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AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF (1775–1783)

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF (1775–1783). The War of American Independence began on 19 April 1775 with firefights at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. It ended on 28 June 1783, when a British force ceased operations against the French, who were aiding rebels in southern India. Barring Vietnam, it was the longest war in the history of the United States to the twenty-first century. It involved most European powers as either belligerents or watchful observers. In one way or another it touched every part of what had been British America, including not only the thirteen east coast colonies but also Canada and Native American country as well as the West Indies and the open Atlantic. The war destroyed one empire and created another.

The war was not synonymous with the American Revolution. That larger civil, cultural, social, and economic transformation sprawled over a quarter century between the first colonial challenges to British authority in 1764 and the implementation of the U.S. Constitution in 1789. Unlike the later Southern war to preserve slavery and destroy the United States, it does not have a military narrative strong enough to carry the whole story of the American Republic's creation. But the war was central to the Revolution's process and its outcome.

Two myths about the war need dismissal. One, long favored in patriotic annals, is that virtuous citizen-soldiers put down their plows, threw off tyranny, and returned to daily life. The other is that British power was so overwhelming as to render American victory almost inexplicable. Americans did believe they fought in a good cause, but there were many dissenters. The fiercest fighting pitted white colonials, black people, and Natives in a melee that engulfed them all. For patriot whites the war did end in triumph. Loyalist whites emigrated at the war's end in larger percentages than those in which people left revolutionary France. The war shook slavery severely, and thousands of former slaves also departed with the British. Though most Indians had no reason to count themselves among the war's losers, it ended in disaster for virtually all of them.

THREE PHASES

With hindsight the North American story has three phases. In the first, for roughly a year following Lexington, Britain attempted a police action to contain and put down a local rebellion. The goal was to combine a show of force with relative lenience. This phase is associated primarily with General Thomas Gage (1721–1787), who in 1775 was both civil governor of Massachusetts and commander in chief in North America. But the hope of reconciliation carried over to his successors, the brothers Admiral Lord Richard Howe (1726–1799) and General Sir William Howe (1729–1814), whose appointments made them peace commissioners as well as joint commanders.

From the spring of 1776 until the autumn of 1778 both Britons and Americans understood the confrontation in terms of conventional European warfare. Nonetheless there was a difference. The Howes sought control of American cities. They abandoned Boston (17 March 1776) when Americans placed artillery on Dorchester Heights and made the town indefensible. The British regrouped at Halifax, Nova Scotia, marshaled their largest seaborne force prior to the twentieth century, and seized New York City (15 September 1776). It remained in British hands until 1783. Their forces included regiments of hired German "Hessians," named for the principality of Hesse that supplied them.

The American commander in chief George Washington (1732–1799) realized after losing New York that his primary task was to keep his army in existence while it acquired strength, skill, and weapons. Washington bolstered American morale with winter victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey (26 December 1776 and 3 January 1777). The major outcome of this phase was the defeat and capture at Saratoga (17 October 1777), in upstate New York, of a British army led by General John Burgoyne (1722–1792). Burgoyne's goal had been to seize the Champlain-Hudson corridor between Montreal and New York City. The American commander at Saratoga, Horatio Gates (c. 1728–1806), was a former British officer who once had served with Burgoyne. Burgoyne had not expected serious help from Sir William Howe, who was moving on Philadelphia, which he captured from Washington's forces (26 September 1777). Howe's successor, Sir Henry Clinton (1738–1795), evacuated the nominal American capital the following spring to concentrate his forces in New York.

Partisan war marked the third phase. In 1777 civil war broke out in what now is western New York, pitting regular soldiers, settlers turned guerrilla fighters, and Indians against one another on both sides. The same configuration appeared after the British invaded Georgia in 1779 and South Carolina in 1780. These conflicts saw the disintegration of both white and Native communities, with the added element in the South of slaves who sought their freedom where they could find it. The Americans tried to put down the Iroquois country conflict with a conventional invasion in 1779, and the British used the same strategy in the South. Neither effort was successful. The war in northern Indian country spread into modern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Though it ended with Iroquois fragmentation and defeat, Shawnees and others farther west remained powerful enough to resist the United States for a decade.

AMERICAN VICTORY, THANKS TO THE FRENCH

The mainland war ended with a set-piece siege at Yorktown, Virginia (9–18 October 1781). Yorktown became possible for many reasons. Initially the British invasion of South Carolina in 1780 seemed successful. At Charles Town (Charleston after 1783) Clinton's invaders captured the American army of Benjamin Lincoln (1733–1810), more than five thousand troops. Redressing Saratoga, Clinton's army defeated Americans led by Gates at Camden, South Carolina (16 August 1780), bringing the entire province under British control. Clinton returned to New York, leaving Major General Lord Charles Cornwallis (1738–1805) to complete southern pacification on the assumption that most Americans would welcome the invaders.

