patriot-controlled territory north to the Chesapeake Bay. The Americans lost an army in their greatest defeat at Charleston in 1780. British maneuvering north led to a combined American and French force cornering a second British army at Battle of Yorktown, and their surrender effectively ended the Revolutionary War.

Early engagements

Sir Thomas Gage, the British Commander-in-Chief in America 1763-1775 and sitting Governor of Massachusetts, gathered intelligence of a Patriot plan to destroy stores of militia ordnance at Concord. He set out to secure the stores there by way of Lexington to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams, the two principal provocateurs of the rebellion. The operation was to commence before midnight while completing their objectives and retreating to Boston before multitudes of patriot militias could respond. However, the patriots had a good intelligence network of their own, which Paul Revere had helped organize. Subsequently, the Patriots learned of Gage's intentions before he could act, where Revere quickly dispatched this information and alerted Captain John Parker and the patriot forces in Concord.

The British marching to Concord

Fighting broke out during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, when patriots fired the first shot forcing the British troops to conduct a fighting withdrawal to Boston. Overnight, the local militia converged on and laid siege to Boston. On May 25, 4,500 British reinforcements arrived with generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. During the Battle of Bunker Hill the British seized the Charlestown Peninsula on June 17 with a frontal assault costing many officer casualties to American rifle snipers. Surviving British commanders were dismayed at the costly attack which had gained them little, and Gage appealed to London stressing the need for a large army to suppress the revolt. Total British losses killed and wounded exceeded 1,000, leading Howe to replace Gage.

Congressional leader John Adams of Massachusetts nominated Virginia delegate George Washington for commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in June 1775. He had previously commanded Virginia militia regiments in British combat commands during the French and Indian War. Washington proceeded to Boston to assume field command of the ongoing Siege of Boston on July 3. Howe made no effort to attack in a standoff with Washington, who made no plan to assault the city. Instead, the Americans fortified Dorchester Heights. In early March 1776, Colonel Henry Knox arrived with heavy artillery captured from a raid on Fort Ticonderoga. Under cover of darkness Washington placed his artillery atop Dorchester Heights March 5, threatening Boston and the British ships in the harbor. Howe did not want another battle like Gage's Bunker Hill, so he evacuated Boston. The British were permitted to withdraw without further casualties on March 17, and they sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington then moved his army south to New York.

Beginning in August 1775, American Privateers had begun to raid villages in Nova Scotia, first at Saint John, then Charlottetown and Yarmouth. They continued in 1776 at Canso and then a land assault on Fort Cumberland.

British regulars and Canadian militia repulse American attack on Quebec

Meanwhile, British officials in Quebec began negotiating with Indian tribes to support them, while the Americans urged them to maintain neutrality. In April 1775, Congress feared an Anglo-Indian attack from Canada and authorized an invasion of Quebec. Quebec had a largely Francophone population and had been under British rule for only 12 years. A Massachusetts sponsored uprising in Nova Scotia had been disbursed in November, but The Americans expected that they would welcome liberation from the British. The second American expedition into the former French territory was defeated at the Battle of Quebec on December 31. After a loose siege, the Americans withdrew on May 6, 1776. An American failed counter-attack on June 8 ended their operations in Quebec. However, British pursuit was blocked by American ships on Lake Champlain until they were cleared on October 11 at the Battle of Valcour Island. The American troops were forced to withdraw to Ticonderoga, ending the campaign. The invasion cost the Patriots their support in British public opinion, and their aggressive anti-Loyalist policies had diluted Canadian support. No further Patriot attempts to invade were subsequently made.

In Virginia, Royal Governor Lord Dunmore had attempted to disarm the militia as tensions increased, although no fighting broke out. He issued a proclamation on November 7, 1775, promising freedom for slaves who fled their Patriot masters to fight for the Crown. Dunmore's troops were repulsed at the Battle of Great Bridge, and Dunmore fled to British ships anchored off the nearby port at Norfolk. The Third Virginia Convention refused to disband its militia or accept martial law. Speaker Peyton Randolph in the last Royal Virginia Assembly session did not make a response to Lord Dunmore concerning Parliament's Conciliatory Resolution. Negotiations failed in part because Randolph was also President of the Virginia Conventions, and he deferred to Congress, where he was also President. Dunmore ordered the ship's crews to burn Norfolk on January 1, 1776.

Sgt. Jasper raising the fort's flag,
Battle of Sullivan's Island, June 1776

Fighting broke out on November 19 in South Carolina between Loyalist and Patriot militias, and the Loyalists were subsequently driven out of the colony. Loyalists were recruited in North Carolina to reassert colonial rule in the South, but they were decisively defeated and Loyalist sentiment was subdued. A troop of British regulars set out to reconquer South Carolina and launched an attack on Charleston during the Battle of Sullivan's Island, on June 28, 1776, but it failed and left the South in Patriot control until 1780.

Shortages in Patriot gunpowder led Congress to authorize an expedition against the Bahamas colony in the British West Indies to secure additional ordnance there. On March 3, 1776, the Americans landed and engaged the British at the Battle of Nassau, but the local militia offered no resistance. The expedition confiscated what supplies they could and sailed for home on March 17. The squadron reached New London, Connecticut, on April 8, after a brief skirmish during the Battle of Block Island with the Royal Navy frigate HMS Glasgow on April 6.

British New York counter-offensive

Main article: New York and New Jersey campaign

Americans at Long Island, 1776

After regrouping at Halifax, William Howe determined to take the fight to the Americans. He set sail 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 July 30. Facing off against the British at New York City, Washington realized that he needed advance information to deal with disciplined British regular troops. On August 12, 1776, Thomas Knowlton was given orders to form an elite group for reconnaissance and secret missions. Knowlton's Rangers became the Army's first intelligence unit.

When Washington split his army to positions on Manhattan Island and across the East River in western Long Island, 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. Through the night of August 28, General Henry Knox bombarded the British. On August 29, an American council of war 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, with General Thomas Mifflin's regiments in the rear guard.

The Staten Island Peace Conference failed to negotiate peace as the British delegates did not have authority to recognize independence to meet the rebel demands. Howe seized control of New York City on September 15 and unsuccessfully engaged the Americans the following day. He failed to encircle the Americans at the Battle of Pell's Point, then the Americans successfully withdrew. Howe declined to close with Washington's army on October 28 at the Battle of White Plains, but instead concentrated his efforts on a hill that was of no strategic value.

British forced Hudson River narrows

Washington's retreat had left his remaining forces isolated, and the British captured their Fort Washington on November 16. The British victory there took 3,000 prisoners and amounted to Washington's most disastrous defeat. Washington's remaining army on Long Island fell back four days later. Henry Clinton wanted to pursue Washington's disorganized army, but he was required to commit 6,000 troops to first capture Newport, Rhode Island in an operation that he had opposed. The American prisoners were subsequently sent to the infamous prison ships where more American soldiers and sailors died of disease and neglect than died in every battle of the war combined. Charles Cornwallis pursued Washington, but Howe ordered him to halt and Washington marched away unmolested.

The outlook was bleak for the American cause; the reduced army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 men and that number would be reduced further when enlistments expired at the end of the year. Popular support wavered, morale ebbed away, and Congress abandoned Philadelphia. Loyalist activity surged in the wake of the American defeat, especially in New York. Once Washington was driven out of New York, he realized that he would need more than military might and amateur spies to defeat the British and earnestly made efforts to professionalize military intelligence with the aid of Benjamin Tallmadge. They created the Culper spy ring of six men.

Washington Crossing the Delaware

News of the campaign was well received in Britain with festivities held in London, public support reached a peak, and the King awarded the Order of the Bath to Howe. The successes led to predictions that the British could win within a year. Strategic deficiencies among Patriot forces were evident by Washington's dividing a numerically weaker army in the face of a stronger one, inexperienced staff misreading the situation, and their troops fleeing in the face of enemy fire. In the meantime, the British entered winter quarters and were in a good place to resume campaigning.

On the night of December 25–26, 1776, Washington crossed the ice-choked Delaware River and surprised and overwhelmed Colonel Johann Rall and the Hessian garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, and taking 900 prisoners. The decisive victory rescued the army's flagging morale, dispelled much of the fear for professional Hessian "mercenaries" and gave a new hope to the Patriot cause. Cornwallis marched to retake Trenton, but his efforts were repulsed in the Battle of the Assunpink Creek on January 2. Washington outmaneuvered Cornwallis that night and defeated his rearguard the following day. The two victories contributed to convincing the French that the Americans were worthwhile allies. Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey on January 6, though a prolonged guerrilla conflict continued. Howe made no attempt to attack, much to Washington's amazement.

British northern strategy fails

Main articles: Saratoga campaign and Philadelphia campaign

In December 1776, John Burgoyne returned to London to set strategy with Lord George Germain. Burgoyne's plan was to isolate New England by establishing control of the Great Lakes from New York to Quebec. Efforts could then concentrate on the southern colonies, where it was believed that Loyalist support was widespread and substantial.

"The Surrender at Saratoga", Gen. John Burgoyne (l.), to Gen. Horatio Gates

Burgoyne's plan was to maneuver two armies by different routes and rendezvous at Albany, New York. Burgoyne set out along Lake Champlain on June 14, 1777, quickly capturing Ticonderoga on July 5. From there the pace slowed. The Americans blocked roads, destroyed bridges, dammed streams, and stripped the area of food. Meanwhile, Barry St. Ledger's diversionary column along the Mohawk River laid siege to Fort Stanwix. St. Ledger withdrew to Quebec on August 22 after his Indian support abandoned him. On August 16, a Brunswick foraging expedition was soundly defeated at Bennington, and more than 700 troops were captured. The vast majority of Burgoyne's Indian support then abandoned him in the field, but Lord Howe informed him that he would still launch their planned campaign on Philadelphia, but without his support from New York.

Burgoyne continued the advance, and he attempted to flank the American position at Freeman's Farm on September 19 in the First Battle of Saratoga. The British won, but at the cost of 600 casualties. Burgoyne then dug in, but he suffered a constant hemorrhage of deserters, and critical supplies ran low. The Americans repulsed a British reconnaissance in force against the American lines on October 7, with heavy British losses during the second Battle of Saratoga. Burgoyne then withdrew in the face of American pursuit, but he was surrounded by October 13. With supplies exhausted and no hope of relief, Burgoyne surrendered his army on October 17, and the Americans took 6,222 soldiers as prisoners of war.

Washington & Lafayette inspecting troops at Valley Forge

Meanwhile, Howe took command of a New York-based campaign against Washington. Early feints failed to bring Washington to battle in June 1777. Howe then declined to attack towards Philadelphia further, either overland via New Jersey or by sea via the Delaware Bay, leaving Burgoyne's initiative launched from the interior unsupported.

Later in the fall with additional supplies, Howe recommenced the Philadelphia campaign. This time on advancing, he outflanked and defeated Washington on September 11, but failed to pursue and destroy the defeated Americans on two occasions; once after the Battle of Brandywine, and again after the Battle of Germantown. A British victory at Willistown left Philadelphia defenseless, and Howe captured the city unopposed on September 26. He then moved 9,000 men to Germantown north of Philadelphia. Washington launched a surprise attack there on Howe's garrison on October 4, but he was eventually repulsed. Once again, Howe did not follow up on his victory.

