CHAPTER 2 The early French and English settlers disputed boundaries and territories throughout the vast Ohio Valley region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. In many respects, the French and Indian War set the stage for the American Revolution. The French suffered a humiliating defeat, and as a result, the French would do almost anything to take revenge against the British, even if the French monarchy could not afford public financial support of American causes, which angered the British further.
Many of the dictates set forth by Great Britain on the American colonies served as a prelude to war, there’s some debate as to which issues were the most pressing. Certainly, the signers of the Declaration of Independence insisted it was about liberty and democracy. Yet some modern historians argue that the Revolution was fought for money and trade.
With tensions building up between the British and the colonies, something had to give, and inside this chapter, you’ll learn all about the interesting facts and stories that contributed to the revolt, which had most likely given King George more than a few sleepless nights.
UPON HIS APPOINTMENT as commander of the colonial forces, General Washington organized militia companies. Because he had fought alongside the British in the French and Indian War, he knew the contempt the British military showed for colonial officers. It didn’t hurt that as a Virginian, he might bind the southern colonies to the New England patriots. If there was to be victory, Washington knew it would take all thirteen colonies working together.
_____________ 
_____________
BATTLES WERE ALREADY underway when Washington appeared at the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, dressed in his uniform of the Fairfax County militia. On June 25, 1775, Washington set out for Massachusetts to take command of the forces. Under great adversity, Washington took what was more or less an armed mob and assembled it into the Continental army with one goal: victory.
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON SOUGHT LONGER terms of enlistment from Congress as well as better pay for his troops. But a leery Congress, afraid of moving from one military dictatorship to another, was not easily convinced. So Washington was forced to do the best he could under the circumstances. Considering the problems of troop defection, insubordination, lack of discipline, and a shortage of gunpowder, it’s understandable that Washington maintained order at times by flogging troops, or worse. Deserters and repeat offenders were often hanged.
_____________ _____________
WHEN WASHINGTON FIRST took command, there was much strategic planning. On May 10, 1775, at the start of the Revolutionary War, Ethan Allen, an American Revolutionary soldier, led his Green Mountain Boys in an attack to overtake Fort Ticonderoga. These soldiers from Vermont seized the fort and all of its valuable artillery stores without a struggle. They then dragged fifty heavy cannons by sled from Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York to Boston. An astute Washington had the cannons mounted on Dorchester Heights, which commanded the city. Of course, British general William Howe saw this and fled by sea to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he awaited the reinforcement of German mercenaries from Europe. This brought a much-needed reprieve from the occupation of any British troops in the colonies.
_____________ _____________
BRITAIN’S CLEAR ADVANTAGE was its navy, for the Americans did not have one. Sensing the final break even before the Declaration of Independence was signed, in June of 1776 the British sent General Howe to assemble his forces as well as a huge fleet. Howe landed on Long Island, pushing his way to New York City with an army of 30,000 soldiers—more than twice as many men as Washington had.
_____________ _____________
TRYING TO COPE with Howe’s mighty force, Washington committed a tactical blunder that nearly cost him the war. He split his troops between Brooklyn, Long Island, and Manhattan Island. This weakened the overall American position. By the end of August, the Americans had to retreat to their Brooklyn Heights fortifications.
_____________ _____________
DURING THE REVOLUTION, when General William Howe and his British forces occupied New York City, they placed an enormous demand on the milk and cream products coming from Long Island. Long Islanders were forced to substitute tomatoes and water broth for the cream in their chowder. Therefore, the proper name for red clam chowder would be Long Island clam chowder, rather than Manhattan clam chowder, as it is called.
_____________ _____________
THINKING HE HAD Washington’s men cornered, Howe called off his redcoats temporarily while he planned a potential siege. This proved to be a mistake. Surrender was not on Washington’s mind. Though he had no navy to rely on, the undeterred general rounded up every seaworthy vessel he could find and obtained assistance from the experienced boatmen of Marblehead, Massachusetts. In the midst of a raging storm and a thick fog, he and his men rowed across the East River to safety in Manhattan, losing not one man in his command. But although this served as a brilliant escape, it also meant that an important American seaport had been lost to the British.
