Lecture 14
hello historians we’re going to take a quick dive into um the Revolutionary War I’m going to I’m going to skim the information and as I’m doing this the reason why I recorded myself is so that you can pause me and work with a partner and then add the main events uh to this timeline you can see 1775 here so you’ll go in chronological order all the way up to 18800 I’m going to talk about um 1810 so use Arrow and put everything in chronological order so in order from 1775 all the way through 1800 um and arrows and then you can write little jot notes up and and Below of your timeline so let’s go ahead and jump into it um it’s I think very very interesting history um and I’m not going to give it the Justice it really deserves uh simply for the sake of time but if you have a chance to learn more about the American Revolution War you should go for it um so uh let’s just jump into it Americans win I know that surprised you um so let’s talk about when the war begins let’s see if I can get my computer to work with me it’s broken there we go so at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War uh it seemed like Britain had all the advantages they were the leaders in manufacturing they produced more ships more weapons than colonists they had an established government and the colonists were starting from scratch um the colonist Continental Congress they struggled to pay for the war they didn’t have authority to collect taxes so Congress and States they just printed paper money and you can see here examples of paper money and so this produced inflation that damaged the economy Continental soldiers were hungry and cold British troops were well trained and they had plenty of supplies and so in the beginning the odds seemed very slight that Patriots could win this war in 1775 um British did not take Patriots seriously as an enemy so two months after the defeat at Concord British repeated their mistake at the Battle of Bunker Hill so let’s talk about the Battle of Bunker Hill so by fortifying the hills overlooking Boston Patriots hoped to drive the British from the port of Boston and to retake the hills the new British commander you can see his image here Lord William how he ordered a frontal assault by his soldiers in the middle of the day now remember these are the Red Coats they are carrying heavy packs and they wear bright red uniforms and British men as they went to attack um they marched right into murderous fire so the question is why did how put his soldiers in such a dangerous position so you can see uh a detailed map of the Battle of Bunker Hill you can see I can let’s move it over here um you can see the blue bits for the American forces and then you can see the red bits for the British forces um and then you can see this uh artist uh depiction of the event the battle and you can just see how bright these these coats are and how obvious uh they are as as targets um how wanted to win the battle despite giving the Patriots every Advantage his point he wanted to prove that quote that trained troops are invincible against any numbers or any position of untrained rabble comparing colonists to Rabel so instead of proving House Point the British they suffered a blood bath they um they charged twice unsuccessfully on the Third charge they were only able ble to capture the hill because Patriots ran out of ammunition so technically the British won the battle but they suffered more than twice uh of the Patriot casualties but the Patriots really won a psychological Victory because remember Britain is the most powerful military in the world so January 1776 about 6 months after the Battle of Bunker Hill Colonel Henry Knox he arrived uh in Boston with cannons to reinforce Patriots that were just outside of Boston and knox’s men had hauled the Cannons hundreds of miles from upstate New York so you can see this map they’re going to come from taon dooga and they’re going to make their way all the way to Boston these heavy cannons so Ethan Allen this man down here um so this is Knox and this is Ethan Allen I love how Knox has the cannon because that’s like epic uh Ethan Allen his militia men they captured the Cannons from Fort taond deroga so March 1776 with these cannons shelling both Boston and the British ships in the harbor British abandoned Boston so Lord how continued to pursue a misguided strategy the British thought they were fighting a traditional European War they believed the Patriots would surrender if how could defeat the Continental Army and then capture the major sea ports including Philadelphia the Patriots Capital but the British accomplished these goals and they still lost the war so the British never fully understood that they were fighting a different type of War a revolutionary war Patriots understood that it was a struggle to win the hearts and minds of the civilian population so instead of surrendering after setbacks Patriots they kept on fighting Thomas Payne wrote an inspiring series of ESS essays called the American American crisis and uh leaders like George Washington would read these essays to encourage his troops to keep going meanwhile the British hired um German mercenaries uh these are soldiers who fight you hire them and they’ll fight on your country’s behalf they’re called hessin and hessin had a brutal reputation Patriot persistence was owed much to George Washington’s leadership Washington realized that to preserve