American Revolution

D

3

The War at Sea

As British and American troops battled in the Southern backcountry, the small Patriot navy won a few spectacular victories at sea. On two occasions a small American squadron captured the port of Nassau in the Bahamas. Captain John Paul Jones twice carried the naval war into British waters. In 1778 Jones raided the port of Whitehaven, in England, and then captured the British sloop Drake. In the North Sea on September 23, 1779, Jones’s Bonhomme Richard forced the surrender of the British warship Serapis.

More important than these isolated triumphs was the steady war of attrition waged by American privateers against the British commercial fleet. By 1781 more than 450 privately owned vessels had received commissions from the states or the Congress to attack British shipping. During the war, these vessels captured or destroyed nearly 2,000 British merchant ships. The privateers did not seriously impede the movement of British armies and military supplies, which were usually transported in well-protected convoys. But they raised the cost of the war to Britain and, in combination with the French fleet, formed a serious threat to Britain’s commercial supremacy.

D

4

The Road to Yorktown

Ultimately, the outcome of the American War of Independence was determined on land, not at sea. Following Cornwallis’s victory at Camden, South Carolina, in the summer of 1780, the British controlled most of Georgia and South Carolina. Then Britain’s Southern strategy began to collapse. Clinton never had enough troops and supplies to crush the Patriot armies. Some much-needed British forces were tied down by French threats to the West Indies and to the British garrisons in Newport and New York City. Moreover, Parliament was unwilling to make an unlimited commitment of men and supplies to the reconquest of its mainland colonies. Equally important, the British and Loyalist troops in the South were unable to hold captured territory in the face of rebel guerrilla attacks.

Patriot bands led by Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British. They gradually cut the British lines of supply, forcing the garrisons to withdraw toward Charleston and Savannah. At the same time, American troops and militia under the command of Nathanael Greene, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, and Daniel Morgan inflicted heavy casualties on the main British army under Cornwallis. Following significant American victories at Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, and Cowpens on January 17, 1781, in South Carolina and a costly battle at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781, Cornwallis moved his army northward to Virginia.

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After Cornwallis’s departure, General Greene’s army engaged the remaining British forces in South Carolina in battles at Hobkirk’s Hill in April, at Ninety Six in May and June, and at Eutaw Springs in September. Each time the combined force of British regulars and Loyalists emerged victorious on the battlefield, but each time they were then forced to retreat because of American strength in the surrounding countryside. By the fall of 1781, the British had been forced back to their coastal enclaves at Charleston and Savannah.

By 1781 the British attempt to conquer the Southern states, which had begun so successfully in 1778, was failing. The British strategy finally collapsed in Virginia. After leaving the Carolinas, Lord Cornwallis moved his forces through Virginia without serious resistance. At Yorktown, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, they began building a fortified base from which to launch a new campaign against American forces in Virginia. At this point, the American alliance with France allowed the Patriots to administer a crushing defeat to Cornwallis’s army.

Before 1780, the French had focused their attention on the rich British sugar islands and had provided the Americans with little assistance. Then, in July 1780, a French army of about 5,000 men, commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, dislodged the British from Newport and threatened their garrison in New York City. The presence of this French army gave Washington enough military force to launch a surprise attack on Cornwallis. In the summer of 1781, a large French fleet under Admiral François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse sailed from the West Indies to Chesapeake Bay, where it was joined by a French squadron from Newport. This strong naval force prevented the resupply or evacuation of Cornwallis’s army. Meanwhile, Washington secretly moved Rochambeau’s troops to Virginia, where they joined an American army commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer, and 3,000 French troops carried by de Grasse’s ships. By September 1781 the 7,000 men under Cornwallis faced a combined French and American force of more than 16,000. As at Saratoga, British immobility had permitted the Americans to gather reinforcements for the Siege of Yorktown. Once more the British were greatly outnumbered, and they were again forced to surrender an entire army. Cornwallis capitulated on October 19, 1781.