_____________ _____________
A FEW DAYS after Howe landed in Manhattan, a mysterious fire leveled much of the town. Was it mere coincidence? Some have attributed it to a patriot arsonist, but whatever the fire’s origin, it aided the American cause.
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON WITHDREW HIS troops for a while, retreating to Harlem Heights, then to White Plains. The British prevailed at a White Plains skirmish. While they allowed Washington’s forces to retreat in good order, the British turned their attention south, capturing Fort Washington and Fort Lee on the New Jersey shore just days later.
_____________ _____________
IN THREE MONTHS, Washington had lost New York and Long Island, and his army of 19,000 was reduced to fewer than 3,500. Desertion among the troops was rampant, and Washington was facing criticism for his performance. The circumstances became so grim that General Howe declared victory. Even the Congress fled Philadelphia for Baltimore. Washington led his contingent across the Delaware River into the relative safety of Pennsylvania. As a precaution, he ordered all boats along the New Jersey side of the river to go with them.
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON CALLED ON the Marblehead fishermen’s tactical aid once again as he launched a surprise attack on Howe’s sleeping soldiers on the morning of December 26. He was fairly certain that these foreign troops, celebrating the holidays away from home, would imbibe heavily, and that this was the optimal moment to attack. Washington gained serious ground by killing, wounding, or capturing every one of the Hessian soldiers while suffering only six casualties among his men. James Monroe was one of the four wounded.
_____________ _____________
WHEN THE BRITISH hanged Nathan Hale for being a spy on September 22, 1776, he uttered the famous line, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” His words might have been inspired by a passage from Joseph Addison’s play, Cato: “What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country.”
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON SLIPPED PAST Trenton in the night and attacked the British the next morning. The Americans not only were victorious on the battlefield, but also were able to acquire much-needed supplies. In fact, the British felt so alarmed and threatened that they evacuated most New Jersey garrisons. With victories in the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton, and with Philadelphia no longer in peril, Washington moved north to winter quarters in Morristown, New Jersey. There, Washington turned his attention to recruitment.
_____________ _____________
THE BRITISH DIDN’T use their time wisely, for they spent the first six months of 1777 on skirmishes in northern New Jersey. General John Burgoyne felt that by striking down the Hudson River, he would cut off New England and New York from the rest of the colonies and end the colonial rebellion. After recapturing Fort Ticonderoga, Burgoyne headed toward Fort Edward. When the patriots saw them approaching, they scattered into the woods for cover, but continued to attack from behind their shield of trees. The end result was British losses of close to 1,000 men. This slowed the British down, and by the time they reached Saratoga, New York, the Americans were ready.
_____________ _____________
AMERICAN GENERAL HORATIO GATES positioned his troops to overlook the road to Albany so that when Burgoyne came along, he pretty much had to fight. After losing even more soldiers, Burgoyne did what he swore he’d never do—he surrendered on October 17, 1777.
_____________ _____________
THOUGH SARATOGA HAD turned the war in America’s favor, Washington still had his struggles. Trying to protect the capital of Philadelphia, he lost the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and he withdrew his besieged forces to nearby Valley Forge, the site of his winter encampment.
_____________ _____________
WITHIN SIX MONTHS, the Continental army was ready once more. The last major battle in the northeast occurred at Monmouth in June 1778, when the British general Sir Henry Clinton, who took over as commander in chief after Howe retired, pulled troops out of Philadelphia and moved them north toward New York.
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON’S ARMY CAUGHT up with them at Monmouth, New Jersey, where General Washington ordered his second in command, Charles Lee, to attack the rear of the British forces. Lee, disliking Washington’s plan, fought halfheartedly and ordered retreat. This infuriated General Washington. He rallied the troops to follow his command, and Clinton’s army fell back some before withdrawing to New York. Washington had once again restored sagging morale, and Lee, while trying to clear his name of wrongdoing, was court-martialed and suspended from command. When he refused to accept this, Lee was removed from the Continental army altogether.
_____________ _____________
WHILE THE ENGLISH major general John Burgoyne was fighting in the north, Howe loaded his troops aboard approximately 250 ships and sailed up the Chesapeake Bay for Philadelphia, leaving Burgoyne to face potential disaster. Washington didn’t exactly expect to keep Howe out of the city. Nonetheless, he couldn’t just hand it to him. Thus, he fought with an outnumbered army. The Battle of Brandywine occurred in September 1777 and was followed by the Battle of Germantown, where the British outflanked the entrenched Continental army.
