🎖️The American Revolutionary War

1775–1783 — War for Independence

The Revolutionary War was the eight-year conflict in which thirteen British colonies in North America won their independence from the British Empire. It began with the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. Along the way, it became a world war fought from the forests of upstate New York to the Caribbean, with France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic all eventually drawn in against Britain.

Causes

Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War (1763) as the dominant power in North America but deeply in debt. Parliament's attempts to raise revenue from the colonies — the Sugar Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765), Townshend duties (1767), Tea Act (1773) — produced increasingly organized colonial resistance. Committees of Correspondence linked resistance leaders across colonies. After colonists dumped British tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773, Parliament's punitive response — the Coercive or "Intolerable" Acts of 1774 — closed the port of Boston and curtailed Massachusetts self-government. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to coordinate a response.

Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill

On April 19, 1775, British troops marched from Boston to Concord, Massachusetts to seize a suspected arms cache. Warned by Paul Revere and others, the colonial militia met them at Lexington and Concord. Eight militiamen died in a brief exchange on Lexington Green, and the British column was harassed and bloodied all the way back to Boston. The war had begun. Two months later, on June 17, 1775, British forces attacked colonial positions on the heights above Boston in the Battle of Bunker Hill (actually fought mostly on Breed's Hill). The British took the ground but at horrific cost — more than 1,000 of 2,400 British troops engaged were killed or wounded.

Independence and Washington's Army

The Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army on June 15, 1775. On July 4, 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. The war went badly through most of 1776 — the British drove Washington's army out of New York and across New Jersey. On Christmas night 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware River and surprised Hessian troops at Trenton, followed by another victory at Princeton a week later. These modest wins saved the Revolution from collapse during its darkest winter.

Saratoga and French Alliance

The strategic turning point came in October 1777 at Saratoga in upstate New York. American forces under Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold trapped and defeated an entire British army under General John Burgoyne. The victory convinced France that the Americans could win and, in February 1778, France formally entered the war as an American ally. Spain followed in 1779, the Dutch Republic in 1780. The war became a global conflict, forcing Britain to disperse its forces to the Caribbean, Gibraltar, India, and the Atlantic.

Yorktown

The final major campaign unfolded in the summer and fall of 1781. A French fleet under Admiral de Grasse defeated a British fleet at the Battle of the Virginia Capes in early September, cutting off a British army under General Charles Cornwallis that had dug in at Yorktown, Virginia. A combined American-French army under Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau laid siege. Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, with British bands reportedly playing "The World Turned Upside Down." Although skirmishes continued, Yorktown effectively ended major combat operations.

Treaty of Paris

American negotiators Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay hammered out the Treaty of Paris with Britain, signed September 3, 1783. The treaty recognized the independence of the United States, established the Mississippi River as the new nation's western border, and granted generous fishing rights off Newfoundland. The British evacuated New York City in November 1783. Washington resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve.

Revolutionary War Facts

• The Continental Army never exceeded about 17,000 men at any one time. Many more served in state militias.
• About one-third of colonists actively supported the Revolution, one-third remained loyal to Britain ("Loyalists"), and one-third tried to stay neutral.
• The Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat who volunteered for the Continental Army at age 19, became one of Washington's most trusted commanders.
• Benedict Arnold — a brilliant American field commander at Saratoga — switched sides in 1780 and tried to surrender West Point to the British. "Benedict Arnold" has been American shorthand for "traitor" ever since.
• The war produced the United States Navy (1775), the U.S. Marine Corps (1775), and the tradition of July 4 as Independence Day.