American Revolution

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2

Britain’s Strategic Mistakes

The year 1777 was crucial to the contest. It tested the ability of the British to overpower the Continental Army and the will of the Americans to endure a series of military defeats. Lord North’s strategy remained the isolation of New England. To achieve this goal a strong army under General Burgoyne was to move down the Lake Champlain route to Albany, where it would join up with Howe’s force from New York City. But Howe had decided upon a different plan. He left 3,000 troops under General Clinton in New York City and personally led the main British force in an attack on Philadelphia, the home of the Continental Congress.

There were two flaws in Howe’s plan, one strategic and the other tactical. The strategic flaw was the division of his force and the failure to dispatch any troops to the north. If Burgoyne’s army encountered heavy American resistance, it would have no help. This basic mistake was then compounded by a tactical error. Instead of quickly marching overland through New Jersey to Philadelphia, Howe decided to move his force by water, a much longer and slower route. Embarking about 20,000 men on some 250 ships, the British general sailed down the coast and then up the Chesapeake Bay toward Philadelphia. Although Congress had fled the city, General Washington had no choice but to meet Howe’s forces in fixed battle, whatever the danger to his outnumbered army. First at the Battle of the Brandywine on September 11 and again at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, the British outflanked the entrenched Continental Army, forcing it to retreat. Having easily occupied Philadelphia, Howe set up headquarters in the city.

Washington withdrew his battered forces to nearby Valley Forge, where 11,000 soldiers spent a harsh and trying winter. Perhaps more than 2,500 soldiers died from exposure or disease in the winter encampment, while desertions and an extreme lack of provisions further reduced the army to about half its former size. Only the efforts of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian officer who volunteered his services to the American cause, restored discipline and morale to the rebel forces by training and teaching many military tactics.

C

3

Saratoga: The Turning Point of the War

The British victories in Pennsylvania were won at a high price: the loss of an entire army at Saratoga, New York. Because of Howe’s water route and Washington’s determined, if futile, resistance, the British captured Philadelphia late in the campaigning season—too late for them to send aid to General Burgoyne’s forces in the north. Early in July 1777, Burgoyne’s army of almost 9,000 troops took Fort Ticonderoga, and began to move south toward Albany. Simultaneously, a mixed force of about 2,000 British regulars and Native Americans under Colonel Barry St. Leger marched to launch a coordinated attack on Albany. St. Leger proceeded along the St. Lawrence to Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario and began to descend the Mohawk River valley. His mission was to reduce the American stronghold of Fort Stanwix and then to continue east and link up with Burgoyne at Albany.

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The first British setback came on the Mohawk. St. Leger’s forces placed Fort Stanwix under siege early in August and ambushed a relief column led by General Nicholas Herkimer near Oriskany. However, they failed to capture the American fortress. In late August, following the departure of some of his Native American allies and threatened by the approach of an American force under Benedict Arnold, St. Leger was compelled to lift the siege and retreat to Montréal. The Americans could now concentrate their forces against Burgoyne’s army.

At first, the progress of Burgoyne’s invasion force was impeded by troops commanded by General Philip Schuyler. Then, New England militias dealt a staggering blow to a contingent sent out to secure supplies for the underprovisioned British army, killing or capturing most of the 800-man force in the Battle of Bennington, in present-day Vermont, on August 16. Nevertheless, Burgoyne decided to push south toward Albany. He hoped for help from St. Leger and from General Clinton, who was now leading a relief expedition north from New York City.

By mid-September Burgoyne’s army had advanced south of Saratoga and was within striking distance of Albany. But American forces, commanded by General Horatio Gates, were well entrenched at Bemis Heights and repelled a British assault. Because of the slow movement of British regulars and their supply wagons over the rough terrain, the Americans had been able to bring up substantial reinforcements, primarily militia from western New England. On October 7, these forces resisted a second British attack. Burgoyne’s reduced army withdrew to Saratoga, where it was surrounded by the ever increasing American force, now numbering up to 17,000. On October 17, 1777, they forced Burgoyne to surrender his remaining 5,800 troops. This capitulation gave the Patriots their first major military victory and brought to an end the second, and pivotal, phase of the war of independence.