General von Steuben training
"Model Infantry" at Valley Forge

Howe, surprised by the American defenses, inexplicably ordered a retreat to Philadelphia after several days of probing at the Battle of White Marsh. He ignored the vulnerable American rear, where an attack might possibly have deprived Washington of his baggage and supplies. On December 19, Washington's army entered winter quarters at Valley Forge. Poor conditions and supply problems there resulted in the deaths of some 2,500 American troops. During Washington's winter encampment at Valley Forge, Baron von Steuben, introduced the latest Prussian methods of drilling and infantry tactics to the entire Continental Army.

While the Americans wintered only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, which some critics argue could have ended the war. Following the conclusion of the campaign, Howe resigned his commission, and was replaced by Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778. Clinton received orders to abandon Philadelphia and fortify New York following France's entry into the war. On June 18, the British departed Philadelphia, with the reinvigorated Americans in pursuit. The two armies fought at Monmouth Court House on June 28, with the Americans holding the field, greatly boosting Patriot morale and confidence. By July, both armies were back in the same positions they had been two years prior.

Foreign intervention

Main articles: France in the American Revolutionary War, Spain in the American Revolutionary War, and Carlisle Peace Commission

Early in the war, it became clear to Congress that help from France was imperative. First, the British instituted a blockade on the Atlantic seacoast ports against military assistance that could not be challenged. Second, its army troop strength attrited by death, disease and desertion, and the states failed to meet recruitment quotas. Third, the British had a continuing resupply of German auxiliaries to compensate for their losses.

French foreign minister the Comte de Vergennes was strongly anti-British, and he had long sought a pretext for going to war with Britain since the conquest of Canada in 1763. The French public favored war, but Vergennes and King Louis XVI were hesitant, owing to the military and financial risk.

Louis XVI gifted the US a former merchant for US Capt. Jones, renamed USS Bonhomme Richard

France, however, would not feel compelled to intervene if the colonies were still considering reconciliation with Britain, as France would have nothing to gain in that event. To assure assistance from France, independence would have to be declared, which was effected by Congress in July 1776. The Americans who had been covertly supplied by French merchants through neutral Dutch ports since the onset of the war, were now also supplied directly by the French government. These proved invaluable in the American 1777 Saratoga campaign.

The British defeat at Saratoga caused British anxiety over possible foreign intervention. The North ministry sought reconciliation with the colonies by consenting to their original demands, but without independence. However the Americans were now bolstered by their French trade, and would settle for no terms short of complete independence from Britain. The American victory at Saratoga convinced the French that supporting the Patriots was worthwhile, but doing so too late brought major concerns. King Louis XVI feared that Britain's concessions would be accepted and bring reconciliation with the Colonies. Britain would then be free to strike at French Caribbean possessions. To prevent this, France formally recognized the United States in a trade treaty on February 6, 1778, and followed that with a defensive military alliance guaranteeing American independence. Spain was wary of recognizing a republic of former European colonies, and also of provoking war with Britain before it was well prepared. It opted to covertly supply the Patriots mainly from Havana in Cuba and New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana.

To encourage French participation in the American struggle for independence, diplomat Silas Deane promised promotions and command positions to any French officer who joined the American war effort. However, many of the French officer-adventurers were completely unfit for command. In one outstanding exception, Congress recognized Lafayette's "great zeal to the cause of liberty" and commissioned him a major General. He was immediately instrumental in reconciling some of Washington's rival officers and he aligned some of the delegates in Philadelphia to support Washington in an otherwise indifferent Congress.

Congress also hoped to persuade Spain into an open alliance, as formally extended in the French treaty. The American Commissioners met with the Count of Aranda in 1776. But Spain was still reluctant to make an early commitment due to its Great Power concerns on the Continent. Nevertheless, the following year, Spain affirmed its desire to support the Americans so as to weaken Britain's empire.

Capture of the HMS Serapis. The Dutch let Jones into port as a "French capture" to aid the US

Since the outbreak of the conflict, Britain had appealed to its former ally, the neutral Dutch Republic, to lend the use of the Scots Brigade for service in America. But pro-American sentiment there forced its elected representatives to deny the request. Consequently, the British attempted to invoke treaties for outright Dutch military support, but the Republic still refused. At the same time, American troops were being supplied with ordnance by Dutch merchants via their West Indies colonies. French supplies bound for America were also transshipped through Dutch ports. The Republic traded with France following France's declaration of war on Britain, citing a prior concession by Britain on this issue. But despite standing international agreements, Britain responded by confiscating Dutch shipping, and even firing upon it. The Republic joined the First League of Armed Neutrality with Austria, Prussia and Russia to enforce their neutral status. But The Republic had further assisted the rebelling Patriot cause. It had also given sanctuary to American privateers and had drafted a treaty of commerce with the Americans. Britain argued that these actions contravened the Republic's neutral stance and declared war in December 1780.

Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight. He did not welcome war with France, but he believed that Britain had made all necessary steps to avoid it and cited the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to remain optimistic in the event of war with France. Britain tried in vain to find a powerful ally to engage France. It was isolated among the Great Powers, and French strength was not drawn off into Europe as in the Seven Years' War. Britain subsequently changed its focus from one theater, and diverted major military resources away from America. Despite these developments, George III still determined never to recognize American independence and to make war on the American colonies indefinitely, or until they pleaded to return as his subjects.

Stalemate in the North

Main articles: Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga and Western theater of the American Revolutionary War

French Adm. d'Estaing's joint expedition with US Gen. Sullivan at Newport RI

Following the British defeat at Saratoga in October, 1777, and French entry into the war, Clinton withdrew from Philadelphia to consolidate his forces in New York. French admiral the Comte d'Estaing had been dispatched to America in April 1778 to assist Washington. The Franco-American forces felt that New York's defenses were too formidable for the French fleet, so in August 1778 they launched an attack on Newport at the Battle of Rhode Island under the command of General John Sullivan. The effort failed when the French opted to withdraw, disappointing the Americans. The war then stalemated. Most actions were fought as large skirmishes such as those at Chestnut Neck and Little Egg Harbor. In the summer of 1779, the Americans captured British posts at the Battles of Stony Point and Paulus Hook. In July, Clinton unsuccessfully attempted to coax Washington into a decisive engagement by making a major raid into Connecticut. That month, a large American naval operation attempted to retake Maine, but it resulted in a humiliating defeat. The high frequency of Iroquois raids compelled Washington to mount a punitive expedition which destroyed a large number of Iroquois settlements, but the effort ultimately failed to stop the raids. During the winter of 1779–80, the Continental Army suffered greater hardships than at Valley Forge. Morale was poor, public support fell away in the long war, the national currency was virtually worthless, the army was plagued with supply problems, desertion was common, and whole regiments mutinied over the conditions in early 1780.

Continentals repulsing British attack at Springfield – "Give 'em Watts, boys!"

In 1780, Clinton launched an attempt to retake New Jersey. On June 7, 6,000 men invaded under Hessian general Wilhelm von Knyphausen, but they met stiff resistance from the local militia at the Battle of Connecticut Farms. The British held the field, but Knyphausen feared a general engagement with Washington's main army and withdrew. A second attempt two weeks later was soundly defeated at Springfield, effectively ending British ambitions in New Jersey. Meanwhile, American general Benedict Arnold turned traitor, joined the British army and attempted to surrender the American West Point fortress. The plot was foiled when British spy-master John André was captured. Arnold fled to British lines in New York where he justified his betrayal by appealing to Loyalist public opinion, but the Patriots strongly condemned him as a coward and turncoat.

Quebec Gov. Hamilton surrenders to Col. Clark at Vincennes, 1779

The war to the west of the Appalachians was largely confined to skirmishing and raids. In February 1778, an expedition of militia to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River was halted by adverse weather. Later in the year, a second campaign was undertaken to seize the Illinois Country from the British. Virginia militia, francophone settlers and Indian allies commanded by Colonel George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia on July 4 and then secured Vincennes, although Vincennes was recaptured by Quebec Governor Henry Hamilton. In early 1779, the Americans counter-attacked and retook Vincennes, taking Hamilton prisoner.

On May 25, 1780, the British launched an expedition into Kentucky as part of a wider operation to clear rebel resistance from Quebec to the Gulf coast. Hundreds were killed or captured, but the initiative met with only limited success. The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success, but it did little to abate the Indian raids on the frontier. French militia attempted to capture Detroit, but it ended in disaster when Miami Indians ambushed and defeated the gathered troops on November 5. The war in the west had become a stalemate; the Americans did not have the manpower to simultaneously defeat the hostile Indian tribes and occupy the land.

War in the South

Main article: Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War

The British turned their attention to conquering the South in 1778 after Loyalists in London assured them of a strong Loyalist base there. Squadrons of the Royal Navy would be closer to the British Caribbean colonies to defend against attacking Franco-Spanish fleets. On December 29, 1778, Lord Cornwallis commanded an expeditionary corps from New York to capture Savannah, and British troops then moved inland to recruit Loyalist support.

The initial Loyalist recruitment was promising in early 1779, but then a large Loyalist-only militia was defeated by Patriot militia at Kettle Creek on February 14. That demonstrated Loyalist need for the support of British regulars in major engagements. But the British in turn defeated Patriot militia at Brier Creek on March 3. In June they launched an abortive assault on Charleston, South Carolina. The operation became notorious for its widespread looting by British troops that enraged both Loyalists and Patriots in the Carolinas. In October, a combined Franco-American siege by Admiral d'Estaing and General Benjamin Lincoln failed to recapture Savannah.

British Siege of Charleston in 1780

The primary British strategy for the following year hinged on a Loyalist uprising in the south. Cornwallis proceeded into North Carolina, gambling his success on a large Loyalist uprising which never materialized. In May 1780, Henry Clinton captured Charleston, taking over 5,000 prisoners and effectively destroying the Continental Army in the south. Organized Patriot resistance in the region collapsed when Banastre Tarleton defeated the withdrawing Americans at Waxhaws on May 29.

British commander-in-chief Clinton returned to New York, leaving General Lord Cornwallis at Charleston to oversee the southern war effort. Few Loyalists joined him there. The initiative was seized by Patriot militias who won July victories at the Fairfield County, Lincolnton, Huck's Defeat, Stanly County, and Lancaster County. These effectively suppressed Loyalist support.

In July, Congress appointed General Horatio Gates with a new command to lead the American effort in the south. By mid-August 16, 1780, he had lost the Battle of Camden, and Cornwallis was poised to invade North Carolina. The British attempted to subjugate the countryside, but Patriot militia continued their attacks. Cornwallis dispatched Major Patrick Ferguson to raise Loyalist forces to cover his left flank as he moved north, but they ranged beyond mutual support. In early October the Tory regulars and militias were defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain, destroying any significant Loyalist support in the region.

