Revolutionary War

1. Revolutionary War Independence

2. King George III

3. Revolutionary War • A classic war with professional armies • A civil war • A guerilla war • Pitted Indians allied with the British against the Americans • Opportunity for freedom for enslaved Africans or for fighting alongside white Americans

4. Combatants • British • Americans • Loyalists • Slaves • French • Indians

5. Battle of Bunker Hill • June 16, 1775 • 2,500 British troops under General William Howe • 1,400 Americans • British are victors • British: 226 dead, over 800 wounded • Americans: 140 dead, 271 wounded, 30 captured

8. British General William Howe

9. Thomas Paine

10. Thomas Jefferson

12. Continental Army

13. Quebec • Late 1775, the Americans launched an expedition to conquer the cities of Montreal and Quebec before British reinforcements could arrive • General Montgomery took Montreal in September of 1775 • Montgomery and General Benedict Arnold failed to take Quebec, and smallpox ravaged their ranks.

14. American officers Colonel Benedict Arnold General Richard Montgomery

15. Battle of Long Island • Main action of the first year came in New York • The British won the battle of Long Island in late August, Washington evacuated his troops to Manhattan Island • knowing it would be hard to hold Manhattan, he moved north to two forts along the Hudson River; • two armies engaged in limited skirmishing for two months before British General Howe finally captured Fort Washington and Fort Lee;

16. Washington retreated through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania; Howe again decided not to pursue. • New Jersey—On December 25, Washington crossed the Delaware River and made a quick capture of German soldiers at Trenton; • Major victory for Americans and lifted the morale of the troops.

18. Crossing the Delaware

20. The Hudson River Valley • In 1777, Burgoyne assumed command of an army of 7,800 soldiers in Canada and began the northern squeeze on the Hudson River valley • also had 1,000 “camp followers,” 400 Indian warriors, and 400 horses; • captured Fort Ticonderoga with ease in July

21. British Leaders General John Burgoyne Mohawk chief Joseph Brant

23. To the South • Burgoyne’s army slowly moved South, expecting reinforcements • rather than meet Burgoyne to isolate New England, however, General Howe sailed south to attack Philadelphia.

24. Ft. Stanwix • reinforcements encountered Americans who refused to surrender • the British laid siege to the fort with the help of Palatine German militiamen and Oneida Indians • Mohawk chief Joseph Brant led an ambush on the Germans and Oneidas in a narrow ravine called Oriskany, killing nearly 500 out of 840 of them;

25. Indian v. Indian, German v. German • these were multiethnic battles with a high mortality rate; • the British retreated at Fort Stanwix, depriving Burgoyne of reinforcements.

26. Battle of Saratoga • Burgoyne camped at the small village of Saratoga; • American General Horatio Gates began moving his army toward Saratoga; • the British won the first battle of Saratoga, but the Americans won the second; • forced Burgoyne to surrender to American forces on October 17, 1777.

27. Valley Forge • General Washington moved his troops into Valley Forge outside Philadelphia for the winter • 2,000 men died of disease • 2,000 men deserted • Washington blamed the citizenry for lack of support and of supplies

28. French Alliance • American victory at Saratoga convinced France to enter the war • Formal alliance signed 1778 • French had been covertly providing weapons and military advisers to the Americans well before 1778.

32. Southern Strategy and the End of the War • Georgia and South Carolina • British forces abandoned New England and focused on the South • they believed the South’s large slave population would desert to the British and disrupt the southern society and economy • also believed Georgia and South Carolina were loyalist strongholds.

33. Siege of Charleston • Easy Victory in Georgia—Fell easily at the end of December 1778; • the bulk of the Continental army was still in New York and New Jersey. • British laid siege for five weeks; took Charleston in May 1870; • General Charles Cornwallis established military rule of South Carolina by mid-summer. • Battle of Camden—American troops arrived to strike back at Cornwallis by August 1780, the most devastating defeat of the war for the Americans.

34. Yorktown • minor victories allowed Cornwallis to imagine he was succeeding in Virginia; • moved toward Yorktown near the Chesapeake Bay to wait for backup. • French Intervention—The French fleet beat British backup to the Chesapeake Bay; • a five-day naval battle left the French navy in clear control of the coast;

35. Surrender at Yorktown • proved a decisive factor in ending the war because French ships prevented any rescue of Cornwallis’s army. • Surrender—Cornwallis and his 7,500 troops faced a combined French and American army of 16,000; • French and Americans bombarded British fortifications at Yorktown for twelve days; • Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781.