REVOLUTION : II. War of Independence

For years the great question about the revolutionary war was how the Americans managed to win. How did the inexperienced, poorly armed, badly trained forces of an infant nation made up of thirteen independent and mutually jealous states come to defeat one of the world's greatest military powers? Was it American marksmanship, unfamiliar New World guerrilla tactics, British blunders, French aid, or the intervention of Divine Providence that made the difference? The debate went on until American and French experience in Indochina in the 1950s and 1960s took the life out of the question. There were clearly significant differences between the Vietnamese conflict and the American revolutionary war, but after Vietnam it no longer seemed improbable that a great military power could bog down in a struggle with a smaller but tenacious enemy amid a civilian population whose loyalties could not be relied upon, especially when the costs of the war and uncertainty about its purposes undermined the great power's domestic support. All those conditions existed in Britain's war with its American colonies, and post-Vietnam Americans know firsthand why Britain at last might choose to withdraw its forces—even though it was not completely defeated—rather than to prolong a debilitating struggle.

In subsequent years it has been possible to assess more sympathetically than before the problems Britain faced in devising an effective strategy for ending American resistance and to mark the alterations in British conceptions of how to conduct a difficult war. Initially the British conceived of the conflict as discipline of the unruly. After the clash at Concord on April 19, 1775, the British believed they might end rebellion by isolating and punishing the rebels at Boston through a show of force. By crushing the center of resistance, the British hoped to bring the rest of the colonies into line. But this strategic plan did not last long. At the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, the British launched a reckless frontal assault on the American positions on Breed's Hill in an attempt to demonstrate the invincibility of trained troops against untrained militia. The demonstration was a failure. Apart from the high casualties, the refusal of the Americans to give way until they exhausted their ammunition compelled the British to reassess American strength. It was no longer certain that the rebels could be intimidated. Furthermore, the outpouring of support from other New England towns and the promises of aid from the other colonies weakened the conviction that the rebellion centered in Boston alone. With initial assumptions about the Revolution collapsing, the British were in need of a new strategy.

On June 15, 1775, the Continental Congress commissioned George Washington to lead the army, and on July 3 he took command at Cambridge. After capturing cannon and mortars at Fort Ticonderoga, the Americans occupied Dorchester Heights south of Boston where they could command the city. Recognizing the vulnerability of his position, Sir William Howe, now commander of British forces in America, evacuated Boston on March 7, 1776, and transported his army to New York. Recognizing the altered conditions of the war, Howe shifted his strategy. For the next two years he waged war on classical European lines with the aim of engaging the enemy army and destroying it, thus breaking the back of the resistance. He drove the American army from Long Island in August and occupied New York City, which was to remain British headquarters for the remainder of the war. He then pursued Washington's army up the east side of the Hudson until the American general escaped with his troops and retreated across New Jersey toward Pennsylvania with the British at their heels. With the Americans in retreat, Howe seemed to have demonstrated the superiority of British forces and routed the rebels. The Patriot militia in New Jersey disintegrated after the British occupation, and three thousand Americans took an oath of allegiance to the king.

But in the long run, classical warfare of army against army proved no more successful than the intimidation and discipline strategy of the first year of war. Howe discovered that his outposts were vulnerable when Washington came back across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to attack the Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776, and a British main force near Princeton on January 3, 1777. Forced to pull back, Howe discovered that New Jersey quickly reverted to the Patriots. The British maintained control only in the immediate vicinity of New York City. He learned the same lesson with the attack on Philadelphia. Bringing his troops by sea from New York up Chesapeake Bay, Howe defeated Washington at every encounter and occupied Philadelphia on September 26, 1777, while the Congress fled to Lancaster and York. But the victory of the army proved hollow when the countryside could not be subdued. The lesson was brought home first in the North. Gen. John Burgoyne, descending from Canada to Lake Champlain in an effort to cut off New England from the other colonies, found himself swamped amid a hostile population and ultimately surrendered at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777. British intelligence had severely underestimated civilian hostility, and an army far from its supply base simply could not survive. It was little better for Howe and his successor, Sir Henry Clinton, in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania farmers supplied them with food for a price, and Philadelphia society enjoyed the officers' company for the winter, but the colony and city were no more loyal after the occupation than when the Americans controlled the city. Fearing the approach of the French fleet, Clinton evacuated Philadelphia on June 18, 1778, and headed back to New York having accomplished nothing toward defeat of the American cause.