Cornwallis moved into North Carolina, where a new American army under Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) inflicted major damage on him at Guilford Court House (15 March 1781). Resistance popped up everywhere as soon as Cornwallis's redcoats pushed on, despite ferocious action against the militiamen by British and Loyalist cavalry under Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833). Nonetheless Cornwallis moved his army north again to subdue Virginia. He had no better luck there and finally took up position at Yorktown (1 August 1781) to await seaborne supplies and possible reinforcements.

The relief never came. Instead, a combined Franco-American force besieged and captured Cornwallis's entire force. Yorktown proved the major strategic consequence of the fact that France had entered the war in 1778. Clandestine aid had begun arriving even prior to American independence via the government-sponsored trading firm Hortalez et Cie of Bordeaux. French matériel and monetary assistance were of great importance to the American army's ability to remain in the field, and after 1778 the French could provide soldiers and a fleet. Cooperation was not always good. French supply officers had as much difficulty as their American and British counterparts in obtaining foodstuffs from reluctant farmers and profit-seeking merchants.

Washington's main goal from the alliance was to recapture New York City, which he could not do without French naval support. Nonetheless, when he learned that Cornwallis was in the Chesapeake and that a French fleet was en route there from the Caribbean, he and the French commander, Jean de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725–1807), agreed to move south. It was a gamble, because there was no guarantee that the French admiral, François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse, comte de Grasse (1722–1788), could gain control of the Chesapeake entrance. Grasse did stave off a British fleet outside the Virginia capes (10 September 1781), taking control of the great Chesapeake Bay and making it possible to move both a French siege train and the combined American and French forces into position around Cornwallis. Grasse returned to the West Indies, and Washington returned to the Hudson Valley, where he continued to plan New York's recapture. But the loss of Cornwallis's entire army at Yorktown broke Britain's political will to continue the North American struggle. The ministry of Frederick North (Lord North, 1732–1792), in power since 1770, fell, and British offensive operations in North America ended.

THE LARGER WAR

The larger war did not end. As early as 1779 British policymakers began to think that the Americans could not be defeated. Thanks to the involvement of France and of Spain as a French ally, Britain's naval resources were stretched thin. In 1779 there was real danger that a Franco-Spanish fleet and army would invade Britain. Every Caribbean island, including Jamaica, was vulnerable, and there were not enough ships to protect them all. That risk finally ended at the Battle of the Saints, fought between the Leeward Islands of Dominica and Îles des Saintes (12 April 1782), when a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney (1718–1792) captured Grasse himself. But Britain did lose Minorca to Spain and came close to losing Gibraltar.

Despite its enormous might, Britain faced great disadvantages during the American war. In diplomatic terms it was virtually isolated. France became an American ally, Spain was an ally of France, and the Dutch were so pro-American that Britain declared war against the Dutch at the end of 1780. Led by Catherine the Great (ruled 1762–1796), empress of Russia, who entertained visions of mediating the conflict, other European powers formed the League of Armed Neutrality, which stretched from Russia to Sicily. That development favored the American cause indirectly by securing Baltic naval stores for France and Spain. Britain, long dependent on American sources for the wood, tar, and hemp its fleets needed, had the advantage only that more of its ships were copper-bottomed to resist fouling and therefore faster and more maneuverable at sea. Although North's ministry was politically secure until the loss of Yorktown, it could not raise enough troops in Britain and Ireland both to fight overseas and to maintain home defense. That was the main reason for hiring the German Hessian regiments.

Sheer distance proved another problem for British policymakers and generals. The thirty thousand troops who arrived in New York harbor with the Howe brothers in July 1776 were an enormous force. But every soldier, whether British or German, was virtually irreplaceable. Despite short enlistments and great suffering in the Continental army, it seemed there always were more Americans. New England's original pickup army inflicted heavy casualties before losing Bunker Hill (actually Breed's Hill) overlooking Boston (17 June 1775). Britain could not afford more such Pyrrhic victories. That may be why the Howe brothers did not pursue their advantage after they trapped Washington's half-trained and demoralized Continentals on Long Island (27 August 1776), allowing them to fall back first to Manhattan, then into Westchester County north of New York City, and finally to New Jersey. Washington's capture of Hessian regiments at Trenton and Princeton and the capitulation of Burgoyne's entire seven-thousand-man army at Saratoga in October 1777 presented the British with losses that were difficult to fill. The British never succeeded in supplying themselves from the American countryside, despite constant foraging. After 1776 New York City was virtually impregnable against recapture, but virtually every tree and fence on Manhattan Island had to be chopped for firewood, and the city needed constant reprovisioning from across the ocean. The same became true in the other two secure British enclaves, Charles Town and Savannah, Georgia.