American and British cavalry clash
Battle of Cowpens, 1781

Cornwallis advanced into North Carolina despite the setbacks, gambling that he would receive substantial Loyalist support there. Greene evaded combat with Cornwallis, instead wearing the British down through a protracted war of attrition. Washington replaced General Gates with General Nathanael Greene At the beginning of December 1780. Greene was unable to confront the British directly, so he dispatched a force under Daniel Morgan to recruit additional troops. Morgan then defeated the renowned British Legion, on January 17, 1781, at Cowpens. Cornwallis subsequently aborted his advance and retreated back into South Carolina.

The British launched a surprise offensive in Virginia in January 1781, with Benedict Arnold invading Richmond, Virginia. It met little resistance. Governor Thomas Jefferson escaped Richmond just ahead of the British forces, and the British burned the city to the ground. Although later accused by his enemies of inaction and cowardice, Jefferson sent an emergency dispatch to nearby Colonel Sampson Mathews to check Arnold's advance.

   1st Maryland Regiment
Battle of Guilford

By March, Greene's army had increased in size enough that he felt confident in facing Cornwallis who was far from his supply base. The two armies engaged near Guilford Courthouse on March 15. Accompanied by lieutenant colonel "Light Horse Harry" and his cavalry, the fighting went back and forth with the first British advance resulting in their retreat. The second clash occurred in a wooded area mostly involving close-quarters combat. During the chaotic melee Cornwallis has his horse shot out from under him, however, Greene was beaten, but Cornwallis's army suffered irreplaceable casualties. The Americans further reduced his army in a war of attrition, and far fewer Loyalists were joining than the British had previously expected. Cornwallis's casualties were such that he was compelled to retreat to Wilmington for reinforcement, leaving the Patriots in control of the interior of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Greene then proceeded to reclaim the South. On April 25 the American troops suffered a reversal at Hobkirk's Hill due to poor tactical control, but they continued to march 160 miles in 8 days, continually dislodging strategic British posts in the area nonetheless. They recaptured Fort Watson and Fort Motte on April 15. During the Siege of Augusta on June 6, Brigadier general Andrew Pickens reclaimed possession of the last British outpost beyond Charleston and Savannah.

The last British effort to stop Greene occurred at Eutaw Springs on September 8, but the British casualties were so high that they withdrew to Charleston. By the end of 1781, the Americans had effectively confined the British to the Carolina coasts, undoing any progress they had made in the previous year. Minor skirmishes continued there until the end of the war.

Mississippi River theater

Conquerors of the British controlled Mississippi River Basin

Bernardo de Gálvez opened Mississippi River and retook West Florida George Rogers Clark took western Quebec US 'Northwest Territory'

In America east of the Mississippi River, though Spanish Louisiana territory ran west of it, Governor General Gálvez had been allowing covert aid to George Washington by Pittsburgh via New Orleans. In 1777 Oliver Pollock, a successful merchant in Havana and New Orleans, was appointed US "commercial agent". He personally underwrote the American campaign against the British along the upriver Mississippi among the francophone settlements of western Quebec.

In the Virginia militia campaign of 1778, General George Rogers Clark founded Louisville, and cleared British forts in the region. Clark's conquest resulted in the creation of Illinois County, Virginia. It was organized with the consent of French-speaking colonials who had been guaranteed protection of the Catholic Church. Voters at their court house in Kaskaskia, were represented for three years in the Virginia General Assembly until the territory was ceded to the US Congress.

At the Spanish declaration of war with France in 1779, Governor Gálvez raised an army in Spanish Louisiana to initiate offensive operations against British outposts. First, he cleared British garrisons in Baton Rouge, Fort Bute and Natchez, capturing five forts. In this first maneuver Gálvez opened navigation on the Mississippi River north to US settlement in Pittsburg. His Spanish military assistance to Oliver Pollock for transport up the Mississippi River became an alternative supply to Washington's Continental Army, bypassing the British-blockaded Atlantic Coast.

Gálvez at the Siege of Pensacola

In 1781, Governor Galvez and Pollack campaigned east along the Gulf Coast to secure West Florida including British-held Mobile and Pensacola. The Spanish operations crippled the British supply of armaments to British Indian allies, effectively suspending a military alliance to attack settlers between the Mississippi River and Appalachian Mountains.

In April 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes, the British parried the French-Spanish invasion of Jamaica, then dominated the Caribbean Sea. In February 1783 Spanish lifted their siege of Gibraltar. A Spanish-US fleet captured Bahamas was returned at the peace. The belligerents had all lost heart for continued warfare. After George III announced for US independence in a Speech before the Throne before a joint session of Parliament in December 1782, the British proffered terms to the Americans in Paris, which were then approved by Congress April 1783. British "American settlement" allowed US fishing rights in Newfoundland and the Gulf of Mexico, along with "perpetual access" to the Mississippi River. The two British treaties with France and Spain settled their three-way swaps of imperial territory in September. The British settled their Fourth Anglo-Dutch War the next year.

British defeat in America

Main article: Yorktown campaign

In 1781, the British commander-in-chief in America was General Clinton, who was garrisoned in New York City. He had failed to construct a coherent strategy for British operations that year, owing to his difficult relationship with his naval counterpart Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot in turn had failed to detect the arrival of French naval forces in July. In Charleston, Cornwallis independently developed a plan for a campaign in Virginia to cut supply to Greene's army in the Carolinas, expecting the Patriot resistance in the South would then collapse. Lord Germain, Cabinet Secretary of State for America in London agreed, but neither official informed Clinton.

French fleet (left) engages the British
Battle of the Chesapeake, 1781

Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau discussed their options. Washington pushed for an attack on New York, while Rochambeau preferred a strike in Virginia, where the British were less well-established and thus easier to defeat. Franco-American movements around New York caused Clinton a great deal of anxiety, fearing an attack on the city. His instructions were vague to Cornwallis during this time, rarely forming explicit orders. However, Clinton did instruct Cornwallis to establish a fortified naval base and to transfer troops to the north to defend New York.

Cornwallis maneuvered to Yorktown to establish a fortified a sea-base of supply. But at the same time Lafayette was maneuvering south with a Franco-American army. The British dug in at Yorktown and awaited the Royal Navy. As Lafayette's army closed with Cornwallis, the British made no early attempt to sally out to engage the Americans before siege lines could be dug, despite the repeated urging of his subordinate officers. Expecting relief from Admiral Arbuthnot shortly to facilitate his withdrawal off the Virginia Peninsula, Cornwallis prematurely abandoned his outer defenses. These were promptly occupied by the besiegers, serving to hasten the British defeat.

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown

The British had dispatched a fleet from New York under Thomas Graves to rendezvous with Cornwallis. As they approached the entry to the Chesapeake Bay on September 5, the French fleet commanded by Admiral de Grasse decisively defeated Graves at the Battle of the Chesapeake, giving the French control of the seas around Yorktown and cutting off Cornwallis from further reinforcements or relief. On the unexpected arrival of the French fleet, Cornwallis then failed in an attempt to break out of the siege by crossing the York River at Gloucester Point when a storm hit. Cornwallis and his subordinates were under heavy bombardment and facing dwindling supplies, they agreed that their situation was untenable. On October 17, 1781, after twelve hours of negotiations, the terms of surrender were finalized. Yorktown was the last major battle on the American mainland, but Britain fought France and Spain elsewhere involving their own objectives for two more full years. After the defeat at Yorktown Clinton attempted to lay blame on Germain who had assured him that adequate reinforcements would arrive. Clinton also took exception to Cornwallis' account of the campaign, prompting him to write his own version of the defeat. Clinton, however, ultimately took the brunt of the blame for the defeat.

Strategy and commanders

To win the American Revolution, the United States had to outlast the will of the British Crown and its government in Parliament to subdue them. For the British to win the conflict, they had to defeat the Continental Army early in the war and force the dissolution of Congress.

American Revolution, campaigns

The revolt for and against colonial independence between British subjects in thirteen colonies of North America can be seen as three kinds of ongoing and interrelated warfare. First there was an economic war between a European state and its territory settled for its own economic strength and European balance of power. By 1775, British American colonies supplied of raw materials for its ships and one-third its sailors and they purchased British-manufactured goods that maintained its industrial growth. Newly enforced and expanded mercantile regulation restricted previous international Caribbean trade and colonial laissez faire smuggling.

Second there was a political civil war, a British constitutional war. Across 1000 miles of Atlantic coastline, settled as much as 300 miles into the continental frontier, thirteen British colonies self-proclaimed themselves states independent of Parliament and united in a Congress of their delegates to declare their independence as “one people” in a political revolution from monarchy to republic. This initiated a political struggle for British recognition assisted by Whigs in Parliament, a military struggle assisted by state militias and the creation of George Washington's national Continental Army, and an economic struggle for international free-trade to break the European mutually beneficial system of mercantilism. It also began thirteen civil wars in every state, as there were in every colony and county, a mix of Patriots (Whigs) and Loyalists (Tories) who now went to war among their neighbors. These divided variously in each state along both multi-ethnic and multi-religious lines. Every faction and element had veterans from the imperial conflict between Brtiain and France fifteen years before, there were officers and sergeants on every side practiced in the arts of both Indian frontier warfare, and in the European infantry line formations of musketry.

Third, there was an international war, outside the American Revolution removed from it, but also intervening and influencing it. France played a key role in assisting the Americans with money, weapons, soldiers, and naval vessels. French troops fought under US command in the states, and Spanish troops in its territory west of the Mississippi River and on the Gulf of Mexico defeated British forces. In the two years from 1778 to 1780, more countries with competing imperial domains worldwide went to war against Britain for their own reasons, including the Dutch Republic to assert its right to trade with its former colony in New York, and the French and Spanish to regain lost empire and prestige in the Caribbean, India and Gibraltar. Alternatively, nations in the League of Armed Neutrality including Russia, Austria and Prussia, defended the right of their merchant convoys to trade with the rebel Americans, enforced by Russian squadrons in the Mediterranean, North Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea.

American strategy

American population density, 1775

Congress had multiple advantages if the rebellion turned into a protracted war. Their prosperous state populations depended on local production for food and supplies rather than on imports from a Mother Country that lay six to twelve weeks away by sail. They were spread across most of the North American Atlantic seaboard stretching 1000 miles. Most farms were remote from the seaports; control of four or five major ports did not give British armies control over the inland areas. Each state had established internal distribution systems.

Each colony had a long-established system of local militia, combat tested in support of British regulars thirteen years before to secure an expanded British Empire. Together they took away French claims in North America west to the Mississippi River. The state legislatures independently funded and controlled their local militias. They would train and provide Continental Line regiments to the regular army, each with their own state officer corps. Motivation was also a major asset. Each colonial capital had its own newspapers and printers. The Patriots had more popular support than the Loyalists. British hoped for the Loyalists to do much of the fighting, but they did much less than expected.

Continental Army

Main articles: Continental Army, Continental Navy, and Minutemen

See also: Militia (United States) § American Revolutionary War (1775-1783)

When the war began, Congress lacked a professional army or navy, and each colony maintained only local militias. Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually without uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time and lacked the training and discipline of soldiers with more experience. Local county militias were reluctant to travel far from home and they were unavailable for extended operations. However, if properly employed their numbers could help the Continental armies overwhelm smaller British forces, as 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. The Congress established a regular army on June 14, 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress, and Washington used both his regulars and state militia throughout the war.

