Chapter 3: America wins the Revolutionary War

Britain is outraged by the Declaration and King George vows to quash the rebellion. In August 1776 the tide on the battlefield turns sharply against the Continental Army when 32,000 Regular Army troops land on Long Island under command of the accomplished General Henry Clinton. They advance through Brooklyn Heights and across the East River into lower Manhattan hoping to bag Washington’s entire army quartered at Ft. George. But delays by General Howe allow the U.S. troops to flee north and fight a holding battle at Harlem Heights before crossing into New Jersey and heading south over the Delaware River to safety. Still this rout costs 4,000 American casualties and ends with the entire state of New York firmly under British control.

After re-grouping, Washington reverses his army’s lagging morale by leading a daring raid across the Delaware on Christmas night 1777 and winning a victory the next day over Hessian mercenaries at Trenton. A week later he re-takes lost ground in New Jersey with another win at Princeton.

In the Fall of 1777 two crucial battles occur almost simultaneously, with each side recording important wins. In Pennsylvania, General Howe defeats Washington at Brandywine and Germantown before capturing the American capital of Philadelphia, Independence Hall and all. But instead of then hurrying north to aid General Burgoyne’s campaign in upstate New York, Howe dallies until it’s too late. This leads to a shocking American victory at Saratoga where Generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold surround the redcoat army and force a surrender by British General John Burgoyne. Not only is the defeat humiliating to Britain, but it also convinces France to sign a formal alliance with the Americans to defeat their ongoing rival.

The loss at Philadelphia has Washington retreating to Valley Forge for the winter of 1777-78, where Prussian drill master, Baron Friedrich von Steuben goes about converting the rag-tag troops into a disciplined army. In June 1778 they collide with the redcoats at Monmouth, New Jersey as the redcoats are falling back from Philadelphia to New York. The battle ends in a stalemate but reinforces the capacity of the Continental Army to hold its own against the British Regulars and solidifies Washington’s status as Commander-in-Chief with his critics. It also marks the end of large-scale action in the northern theater of the war.

Major Revolutionary War Engagements In The Northern Theater

British strategy now turns to the South where it hopes to rally “Loyalists” in the Carolinas and Georgia and permanently detach those colonies from the north.

In December 1779, Generals Clinton and Cornwallis leave New York City with 8,500 troops and head down the Atlantic to siege the port city of Charleston, South Carolina. It falls on May 12, along with the capture of American General Benjamin Lincoln and his entire corps of 5,000 troops. Along with its ongoing control over Savannah, the British now have two beachheads for the Royal Navy to provide the supplies needed for an invasion inland. It will be led by two redcoat commanders, Colonel Banastre Tarleton and Lord Cornwallis.

The war for the South will be fought out over the next two years between British Regulars and their Loyalist allies against an often undermanned America opposition. The key battle in 1780 occurs on August 16 at Camden, South Carolina, where an inferior British force under Cornwallis outsmarts General Gates and his mostly green militiamen, who suffer 900 casualties and another 1,000 captured. This ends Gate’s career for good, despite his earlier triumph at Saratoga.

But then in January 1781 the Americans strike back with a decisive victory at the Battle of Cowpens that ends British hope for control of South Carolina. The hero here is the youthful General Nathanael Greene who executes an humiliating “double envelopment” of the arrogant Tarleton, known for his “no quarters” ruthlessness. Lord Cornwallis assumes commands over the remaining British army and leads its retreat into North Carolina. The Americans under General Greene chase them some 160 miles to the northeast, catching up two months later at Guilford Court House. Cornwallis records a win there, but a costly one that depletes his capacity to fight on in the Carolinas. Instead he slides east to Petersburg, Virginia to consolidate his remaining troops with those arriving from New York under turncoat General Benedict Arnold.

Britain’s overall Commander-in-Chief, General Clinton, orders Cornwallis to head due east to Yorktown to construct a defendable deep water port there for the Royal Navy. He arrives there in June with some 7,000 Regulars and another 3,000 Hessians and begins his fortifications efforts.

Meanwhile the French, under King Louis XVI, have fully committed to helping the Americans win the war. They send 5,500 infantry men under General Rochambeau to link up with Washington in Newport, Rhode Island. Their initial plan is to attack New York until word arrives that a French fleet under Comte de Grass is sailing toward Virginia. That news prompts a 680 mile, 14 week march south to Williamsburg, Virginia ending on September 22, 1781. They are met there by the Marquis de LaFayette, who had previously fought alongside Washington at Brandywine, where he was wounded, and lobbied successfully in Paris on behalf of the alliance with America.

This link-up is preceded on September 5 by the naval Battle of the Chesapeake, a two hour engagement between Comet de Grasse and British Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves. Over 20 ships of the line on both sides fight it out, with the French finally forcing the Royal Navy to retreat. This cuts Cornwallis off from his supply line and finds him surrounded at sea by the French fleet and on land by the combined American and French infantry. A classical siege follows with heavy mortars gradually advancing to pound the British garrison into submission, until Cornwallis officially surrenders on October 19, 1781.

The war is over and, with the help of France, the United States of America becomes an independent nation.

Data on total battlefield casualties of the Revolutionary War are sketchy, but the losses are probably quite comparable on both sides.

The financial costs are also elusive, but both the U.S. and Britain end the war deeply in accumulated debt. For the Americans the total is around $43 million in 1783, a burden that will challenge the new government as it forms up. The British have it even worse. Their debt from the Seven Year’s War already stood at roughly 170 million pounds, and the Revolutionary War, fought from across the ocean, adds another 80 million.