his continental army from destruction he could not risk everything on a major battle if the conditions were unfavorable he was outnumbered he was often outmaneuvered uh Washington lost most of the battles but what he was good at was a skillful Retreat and that saved the Army to fight another day so by preserving and inspiring his soldiers um Washington sustained them through incredible hardships his army was small but committed they were hungry they were ragged clothing um and they suffered terrible casualties by preoccupying the British army Washington’s continental army freed local militias to suppress those loyalists that were out in the countryside so to succeed the Continental Army needed Aid and support from the civilian population so throughout the war women’s work was crucial women ran farms and the shops the husbands and Sons went off to fight the women made the clothing blankets shoes for soldiers the British Navy blockaded the ports so it made anything imported scarce and very expensive a few colonists took advantage of the shortages um by profiteering and selling in demand items at very high prices and another unfortunate thing was was that Patriots caused inflation because they just made and printed paper money and so the value of money decreased and it also worked out for Patriots that if Farmers sold their crops to Patriots they would be paid in Continentals so you can see there’s a continental here for $3 so if a farmer sold Patriots um their crops uh cattle they would be paid in this paper money um issued by the Continental Congress and if the Patriots lost this money would be worth nothing and in turn the British army they paid for their supplies and gold so that was uh very difficult to navigate as well during the war some women they follow their husbands into the army um they received rations and what the women would do would maintain camp and do the washing and uh uh make meals and such like that a few women even helped fire cannons or they served his soldiers masquerading his men Deborah Samson she won a military pension from Congress for her service and Mary hay she’s also known as Molly Pitcher she delivered water to troops during the battle at um mouth and Legend has that she even stepped in and took her husband’s place at the cannon so women were definitely involved in the uh American Revolutionary War so early 1776 after the British left Boston they decided to attack New York City and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies so September 1776 how captured New York City after winning a series of battles there were about 30,000 British and German troops that nearly crushed the poorly maintained Continentals George Washington was forced to retreat um back to uh New Jersey and he saved his Army and the Revolution by Counterattack attacking um Washington crossed the Delaware River in the middle of Christmas night we might recognize the painting up here on top um and so Continental surprised a Garrison of more than a thousand German mercenaries this is called the Battle of Trenton it took place on day after Christmas December 26 1776 it was a modest um Patriot Victory but it really raised the spirits of the troops um and supporters at a critical moment when troops are cold and hungry and feeling uh like they just can’t make it Washington began the year 1777 with another Victory so it took place on January 3rd 1777 he moved his troops again at night it’s called The Battle of Princeton and the Patriots inflicted heavy casualties on General Charles corn Wallace’s troops and so for the rest of the year uh of 1777 Washington suffered more defeats by the fall of 1777 um the Patriots lost their Capital uh Philadelphia toah how’s Army another British Army marched from Canada to invade New York’s Hudson Valley this um group was led by General John beronia and bergonia fell into a patriot trap at Saratoga on September 19th 7 1777 um by October 1777 Bonia surrendered and this was the greatest Patriot Victory yet and Saratoga was like that hintch that just maybe the US might win this war the victory at Saratoga was important it encouraged France to recognize American independence and to enter the war France welcome the opportunity to weaken their old enemy Great Britain and during the early years of the war France doubted that these Patriots could even win this war and so France was not willing to risk an open Alliance and so France limited their assistance to secretly shipping arms and ammunition and this would keep the Patriot Army alive and fighting um the French also sent volunteers like the Marquee de Lafayette uh he was a P General and he had um he was an expertise in military strategy after s Saratoga the French said okay Patriots we will we will risk an open alliance with you so febu February 1778 uh there was a negotiation between Benjamin Franklin and the French and this Alliance reflected really The Diplomatic Genius of benerin Franklin he was the leading American negotiator in Paris and he was just really smart and strategic Benjamin Franklin was he while in France uh trying to get France to be an ally of the early Americans um he became very popular in France and he presented gr public and he would present himself as a simple American who just loved the French and so after this point after February 1778 the French AR Army and Navy began attacking British and so this is the point where the war becomes