General Washington
Commander of the Continental Army

Washington designed the overall military strategy of the war in cooperation with Congress, established the principle of civilian supremacy in military affairs, personally recruited his senior office corps and kept the states all pointed toward the common goal. For the first three years until after Valley Forge, the Continental Army was largely supplemented by local state militias. At Washington's discretion, the inexperienced officers and untrained troops were employed in a Fabian strategy rather than resorting to frontal assaults against Britain's professional army. The American commander spent more than 10 percent of his total military funds on intelligence operations. Some historians maintain that, without the efforts of Washington and the Culper Spy Ring, the British would never have been defeated. Over the course of the entire war, Washington lost more battles than he won, but he maintained a fighting force in the face of British field armies and never surrendered his troops.

The American armies were small by European standards of the era, largely attributable, to limitations such as lack of powder and other logistics. At the beginning of 1776, Washington commanded 20,000 men, with two-thirds enlisted in the Continental Army and the other third in the various state militias. About 250,000 men served as regulars or as militiamen for the Revolutionary cause in the eight years of the war, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at one time.

American officers as a whole never equaled their opponents in tactics and maneuver, and they lost most of the pitched battles. The great successes at Boston (1776), Saratoga (1777), and Yorktown (1781) came from trapping the British far from base with much larger numbers of troops. Nevertheless, after 1778, Washington's army was transformed into a more disciplined and effective force, due largely to training by Baron von Steuben. Immediately after the Army emerged from Valley Forge, it proved its ability to match the British troops in action at the Battle of Monmouth, including a black Rhode Island regiment fending off a British bayonet attack then counter-charging for the first time in Washington's army.

A watercolor showing various
Continental Army uniforms

Though Congress had responsibility for the war effort and getting supplies to the troops, Washington took it upon himself to pressure the Congress and state legislatures to provide the essentials. There was never nearly enough. Congress evolved in its committee oversight, establishing the Board of War which included members of the military. But the Board of War was also a committee ensnared with its own internal procedures, so Congress created the post of Secretary of War, appointing Major General Benjamin Lincoln in February, 1781. Washington worked closely with Lincoln in coordinating civilian and military authorities and took charge of training and supplying the army.

The new Continental Army suffered significantly from a lack of an effective training program and from largely inexperienced officers and sergeants. The inexperience of its officers was somewhat offset by a few senior officers. Each state legislature appointed officers for both county and state militias and their regimental Continental Line officers, but Washington was permitted to choose and command his own generals, although sometimes he was required to accept Congressional appointments.

Eventually, the Continental Army found capable officers such as Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, Henry Knox (chief of artillery), and Alexander Hamilton (chief of staff). One of Washington's most successful recruits to general officer was Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual. Over the winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, von Steuben was instrumental in training the Continental Army in the essentials of infantry field maneuvers with military discipline, drills, tactics, and strategy.

Continental Navy

USS Ranger, Capt. Jones. France
gives the US flag its first foreign salute

During the first summer of the war, Washington began outfitting schooners and other small sea-going vessels to prey on ships supplying the British in Boston.

USS Alliance, Capt. Barry won the war's last engagement

Congress established the Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, and appointed Esek Hopkins as the Navy's first commander. The following month, Marines were organized on November 10, 1775. The Continental Navy was a handful of small frigates and sloops throughout the Revolution for the most part.

John Paul Jones became the first great American naval hero, capturing HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters. The last 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 Congress. After Yorktown, all US Navy ships were sold or given away. For the first time in America's history she had no fighting forces on the high seas.

Congress primarily commissioned privateers as a cost savings, and to take advantage of the large proportion of colonial sailors found in the British Empire. Overall, they included 1,700 ships, and these 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.

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. About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war.

France

Main article: France in the American Revolution

To begin with, the Americans had no major international allies. 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 such as France and Spain, who moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies to overtly supporting them.

Vergennes French Chief Minister for US to Appalachians & more French empire Lafayette FR liaison, US soldier for US independence & the Rights of Man

The decisive American victory at Saratoga spurred France to offer a defensive treaty of alliance with the United States to guarantee its independence from Britain. It was conditioned on Britain initiating a war on France to stop it from trading with the US. Spain and the Netherlands were invited to join by both France and the United States in the treaty, but neither made a formal reply.

On June 13, 1778, France declared war on Great Britain, and it invoked the French military alliance with the US. That ensured additional US privateer support for French possessions in the Caribbean. King George III feared that the war's prospects would make it unlikely he could reclaim the North American colonies. During the later years of the Revolution, the British were drawn into numerous other conflicts about the globe.

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. 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.

British strategy

George III limited settlement west to the Continental Divide

The population of Great Britain and Ireland in 1780 was approximately 12.6 million, while the Thirteen Colonies held a population of some 2.8 million, including some 500,000 slaves. Theoretically, Britain had the advantage; however, many factors inhibited raising a large army for a war that was unpopular at home.

1768 treaties: Iroquois west (red), Cherokees west (purple)

Suppressing a rebellion in America presented the British with major problems. The key issue was distance; it could take up to three months to cross the Atlantic, and orders from London were often outdated by the time that they arrived.

The colonies had never been formally united prior to the conflict and there was no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance. Traditionally, the fall of a capital city often signaled the end of a conflict yet the war continued unabated even after the fall of major settlements such as New York, Philadelphia (where Congress met), and Charleston. Britain's ability to project its power overseas lay chiefly in the power of the Royal Navy, allowing her to control major coastal settlements with relative ease and to enforce a strong blockade of colonial ports. However, the overwhelming majority of the American population was agrarian, not urban, and the American economy proved resilient enough to withstand the blockade's effects.

The vastness of the American countryside and the limited manpower available meant that the British could never simultaneously defeat the Americans and occupy captured territory. One British statesman described the attempt as "like trying to conquer a map". Debate persists over whether a British defeat in America was a guaranteed outcome. Ferling argues that long odds made the defeat of Britain nothing short of a miracle.

Ellis, however, considers that the odds always favored the Americans. He holds that the British squandered their only opportunities for a decisive success in 1777 because William Howe's strategic decisions relied on local Tory militias while underestimating Patriot capabilities. Ellis concludes that once Howe failed, the opportunity for a British victory "would never come again". Conversely, the US military history published by the US Army argues that an additional British commitment of 10,000 fresh troops in 1780 would have placed British victory within the realm of possibility.

British army

Main articles: British Army during the American Revolutionary War and Royal Navy

Britain had four commanders-in-chief from initial days of the American colonial revolt to the final conclusion of the British-American civil war. The first commander of British forces in America following the 1763 Treaty of Paris was long-serving General Lord Thomas Gage. He had been installed in the flush victory days immediately following the end of the French and Indian War in America, with the business of expanding British empire into the French cessions in North America. The second British commander-in chief followed the dismissal of General Gage with his Bunker Hill assault and its high casualties to entrenched American rifle-fire. General Sir William Howe, commanded British forces in North America 1775–1778. His tenure continued the London policy of "soft war" under the influence of back-bencher Whigs in Parliament, and the caution felt in government because senior general officers refused to serve in America to put down the revolt.

At the loss of an army at Saratoga and France declaring war on Britain, Congress rejected the peace offer at the Carlisle Commission, and Howe's replacement as British commander-in-chief in 1778 was General Sir Henry Clinton. He would serve for the duration of British campaigning in North America. London changed its war policy with orders to ruthlessly pursue victory against the colonists as enemies. Clinton's tenure ended at the loss of a second British army at Yorktown, and in early 1782 at the British-American truce, he was replaced by Sir Guy Carleton, who had repelled the American assault on Quebec in 1775. Carlton then successfully managed the British evacuation of American port cities in Savannah, Charleston and New York City.

Sir Thomas Gage, British Commander, 1763-1775

In 1775, the standing British Army, exclusive of militia, comprised 45,123 men worldwide, including 8500 men stationed in North America. The British army at home had been deliberately kept small in peacetime to prevent abuses of power by the King. Despite this, eighteenth century armies were not welcome guests among British civilian populations, and were regarded with scorn and contempt by the press and public of the New and Old World alike, derided as enemies of liberty. The idle peacetime Army fell into corruption and inefficiency, resulting in many administrative difficulties once campaigning began.

Through the American crises of 1775, the British leadership discovered it had overestimated the capabilities of its own troops, while underestimating those of the colonists. Strategic and tactical reassessments began in London and British America. The immediate replacement of General Gage with General Howe followed the large casualties suffered in a frontal assault against shallow entrenchments at Bunker Hill. Both British military and civil officials soon acknowledged that their initial responses to the rebellion had allowed the initiative to shift to the Patriots, as British authorities rapidly lost control over every colony. Ultimately, Gage was relieved of command for underestimating the strength of republican sympathy and Patriot support.

Sir William Howe, British Commander, 1775–1778

Gage was replaced by Sir William Howe. Both had been light infantry commanders in America during the French and Indian War, but now General Howe had a command advantage, as he received large numbers of reinforcements of both British and German troops, horse and artillery.

Howe made several strategic errors that cost the British offensive initiative. The general's tardiness in launching the New York campaign awaiting supplies, and his reluctance to allow Cornwallis to vigorously pursue Washington's beaten army, have both been attributed to food shortages. During the winter of 1776–1777, Howe split his army into scattered cantonments. This decision dangerously exposed the individual forces to defeat in detail, but low food supply in New York City warehouses required dispersed regimental foraging parties. Washington took advantage at Trenton and Princeton. Howe's difficulties during the next year's Philadelphia campaign were also magnified by the poor quality and quantity of resupply directly from Britain.

In 1777, Howe might have committed his army to support Burgoyne attacking south from Quebec into New York, but he saw Washington positioned before Philadelphia as a greater threat. At the Battle of White Marsh, Howe failed to exploit the vulnerable American rear, and then he inexplicably ordered a retreat to Philadelphia after only minor skirmishes. His withdrawal astonished both sides. Howe may have been dissuaded from direct assaults by the memory of the grievous losses the British suffered at Bunker Hill. In his initial approach Philadelphia, which was round-about by sea through the Chesapeake Bay, Howe was unable to assist Burgoyne even if it were required, and no surprise was achieved. That decision so angered Tories on both sides of the Atlantic, that Howe was accused in Parliament of treason. At the surrender of General John Burgoyne and the loss of a British army to the Continental Army at Saratoga, Howe was recalled and replaced by Sir Henry Clinton.

Sir Henry Clinton, British Commander, 1778–1782

Clinton was professionally regarded in the British Army as one of the best-read experts on campaign tactics and military strategy. But like Howe before him, Clinton's efforts to campaign suffered from chronic supply issues. In 1778, Clinton wrote to Colonial Secretary Lord Germain complaining of the lack of supplies, even after the arrival of a convoy from Ireland. Clinton was largely inactive in the North throughout 1779, launching few major campaigns. This inactivity was partially due to the shortage of food. By 1780, the situation had not improved. Clinton wrote a frustrated correspondence to Germain, voicing concern that a "fatal consequence will ensue" if matters did not improve.

