America's War for Independence, 1775–1783

This is Unit Six, part two, taking the war from Valley Forge to the peace, and then asking who actually fought it. Part one ended with a French alliance that changed the war's scale. This part changes the question. The battles get shorter treatment here, and the entries that matter most are about the people the standard account leaves at the edges — Loyalists, enslaved people on both sides, Native allies, and women. Watch for one reversal in particular. There is a familiar story about which side enslaved people supported, and this course says the numbers run the other way, by a factor of four, for a reason it states plainly. By the end you will be able to explain Britain's southern strategy and which of its assumptions held. You will be able to state Greene's theory of the war and show how Yorktown follows from it. You will be able to give the proportions of Loyalist and Patriot support and say why the course declines to settle them. You will be able to explain the four-to-one figure. And you will be able to state the anchor's closing claim about what the Revolution reinforced.

It opens in a camp where the enemy was hunger, and then moves to a strategy built on three guesses about who would rise for the king.

The winter encampment, in the numbers and in Washington's own phrase.

USH1 0767 Valley Forge and Von Steuben

Of eleven thousand encamped at Valley Forge, twenty-five hundred died of starvation, malnutrition and disease, with desertion at about one hundred a week, and Washington wrote that there had been little less than a famine in camp. Von Steuben arrived in February seventeen seventy-eight and drilled a small corps who then trained the others.

Why Britain changed theatre, and what the change assumed.

USH1 0768 Why Britain Turned South

By seventeen seventy-eight the war was deadlocked, with Lord North favouring peace and George the Third demanding submission, so Britain turned south expecting greater Loyalist support. Germain believed victory required Loyalists, enslaved people and Native allies — three populations assumed to rise for the Crown.

The first southern city, and the response that followed.

USH1 0769 Savannah and the Enslaved

The British took Savannah in December seventeen seventy-eight, and thousands of enslaved people fled to British lines seeking freedom, with twenty Loyalist regiments raised in the southern campaign. The Continental Congress had suggested freeing enslaved people who joined the Patriot army, and Georgia and South Carolina refused outright.

And what the fighting there actually became.

USH1 0770 The Savage Civil War

South Carolina divided, with revolutionary partisans in the backcountry and strong Loyalist populations on the coast, and revenge killings and the destruction of property became mainstays of the fighting. The course calls it a savage civil war that gripped the South.

Four entries on the campaign itself, and the middle one contains a sentence that explains how a side losing battles wins a war.

The worst single loss of the war.

USH1 0771 The Siege of Charleston

Eight thousand British soldiers besieged Charleston for six weeks in April seventeen eighty, and General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered — the largest American loss of the entire war, with prisoners held in jails and British prison ships. Clinton set up military government and ordered Cornwallis to subdue the colony.

Another disaster, a new commander, and his theory.

USH1 0772 Camden and Greene

Cornwallis forced Gates to retreat at Camden in August seventeen eighty, in what the course calls one of the worst disasters of the entire war, and Congress replaced Gates with Nathanael Greene. Greene held that to defeat Cornwallis he did not have to win a single battle, so long as he remained in the field.

The theory in practice, across two engagements.

USH1 0773 Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse

Morgan decisively beat the British at Cowpens, and at Guilford Courthouse in March seventeen eighty-one the British held the field but took heavy losses — which the course compares to Bunker Hill six years earlier. Greene divided his troops to wage destructive war, trading battles for the attrition of isolated British forces.

And where that attrition left Cornwallis.

USH1 0774 Yorktown

Cornwallis moved to Yorktown expecting the Royal Navy to carry him to New York, and a combined French and American force of sixteen thousand closed on him instead, with Admiral de Grasse sailing into Chesapeake Bay to cut off escape by sea. The siege lasted eight days and he surrendered on October nineteenth, seventeen eighty-one.

One entry on the settlement, and the detail worth carrying is not the boundaries but the clause nobody honoured.

The treaty, its terms, and its unenforced provision.

USH1 0775 The Treaty of Paris

The Treaty of Paris was signed in September seventeen eighty-three, setting boundaries at the Mississippi, the Atlantic, Canada and Florida, with New England fishing rights off Newfoundland. States were encouraged to stop persecuting Loyalists and to return confiscated property, which most did not do.