more equal the first joint operations between French and Patriots working together they failed miserably and the alliance would produced the biggest victory of the war in 1781 1779 the British suffered another blow Spain entered the war as a French Ally the Spanish also wanted to weaken their friends not uh the British Empire Spain really feared that American independence would Inspire their own colonists to get this idea of natural rights and to rebel against Spanish rule so Spain was not an official Ally they were just an ally of France and France and the Patriots were officially allies hope that makes sense so the Spanish governor of Louisiana his name was Bernardo Dez he provided money and supplies to Patriots and he and his forces were also able to prevent British ships from entering the Mississippi River at New Orleans and this is Mississippi river is a very very important part of our geography 1777 to 1778 in Pennsylvania Washington’s Army spent a harsh and hungry winter at uh Valley Forge which is right outside Philadelphia Soldier they didn’t have uh food or supplies Washington reported to Congress that nearly onethird of his soldiers didn’t have a coat or a pair of shoes um he says unless some great change suddenly takes place this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things Star disolve or disperse in order to obtain subsistance in the best manner they can so that’s right before Christmas 1777 despite their hardships Patriots soldiers improved from careful drilling by a supervis and and were supervised by a German volunteer named Baron Bon stubin he came from Germany to help the patriots so June of 1778 the British evacuated the capital Philadelphia uh the British retreated across New Jersey um back to New York City City and on the way the British fought off Washington’s Pursuit at M mouth New Jersey and this is a a battle where Continental soldiers really dis demonstrated their improved discipline Under Fire so despite having won most of the battles the British had little to show for it beyond their headquarters in New York City despairing of winning in the north the British turned their attention elsewhere so defying the pro clamation of 1763 um was a huge issue remember the proclamation is this red line where the British crown said colonist you need to stay on the darker parts and this is for American Indians right so the early 1770s colonists disregarded the proc Proclamation and they started to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains that’s west of this this red line so this led to an outbreak of war between colonists and the British it escalated the frequent skirmishes between settlers and American Indians and this led the settlers to playing even more American Indian lands and Frontier war was especially destructive most American Indians sided with the British because the British promised to keep the colonists in the west sorry in the East sorry 1777 with a British urging American Indians increased increased their attacks on Colonial settlement settlements meanwhile white settlers increasingly attacked and killed neutral American Indians or they just disregarded trues and this is going to start a cycle of Revenge that’s going to continue for years in the Northwest Colonel George Rogers Clark he led the British militia in the fight against the British spring of 1778 um Clark took the settlements of CAS um kakia and Cahokia later in the summer of 1778 Clark’s 175 soldiers and their French settler allies they captured all the British posts in the area that would become later Indiana and Illinois the British and their American Allies responded a few months later they recaptured a fort at Vinson Indiana Clark’s men all unpaid volunteers they quickly rallied marching from their winter quarters on the shores of the Mississippi River by late February 1779 they reached benen and convinced many American Indians to abandon their British allies and this allowed Patriots to recover the fort at the war’s end the Patriot Outpost allowed Americans to lay claim to the Ohio River Valley 1779 in Upstate New York American Indian and British forces attacked several Frontier outposts in return Patriot troops burned 40 iray towns and they destroyed um the power of the iray Federation but American Indians continued to attack settlers with deadly effect forcing many of them to return East now as the war continued British expected loyalist support in the South especially among the farmers of North Carolina South Carolina and Georgia but the British they wasted this support by continuing their misguided strategy instead of supporting loyalist militias the British continued to wage a conventional war in the South just like in the North the British won most of the battles and they captured the leading sea ports late 1778 the British seiz Savannah Georgia spring of 1780 the British captured Charleston South Carolina along with 5,000 Patriot soldiers so just as the British began their offensive in the South Spanish forces under Bernardo de galz they made key attacks on British forts in the Gulf region the Gul of Mexico region they captured in 1780 um the British Fort at Mobile Alabama and they uh took Pensacola the capital of British West Florida and so these moves were intended to solidify Spanish power in North America but they also diverted the British troops from the offense against the Patriots because remember Spain and