To emphasize his disappointment, Clinton had asked London that Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot be recalled. Arbuthnot's relief was meant to be Admiral Sir George Rodney from his Leeward Islands command in late 1780, but Arbuthnot appealed to the admiralty. The replacement was upheld and Rodney took command in New York, but not before Arbuthnot narrowly turned back a French navy attempt in March 1781 to reinforce Lafayette in Virginia at the Battle of Cape Henry.

The following spring, General Lord Cornwallis commanding the British southern army in Charleston began a campaign north into Virginia to force a collapse of Patriot support throughout the South. Although approved by Colonial Secretary Sir George Germain, General Clinton was not notified either of adopting the plan or the beginning of the campaign. Clinton delayed sending reinforcements because he believed the bulk of Washington's army was still outside New York City. Admiral Romney's relief fleet to Yorktown failed. Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown and the loss of a second British army to the Continental Army effectively ended British attempts to retake America. Clinton was relieved and replaced by Sir Guy Carleton.

General Carleton had repelled the American assault on Quebec in 1775, but he had been passed over for advancement by General Burgoyne because of his reputation for over-caution. On his taking command of British forces in America, he then successfully managed the British transport of Loyalists to Nova Scotia and British East Florida, then evacuated British troops from American port cities in Savannah, Charleston and New York City.

Hessians

Main article: Hessian (soldier)

Hessian uniforms of the Leibregiment deployed to America

In 1775 at the onset of the American War of Independence, without sufficient popular support, the British soon realized they needed greater numbers of soldiers to subdue the rebellion in colonial America. Seeking military aid, and being denied by Russia, several German princes from Hesse-Cassell and elsewhere were presented with a great opportunity to hire out their professional regular army units for service in America. Hesse-Cassell, had for 100s of years been hiring out professional soldiers to the highest bidder, sometimes to countries that were at war with one another. Britain was their best customer and arranged treaties of subsidy to hire the needed soldiers, affording the German princes large profits.

The war had made the Hessians the focus of national sentiment and public political debate in Britain, France, and for the first time, in Germany. King Frederick II of Prussia did not allow the transfer of hired soldiers slated to fight in the American war to cross his territory. In March 1776 the controversial treaties were debated in the British Parliament. The opposition was soon taken up by the Continental Congress. In late 1775 and early 1776 the American public was becoming increasingly aware of the parliamentary discussions over the use of foreign troops. In the fall of 1775, a growing faction in Parliament was openly challenging Lord North's increasingly aggressive policies regarding the Americans and the deployment of foreign soldiers to subdue the rebellion in the colonies.

American newspapers covered the parliamentary debates in detail, printing and reprinting key speeches on the treaties. Most of the news items were taken from London newspapers, and correspondence between Britain and Germany. In October the Wochentliche Philadelphische Staatsbote, the only German-language newspaper published in the American colonies during the war, reported that Britain planned to send 10,000 German troops to Boston and New York. In the same issue it was reported that Britain was also planning to build permanent fortifications in the colonies, garrisoned by 10,000 Hanoverians that would be supported with taxes levied on the colonists. This caused most patriots to relinquish their allegiance to Britain, more so than issues of taxation, and suspension of local governments did. There was now a general consensus that Britain fully intended to use hired foreign soldiers against the Americans, which only served to increase the enlistments for the Continental Army. During this time, rumors that Britain was sending a large contingent of peace commissioners also circulated throughout the colonies. However, when copies of the treaties between Britain and the German princes became public, advocates for independence felt they had the proof they needed that foreign soldiers would soon be on their way. The idea of reconciliation with Britain now seemed naive and hopeless now that it was clear Britain was determined to go to war.

Before the actual arrival of the Hessians, Americans had expected, and the British had feared, that many of the foreign troops would desert. James Lutrell, a member of Parliament, feared that there "were already 150,000 Germans in America ... desertions would be the likely outcome." Sir Henry Clinton instead had hoped to employ Russian soldiers with the idea that they knew only one language and would not be inclined to desert in a country with very few Russians. Thinking along the same lines, on August 9, 1776, the American Congress directed Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to author and print up "handbills" to disperse among the Hessians, promising them large land holdings and civil liberties if they joined the American cause. However, the British employed similar designs and dissuaded the Hessians from desertion by creating negative stereotypes of the Americans, with the idea that if they deserted they would likely be hung by angry and resentful colonists for meddling in a war that was not theirs. British soldiers were themselves often contemptuous in their treatment of Hessian troops, despite orders from General Howe that "the English should treat the Germans as brothers". The first Hessians arrived in August and landed on Staten Island to reinforce the British troops stationed there, and would soon participate in the action that followed during the Battle of Long Island. The German soldiers were an essential part of the British war effort, without whose participation the prospect of subduing the rebellion by themselves was deemed unlikely. During the course of the war Hessian recruits were sent out every year to America to the various British divisions. By the end of the war nearly 30,000 Hessians had been sent to America. From this total 17,000 returned to Germany, while more than 12,000 never returned. The total cost to Britain amounted to more than seven million pounds sterling at that time.

By the end of hostilities in America at the close of 1781, the British Army numbered approximately 121,000 men globally, 48,000 of whom were stationed throughout the Americas. Of the 171,000 sailors who served in the Royal Navy throughout the conflict, around a quarter were pressed. This same proportion, approximately 42,000 men, deserted during the conflict. At its height, the Navy had 94 ships-of-the-line, 104 frigates and 37 sloops in service.

Revolution as civil war

Loyalists

Main article: Loyalist (American Revolution)

See also: American Legion and Prince of Wales' American Regiment

Wealthy Loyalists wielded great influence in London and they were successful in convincing the British government that the majority view in the colonies was sympathetic toward the Crown. Consequently, British military planners pinned the success of their strategies on popular uprisings of Loyalists that never materialized.

Black Loyalist militia fight alongside British regulars, Battle of Jersey 1781.

Recruiting adequate numbers of Loyalist militia to support British military plans in America was made difficult by intensive local Patriot opposition nearly everywhere. To bolster Loyalist militia numbers in the South, the British promised freedom and grants of land to slaves who fought for them. Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war.

From early on, the British were faced with a major dilemma. Any significant level of organized Loyalist activity required a continued presence of British regulars. The available manpower that the British commands had in America was insufficient to protect Loyalist territory while at the same time countering American offensives. The Loyalist militias in the South were vulnerable to strings of defeats by their Patriot militia neighbors. The most critical combat between the two partisan militias was at Kings Mountain. The Patriot victory there irreversibly crippled any further Loyalist militia capability in the South.

During the early war policy administered by General Lord Howe, the need to maintain Loyalist support prevented the British from using the harsh methods of suppressing revolts that they had used in Scotland and Ireland. The Crown's cause suffered when British troops looted and pillaged the locals during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779, enraging both Patriots and Loyalists. After Congress rejected the Carlisle Commission settlement offer in 1778 and London turning to "hard war" during General Lord Clinton's command, neutral colonists in the Carolinas were often driven into the ranks of the Patriots whenever brutal combat broke out between Tories and Whigs. Conversely, Loyalists were often emboldened when Patriots resorted to intimidating suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering.

One outstanding Loyalist militia unit provided some of the best troops in the British service. Their British Legion was a mixed regiment of 250 dragoons and 200 infantry, supported by batteries of flying artillery Under the command of Banastre Tarleton in the South, it gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies for "brutality and needless slaughter". Nevertheless, in May 1779 the Loyalist British Legion was one of five regiments taken into British Army regular service as the American Establishment. After the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781, British Legion survivors amounting to 14 percent of those engaged were consolidated into the British garrison at Charleston.

Women

Main article: Women in the American Revolution

Nancy Morgan Hart captured six British infantry while defending her home.

Women played various roles during the Revolutionary War. Some women accompanied their husbands when permitted. Martha Washington was known to visit the American camp, for example, and Frederika Charlotte Riedesel documented the Saratoga campaign. Women also acted as spies on both sides of the Revolutionary War. In some cases women served in the American Army in the war, some of them disguised as men. Deborah Sampson fought until her sex was discovered and she was discharged, and Sally St. Clare died in the war. Anna Maria Lane joined her husband in the Army, and she was wearing men's clothes by the time of the Battle of Germantown. According to the Virginia General Assembly, Lane "performed extraordinary military services, and received a severe wound at the battle of Germantown", fighting dressed as a man and "with the courage of a soldier". Other women fought or directly supported fighting while dressed as women, such as the legendary or mythical Molly Pitcher. On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington rode to alert militia forces of Putnam County, New York and Danbury, Connecticut, warning of the approach of the British regular forces. She is referred to as the female Paul Revere. Other women also accompanied armies as camp followers, selling goods and performing necessary services in hospital and camp. They were a necessary part of 18th century armies, and they numbered in the thousands during the war.

African Americans

Main article: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

Continental 1st Rhode Island Regt.
black & white infantry, (r.) officer & whip

African Americans—slave and free—served on both sides during the war. The British recruited slaves belonging to Patriot masters and promised freedom to those who served by act of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Because of manpower shortages, George Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January 1776. Small all-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; many slaves were promised freedom for serving. Some of the men promised freedom were sent back to their masters after the war was over for political convenience. Another all-black unit came from Saint-Domingue with French colonial forces. At least 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Revolutionary cause.

Tens of thousands of slaves escaped during the war and joined British lines; others simply moved off in the chaos. For instance, in South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (30% of the enslaved population) fled, migrated or died during the disruption of the war. This greatly disrupted plantation production during and after the war. When they withdrew their forces from Savannah and Charleston, the British also evacuated 10,000 slaves belonging to Loyalists. Altogether, the British evacuated nearly 20,000 blacks at the end of the war. More than 3,000 of them were freedmen and most of these were resettled in Nova Scotia; other blacks were sold in the West Indies. About 8,000 to 10,000 slaves gained freedom. About 4,000 freed slaves went to Nova Scotia and 1,200 blacks remained slaves.

American Indians

Main page: Category:Native Americans in the American Revolution

See also Cayuga, Cherokee, Cherokee War of 1776, Cherokee–American wars, Chocktaw, Iroquois, Lenape, Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, Seneca.

Most American Indians east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many tribes were divided over the question of how to respond to the conflict. A few tribes were on friendly terms with the other Americans, but most Indians opposed the union of the Colonies as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Indians fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes, who fielded around 1,500 men.

Indians split within languages, nations and tribes; Neutrality was impossible to maintain in the Revolution

Col. Joseph Brant, GB Iroquois Mohawk led Seneca in war Col. Joseph Cook, US Iroquois Mohawk led Oneida in war

The powerful Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the conflict, whatever side they took; the Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga tribes sided with the British. Members of the Mohawks fought on both sides. Many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the Americans. The Continental Army sent the Sullivan Expedition on raids throughout New York to cripple 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, and this further exacerbated the split.

