American Independence War

12 Key excerpts on "American Independence War"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Roots and Consequences of Independence Wars

  Conflicts That Changed World History

  • Spencer C. Tucker(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  American War of Independence (1775–1783) Causes

  The American War of Independence, also known as the American Revolutionary War, took place during 1775–1783. Separated as they were by both 3,000 miles of ocean and dissimilar circumstances, it was inevitable that differences in outlook would arise between the ruling class in Britain and the inhabitants of British North America. Statesmen in London did not understand this, and even when they did, they made little or no effort to reconcile the differences. The communities on each side of the Atlantic had been growing apart for some time, but the crushing British victory over France in the French and Indian War (1754–1763) removed the French threat and gave free play to the forces working for separation.

  Almost immediately after the war, in 1763 Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa Indians led an intertribal Native American alliance in a rebellion along the western frontier. British regulars put it down, but in these circumstances London decided to station 10,000 regulars along the frontier and require the Americans to pay part of their upkeep. The plan seemed fair, especially as the mother country was hard-pressed for funds following the heavy expenditures of the French and Indian War and the concurrent Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and because the soldiers would be protecting the colonials from both Indian attack and any French resurgence. This decision, however, ignited a long controversy about Parliament’s right to tax. Apart from import duties (much of which were evaded through widespread smuggling), Americans paid only those few taxes assessed by their own colonial legislatures. By the same token, Americans did not have any direct representation in the British Parliament.

  Parliament’s effort began with the American Duties Act of April 1764, commonly known as the Sugar Act. Although it lowered the duty on foreign molasses, the act imposed the duty on all sugar or molasses regardless of its source. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a levy on all paper products. Reaction was such that the act was repealed the next year, as was the Sugar Act. Generally unnoticed in the excitement over the repeal was the Declaratory Act of March 1766, which asserted Parliament’s right to bind its American colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  A World Safe for Commerce

  American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China

  • Dale C. Copeland(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  63 3 The Origins of the War for Colonial Independence the war for American independence from Great Britain, fought from 1775 to 1783, set the foundation for much of what transpired in American foreign policy over the next two centuries. The war not only created a country whose com- mitment to ideals of liberty brought into question the legitimacy of the absolut- ist states of Europe, it also introduced to the world system a land-rich and dy- namic nation that these states knew might one day challenge them in both commercial and military power. Yet surprisingly, the War for Colonial Independence is rarely studied by international relations scholars, presumably because it seems to be a case of civil strife within a political unit rather than an “inter-national” conflict. Narrowly defined, this of course is true, since the Americans were seeking to break from an imperial realm that they had been a part of for a century and a half. Yet if we look at how the war broke out in 1775–76, this is clearly a conflict between thirteen political units (the colonies) that had seen themselves as essentially free to run their internal affairs and a power (Britain) that sought to restrict these traditional rights. Moreover, in the 1760s each of the thirteen colonies, unlike in British Canada or East and West Florida, had its own functioning political structure and elites that made deci- sions for their specific colony independent of London, even if the crown often had a final say on legislation. Hence when these elites gathered in Philadelphia in September 1774 for the first Continental Congress, they were acting as if they already had the legal power to commit their fellow colonists to a common strat- egy and to use established institutional tools to enforce the colonies’ agree- ments.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History

  The Colonial Period to 1877

  • Christos G. Frentzos, Antonio S. Thompson(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  PART III

  The War for American Independence 1775–1783

  Passage contains an image

  11 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR A Historiographical Summary

  Edward G. Lengel    

  Americans debated the meaning of the Revolutionary War while its battles still raged, and sought to define its place in history as soon as the guns fell silent. In this respect it mirrored other wars. Strangely, though, the Revolutionary War has become nebulous in American historical memory. While the causes and course of the Revolution—as distinct from the Revolutionary War—seem cut and dried, interpretations of the war remain embedded in mythology. Many important aspects of the war remained unstudied until the 1950s. Innovative interpretations of broad issues in strategy, tactics and leadership did not surface until after the Vietnam era. Instead of developing improved concepts, challenges to these interpretations have often been atavistic rather than original.