It now seemed apparent that the British had paid too little heed to "pacifying" the civilian population. Though many Americans flocked to the British side when the army occupied American territory, the long-term effect of the British presence was more often to alienate neutral citizens and convert them to the Revolution. The British themselves were conscious of the "licentiousness of the troops, who committed every species of rapine and plunder," frequently without regard for the political sympathies of the civilian population. Such offenses necessarily made Patriots out of potential friends of Britain. Moreover, with the approach and retreat of the British army as it moved from one region to another, the Patriot militia compelled the citizenry to take a stand. Seeing the impermanence of British occupation, otherwise disinterested people threw in their lot with the Patriots if only to avoid harassment. By a variety of routes, the war recruited civilians for political and military action, more frequently to the advantage of the Americans than the British.

The war moved to the South in 1778 on the strength of reports of a Loyalist population there. The British commanders now turned their attention to mobilizing support among the civilian population. When Savannah fell to the British on December 29, 1778, twenty Loyalist militia companies were recruited and fourteen hundred Georgians took the oath of allegiance. During 1779 campaigns were conducted in Georgia and South Carolina. In May 1780 Clinton captured Charleston. In accord with the concern for the civilian population, he ordered the Loyalist militia to refrain from inflicting violence on innocent civilians and to protect "the aged, the infirm, the women and children from insult and outrage." When Clinton left Charleston in June 1780 he was confident he had won South Carolina for the Crown.

But in the long run the British attempt to cultivate Loyalist citizens was no more successful than the other strategies. Despite the attention to civilian needs, the Patriot militia once again sprang to life as soon as the British army departed. If anything the swing of the pendulum was more extreme because of the retribution the Patriots sought against the Loyalist militia. Instead of pacifying the Carolina and Georgia countryside, British policy had left it more severely divided. Moreover, the British could never perfectly discipline their own troops. Col. Banastre Tarleton was as famed for his harsh treatment of the populace as for his slashing military tactics. He left in his wake hundreds of formerly neutral Americans committed to active rebellion.

The failures in the South along with the approach of the American army from the North compelled the British to change their strategy once more, this time reverting to classical warfare of army against army. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, commander of British forces in the South, moved north from Wilmington, North Carolina, in May 1781 to attack the supply and training bases in Virginia that were supporting Patriot forces in North Carolina. He met little resistance as he marched deep into Virginia; Tarleton nearly captured Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature at Charlottesville. But as American forces collected to resist his advance, he returned to the coast to establish contact with the British fleet. At Yorktown he established a base from which he could keep in touch with Clinton in New York. Then his fortunes reversed. Cornwallis knew he was in trouble when he discovered that the French fleet rather than the British controlled the mouth of the Chesapeake. With the American armies closing in, he found himself in a trap.

In this final battle of army against army, Washington won one of his few major victories of the war. American forces under Marie Joseph, Marquis de Lafayette, aided by French troops landed from Adm. François Joseph Paul de Grasse's fleet controlling the Chesapeake, laid siege to Cornwallis's encampment. After de Grasse brought Washington's army down the Chesapeake to Williamsburg, the allied forces of over sixteen thousand men heavily outnumbered Cornwallis's eight thousand. Every avenue of escape closed to him, Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781.

The defeat at Yorktown ended British desires to prosecute the war. In March 1782 the House of Commons voted to abandon the effort. Lord North's government fell, and the new ministry under Lord Rockingham opened negotiations with the American peace commissioners. Talks began in April in Paris and the preliminary articles of peace were signed November 30, 1782. After acceptance by Britain and the U.S. Congress, the final peace treaty was signed September 3, 1783.

The war has been refought innumerable times in an attempt to identify the crucial British mistakes. Probably no strategy was equal to the task of quelling American resistance. Despite their superior numbers, the British operated in a hostile environment that repeatedly defeated all efforts to put down rebellion. As much as anything that fact accounts for their defeat. It is true that as the war dragged on Americans were slow to enlist, reluctant to pay for still more provisions, and heartily tired of the conflict, but in the final analysis it was the refusal of the civilian population to capitulate and the determination of hundreds of ill-trained, poorly supplied militia companies to harass the enemy that weighed most heavily in the defeat of the British forces in America.

Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (1979); Willard M. Wallace, Appeal to Arms: A Military History of the American Revolution (1951).

Richard L. Bushman

See also Arnold, Benedict; Common Sense; France-U.S. Relations; Franklin, Benjamin; Jay, John; Paine, Thomas; Paris, Treaty of (1783); Washington, George.