America's War for Independence, 1775–1783

This is Unit Six, part one, covering seventeen seventy-five to the French alliance. Unit Five ended with a Congress addressing its king as Most Gracious Sovereign. What changes in this unit is not the grievance — the grievances are the same ones, and the Declaration will list them — but the conclusion drawn from them. Watch the moment the same complaint stops asking for redress and starts justifying separation. Hold a second idea alongside it. Several times here an army wins the ground and loses the point, or loses a city and keeps the war. Ask what each engagement actually decided. By the end you will be able to explain why holding Bunker Hill did not break the siege. You will be able to state what the bulk of the Declaration consists of and why that list is the argument. You will be able to account for Washington's winter strategy and what its victories proved. You will be able to explain why Saratoga is a turning point. And you will be able to hold both of the Declaration's contradictory sentences at once.

It starts with a garrison trying to disarm a countryside, which is a policy that only works if you get there first.

The general, the troops, and the strategy.

USH1 0751 Gage in Boston

General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston in May seventeen seventy-four as royal governor, stationing thirty-five hundred troops in the town and ordering periodic raids on towns where guns and gunpowder were stockpiled. The strategy was to impose law and order by seizing the means of resistance.

The raid that met resistance, and one thing the course declines to settle.

USH1 0752 Lexington and Concord

On April nineteenth, seventeen seventy-five, Gage ordered troops to seize a powder magazine at Concord, and Boston riders including Paul Revere alerted the militias. Seventy-three British soldiers and forty-nine Patriots died during the retreat. The course adds that it remains unclear who fired the first shot.

The first set-piece battle, and the distinction it teaches.

USH1 0753 Bunker Hill

On June seventeenth three British assaults took Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill at a cost the course calls very high — over two hundred killed and eight hundred wounded. Despite holding the field, Gage could not break the siege of Boston.

And a fort taken far away, whose contents mattered more than its walls.

USH1 0754 Ticonderoga

In May seventeen seventy-five Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold took Fort Ticonderoga from its small British garrison, and its cannons were hauled overland to Massachusetts to strengthen the siege of Boston. Arnold's name is remembered for what came later, and the course records him here on the American side.

Three documents now, and the third is the one this unit is built around — though not for the sentence everybody quotes.

An offer of freedom, made as a weapon.

USH1 0755 Dunmore's Proclamation

In November seventeen seventy-five Lord Dunmore promised freedom to enslaved people and indentured servants of rebels who remained loyal to the king — a military measure aimed at stripping the rebellion of its labour force. The course judges that it backfired politically, galvanising Patriot resistance rather than breaking it.

The pamphlet, and why it succeeded where more learned ones had not.

USH1 0756 Common Sense

Paine published Common Sense in January seventeen seventy-six, calling George the Third a royal brute and questioning the right of an island to rule a continent, arguing for elected representatives rather than a monarch. The case was made in plain language for a mass readership.

And the Declaration — read for its structure, and for a contradiction inside it.

USH1 0757 The Declaration

The famous second paragraph holds that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights. But the bulk of the document is a long list of grievances against George the Third, and the list is the argument: a people may dissolve political bands only for cause. Among the grievances are standing armies kept in peacetime without legislative consent, and the military rendered superior to civil power.

Two war plans now, and they are not symmetrical. One side plans to take territory; the other plans to still have an army in the spring.

What each side intended to do.

USH1 0758 The Two Strategies

Britain evacuated Boston in March seventeen seventy-six and planned to isolate New England with three armies converging on the Hudson. Washington focused instead on keeping an army in the field through the winter, breaking the eighteenth-century convention restricting combat to summer.

The first great defeat, and what the peace conference revealed.

USH1 0759 Long Island

At Long Island in August seventeen seventy-six Howe commanded thirty-two thousand troops against an outnumbered and inexperienced Continental Army, which was routed. Howe's September peace conference failed when the Americans demanded independence. Six months after the Declaration there was no settlement available short of it.

A reversal, then a loss with long consequences.

USH1 0760 Harlem Heights and White Plains

Harlem Heights in September was an important American military achievement and a key reversal after Long Island. White Plains in October went to the British, after which New York City fell and was occupied for seven years as British headquarters.

Then the winter that the convention said should not have had any fighting in it — and a capital falling without the war ending.

The crossing, and what it captured.

USH1 0761 Trenton

Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, seventeen seventy-six, and captured over nine hundred Hessians, the German mercenaries Britain had hired. The attack was timed to break the protocol of winter inactivity, and the course calls it a desperately needed morale boost after the loss of New York.

And the second, nine days later.

USH1 0762 Princeton

Washington won again at Princeton on January third, seventeen seventy-seven, after the traditional fighting season had ended — two victories in nine days against a convention both armies had observed. The strategic value was not ground taken. It was proof that the Continental Army still existed and would fight.

The following autumn, and a loss that looks worse than it was.

USH1 0763 Brandywine and Philadelphia

In autumn seventeen seventy-seven Howe brought fifteen thousand troops via Chesapeake Bay, defeated Washington at Brandywine Creek and took Philadelphia, with Congress fleeing and Washington withdrawing to Valley Forge. Losing the capital did not end the war, because the Continental Congress was not the source of the resistance.

Three entries to close, and the middle one explains why the name Saratoga appears on every exam about this war.

The surrender itself.

USH1 0764 Saratoga

At Saratoga in October seventeen seventy-seven Burgoyne surrendered five thousand soldiers, and the course calls it a major turning point in the war — a British army surrendered whole, in the field, to American forces.

The plan behind it, and the reason the surrender mattered.

USH1 0765 Why Saratoga Worked

The plan needed three armies to meet at Albany. St. Leger's advance failed and he retreated to Quebec, Clinton advanced too slowly, and Burgoyne found himself surrounded by colonial militias. The consequence is the point: the victory convinced France to recognise American independence and form a military alliance.

And what that alliance actually supplied.

USH1 0766 The French Alliance

France, still smarting from defeat in the Seven Years' War, supplied gunpowder, money, soldiers and naval forces that the course calls decisive in the defeat of Great Britain. Lafayette arrived in seventeen seventy-seven as a volunteer and served as Washington's aide-de-camp. Spain joined against Britain in seventeen seventy-nine.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why Bunker Hill settled nothing: three assaults, over a thousand British casualties, the field taken and the siege still standing. You can say what the Declaration mostly is — a list of grievances, because a people may dissolve political bands only for cause — and recognise Unit Five's complaints inside it, standing armies in peacetime and the military set above civil power. You can account for Washington's winter strategy, and say what Trenton and Princeton proved, which was not territory but that the army was still there. You can explain Saratoga by what it produced: a French alliance that turned a colonial rebellion into a war Britain had to fight on two oceans. And you can hold both sentences of the Declaration at once. The document asserting that all men are created equal calls Native peoples merciless Indian savages, on the same day, by the same men. The contradiction is the subject of the century that follows.