  As the Revolutionary War’s final stages played out in October 1782, a Massachusetts minister named William Gordon approached George Washington with the idea of writing a history of the war. Washington encouraged Gordon, but noted that the “best Historiographer living” could not write such a work effectively without access to the archives of Congress and the individual states, and the papers of the commander in chief and his officers. Calling his own papers “a species of Public property, sacred in my hands,” Washington refused to grant Gordon access to them until the war had ended.1

  Gordon knocked at Mount Vernon’s door again in June 1784 and this time received Washington’s blessing to study his papers. Gordon copied dozens of volumes of the general’s letters for use in his research, and afterwards traveled in the United States and England to gather additional materials. His labors bore fruit in 1788 with the publication of The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America in four volumes. Although Washington subscribed to the publication, critics excoriated it. Gordon, they pointed out, had used his work to blast his enemies and glorify his friends. Worse, he had plagiarized passages from other sources, particularly the British Annual Register . Gordon’s account of wartime military affairs was unoriginal, and reflected the many errors in its journalistic British source.2

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Handbook of Attrition Warfare

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 5 American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783) or American War of Independence began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers. The war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby many of the colonists rejected the legitimacy of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation, claiming that this violated the Rights of Englishmen. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 to coordinate relations with Great Britain and the by-then thirteen self-governing and individual provinces, petitioning George III of Great Britain for intervention with Parliament, organizing a boycott of British goods, while affirming loyalty to the British Crown. Their pleas ignored, and with British soldiers billeted in Boston, Massachusetts, by 1775 the Provincial Congresses formed the Second Continental Congress and authorized a Continental Army. Additional petitions to the king to intervene with Parliament resulted in the following year with Congress being declared traitors and the states to be in rebellion. The Americans responded in 1776 by formally declaring their independence as one new nation — the United States of America — claiming their own sovereignty and rejecting any allegiance to the British monarchy. France's government under King Louis XVI secretly p rovided supplies, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries starting in 1776, and the Continentals' capture of a British army in 1777 led France to openly enter the war in early 1778, which evened the military strength with Britain.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  U. S. History

  • P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, Sylvie Waskiewicz(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Openstax

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 6 America's War for Independence, 1775-1783 Figure 6.1 This famous 1819 painting by John Trumbull shows members of the committee entrusted with drafting the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Continental Congress in 1776. Note the British flags on the wall. Separating from the British Empire proved to be very difficult as the colonies and the Empire were linked with strong cultural, historical, and economic bonds forged over several generations. Chapter Outline 6.1 Britain’s Law-and-Order Strategy and Its Consequences 6.2 The Early Years of the Revolution 6.3 War in the South 6.4 Identity during the American Revolution Introduction By the 1770s, Great Britain ruled a vast empire, with its American colonies producing useful raw materials and profitably consuming British goods. From Britain’s perspective, it was inconceivable that the colonies would wage a successful war for independence; in 1776, they appeared weak and disorganized, no match for the Empire. Yet, although the Revolutionary War did indeed drag on for eight years, in 1783, the thirteen colonies, now the United States, ultimately prevailed against the British. The Revolution succeeded because colonists from diverse economic and social backgrounds united in their opposition to Great Britain. Although thousands of colonists remained loyal to the crown and many others preferred to remain neutral, a sense of community against a common enemy prevailed among Patriots. The signing of the Declaration of Independence (Figure 6.1) exemplifies the spirit of that common cause. Representatives asserted: “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, . . . And for the support of this Declaration, . . . we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Chapter 6 | America's War for Independence, 1775-1783 155

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The British Way in Warfare 1688 - 2000 (Routledge Revivals)

  • David French(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  3  The American War of Independence, 1763–83

  Clausewitz believed that before 1793 war had been an affair for governments alone but that during the French Revolution ‘Suddenly war again became the business of the people’ who threw the full weight of their nation’s might into their struggles.1 In fact the break between the limited wars of the eighteenth century and an era of unlimited war beginning in 1793 (and temporarily ending in 1815) was less sharp than he suggested. Its beginnings can be discerned during the Seven Years’ War. The means which the combatants adopted may have been limited but for at least one belligerent, Prussia, the ends were not. The anti-Prussian alliance tried to deprive her of more than just a province; they wished to reduce her to the ranks of a second-rate power. And had he looked across the Atlantic, Clausewitz might have noticed that in the 1770s and 1780s the Americans had already shown how the full weight of the people might be thrown into a national war effort. The American War of Independence was unlike the wars which had been fought in Europe for dynastic aims earlier in the eighteenth century. It was not so much a struggle for territory as a contest for the political allegiance of the American people. The Americans proclaimed that they were fighting to liberate themselves from the despotism of British rule. The great cause for which they believed they were fighting filled enough Americans with sufficient patriotic zeal to enable the Congress to mobilize the colonies’ resources in a way which had not been seen in Europe since the Thirty Years’ War.