_____________ _____________
ON OCTOBER 4, 1777, Howe took Philadelphia, the American capital (though government leaders had previously fled). This might have impressed the British, but it didn’t do much for the French, who were beginning to take notice of the American victories in other battles.
_____________ _____________
AT THE OUTSET of the Revolution, the Americans realized their limitations. All the resources seemed to lie across the ocean. Benjamin Franklin was dispatched to France to foster financial support as well as troops. Franklin’s diplomatic prowess certainly succeeded, but the victories, especially at Saratoga, spoke volumes. After seeing proof that the Continental army was a capable fighting force, and upon hearing rumors that Britain might offer America territorial concessions to reach peace, the French government ministers had enough confidence in General Washington to recommend to King Louis XVI that he sign a treaty of alliance with the Americans. In February 1778, this alliance was made formal, with France diplomatically recognizing “the United States of America.” Soon after the signing, Spain, which had offered to remain neutral if Britain returned Gibraltar, threw in support, since its demands were not met. Spain and France were already allies as well.
_____________ _____________
FRENCH AID WAS certainly welcome, but French egos were not. Many of the officers who arrived in the summer of 1777 demanded exalted rank and commensurate pay for their limited military experience. An exception was the young Marquis de Lafayette, who arrived in Philadelphia volunteering to serve on America’s behalf at his own expense. This quickly won Washington’s praise and admiration from American troops.
_____________ _____________
LAFAYETTE HAD BEEN rushed into battle at Brandywine, and by December he had his own command and commission as a major general. In 1779, Lafayette returned to his native country to continue lobbying for further aid, thus proving to be a valuable liaison between the Continental army and the French government.
_____________ _____________
AMERICAN FRONTIERSMEN CONTINUED to settle, and their numbers in the region grew. This was significant because Britain had forbidden the American colonists to move beyond the Appalachians. In fact, Great Britain had recruited Native Americans as allies to attack any western colonial settlements. But George Rogers Clark, a Virginian, seized British forts along the frontier in 1778 and braved the Ohio River. By spring 1779, he arrived in the Illinois territory.
_____________ _____________
GRADUALLY, THE REAL action in the war had shifted south to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, states that were home to the crucial export crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo, making the southern states perhaps the most valuable of the rebel states.
_____________ _____________
WHEN GEORGIA WAS founded as a British royal colony in 1733, it was illegal to owe money that you couldn’t pay. People in England often went to jail until they could pay their debts. Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, thought that one way to help people in this position was to offer to send them to a colony in America, rather than send them to a jail in England, where they couldn’t pay off their debt because they weren’t free to work. And so Georgia (named for George II, the English king at the time) was born.
_____________ _____________
IN 1779, THE British general Cornwallis had 5,000 troops stationed in the south with the goal of forcing the “king’s obedience” into the Carolinas. Loyalist sentiment was stronger here. The British secretly hoped that southern Loyalists would provide support as well as much-needed supplies.
_____________ _____________
IN THE AUTUMN of 1778, a large British force sailed from New York to launch a sea assault against Savannah, Georgia. The city fell to the British in December. Augusta, Georgia, fell one month later. When the French joined forces to counter the assault, they were shot to tatters. By the end of 1779, most of Georgia was firmly under British and Loyalist control.
_____________ _____________
WHILE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, had fended off attack for nearly three years, the city’s defenses slowly deteriorated. The British besieged Charleston, cutting off supplies, and in May the Americans were forced to surrender. The patriots lost many military supplies in the process.
_____________ _____________
GREAT BRITAIN, THE world’s leading maritime power, hardly feared the infant colonial navy. The British ships plied coastal waters, supplying the redcoats with whatever was needed, including more of His Majesty’s troops. Still, the small patriot navy won a few surprising victories, such as when a small American squadron captured the port of Nassau in the Bahamas.
_____________ _____________
FARTHER OUT AT SEA, American naval power did far better, capturing some British ships and cargo. Continental navy captains—the likes of John Paul Jones from Scotland, Joshua Barney, and Irishman John Barry—proved to be heroic at sea. John Paul Jones is by far the most famous Revolutionary naval hero. In 1778, Jones raided the port of Whitehaven in England and then captured the British sloop called the Drake. On September 23, 1779, when the British attacked his converted merchant ship the Bonhomme Richard and demanded his surrender, Jones answered with the famous words, “I have not yet begun to fight!”