Farther west, conflicts between settlers and Indians led to lasting distrust. In the 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. Tribes in the Northwest Territory banded together and allied with the British to resist American settlement; their conflict continued after the Revolutionary War as the Northwest Indian War.

Early in July 1776, Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the western frontier areas of North Carolina. Their defeat resulted in a splintering of the Cherokee settlements and people and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, bitter enemies of the American settlers who carried on a frontier war for decades following the end of hostilities with Britain. Creek and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Creeks destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Creek warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the Siege of Savannah. Many Indians were involved in the fighting between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River, mostly on the British side. Thousands of Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws fought in major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the Siege of Pensacola.

Global war and diplomacy

North Ministry collapses

See also: Fox-North coalition

Lord North had been the King's Prime Minister in Parliament since 1770. By the end of 1777 with the loss of the first British army, King George III had determined that in the event of his initiating a separate war with France, he would have to redeploy most of the British and German troops in America to threaten French and Spanish Caribbean settlements. In the King's judgment, Britain could not possibly fight on all three fronts without becoming weak everywhere. At the news of the French-US treaties for trade and defense arrived at London, British negotiators proposed a second peace settlement to Congress.

Lord North Tory for American war and territorial Empire Lord Rockingham Whig for peace, trade and US independence

The Carlisle Peace Commission was sent across the Atlantic to make a formal presentation to Congress. Firstly, virtual self-government by a kind of "home-rule" was contemplated. It would recognize Congress, suspend all objectionable acts of Parliament, surrender Parliament's the right to taxation, and perhaps allow American representatives to the House of Commons. But secondly, all property would be restored to loyal subjects, their debts honored, with locally enforced martial law, Parliament to regulate trade, and the Declaration of Independence withdrawn. Parliament's commission was rebuffed by a Congress which knew the British were about to evacuate Philadelphia. Before it returned to London in November 1778, the commission directed a change in British war policy. Sir Henry Clinton, the new British Commander-in-Chief in America was to stop treating rebels as subjects whose loyalty might be regained – now they were to be routinely treated as enemies. Those standing orders would be in effect for three years until Clinton was relieved.

King George III, 1785
in his parliamentary robes

Prior to the surrender of Cornwallis's army at Yorktown, George III still had hoped for victory in the South. He believed a majority of American colonists still supported him there, especially among thousands of black slaves. When news of the surrender at Yorktown however reached Lord North he exclaimed, “Oh God! It is all over." Nevertheless, Lord North rebutted the Whig resolution in Commons to end offensive operations in America. The speech postponed the inevitable several weeks.

But the mood of the country in Great Britain had changed since the 1770s. Member of Parliament Edward Gibbon had believed the King's cause in America to be just, and the British and German soldiers there fought bravely. But after Yorktown, he concluded, "It is better to be humbled than ruined." There was no point in spending more money on Britain's most expensive war, with no hope of success. Whig William Pitt argued that war on American colonists had brought nothing but ineffective victories or severe defeats. He condemned effort to retain the Americans as a "most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unjust and diabolical war." Lord North resigned. George III never forgave him.

From the time London learned of the surrender of a second British army, it was only two weeks before the Whig Opposition motion to end offensive war in America which was defeated by only one vote. On February 27, 1782, the Commons carried the motion by 19 votes. At a vote of no confidence against Lord North, the Rockingham Whigs came to power and opened negotiations for peace with the Americans. Rockingham died and was succeeded by the Earl of Shelburne. The British troops remaining in America were garrisoned in the three port cities of New York, Charleston, and Savannah. General Clinton was recalled and replaced by Guy Carleton who was ordered to suspend offensive operations and agreed to evacuate New York on 25 November, 1783..

English public will evaporated for continuing the government's war to suppress the Thirteen Colony rebellion. With the House of Commons vote against further offensive war in the US, overturning Lord North's policy to continue the war, the British government could then commit the British garrisons at New York and Charleston to holding her West Indies colonies under attack from France and Spain. Six weeks more, American General George Washington and British General Sir Guy Carleton entered into an end of hostilities between the belligerents at New York City.

Treaty of Paris

See Treaty of Paris (1783) for the Anglo-American peace, formally in effect at the conclusive peace with Anglo-French peace.

The British surrender at Yorktown on 19 October 1781 “virtually settled” independence for the United States. All who contributed to any prolonging of offensive war in America were declared “enemies to the country [Britain]”. George III formally sent for peace Whig Lord Rockingham, who had been a constant advocate in Parliament for the American cause since 1775. Before he agreed to serve, Rockingham required, and the King agreed to acknowledge American independence. Rockingham took office 27 March 1782. Nevertheless, with the departure of the French fleet from American shores in November 1781, the Royal Navy was able to move in and re-assert a close blockade.

Following the death of Lord Rockingham on 1 July 1782 the new Prime minister Shelburne succeeded him. He sought to separate the US from warring France by strengthening the US so it would not depend on France militarily. The French long-term interest was a weak US to ensure a future military alliance against Britain. The British strategy ultimately would prove successful. The US ministers negotiating the British-US peace were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and for Britain, David Hartley of Parliament and Richard Oswald, Britain's Peace Commissioner.

American mission (l-r) Jay, Adams, Franklin, Laurens in Treaty of Paris oil

France and Spain floated distinctly different proposals for an "American Settlement" to apportion territory to the United States. The French had the most restrictive plan, with a western boundary for the US at the Appalachian Mountains, matching the British 1763 Proclamation Line. The Spanish allowed for some additional Mississippi River Basin upland just west of the Appalachians for the US. But it also required that the British cede its colony of Georgia to Spain in violation of the Franco-American alliance of 1778.

When the American delegation in Paris discovered France was negotiating with Britain unilaterally in early September 1782, the Americans followed suit. Shelburne met American demands for territory west to the Mississippi River in order "to cheat the Spaniards". The agreement met four Congressional peace demands: independence, territory to the Mississippi, navigation to the sea, and fishing off Newfoundland.

Meanwhile, by mid 1782 the British blockade of the American coast had tightened to the point that the Continental economy was suffering - coastal merchant ships were being taken at large rates by the Royal Navy. This led to rising inflation made worse by the fact that France was unable to provide anymore loans. As a result, congress financier Robert Morris was unable to pay soldiers of the Continental Army. To speed the US negotiators, Britain offered Newfoundland fishing rights to the US, denying France exclusive rights; France and Spain would now sign their treaties after the Anglo-American fait accompli. The Preliminary Peace was signed November 30, 1782. Congress endorsed it unanimously by law on April 15, 1783 and proclaimed that peace with independence was achieved in public broadsides. The “conclusive” treaty was signed on September 2, 1783 in Paris, effective the next day September 3, when Britain signed its treaty with France. John Adams, who was an early participant drafting the treaty, maintained that its negotiations represented "one of the most important political events that ever happened on the globe".

British America and Empire

Main article: Anglo-French War (1778)

Battle of Cuddalore, off India - although a French victory it failed to regain territory in India

As a part of the Anglo-French Second Hundred Years' War, beginning 1778–9, France and Spain again declared war on Britain. The British were forced to severely limit the number of troops and warships that they sent to America in order to defend the British homeland and key overseas territories. The immediate strategic focus of the three greatest European colonial powers, Britain, France, and Spain, all shifted to Jamaica. King George abandoned any hope of subduing America militarily while simultaneously contending with two European Great Powers alone.

The small size of Britain's army left them unable to concentrate their resources primarily in one theater of war with a Great Power ally as they had done before in the Seven Years' War allied with Prussia. That left them at a critical disadvantage. London was compelled to disperse troops from America to Europe and the East Indies. These forces were unable to mutually support one other, exposing them to potential defeat everywhere.

Nevertheless, the British secured a preliminary peace settlement in America, and it was agreed to in Congress April 1783. British military successes worldwide from 1782 to 1784 led to their ability to dictate their Treaty of Versailles (1783) with France, their Treaty of Versailles (1783) with Spain, and their Treaty of Paris (1784) with the Dutch Republic. Following the end of British engagement in conflicts worldwide 1775–1784, the Empire had lost some of her most populous colonies in the short term. But in the long term, the economic effects were negligible. With expanding trade in America with the US, and expanding colonial territory worldwide, she became a global superpower 32 years after the end of her many conflicts throughout the American Revolution and Napoleonic Eras.

Peace of Paris

:See Peace of Paris (1783) for how the Anglo-American Preliminary Peace November 1782 was incorporated into the Anglo-French 1783 Treaty of Versailles, the Anglo-Spanish 1783 Treaty of Versailles, and the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Paris (1784).

Internationally the British still faced three active European belligerents; France, Spain and the Dutch Republic. She was under attack around the world - in European waters, the Caribbean and in the East Indies Indian sub-continent. Britain's strategic reply was to center her offensive war in these areas.

Battle of the Saintes. British defeat the French. The battle reasserted British control in the Caribbean and saved Jamaica from a Bourbon invasion

The French and Spanish kings had a royal House of Bourbon Family Pact to pursue their 'War of 1778' against Britain. It was conceived for revenge at the humiliating Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended the Seven Years’ War, and they sought imperial acquisition in trade and territory called out in their secret Treaty of Aranjuez. France and Spain had also consorted in secret in that treaty to promise those two would fight until Spain gained Gibraltar, at the choke-point passage between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The resultant three year Siege of Gibraltar became involved in the American Revolutionary War, as it took away British resources that could be employed in the war on the American continent and elsewhere. British Admiral of the Fleet George Rodney's decisive defeat of French Admiral de Grasse in the Caribbean Sea at the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782 ultimately cancelled a Franco-Spanish invasion of Jamaica. The British victory also transferred the strategic initiative to them, allowing them to reassert dominance at sea not just in the Caribbean but also across the North Atlantic. This stiffened British resolve with a significant effect on the peace negotiations for the French and Spanish Versailles treaties.

Britain then objected to American claims on the Newfoundland fisheries and Canada, and as a result the American negotiators led by John Jay became more amenable. From this, Britain's priority was for the disruption of her European belligerents, and for better relations with an independent America which would prove successful.

Negotiations for France & Spain awaited a 'Final Assault' on Gibraltar

More British victories followed, culminating in September 1782, when they inflicted a huge defeat on the anticipated Franco-Spanish assault at Gibraltar - the largest battle in the entire war. Not only did this strengthen British bargaining power in the peace talks, it also further weakened French and Spanish resolve for the war. France now desperate for peace sought serious discussions on alternative exit strategies, and urged Spain to give up its claim on Gibraltar to make peace, which the latter acquiesced to. Britain also flatly refused American demands to cede land north of the old border with Canada. Gibraltar's ultimate fate however did not involve any settlements with the United States.

Britain signed preliminary agreements with France and Spain to end their European war in separate treaties, signing an additional conclusive Anglo-French Treaty of Versailles on 20 January 1783 and then the conclusive Anglo-Spanish Treaty of Versailles (1783). This addressed issues of mutual Great Power concern, such as a European “continental balance of power", reciprocal colonial territory swaps, and trade agreements among their respective worldwide colonial empires.

Aftermath

Main article: American Revolution

Washington entering New York City
at British evacuation, November 25, 1783

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". 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. That marked the end of British occupation in the new United States.