  Between the end of the Seven Years’ War and the beginning of the War of Independence Britain endured the longest period of diplomatic isolation in peacetime that she experienced in the eighteenth century. The Seven Years’ War left a legacy of irreconcilable Bourbon animus at a time when no European power had a compelling interest in allying with Britain. France and Spain embarked on an ambitious naval rebuilding programme so that one day they might have their revenge. Prussia had been offended by the way in which Britain had broken with her in 1762. The Dutch remained unwilling to expose themselves to French hostility by siding with Britain. The Austrians saw an alliance with France, rather than with Britain, as the best safeguard for their interests in northern Italy and the Low Countries and the British were no more willing to underwrite Russian ambitions at Turkey’s expense than the Russians were to underwrite Britain’s security by acting as a counterbalance to the Bourbons in western Europe. The decade before the outbreak of the American war was almost the only period in the eighteenth century when the British tried to maintain their security without the assistance of allies and by relying solely on their own forces. After 1763 the British government recognized that their security depended upon the maintenance of a navy capable of defeating the Bourbon fleets and upon convincing the French and Spanish that they would use naval force if necessary to uphold their rights. But they were almost equally anxious to persuade them that Britain’s maritime pre-eminence did not pose such a serious threat to their interests that they must go to war to reduce it. It was a policy which demanded careful statesmanship and a willingness to spend lavishly on the fleet. A series of naval mobilizations in 1764/5 and in 1770 over disputes concerning the Honduras, Turks Island, the Gambia and the Falkland Islands, appeared to demonstrate its success. In reality they only showed that the Bourbons were not willing to push matters to extremes over issues of secondary importance until their naval rearmament was complete.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  United States Independence & Associated History

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • College Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter 2 American Revolution John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence , showing the five-man committee in charge of drafting the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 as it presents its work to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America. They first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from overseas without representation, and then expelled all royal officials. By 1774 each colony had established a Provincial Congress, or an equivalent governmental institution, to form individual self-governing states. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-impose direct rule. Through representatives sent in 1775 to the Second Continental Congress, the new states joined together at first to defend their respective self-governance ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ and manage the armed conflict against the British known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–83, also American War of Independence ). Ultimately, the states collectively determined that the British monarchy, by acts of tyranny, could no longer legitimately claim their allegiance. They then severed ties with the British Empire in July 1776, when the Congress issued the United States Declaration of Independence, rejecting the monarchy on behalf of the new sovereign nation. The war ended with effective American victory in October 1781, followed by formal British abandonment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Handbook of First Generation Warfare

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ The war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby many of the colonists rejected the legitimacy of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation, claiming that this violated the Rights of Englishmen. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 to coordinate relations with Great Britain and the by-then thirteen self-governing and individual provinces, petitioning George III of Great Britain for intervention with Parliament, organizing a boycott of British goods, while affirming loyalty to the British Crown. Their pleas ignored, and with British soldiers billeted in Boston, Massachusetts, by 1775 the Provincial Congresses formed the Second Continental Congress and authorized a Continental Army. Additional petitions to the king to intervene with Parliament resulted in the following year with Congress being declared traitors and the states to be in rebellion. The Americans responded in 1776 by formally declaring their independence as one new nation — the United States of America — claiming their own sovereignty and rejecting any allegiance to the British monarchy. France's government under King Louis XVI secretly provided supplies, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries starting in 1776, and the Continentals' capture of a British army in 1777 led France to openly enter the war in early 1778, which evened the military strength with Britain. Spain and the Dutch Republic – French allies – also went to war with Britain over the next two years, threatening an invasion of Great Britain and severely testing British military strength with campaigns in Europe — including attacks on Minorca and Gibraltar — and an escalating global naval war. Spain's involvement culminated in the expulsion of British armies from West Florida, securing the American colonies' southern flank.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Armies in Revolution

  • John Ellis(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 The American War of Independence 1775–83

  Chronology

  1774

  1. 27 May Eighty-nine burgesses from Virginia and Massachusetts call for a colonial congress to support the stand of Boston against the British.
  2. 17 June The Massachusetts House endorses a call for a Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September. General Gage dissolves the House.
  3. 2-7 Sept Four thousand Massachusetts militiamen assemble in Boston to resist Gage and the British forces.
  4. 17 Sept Congress endorses the Suffolk Resolves calling on the colonists to prepare for armed resistance.

  1775

  1. 19 April Skirmishes at Lexington and Concord (Mass.).
  2. 22 April Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire decide to raise an army of 13,600 men.
  3. 10 May The second Continental Congress convenes at Philadelphia.
  4. 15 June Congress adopts the forces of the four north-eastern states and names Washington as Commander-in-Chief.
  5. 17 June The Battle of Bunker Hill (Mass.). The Americans are driven back.
  6. 2 July Washington joins the Army around Boston.
  7. July The departure of an American force intending to drive the British out of Quebec.
  8. 10 Oct Congress agrees to raise a Continental army of 21,000 men.