the Patriots were not officially in an alliance despite winning major battles the British failed to control the southern Countryside Revolution became a brutal civil war between Patriots and Loyalist militias both sides plundered and killed civilians a German offic officer in the British service said this this country is a scene of the most cruel events neighbors are on opposite sides children are against their fathers October 1780 Kings Mountain South Carolina Patriots crushed a Loyalist militia and executed many of the prisoners as loyalists lost men in territory neutral civilians they swung over to the Patriot side increasing L they blame the British troops for bringing chaos into their lives one disgusted loyalist explained to a British officer the lower sort of people who were originally attached to the British government have suffered so severely and been so frequently deceived that Great Britain has now a 100 enemies where it had one before so as the countryside became sympathetic to the Patriots General Cornwall Wallace became frustrated Continental Army in the South it was small but it was like led by two superb um commanders Nathaniel Green and Daniel Morgan um early 1781 the Continental Army inflicted heavy losses on the British at the battles of Cowpens in South Carolina and Gilford courthouse in North Carolina and these these two events Ed um a corn Wallace’s attempt to take the Carolinas and so corn Wallace marched North into Virginia and he was taking his troops directly into a trap so although it seemed unlikely at the start Patriots ultimately won the war for four big reasons number one the British made tactical mistakes because they initially misunderstood um and un as underestimated the Patriots number two the British misunderstood the political nature of this war number three Patriots were highly motivated and they benefited from George Washington’s shrewd leadership and number four Patriots re received critical assistance from France so late summer 1781 Washington boldly and rapidly marched most of his troops South the plan was to trap corn Wallace’s Army at Yorktown Virginia so for the plan to work Washington needed a French Fleet of ships to arrive at the right moment to prevent the British Navy from evacuating their army by sea so Washington thought that a French fleet was on its way but he couldn’t be certain when it would arrive because remember this is the time of of letter so the French Fleet of ships they arrived at the just right moment they blocked the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay they trapped the British Navy so this coordination was an incredible Stroke of Luck for Patriots October 19th 1781 the British are trapped by land and sea so Cornwall has surrendered his army of 8,000 troops at Yorktown the French had made the critical difference so at Yorktown the French Soldiers and Sailors outnumbered Washington’s American soldiers so thank you for that so the loss of 8,000 soldiers was a crushing blow to the British war effort after seven years of fighting from 1776 to 18 to 1782 seven years um the British public back in in England they were tired of uh heavy casualties and they were tired of heavy taxes that they were paying for this war because remember it’s right on top of the French and Indian War so early 1782 there is a new Administration that came to power in England and they were determined to make peace so an American delegation that included Benjamin Franklin and John Adams they negotiated a favorable favorable treaty with the British so 1783 it’s called the Treaty of Paris uh in this treaty American independence is recognized and the the Americans are granted generous boundaries um to the United States so at the negotiating table Benjamin Franklin he secured far more territory than the Patriots had actually won remember the proclamation went down the Appalachian mountain and so what the United States includes is all these pink bits um so by making A Separate Peace with the British Americans unfortunately strained their alliance with the French the French actually thought they would control the negotiations and so France and Spain each had to negotiate treaties with Britain so you can see here’s the Treaty of Paris and you can see here are the um pre-war boundaries of the British and then now here you have the United States as this read here in 1783 you can also see over here this stuff with Russia we’ll talk about that soon but you can see how close Russia is to the United States but we’ll talk about that later here’s a great cartoon blessed are the peacemakers CR King by the of course tobacco yeah anyway let’s keep going so by 18th century standards 1700s American Revolution was really really radical for the first time ever an overseas colony of a European Empire they escaped control of that Empire and they created a Republican union and this was always dismissed as not possible um and as a dangerous fantasy so by defying the conventional wisdom of their time Patriots began an enormous experiment um the wrong side an enormous experiment uh aimed at creating a more open and equal Society here I am Patriots promised Liberty an opportunity to people um and some Americans they one more than others the the greatest winners I hate saying it like that were white Patriot men that had at least modest property um they secured political rights and economic benefits with western expansion