E

Phase Four: Peace Negotiations

The French and American victory at Yorktown was even more devastating to the British cause than the earlier American triumph at Saratoga. After six futile years of warfare, the British Parliament was not willing to support a new military campaign. The British public would not accept new taxes, and many people were demanding reform of the political system. The British ministry gave up hope of suppressing the rebellion. Sporadic fighting continued for two years, especially at sea, but the major events of the fourth and last phase of the war took place at the negotiations in Europe.

The stakes were not limited to the issue of American independence. When France joined the war in 1778, the American conflict became a key element in European diplomacy. In 1779 Spain offered to remain neutral if the British would return Gibraltar. When this demand was refused, Spain allied with France and declared war on Britain. In the short run, Spain’s entry into the war assisted the American cause by adding to French naval strength. However, its ultimate implications were less favorable. Spain wanted the war to continue until the British could be ousted from Gibraltar. Similarly, France wanted to delay a peace treaty until it had captured some British sugar islands in the West Indies.

These diplomatic and military questions came to the fore after the British surrender at Yorktown. In March 1782 Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, once again took power as the chief British minister. As in 1766, when he resolved the Stamp Act crisis, Rockingham sought compromise. He secured from Parliament a resolution declaring that Britain would no longer prosecute “an offensive war in America.” His ministry then opened negotiations with French and American diplomats in Paris.

Britain’s negotiating strategy was to play its enemies against one another. Thus, the ministry offered independence to the Americans, but refused to return Gibraltar to Spain or to meet any French demands for territory. When the French negotiators continued to press their demands and those of their Spanish ally, the four American diplomats in Paris—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens—acted to protect American interests. Although instructed by Congress to act in concert with their French allies, the Americans entered into secret and separate talks with the British.

The American initiative succeeded. After hard bargaining, the British and American negotiators signed preliminary articles of peace on November 30, 1782. Following an unsuccessful Spanish assault on Gibraltar, the Spanish government finally joined the peace negotiation. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, signed by all parties on September 3, 1783, Britain retained Canada, won legal protection for its merchants who held debts in America, and secured promises concerning the property and rights of Loyalists. In return, Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States of America and accepted the claim of Congress to the lands inhabited by Native Americans peoples between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. In part, this concession was made because of the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes in the Illinois country by Virginian George Rogers Clark in 1778 and 1779. Britain also granted the Americans fishing rights off Newfoundland. Finally, to reconcile the Spanish to the loss of Gibraltar, Britain returned Florida to Spain, which also gained control of Louisiana from France. The peace agreements were an American triumph, extending at the negotiating table the victories gained on the battlefield.

F

The Social Impact of the War

The struggle for independence exposed civilians as well as soldiers to deprivation and death. The residents of New Jersey and the Carolinas were particularly hard hit by the fighting, as British and American armies marched back and forth across their lands. Patriot militias and Loyalist partisans looted farms, seeking political revenge or mere booty. Troops harassed or raped women and girls. Wherever the armies went, families lived in fear. Neighbors came to fear one another as well. Patriot mobs in New England tarred-and-feathered suspected Loyalists and seized their property. Local Committees of Safety often imposed fines or jail sentences on those who failed to support the Patriot cause.

F

1

The Plight of Soldiers

Initially Patriots hoped that a local institution, the militia, would form the core of the American military effort. They feared that a permanent, or “standing,” army constituted a danger to political liberty, and therefore were not eager to supply the Continental Army with money and supplies. As a result, the Continental Army suffered through hardships, such as hunger and deprivation, during the war.

Soldiers had many grievances, for they were subject to harsh discipline and received inadequate rations and pay. During the winters of 1779 and 1780, Continental troops stationed at Morristown, New Jersey, rose up in mutiny to protest the harsh conditions. To restore authority, Washington ordered the execution of several leaders of the mutiny, and persuaded the Continental Congress to find monetary incentives—in the form of back pay and new clothing—to pacify the rest of the recruits. Unrest among higher-ranking military men continued; in 1783 Washington had to use his personal authority to prevent a group of disgruntled officers from leading an armed revolt against Congress. In the end, the officers won a half-pension for seven years, and soldiers received small grants of western lands. These were meager rewards, given the hardships of military life.

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