As for British Indian allies in America, Britain never consulted them at any time prior to treaty negotiations, then it forced them to reluctantly accept the treaty. But the following year Britain underwrote formerly allied Indians for attacks against US settlers west of the Appalachians on territory that Britain had ceded by treaty. The largest sustained British ally Indian war of this period was the Northwest Indian War 1785–1795. Britain's extended war policy on the US continued to try to establish an Indian buffer state below the Great Lakes as late as 1814 during the War of 1812.

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, General 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.

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 US armies were directly disbanded in the field as of Washington's General Orders on Monday June 2, 1783. Once the conclusive Treaty of Paris was signed with Britain, Washington resigned as commander-in-chief at Congress, leaving for his Army retirement at Mount Vernon.

Territory

The expanse of territory that was now the United States 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. The tentative colonial migration west became a flood during the years of the Revolutionary War. Virginia's Kentucky County counted 150 men in 1775. By 1790 fifteen years later, it numbered over 73,000 and was seeking statehood in the United States.

John Jay, whose treaty evacuated British forts James Wilkinson, US Gen. and Spanish agent

Western lands were still populated by a dozen or so American Indian tribes that had been British allies for the most part. British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the United States. Although Indians were not referred to in its territorial cession to the US, the British refused to abandon their existing forts provisioning their former military allies and it sponsored the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795) until the Anglo-American Jay Treaty went into effect. The Spanish also sponsored war on the US by Indian proxies in its Southwest Territory.

Of the European powers with American colonies, Spain was most threatened by United States independence, and it was correspondingly the most hostile to it. Its territory adjacent the US was relatively undefended, so Spanish policy developed a combination of initiatives. Spanish soft power diplomatically challenged the British territorial cession west to the Mississippi and the previous northern boundaries of the Floridas. 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 Indians 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 Spanish-allied Chickamauga Cherokee war. Beginning in 1787, he received pay as Spanish Agent 13, and subsequently expanded his efforts to persuade American settlers west of the Appalachians to secede from the United States, first in the Washington administration, and later again in the Jefferson administration.

Casualties and losses

Revolutionary graves in foreground,
mounds of Saratoga dead behind them

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 in those revolutionary war years. Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions.

Between 25,000 and 70,000 American Patriots died during active military service. 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. The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000. The French suffered 2,112 killed in combat in the United States. The Spanish lost a total of 124 killed and 247 wounded in West Florida.

A British report in 1781 puts their total Army deaths at 6,046 in North America (1775–1779). Approximately 7,774 Germans died in British service in addition to 4,888 deserters; of the former, it is estimated 1,800 were killed in combat.Duncan, L. 1931</ref> Around 171,000 sailors served in the Royal Navy during British conflicts 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). The greatest killer at sea was scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.{{efn|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. Around 42,000 sailors deserted worldwide during the era. The impact on merchant shipping was substantial; 2,283 were taken by American privateers.

See also

• 1776 in the United States: events, births, deaths & other years
• Timeline of the American Revolution

Topics of the Revolution

• American Continental Army
• Committee of safety (American Revolution)
• Diplomacy in the American Revolutionary War
• Financial costs of the American Revolutionary War
• Flags of the American Revolution
• Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War
• 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)
• Loyalists fighting in the American Revolution
• Quakers in the American Revolution
• Scotch-Irish Americans#American Revolution

Others in the American Revolution

• Nova Scotia in the American Revolution
• Watauga Association

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

Legacy & related

• American Revolution Statuary
• Commemoration of the American Revolution
• 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
• War of independence

Bibliographies on Wikipedia

• Bibliography of the American Revolutionary War
• Bibliography of Thomas Jefferson
• Bibliography of George Washington

Citations

Year dates enclosed in [brackets] denote year of original printing

Bibliography

Main article: Bibliography of the American Revolutionary War

• Abrams, Creighton W. "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, N.Y. : Kraus Reprints.
• —— (1969). A History of the American Revolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-306-80366-6.
• Alden, John R. (1976). American Revolution, Seventeen Seventy Five to Seventeen Eighty-Three. Harpercollins. ISBN 978-0061330117.
• —— (2010). Encyclopedia of African American History. ABC-CLIO. p. 356. ISBN 978-1-85109-774-6.
• Allison, David K; Ferreiro, Larrie D., eds. (2018). The American Revolution: A World War. Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 9781588346599.
• Ammerman, David (1974). In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton. ISBN 9780813905259.
• Armour, Alexander W. (October 1941). "Revolutionary War Discharges". William and Mary Quarterly. 21 (4). Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture: 344–360. JSTOR 1920145.
• Archuleta, Roy A. (2006). Where We Come from. p. 69. ISBN 9781424304721.
• 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 978-1-4027-6816-3.

• Babits, Lawrence E. (2011). A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-8766-0.
• Stone, Bailey (1994). The Genesis of the French Revolution: A Global Historical Interpretation. ISBN 978-0-5214-4570-2.
• 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. JSTOR 24474906.
• Baker, Mark Allen (2014). Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut: From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN 978-1-62619-407-6.
• 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.
• 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. ISBN 978-0-1608-7330-0.
• 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 1-4000-4163-5.
• Bicheno, Hugh (2014). Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-0073-9091-5.
• 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 978-0-85989-385-5.
• —— (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 9780253005618.
• Boatner, Mark M. (1974) [1966]. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution'. D. McKay Company. ISBN 978-0-6795-0440-5.
• Buchanan, John (1997). The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-4711-6402-9.
• —— (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. Basic Books. New York. ISBN 978-0-7867-2704-9.
• 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 (2 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1996-7783-2.
• Carp, E. Wayne (1990). To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-0-8078-4269-0.
• Carroll, Francis M. (2001). A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783–1842. U of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8358-6.
• Cashin, Edward J. (March 26, 2005). "Revolutionary War in Georgia". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 21, 2020. Revolution & Early Republic, 1775-1800
• Chambers, John Whiteclay II, ed. in chief (1999). The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1950-7198-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• 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 978-0-8263-2795-6.
• Chartrand, René (2006). Gibraltar 1779–1783: The Great Siege. Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 978-1-8417-6977-6.
• Clayton, Anthony (2014). The British Officer: Leading the Army from 1660 to the present. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-3178-6444-8.
• 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 (4 ed.). McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2585-0.
• Conway, Stephen (2002). The British Isles and the War of American Independence. ISBN 978-0199254552.
• Cogliano, Francis D. (2003). Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. Francis and Taylor. ISBN 978-1-1346-7869-3.
• 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 978-1-4000-5364-3.
• 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 978-0-8368-5393-3.
• Daughan, George (2011) [2008]. If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – from the Revolution to the War of 1812. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02514-5. OCLC 701015376.
• Davies, K.G., ed. (1972–1981). Documents of the American Revolution, 1779-1783. Vol. 12, 15, 17, 18. Shannon: Irish University Press. OCLC 836225. Colonial Office Series: Great Britain, America and Canada {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Davis, Lance E; Engerman, Stanley L (2006). Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History since 1750. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139458481.
• Davenport, Frances G; Paullin, Charles O. (1917). European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies. Vol. l. online at Internet Archive
• Davis, Burke (1975). George Washington and the American Revolution. Random House. ISBN 978-0394463889.
• Dawson, Warrington. "The 2112 Frenchmen who died in the United States from 1777 to 1783 while fighting for the American Independence". Journal de la societe des Americanistes. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
• 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.
• Donne, W. Bodham, ed. (1867). The correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North from 1768 to 1783. Vol. 2. online at Hathi Trust
• Duffy, Christopher (2005) [1987]. The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 1715–1789. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-1357-9458-3.
• 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 978-0-691-06920-3. OCLC 1500030.
• —— (1987). A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-3000-3886-6.
• 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.

• Edler, Friedrich (2001) [1911]. The Dutch Republic and The American Revolution. University Press of the Pacific. ISBN 089-8-7526-98.
• Ellis, Joseph J. (2004). His Excellency: George Washington. ISBN 978-1-4000-3253-2.
• —— (2013). Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence. Random House. ISBN 978-0-307-70122-0.

• 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 978-0-1997-2870-1.
• —— (2007). Almost a Miracle. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1997-5847-0.
• —— (2015). Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-6204-0173-6.
• 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 978-0-2531-0872-2.
• Fischer, David Hackett (2004). Washington's Crossing. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1951-7034-4.
• Fischer, Joseph R. (2008). A Well-Executed Failure: The Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-5700-3837-2.
• Fleming, Thomas (2005) [1973]. Barbara J. Mitnick (ed.). New Jersey in the American Revolution. Rivergate Books, Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-3602-2.
• Fortescue, John (1902). A history of the British army. Vol. 3.
• Freedman, Russell (2008). Washington at Valley Forge. Holiday House. ISBN 978-0823420698.
• Freeman, Douglas Southall; Harwell, Richard Barksdale (2011). Washington. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-0533-7. 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. 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 978-0-8061-3585-4.
• 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. Hill & Wang. ISBN 978-0809046003.
• Gordon, John W.; Keegan, John (2007). South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History. ISBN 9781570034800.
• Grainger, John D. (2005). The Battle of Yorktown, 1781: A Reassessment. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-8438-3137-2.
• 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 978-0-4707-5644-7. 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 978-1-1394-4470-5.
• 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 978-0-8131-9014-3.
• Harvey, Robert (2004). A Few Bloody Noses: The American Revolutionary War. Robinson. ISBN 9781841199528.
• 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 978-1-8441-5699-3.
• 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 978-0-8203-2400-5.
• Hoffman, Ronald (1981). Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813908649.
• Howat, Kenna (November 9, 2017). "Revolutionary Spies: Women Spies of the American Revolution". National Women’s History Museum. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
• 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 978-0-5215-3322-5.
• Inman, George (1903). "Losses of the Military and Naval Forces Engaged in the War of the American Revolution". XXVII (1). The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography: 176–205. open access online at Internet Archive {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

• Jackson, Kenneth T.; Dunbar, David S. (2005). Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-2311-0909-3.
• James, James Alton (2013). The Life of George Rogers Clark. Literary Licensing. ISBN 978-1-4941-1892-1.
• Jasanoff, Maya (2012). Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-1-4000-7547-8.
• Jefferson, Thomas (2018). Julian P. Boyd (ed.). The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4: October 1780 to February 1781. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-6911-8469-2.
• 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 978-0-8420-2916-2.

• 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 978-0-811-70542-4.
• Kelly, James; Smith, Barbara Clark (2007). Jamestown, Quebec, Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings. Smithsonian. ISBN 9781588342416.
• Kennedy, Frances H. (2014). The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook. Oxford UP. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-1993-2422-4.
• Ketchum, Richard M (2014) [1973]. The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton. Henry Holt and Company (reprint of 1973). ISBN 9781466879515.
• —— (1997). Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-8050-4681-6.
• —— (2014). Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1-4668-7950-8.
• —— (2014). Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1-4668-7953-9.
• Kolchin, Peter (1994). American Slavery: 1619–1877. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0-8090-1554-2., p. 73
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• Kupperman, Karen Ordahl (2009). The Jamestown Project. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674027022.