  1776

  1. 18 Feb Congress authorises the use of privateers against British shipping.
  2. 26 Feb Congress places an embargo on all exports to Britain.
  3. 3 March Congress dispatches Silas Deane to Paris to solicit French diplomatic and military aid.
  4. 14 March Congress urges the disarming of the Loyalists.
  5. 17 March Howe evacuates Boston and moves to New York.
  6. 15 May Congress instructs the states to form their own independent governments.
  7. mid-June The return of the defeated remnants of the expedition against Quebec.
  8. 29 June A British attack on Charleston (South Carolina) is repulsed.
  9. 4 July The Declaration of Independence is adopted by all the colonies.
  10. 27 Aug The Battle of Long Island (New York). An American defeat.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Turning the World Upside Down

  The War of American Independence and the Problem of Empire

  • Neil L. York(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 3 Revolution Embraced, Independence Declared We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in Gen- eral Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. Declaration of Independence (1776) 1 Empires have their Rise to a Zenith—and their Declension to a Dissolu- tion Thus by natural Causes and common Effects, the American States are become dissolved from the British Dominion.... A DECREE is now gone forth, NOT to be recalled! And, thus has suddenly arisen in the World, a new Empire, stiled, The United States of America. An Empire that as soon as started into Existence, attracts the Attention of the Rest of the Universe; and bids fair, by the Blessing of God, to be the most glorious of any upon Record. William Henry Drayton (1776) 2 When George III took the throne in the midst of the French and Indian War he pressed for a change in Britain's diplomatic arrangements on the Conti- nent. He wanted Britain to steer its own course, but his ties to Hanover and therefore, by proximity, to Frederick the Great of Prussia, made taking an independent course difficult. Differences with William Pitt over subsidies 78 Turning the World Upside Down to Prussia—neither man liking them, but the king wanting to end them more abruptly than his minister—helped produce the feud that led to Pitt's resignation.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  American Revolution For Dummies

  • Steve Wiegand(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • For Dummies

    (Publisher)

  Technically, it wasn’t. Intermittent fighting continued for a while. British troops still controlled Charleston and Savannah and had 10,000 troops in New York City. They wouldn’t leave for two more years, until the formal peace treaty had been ratified.

  But for all intents and purposes, America’s war of revolution had ended. The fight to become a country of truly united states was just beginning. Passage contains an image Chapter 10

  The War Abroad

  IN THIS CHAPTER

  Looking through British eyes

  Courting the French

  Igniting the rest of the world

  Making peace

  “A compleat History of the American War is nearly the History of Mankind,” John Adams wrote in 1783. “The History of France, Spain, Holland, England and the Neutral Powers, as well as America, are at least comprised in it.”

  Adams wasn’t exaggerating. Although Americans tend to view the Revolutionary War as an us-versus-the-British fight, its impact, near and long term, was felt from Cuba to India.

  This chapter first views the conflict from the British perspective — and how British leaders grossly mismanaged things. It also looks at the vital role France played in America achieving its independence, sees how the war affected other countries, and ends with a peace treaty that took years after the fighting ended to be approved.

  From a Brit’s Eye View

  For much, if not most, of the 160 years prior to 1763, Britain had been engaged in one war or another, sometimes more than one at a time. But with victory in the French and Indian War, Britain had firmly established itself as the No. 1 power on earth. Its capital of London was the most populous and important city in Europe, overseeing the most far-flung holdings since the Roman Empire.

  Riding herd on all that territory, of course, wasn’t cheap. Britain’s national debt had doubled from the beginning of the war until the end. The American colonies were beneficiaries of both the British victory and of being part of the British Empire in general.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  A People and a Nation

  A History of the United States

  • Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard Chudacoff(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Successful strategies were difficult to envision under these new circumstances, and Native leaders no longer concurred on a unified course of action. Communities split as older and younger men, or civilian and war leaders, disagreed over what policy to adopt. Only a few communities (among them the Stockbridge of New England and the Oneidas in New York) unwaveringly supported the American revolt; most Native villages either remained neutral or sporadically aligned with the British. Warfare between settlers and Native peoples persisted in the backcountry long after fighting between patriot and redcoat armies had ceased. Indeed, the Revolutionary War constituted a brief chapter in the ongoing struggle for con- trol of the region west of the Appalachians, which continued through the next century. 6-3e African Americans So, too, the African Americans’ Revolution formed but one battle in an epic freedom struggle that began with the first stirrings of race-based slavery and continues in the twenty- first century. Revolutionary ideology exposed one of the primary contradictions in colonial society. Both European Americans and African Americans saw the irony in slave- holders’ claims that they sought to prevent Britain from “enslaving” them. Some patriot leaders, including Boston’s James Otis and Philadelphia’s Dr. Benjamin Rush, voiced the theme in their published writings. Common folk also pointed out the contradiction. When Josiah Atkins, a Connecticut soldier, saw George Washington’s plantation, he observed in his journal: “Alas! That persons who pretend to stand for the rights of mankind for the liberties of society, can delight in oppression, & that even of the worst kind!” African Americans did not need revolutionary ideol- ogy to tell them that slavery was wrong. But the pervasive talk of liberty added fuel to their struggle. Above all, the Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book