The American fight for independence attracted many European volunteers, often with considerable military training and experience. Quite a number of French and a significant number of Swedish military officers volunteered to join the Americans. Washington recognised the need to augment the American guerrilla capability with more conventional tactics to attain victory. It was worth noting, but hardly earthshaking news. Spies were everywhere, and both sides knew it. Both the British and the Americans used intelligence-gathering spies to their advantage.
Washington, particularly as the war progressed, with French advice, became highly adept in his use of spies and in employing the intelligence they provided, often paying them out of his own pocket. We are far from an anticipated peace because the bitterness of the Rebels is too widespread, and in regions where we are masters, the rebellious spirit is still in them.
The land is too large, and there are too many people. The more land we win, the weaker our army gets in the field. It would be best to come to an agreement with them. The British relied heavily on Hessian mercenaries to fight their American war. Mercenaries, no matter the quality of the men, may fight with professionalism, but not with the same emotional commitment as the primary troops of a given power.
Mercenaries were a necessity for the British, spread thin as they were by the larger world war in which they were engaged. Little known, but significant to the ultimate victory of the American colonists were the privateers of America and other nations that preyed upon the merchantmen of the British. The privateer effort was underpinned by more than 1, Letters of Marque from the United States. The privateer actions involved an estimated 1, to 2, ships and as many as 70, sailors by the end of the Revolutionary War.
The privateer actions, aided and abetted by the French, successfully attacked and plundered more than 3, British ships, earning significant bounty for themselves and enriching the American cause. That disorder began to make its appearance in Camp, and to avoid its spreading in the natural way, the whole were immediately inoculated. Diseases of all sorts, particularly smallpox, affected the colonial forces more than the more exposed and immunised British and German troops.
Washington overcame the problem by courageous use of inoculation. His innovative and visionary use of the highly controversial new inoculation process contributed to the preservation of his army.
It is estimated that for each death in combat, ten soldiers died of disease. Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight-errantry was compatible with all economical forms of society. So warned the father of historical materialism.
Economics provide the essential framework for political and military action, and the simple fact was that the British were financially exhausted at the end of the Seven Years War and in a poor position to fight another major war on a global scale. Economic and political pressures had forced the British to rapidly downsize their forces by approximately one-third at the end of the Seven Years War This smaller force was still responsible for colonial peacekeeping and the protection of maritime communications of what was now a significantly expanded worldwide empire.
The British had doubled their national debt to a dangerous level to win the war and sought ways to recoup their financial losses, rebuild their commerce, and fund their military. Thus did economic weakness both help to trigger the American War and to make British defeat more likely. America could never have won the war without France, and France could never have succeeded without Spain.
Foreign aid to the Americans included cash, loans, weapons, gunpowder, tentage, uniforms, and other military equipment. Historians have long appreciated that the Colonies could not have won the American Revolutionary War without this support.
Fearful of losing its sugar colonies in the West Indies, Britain was unable to concentrate its military forces in the American colonies. All slave societies are highly vulnerable during wartime, and the British recognized that slaves might help them suppress the Revolution.
In November , Lord Dunmore, Virginia's royal governor, issued an emancipation proclamation, freeing any slaves or indentured servants willing to serve in the royal army. At least slaves joined Lord Dunmore's forces. But the threat of slave emancipation led many southern slaveholders to support the patriot cause. Perhaps the single most important reason for the patriot victory was the breadth of popular support for the Revolution.
The Revolution would have failed miserably without the participation of thousands of ordinary farmers, artisans, and laborers who put themselves into the line of fire. The Revolution's support cut across region, religion, and social rank. Common farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, petty merchants were major actors during the Revolution. Ex-servants, uneducated farmers, immigrants, and slaves emerged into prominence in the Continental Army. The growth of popular participation in politics began even before the Revolution.
In the years preceding the war, thousands of ordinary Americans began to participate in politics--in non-importation and non-exportation campaigns, in anti-Tory mobs, and in committees of correspondence linking inland villages and seaports. Many men joined groups like the Sons of Liberty to protest British encroachments on American liberties. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York.
A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North. The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from to , including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army.
Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14, soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation.
Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown , contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York.
Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, , Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris.
At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain which had entered the conflict in , bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years. Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. As a political activist and state legislator, he spoke out against British efforts to tax the colonists, and pressured merchants to boycott British products. He also He was a gifted orator and major figure in the American Revolution.
His rousing speeches—which included a speech to the Virginia legislature in which he famously declared, American Revolution leader John Hancock was a signer of the Declaration of Independence in and a governor of Massachusetts. The colonial Massachusetts native was raised by his uncle, a wealthy Boston merchant.
When his uncle died, Hancock inherited his lucrative Committees of correspondence were emergency provisional governments set up in the 13 American colonies in response to British policies leading up to the Revolutionary War also known as the American Revolution. The exchange of ideas, information and debate between different
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