• Lanctot, Gustave; Cameron, Margaret M. [translator] (1967). Canada and the American Revolution 1774–1783. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. OCLC 70781264. {{cite book}}: |author2= has generic name (help)
• 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. 195–96. ISBN 978-1-4022-4170-3.
• 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 978-1-9327-1403-6.
• Lengel, Edward (2005). General George Washington. New York: Random House Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0-8129-6950-4.
• 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 978-0-9163-4676-8.

• Mackesy, Piers (1993) [1964]. The War for America: 1775–1783. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-8192-9.– 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 9780486842103.
• Maier, Pauline (1998). American scripture: making the Declaration of Independence. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-6797-7908-7.
• 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 978-1-5381-1972-3.
• 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 978-0-7432-8770-8.
• McCusker, John J. (1997). Essays in the economic history of the Atlantic world. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-16841-0. OCLC 470415294.
• McGuire, Thomas J. (2011). Stop the Revolution: America in the Summer of Independence and the Conference for Peace. Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-4508-6.
• 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 9780804705936.
• 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 (fourth ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226923420. foreward by Joseph J. Ellis
• Morley, Vincent (2002). Irish Opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783. Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-1-1394-3456-0.
• Morrill, Dan (1993). Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. Nautical & Aviation Publishing. ISBN 978-1-8778-5321-0.
• 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 (6 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 978-1-8553-2688-0.
• 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 978-0-4363-0420-0.
• 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 978-0-8733-8700-2.
• Nester, William R. (2004). The Frontier War for American Independence. Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-0077-1.

• O'Brien, Greg (April 30, 2008). Pre-removal Choctaw history: exploring new paths. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3916-6. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
• Otfinoski, Steven (2008). The New Republic. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 978-0-7614-2938-8.
• O'Shaughnessy, Andrew (2013). The Men Who Lost America. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-3001-9107-3.

• Paine, Thomas (1982). Kramnick, Isaac (ed.). Common Sense. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-1403-9016-2.
• Pancake, John (1985). This Destructive War. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-0191-0.
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• Paullin, Charles (1906). The navy of the American Revolution: its administration, its policy and its achievements Oscar. The Burrows Brothers Co. paullin massachusetts navy.
• Peckham, Howard Henry (1974). The Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-2266-5318-1.
• 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 978-0-6981-5323-3.
• Pike, John (October 18, 1907). "Privateers". Globalsecurity.org. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
• 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. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-7864-3213-4.
• Randall, Willard Sterne (Summer 1990). "Benedict Arnold at Quebec". MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History. 2 (40): 38–39. 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 978-0-3068-0307-9.
• —— (2011) [1996]. Memory F. Blackwelder (ed.). North Carolina in the American Revolution. ISBN 978-1258093402.
• Rappleye, Charles (2010). Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-7091-2.
• 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 978-1-134-21039-8.
• 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, Jr., William R. (2012). Andrew Pickens: South Carolina Patriot in the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-6694-8.
• Rinaldi, Richard A. "The British Army 1775–1783". Yumpu. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
• 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. JSTOR 3031609.
• Robinson Library "Battle of Monmouth Courthouse". Robinson Library. Self-published. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
• Rose, Alexander (2014) [2006]. Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-5533-9259-3.
• Rose, Michael (2013). Washington's War: From Independence To Iraq. Orion Publishers. ISBN 978-1-7802-2710-8.
• 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 978-0-7864-0783-5. OCLC 248087936.

• Savas, Theodore P.; Dameron, J. David (2006). A Guide to the Battles of the American Revolution. Savas Beatie LLC. ISBN 978-1-6112-1011-8.
• 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". 43 (149). Wiley: 207–212. JSTOR 24404012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• 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 (Thesis). Florida State University. FSU History PhD dissertation
• Scott, Hamish M. (1990). British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820195-3.
• Selby, John E. (2007). The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783. Colonial Williamsburg. ISBN 978-0-8793-5233-2.
• Simms, Brendan (2009). Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-1402-8984-8.
• Skaggs, David Curtis (1977). The Old Northwest in the American Revolution: An Anthology. State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
• Smith, David (2012). New York 1776: The Continentals' First Battle. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-7820-0443-1.
• 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 978-0-88866-578-2. 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 0-16-072362-0.
• 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 978-0-8598-9615-3.
• Syrett, David (1998). The Royal Navy in European Waters During the American Revolutionary War. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-238-7.

• 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 978-0-3932-5387-0.
• Tellier, L.-N. (2009). Urban World History: an Economic and Geographical Perspective. Quebec: PUQ. ISBN 978-2-7605-2209-1.
• 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
• Tucker, Mary (March 1, 2002). Washington Crossing the Delaware. Lorenz Educational Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-0-7877-8564-2.

• US Census Bureau (September 1975). "Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970; Colonial and Pre-Federal Statistics". Bicentennial Edition
• "An Overview of American Intelligence Until World War II". US Central Intelligence Agency. December 5, 2007. Featured Story Archive, Historical Document
• US Congress. "Treaty of Greenville 1795" (3 August 1795). Document Collection: 18th Century, 1700-1799. Yale Law School Avalon Project.

• Vale, Brian (March 22, 2013). "The Conquest of Scurvy in the Royal Navy 1793-1800: A Challenge to Current Orthodoxy". 94, 2008 (2). The Mariner’s Mirror: 160–175. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

• Walker, James W. St. (1992). The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. ISBN 978-0-8020-7402-7.
• 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". Britannica. 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.
• 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 9781616080808. History of land battles in North America
• Ward, Harry M. (1999). The war for independence and the transformation of American society. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1-85728-656-4.
• Watson, J. Steven; Clark, Sir George (1960). The Reign of George III, 1760-1815. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198217138.
• Weigley, Russell F. (1977). The American Way of War. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-2532-8029-9.
• White, Matthew (2010). "Spanish casualties in The American Revolutionary war". Necrometrics.
• 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 978-1-57003-573-9. OCLC 232001108.
• Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail: 1714–1792. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-8441-5700-6. (See also:British Warships in the Age of Sail)
• Wood, W. J. (2003) [1995]. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775–1781. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80617-9.

• Yaniz, Jose I. (2009). "The Role of Spain in the American Revolution: An Unavoidable Mistake" (PDF). Marine Corps University. Spain declared war on Great Britain in June 1779 as an ally of France but not of America … The Bourbon Family Compact obligated Spain with commitments to France; and the Spanish Crown answered the call. Madrid thus took an unavoidable political strategic mistake.

Websites without authors, alphabetically by publisher

• Bruce H. Franklin Editors, Journal of the American Revolution (November 30, 2015). "Which Side Benefitted the Most from the Native Americans". Journal of the American Revolution. Bruce H. Franklin. 'During the war, both sides recruited Native soldiers and allies' – J.L. Bell; 'Britain's Indian allies …Americans … Indian allies' – Daniel J. Tortora {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
• 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

Main articles: Bibliography of the American Revolutionary War and Bibliography of George Washington

These are some of the standard works about the war in general that are not listed above; books about specific campaigns, battles, units, and individuals can be found in those articles.

• Andrews, Charles McLean (1912). Guide to the materials for American history, to 1783, in the Public Record Office of Great Britain. Washington, D.C. : Carnegie Institution of Washington.
• Baack, Ben. "The Economics of the American Revolutionary War". EH.net. Economic History Association. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
• Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America, from the discovery of the American continent. (1854–78), vol. 7–10.
• Billias, George Athan. George Washington's Generals and Opponents: Their Exploits and Leadership, 1994, scholarly studies of key generals on each side.
• Black, Jeremy. "Could the British Have Won the American War of Independence?." Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. (Fall 1996), Vol. 74 Issue 299, pp 145–154. online video lecture, uses Real Player
• Bobrick, Benson. Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution. Penguin, 1998 (paperback reprint)
• Boyer, Paul (2014). The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-285-19339-7.
• 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. 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.
• Caughey, John W. (1998). Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana 1776–1783. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-56554-517-5.
• Chartrand, Rene. The French Army in the American War of Independence (1994). Short (48pp), very well illustrated descriptions.
• Christie, Ian R.; Labaree, Benjamin W. (1976). Empire or independence, 1760-1776. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-1614-2.
• Clarfield, Gerard (1992). United States Diplomatic History: From Revolution to Empire. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 9780130292322.
• 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 0-8229-5201-7.
• 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 978-0-19-513409-4.
• 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 978-0-8160-7468-6.
• Fremont-Barnes, Gregory, and Ryerson, Richard A., eds. The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War: A Political, Social, and Military History (ABC-CLIO, 2006) 5 volume paper and online editions; 1000 entries by 150 experts, covering all topics
• Frey, Sylvia R. The British Soldier in America: A Social History of Military Life in the Revolutionary Period (University of Texas Press, 1981).
• 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.
• Jensen, Merrill (2004). The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution 1763–1776. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87220-705-9.
• 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 978-0-6981-3765-3.
• Knight, Peter (2003). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 184–85. ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9.
• Kohn, George C. (2006). Dictionary of Wars, 3d edition. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781438129167.
• 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 {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Lemaître, Georges Édouard (2005). Beaumarchais. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 9781417985364.
• Levy, Andrew (2007). The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter. Random House Trade Paperbacks. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-375-76104-1.
• Library of Congress "Revolutionary War: Groping Toward Peace, 1781-1783". Library: Library of Congress. 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.
• Middlekauff, Robert (2007) [1984]. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1997-4092-5.
• 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 978-0-5822-2942-6.
• Miller, Ken (2014). Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities During the War for Independence. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-5494-3.
• Nash, Gary B.; Carter Smith (2007). Atlas Of American History. Infobase Publishing. p. 64. ISBN 978-1-4381-3013-2.
• 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 978-0-7656-3143-5.
• 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 978-1-4299-0799-6.
• Scribner, Robert L. (1988). Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-0748-2.
• 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 978-1-4408-3028-0.
• Southey, Robert (1831). The life of Lord Nelson. Henry Chapman Publishers.
• 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 978-1-8441-5143-1.
• Trickey, Erick. "The Little-Remembered Ally Who Helped America Win the Revolution". Smithsonian Magazine January 13, 2017. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
• Volo, M. James (2006). Blue Water Patriots: The American Revolution Afloat. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7425-6120-5.
• 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 978-1-61592-831-6.
• 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. 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. There is an overwhelming consensus that Americans' economic standard of living on the eve of the Revolution was among the highest in the world.
• 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

In addition to this selection, many primary sources are available at the Princeton University Law School [Avalon Project and at the Library of Congress Digital Collections (previously LOC webpage, American Memory). Original editions for titles related to the American Revolutionary War can be found open sourced online at Internet Archive and Hathi Trust Digital Library.

• Congress of the United States, Continental (1776). "Declaration of Independence" (Document). National Archives, Washington DC. {{cite document}}: Cite document requires |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)
• Emmerich, Adreas. The Partisan in War, a treatise on light infantry tactics written by Colonel Andreas Emmerich in 1789.

External links

• Maps of the Revolutionary War from the United States Military Academy

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