D

Phase Three: The War in the South

A new phase of the war began in 1778. The American triumph at Saratoga completely disrupted Britain’s military strategy, and General Howe was forced to resign in disgrace. The Americans had demonstrated their capacity to resist, even following the loss of their chief cities.

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1

European Diplomacy

These events were observed closely in the capitals of Europe, especially in Paris. France, still seeking revenge for the loss of Canada in 1763, had watched the development of the American resistance movement with great interest. The French government had sent observers to America at the time of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and was ready to offer positive assistance when fighting broke out a decade later.

The policy of Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister, was to offer covert aid to the rebels, but to keep France out of the war until an opportune moment. An American emissary, Silas Deane, was welcomed in Paris as a “commercial agent” in 1776. In May of that year a fictitious company was set up under the direction of the author Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais to funnel military supplies to the rebellious colonists. These much-needed munitions were paid for by a secret loan from the French and Spanish governments. However, in December, when the American representatives, who now included Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee as well as Deane, attempted to secure additional military aid, they were firmly rebuffed by Vergennes. Knowing of Howe’s initial military victories in New York and fearing the imminent collapse of the American rebellion, the French leader had no desire to commit his nation to a losing cause.

The American victory at Saratoga profoundly altered French thinking. When news of Burgoyne’s capture reached Paris in December 1777, Vergennes immediately offered the Americans a commercial and military alliance. His haste was justified. In Britain, Lord North was deeply troubled by the inability of his generals to defeat the Patriot armies and had decided to seek a negotiated settlement of the rebellion. He secured repeal of the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts and sent a commission headed by Frederick Howard, 5th earl of Carlisle to negotiate directly with the Continental Congress, offering a return to the pre-1763 imperial relationship.

North’s offer of peace came too late and promised too little. The Patriot leaders now wanted complete independence and they had another diplomatic option. In February 1778 the Continental Congress entered into a formal alliance with France. The French agreed to give up their claim to Canada and regions east of the Mississippi River and promised to fight until American independence had been achieved. In return, the United States opened up their trade to French merchants and agreed to support French territorial gains in the West Indies. Because of this treaty, war soon broke out between France and Britain. For the first time during the war of independence, American success seemed possible.

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2

The New British Strategy

Defeated at Saratoga and now vulnerable to French attack in the West Indies and on the high seas, the British devised a new military strategy. The new British plan had two objectives. The first was to concentrate their forces in the North in two seaports, New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. General Clinton, who had replaced Howe as commander in chief of British forces, evacuated Philadelphia and moved the main British army overland to New York. On the way he fought an indecisive engagement with General Washington’s army near Monmouth Courthouse (now Freehold), New Jersey, on June 28, 1778. In 1778 British forces also repelled a joint French-American attack against Newport. During the following year the Americans were only able to capture a few outlying fortresses, at Stony Point, New York, and Paulus Hook, New Jersey.

Secure in their Northern bases, the British focused their efforts on a second objective: the conquest of the South. The South, with its export crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo, was the most valuable region of the mainland. Moreover, the British believed that more Loyalists lived in the South. They hoped that these Southern Loyalists could be mobilized both to provide support and supplies to the advancing British armies and to hold captured territory after the armies had moved on.

At first, this new strategy met with considerable success. An army of 3,500 British troops captured Savannah, Georgia, at the end of December 1778, and seized Augusta one month later. An American attempt to dislodge the British from Savannah in October 1779 failed, despite the assistance of French naval forces. At the end of 1779 most of Georgia was firmly under Loyalist control, and the British army shifted its attention to South Carolina. In May 1780 an expedition commanded by General Clinton took Charleston, capturing more than 5,000 American troops. Aided by local Loyalists, the invaders gradually occupied most of South Carolina. At the Battle of Camden in August, the British, now commanded in the South by Lord Charles Cornwallis, routed an American army under General Horatio Gates.

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