British strategy assumed that "good Americans" would rally to "government" given any chance. Many did, particularly on Long Island and Staten Island, New York, which were securely loyal, and in New Jersey and South Carolina, where the Revolution virtually collapsed after redcoats arrived. There was strong Loyalism plus neutral "disaffection" in New York's Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, on Maryland's Eastern Shore (between Chesapeake Bay and the sea), and in much of the country where advancing white settlement met Indian resistance. But except for Long Island and Staten Island, Britain never secured its hold over potentially Loyalist country.

Enough Virginia slaves rallied to the offer of freedom in November 1775 made by the royal governor, John Murray, Lord Dunmore (1732–1809), to form his "Aetheopian Regiment." (Most of them died in the smallpox epidemic that broke out that year and swept across most of the continent by 1782.) Clinton repeated that offer when British strategy turned south, with significant results. But Britain never tried to rouse all the slaves, and north of the Carolinas black men could find freedom by serving in the Continental ranks. North and south alike, many Indians recognized Britain as their best hope. However, two of the six Iroquois nations (as well as others) chose the American side, and Americans forced the Cherokee to abandon the British cause in 1779. Finally, though Britain sent the best generals it could find to America, none was of the first rank. Both William Howe and Burgoyne joined the parliamentary opposition after they returned from their American service.

The initial American expectation was that virtuous militiamen could defeat professionals and mercenaries. Early events seemed to support that belief. These included the heavy losses the British expeditionary force suffered on the way back to Boston from Lexington and Concord; the massive redcoat casualties and light American losses at Bunker Hill; the American capture of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain (10 May 1775), which yielded the artillery that eventually was emplaced overlooking Boston; and the nearly successful invasion of Canada in the winter of 1775–1776. In fact militiamen and part-time soldiers were important throughout the war. Without them the Americans could not have outnumbered and trapped the British at Saratoga, and they did important duty controlling Loyalists, guarding coastlines, and serving as skirmishers. Irregulars did most of the frontier fighting on both sides.

But when Washington assumed command at Boston (3 July 1775), his goal was to create a dependable, disciplined regular army. He could draw on an American tradition of one-year service, which was more than ad hoc militia duty but less than European-style long-term enlistment. The officer corps that assembled around him began imagining itself as composed of "gentlemen" with privileges common soldiers could not have. The fact that some American officers, including Generals Richard Montgomery (1736–1775), Charles Lee (1731–1782), and Gates, had borne commissions in the class-riven British army added to that sense. So did the advent of aristocratic and pseudo-aristocratic European volunteers, including the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), who became an instant American major general; Thomas Conway (1735–?1800); Count Kazimierz Pulaski (Casimir Pulaski, 1747–1779); and Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin von Steuben (1730–1794), who became the Continental army's drillmaster. Continental officers came to command troops who were serving "for the duration." These mostly were young, single men of the sort that might have enlisted for the long-term service and tough discipline of a European army in the absence of any better choice.

OLD-STYLE WAR, REVOLUTIONARY WAR

For the British this was the last war of the ancien régime. But for Americans the war was revolutionary. Virtually every American community saw conflict and disruption. In addition to shaking slavery and drastically weakening Indian power, it changed women's understanding of themselves as they learned to deal with businesses their men previously had monopolized. "Your farm" became "our farm" and eventually "my farm." Though the preservation of the Continental army was central to the outcome, militiamen fighting a "people's war" often made the difference at critical moments. The war created both a national elite and a national economy, and these were the basis for the movement that led to the U.S. Constitution in 1787–1788. For the British the war's course led from excessive optimism to humiliation, but otherwise it left them unchanged. For the Americans the war transformed almost everything.

See also British Colonies: North America; England; Enlightenment; Liberty; Military; Revolutions, Age of.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge, U.K., 1995. The war from Native American points of view.

Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere's Ride. Oxford and New York, 1994. Thoughtful account of the outbreak of war.

Gruber, Ira D. The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972. Biographies of joint British commanders.

Higginbotham, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789. Bloomington, Ind., 1977. A thorough account from the American viewpoint.

Hoffman, Ronald, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution. Charlottesville, Va., 1984. Essays by the foremost scholars of the subject.

Mackesy, Piers. The War for America, 1775–1783. Introduction by John Shy. Lincoln, Nebr., 1992. Originally published in 1964. Thorough account from the viewpoint of British policymakers.

Martin, James Kirby, and Mark Edward Lender. A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763–1789. Arlington Heights, Ill., 1982. A brief and well-crafted synthesis.

Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979. Exploration of the war in cultural terms.

Schechter, Barnet. The Battle for New York. New York, 2002. Narrative of events bearing on New York City.

Shy, John. A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence. Oxford and New York, 1976. Essays in the "new military history."

EDWARD COUNTRYMAN