Which brings us to the people on the losing side of a revolution, who were not a fringe.

The proportions, and the course's honesty about them.

USH1 0776 The Numbers

British America held two and a half million people, with Loyalists at twenty to thirty percent, and the course gives roughly a third loyal, a third for independence, a third apathetic. Nineteen thousand colonists served the British and one hundred thousand emigrated after the war. Historians disagree on the proportions, and the course says so rather than picking one.

What the new states did to them.

USH1 0777 Loyalists and Confiscation

States passed confiscation acts seizing Loyalist land and property, and revolutionary governments required oaths of allegiance, with those refusing losing property, being imprisoned, or being forced to work for the revolutionary order. William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's son and royal governor of New Jersey, was imprisoned and never reconciled with his father.

And one family's departure, recorded by a child.

USH1 0778 Hannah Ingraham

Hannah Ingraham was eleven in seventeen eighty-three when her family was removed from New York to Ste. Anne's Point in Nova Scotia — five wagon loads and a Hudson River sloop, her father having been taken prisoner by rebels. The family lived in a tent while he built a house with no floor laid, no windows, no chimney and no door.

Four entries now on who else fought, and the first one is where the familiar account gets corrected.

The numbers, and the reason behind them.

USH1 0779 Enslaved People on Both Sides

There were five hundred thousand enslaved people in the colonies. Twenty thousand joined the British, and between ten and twenty thousand gained freedom because of the Revolution. Four times as many joined the British as the Patriots, because Dunmore and his successors offered freedom and the Continental Congress mostly did not.

One man's account of what that freedom felt like when it seemed about to be revoked.

USH1 0780 Boston King

Boston King, born enslaved near Charleston, escaped and joined the Loyalists, going afterwards to Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone. His memoir records a rumour at New York that two thousand enslaved people were to be delivered to their masters, which filled them with inexpressible anguish and terror until a proclamation confirmed their freedom.

Britain's Native allies, and how the peace treated them.

USH1 0781 Native Peoples and Joseph Brant

The Mohawk and Creek allied with Britain, and Joseph Brant rose to prominence fighting for the British, joining St. Leger's seventeen seventy-seven campaign and afterwards moving to the Six Nations reserve in Canada. Britain failed to keep its promises to its allies, and the Treaty of Paris granted the United States Native land Britain claimed to own.

And the work women did, in several registers at once.

USH1 0782 Women in the Revolution

Esther DeBerdt Reed formed the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, wrote The Sentiments of an American Woman, and helped raise nearly three hundred thousand dollars in Continental money. Women formed mobs during shortages to wrest supplies from hoarders. Others served as camp followers, cooks, washerwomen and nurses, and a few fought.

Two entries to close. One is about money, and the last is the anchor's own verdict on the whole chapter.

How each side paid, and what happened to one of the currencies.

USH1 0783 The War's Economics

Britain paid in gold and silver while the Americans used paper backed by European loans, and Continental currency collapsed — by seventeen eighty-one inflation reached one hundred forty-six Continental dollars to one gold dollar, worsened by each state printing its own. The phrase not worth a Continental entered the language.

And the closing claim, which the course states rather than implies.

USH1 0784 What the Revolution Reinforced

In the new United States, the Revolution largely reinforced a racial identity based on skin colour. Whiteness, now a national identity, denoted freedom and stood as the key to power, and blackness more than ever denoted servile status. Despite class and ethnic differences, White revolutionaries stood mostly united in hostility to both Black and Native Americans.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain Britain's southern strategy and say which assumption held: not the Loyalists in the numbers hoped for, not the Native alliance that the peace then betrayed, but the enslaved people who came to British lines because Britain offered what the Patriots would not. You can state Greene's theory — that he need not win a battle so long as he stayed in the field — and follow it to a Yorktown where the French navy closed the sea. You can give the proportions, roughly a third each way, and say that historians disagree and this course reports the disagreement. You can explain the four-to-one figure by what each side was offering. And you can state the closing claim: a war fought in the name of self-evident equality ended by hardening the categories it might have dissolved. Hold that beside the Declaration from part one. Unit Seven tests it against the Constitution the same men then wrote.