UNITED STATES WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

also called American Revolution or American Revolutionary War (177583), insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain's North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America. After the successful conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British government decided to make its North American colonies pay more of the costs of governing and defending them. Over the next 12 years Britain imposed a series of new taxes and other revenue-raising measures on the colonies that aroused heated opposition. The American colonists resented the trade regulations by which Britain utilized American economic resources to its own advantage, and they likewise resented their lack of representation in the British Parliament. British intransigence to these grievances spurred a growing desire for independence on the Americans' part. Open fighting broke out between the British and Americans in 1775, and the next year the American colonies declared their independence from Britain. The conflict thus began as a civil war within the British Empire over colonial affairs, but, with America being joined by France in 1778, Spain in 1779, and the Netherlands in 1780, it became an international war. On land the Americans assembled both state militias and the Continental (national) Army, with approximately 20,000 men, mostly farmers, fighting at any given time. By contrast, the British army was composed of reliable and well-trained professionals, numbering about 42,000 regulars, supplemented by about 30,000 German mercenaries. The war began when the British general Thomas Gage sent a force from Boston to destroy American rebel military stores at Concord, Massachusetts. After fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, rebel forces began a siege of Boston that ended when the American general Henry Knox arrived with artillery captured from Fort Ticonderoga, forcing General William Howe, Gage's replacement, to evacuate Boston on March 17, 1776. An American force under General Richard Montgomery invaded Canada in the fall of 1775, captured Montreal, and launched an unsuccessful attack on Quebec, in which Montgomery was killed. The Americans maintained a siege on the city until the arrival of British reinforcements in the spring and then retreated to Fort Ticonderoga. The British government sent General Howe's brother, Richard, Admiral Lord Howe, with a large fleet to join his brother in New York, authorizing them to treat with the Americans and assure them pardon should they submit. When the Americans, who declared themselves independent on July 4, 1776, refused this offer of peace, General Howe landed on Long Island and on August 27 defeated the army of General George Washington, the commander in chief of the American forces. When Washington retreated into Manhattan, Howe drew him north, defeated his army at Chatterton Hill near White Plains on October 28, and then stormed the garrison Washington had left behind on Manhattan, seizing prisoners and supplies. Lord Cornwallis, having taken Washington's other garrison at Fort Lee, drove the American army across New Jersey to the western bank of the Delaware River and then quartered his troops for the winter at outposts in New Jersey. On Christmas night, Washington crossed the Delaware and attacked Cornwallis's garrison at Trenton, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners. Though Cornwallis soon recaptured Trenton, Washington escaped and went on to defeat British reinforcements at Princeton. Washington's Trenton-Princeton campaign roused the country and kept the struggle for independence alive. In 1777 a British army under General John Burgoyne moved south from Canada with Albany in New York as its goal. Burgoyne captured Fort Ticonderoga on July 5, but as he approached Albany he was twice defeated by an American force led by Generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold, and on October 17, 1777, at Saratoga, he was forced to surrender his army. Earlier that fall, Howe had sailed from New York to Chesapeake Bay, and once ashore he had defeated Washington's forces at Brandywine Creek on September 11 and occupied the American capital of Philadelphia on September 25. After a mildly successful attack at Germantown on October 4, Washington quartered his 11,000 troops for the winter at Valley Forge. Though the conditions at Valley Forge were bleak and food was scarce, a Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, was able to give the American troops valuable training in maneuvers and in the more efficient use of their weapons. Von Steuben's aid contributed greatly to Washington's success at Monmouth (now Freehold), New Jersey, on June 28, 1778. After that battle British forces in the north remained chiefly in and around the city of New York. While the French had been secretly furnishing financial and material aid to the Americans since 1776, in 1778 they began to prepare fleets and armies and in June finally declared war on Britain. With action in the north largely a stalemate, their primary contribution was in the south, where they participated in such undertakings as the siege of British-held Savannah and the decisive siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis destroyed an army under Gates at Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, 1780, but suffered heavy setbacks at Kings Mountain on October 7 and at Cowpens on January 17, 1781. After Cornwallis won a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781, he entered Virginia to join other British forces there, setting up a base at Yorktown. Washington's army and a force under the French Count de Rochambeau placed Yorktown under siege, and Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on October 19, 1781. Thereafter, land action in America died out, though war continued on the high seas. Although a Continental Navy was created in 1775, the American sea effort lapsed largely into privateering, and after 1780 the war at sea was fought chiefly among Britain and America's European allies. American privateers swarmed around the British Isles, and by the end of the war they had captured 1,500 British merchant ships and 12,000 sailors. After 1780 Spain and the Netherlands were able to control much of the water around the British Isles, thus keeping the bulk of British naval forces tied down in Europe. The Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783) ended the U.S. War of Independence. Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States (with western boundaries to the Mississippi River) and ceded Florida to Spain. Other provisions called for payment of U.S. private debts to British citizens, American use of the Newfoundland fisheries, and fair treatment for American colonials loyal to Britain. In explaining the outcome of the war, scholars point out that Britain seemed never to have an overall strategy for winning and often displayed a lack of understanding and cooperation among their armies. The Americans, on the other hand, were by no means inept even before von Steuben's training at Valley Forge, and the state militias performed admirably alongside the Continental Army in crises. French supplies and funds from 1776 to 1778, and direct military and naval support after 1778, enabled the American forces to take advantage of British disorganization, to defeat entire British armies at Saratoga and Yorktown, and to secure the independence of the 13 American states.