and the groups that lost the most were those that were loyal to England the Loyalists and American Indians so the British tried to protect their loyalists by setting conditions in the Treaty of Paris um but state laws and mob violence prevented most loyalists from returning to their homes after the war 990,000 people including 20,000 formerly enslaved people they became refugees they had nowhere to go about half resettled in Britain’s northern colonies and many enslave people they were were simply just sent to the British West Indies and not granted their freedom in effect the American Revolution spawned two new nations the American Republic and the future Dominion of Canada American Indians were also stunned when the British abandoned them in 1783 the Treaty of Paris absolutely ignored American Indians and this left American Indians vulnerable to expanding American settlements in treaties at Fort Stanwick of 1784 and hopwell in 1785 Patriots forced American Indians to give up massive tracks of land as the price of peace and then more settlers surged Westward so 1790 more than a 100,000 Americans lived in Tennessee and Kentucky and so it’s it’s safe to say that the Revolution was a disaster for American Indians women gained uh a few political or legal rights as a result of the Revolutionary War they won respect based on the new concept of women as quote Republican mothers Abigail Adams and Judith Sergeant Murray are examples of Republican mothers so this is basically the Republic needed virtuous citizens and um those little boys would learn virtue from their mothers and so this invited women to speak on issues that affected their ability to raise virtuous children so men would be virtuous Citizen and daughters would raise sons that would be virtuous citizens so that’s the Republican Motherhood it’s also called the Cults of Domesticity the revolution inspired some women to seek a larger voice in public affairs there is a famous letter of 1776 where Abigail Adams you can see her portrait here she asked her husband to uh to quote remember the ladies in drafting the Constitution and although John Adams respected his wife he dismissed her request said it was ridiculous um and this law reserved um uh there were laws that reserved legal and political rights to husbands widows could vote only in New Jersey but wives could not own property they couldn’t make contracts as this was a norm in Europe at the time as well changes for African-Americans um slavery seemed to be inconsistent with the enlightenment ideals of the revolution 17761 of every five Americans was of African ancestry and the majority of these people were enslaved most Americans including some Patriot leaders they accepted um slavery is natural British and Loyalist critics they mopped Patriots as Hypocrites who spoke of Liberty while holding enslaved people in 1778 the governor of New Jersey confessed that slavery was quote utterly inconsistent with the principles of Christianity and humanity and in Americans who have iiz Liberty pecul peculiarly odious and disgraceful the revolution inspired many and slave people to demand Freedom northern states some ins Slave people petition legislators for emancipation and they sued their owners in courts 5,000 African-Americans joined Patriot militias the continental army or the small Continental Navy in return for a promise of freedom Southern States feared arming black Americans would be a threat to the slave system and at least 50,000 Southern enslaved people escaped to join the British the revolution led to emancipation in the north slavery was not critical to the economy and in Slave people only numbered about 5% of the population in the north uh critical is a hard terms about the economy the economy did rely on slavery let’s not let’s not forget that um but while the laws eventually Bann slavery in northern states many Northern enslavers um instead of granting their enslaved people Freedom they just sold their enslave people to to others in the South before they could become free so am mancipation failed in the South enslaved people consisted of about a third of the population and this was believed to be essential to the plantation economy Maryland in Virginia some planters voluntarily freed their enslave people this practice is called Manu mission after 1800 Southern States passed laws to discourage further Manu missions Southern whites feared that freed black people would seek revenge for past treatment as slaves 1810 about 20,000 Southern enslaved people had been freed including 300 liberated by George Washington so perhaps the greatest effect on the Revolution was the spread of of the idea of Liberty home and abroad the statement that all men are created equal was Radical when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence Jefferson probably intended this statement to apply to white men um but black Americans and women uh repeated the words and uh claim these rights as well over the next three centuries Patriots principles inspired revolutions around the world 1789 the French Revolution comes about European Republicans cited the American precedent to overthrow Kings and aristocracies in the 19th century independent republics emerged throughout Latin America in the 20th century Africans and Asians they begin their National Liberation movements and as Thomas PNE predicted the American Revolution changed the world there you have it