_____________ _____________
THE AMERICAN TURTLE submarine was launched in the dark of night on September 6–7, 1776, against the British flagship, HMS Eagle, which was moored in New York harbor. The submarine crew attempted to attach a bomb to the rudder of the British ship. While the American Turtle failed to destroy its target, the British recognized the threat and moved the fleet.
_____________ _____________
BY 1781, THERE were more than 450 privately owned vessels that had received commissions to attack British shipping. And although these did not impede the British troops and their supply provisions, they added tremendous cost to the war Britain waged.
Thanks to the French navy, Britain’s supremacy was sufficiently threatened, and the war at sea saw fewer American defeats with added victories. French naval forces fought off the Virginia coast, successfully trapping the British general Cornwallis and his army.
_____________ _____________
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR had raged for six years when, in the summer of 1781, the second French fleet arrived. Washington had sent General Lafayette to confront Cornwallis near the Chesapeake Bay. There, the British were awaiting supplies from New York. But upon hearing of the French fleet, Washington changed plans, leaving New York himself and heading south.
_____________ _____________
WASHINGTON COORDINATED THE land and sea operation that brought the final climax of the war. First, the French fleet blockaded Yorktown early that September, followed by a combined Franco-American army that Washington commanded. The troops took up siege positions on land and by early October had trapped the British against the York River. In a gross misjudgment, Cornwallis had his back to the sea. Daily he endured gunfire and continual pounding from the cannons until he was forced to ask the Americans for terms of surrender on October 17, 1781. Two days later, the once mighty (and haughty) British army paraded its units between the victorious French and American soldiers, laying down their arms, while a British band played the popular tune “The World Turned Upside Down.”
_____________ _____________
UNABLE TO CONCEDE the war, Cornwallis sent a representative, General O’Hara, to surrender his sword. General O’Hara approached a French commander, who indicated that the sword should go to General Washington. However, Washington felt that an officer of equal rank should receive it. Thus, his second in command, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, received the British sword in surrender.
_____________ _____________
BACK IN ENGLAND, King George III was prepared to fight on, but the British Parliament put an end to that notion. It had taken more than six years of war, and skirmishes before that, to drive its greatest overseas possession toward independence. In February 1782, Lord North’s ministry in Britain fell. Parliament would no longer support a war in America.
_____________ _____________
THE FIRST PURPLE HEART, a military decoration awarded to those wounded or killed in action, was designed by General Washington and established in 1782. One of his creative ways to keep his soldiers fighting on when the pay envelopes were not forthcoming was to grant a commission and promote men in rank. Winners of this Purple Heart would be permitted to pass any Continental guards or sentries without challenge.
_____________ _____________
GENERAL WASHINGTON COULD have easily usurped power and taken the role of a military dictator, or perhaps become a king himself. Instead, he chose the route of obedience to the Continental Congress and worked tirelessly to establish a strong central government by and for the people. Not only did Washington stress the need for a Constitutional Convention, he presided over it and helped gain ratification of the Constitution of the United States.
_____________ _____________
PEACE WAS OFFICIALLY proclaimed on April 15, 1783, but it wasn’t until November that the last British boats left. The formal signing of the Peace of Paris occurred in September 1783, nearly two years after Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. Though Britain had hoped to give the Americans less than complete independence, it finally did just that, recognizing the thirteen United States of America.
_____________ _____________
ON DECEMBER 4, 1783, Washington took leave of his principal officers at New York City’s Fraunces Tavern. He’d enjoyed the sweet taste of victory several times, but had also swallowed a few bitter defeats. The general had also pacified his former officers, many of whom had not been paid what they’d been promised. He implored these impatient patriots to back down from their threats of military takeover. As he relinquished command, he pledged further service to his new country to “the utmost of my abilities.”
_____________ _____________
SEEKING A QUIET life, Washington returned home to his estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia. En route, he stopped at Annapolis, Maryland, where Congress was meeting, to surrender his commission as commander in chief. But in the months and years that followed, others would hold him to his pledge of service.