The American Revolution

The war is often told as Americans against the British, but the sides were more tangled. Colonists divided into Patriots, Loyalists, and a large number who tried to stay out of it. Britain fought with regular troops, German soldiers hired from several states (often called Hessians), Loyalist regiments, and Native allies.

Native nations — more than eighty of them east of the Mississippi — mostly tried to remain neutral at first. Whichever side they chose, most acted for the same purpose: to protect their land and sovereignty. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy split; the Oneida and many Tuscarora sided with the Americans, sending warriors to fight at Saratoga and men to Valley Forge, while most other Haudenosaunee nations fought with Britain.

African Americans fought on both sides. In November 1775, Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped Patriot owners to join the British; an estimated 20,000 Black people eventually fought for Britain, compared with 5,000 to 6,000 who fought for American independence.

Britain emerged from the Seven Years’ War in 1763 victorious but deep in debt. To raise revenue and govern its enlarged empire, Parliament began enforcing trade duties more strictly and passed new measures: the Currency Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), and the Townshend duties (1767). The Proclamation of 1763, issued after Pontiac’s War, forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachians — angering settlers and land speculators.

Colonists objected that Parliament, in which they had no representatives, had no right to tax them. The Stamp Act crisis united the colonies for the first time: nine sent delegates to a congress in 1765, and boycotts of British goods pushed Parliament to repeal the act. Protest revived against the Townshend duties and again in 1773, when Bostonians destroyed East India Company tea. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts of 1774, closing Boston’s port and curtailing self-government in Massachusetts. The colonies answered by convening the First Continental Congress.

War in New England (1775–1776). British troops marching to seize militia supplies at Concord, Massachusetts, met armed colonists at Lexington on April 19, 1775 — the first battle of the war. The Second Continental Congress created a Continental Army under George Washington, which besieged Boston until the British evacuated in March 1776. An American invasion of Canada failed.

The fight for the middle colonies (1776–1778). After the Declaration of Independence, Britain seized New York City, which it held for the rest of the war, and drove Washington across New Jersey. His surprise victories at Trenton and Princeton kept the army alive. In 1777 the British took Philadelphia, but another British army, invading from Canada, surrendered at Saratoga in October.

A world war (1778–1781). Saratoga convinced France to sign a treaty of alliance with the United States in February 1778; Spain and the Netherlands later went to war with Britain as well. Britain shifted its strategy south, capturing Savannah and Charleston and hoping to rally Loyalists. Brutal partisan fighting followed in the Carolinas.

Yorktown and peace (1781–1783). In 1781 General Charles Cornwallis took his army to Yorktown, Virginia, to build a naval base. A combined French and American army besieged the town while a French fleet blocked rescue by sea. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. Negotiations in Paris led to preliminary articles in 1782 and the final treaty in 1783.

• Saratoga (October 1777): the surrender of a British army persuaded France that the Americans could win, bringing French money, troops, and naval power into the war.
• The French alliance (February 1778): turned a colonial rebellion into a global war that stretched British resources from the Caribbean to India.
• Yorktown (October 1781): the capture of Cornwallis’s army broke Britain’s will to continue fighting in North America.

In the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783, Britain recognized American independence and accepted boundaries that ran west to the Mississippi River. The treaty also settled fishing rights off Newfoundland, addressed debts owed to British creditors, and promised restitution of property taken from Loyalists. Native nations, including Britain’s allies, were not party to the treaty; Britain ceded land that those nations had never surrendered.

Independence created a republic without a king, governed first under the Articles of Confederation and, from 1789, under the Constitution. Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality encouraged Northern states to begin abolishing slavery and inspired later reform movements, but slavery survived and expanded in the South.

The war’s costs fell unevenly. Tens of thousands of Loyalists left for Canada, Britain, and the Caribbean. Thousands of Black Loyalists who had escaped slavery left with the British, though others were re-enslaved. For Native nations, the Revolution brought heavy losses — of people, villages, and above all land — with long-lasting effects on their lands, cultures, and identities. Even nations that had fought for the United States, such as the Oneida and the Stockbridge Mohicans, saw their lands taken in the decades that followed.