Nation of Nations Concise 2/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, & Stoff
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The Battle of Bunker Hill deepened hostility toward Britain. Yet it remained unclear whether most Americans favored independence. And would those Americans who did want independence be willing to fight for it?

The Decision for Independence

When the Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia in the spring of 1775, many moderate and conservative delegates clung to the hope of a settlement with Britain. Radicals who favored independence moved cautiously. Even as Congress approved the creation of the Continental Army, it dispatched the "Olive Branch Petition" declaring loyalty to George III. The harsh British response to that overture withered the cause of compromise within the colonies, opening the way for Congress's adoption of the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776.

In the first part of the Declaration, Jefferson set forth a general justification of revolution. He invoked the "self-evident truths" of human equality and "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The second and longer section denied England any authority in the colonies and blamed George III for a "long train of abuses and usurpation."

Despite an increasing base of support, rebel leaders still recognized that a substantial minority of colonials remained loyal to the king and Parliament. Loyalism was especially strong in those places where violent controversies over sectional grievances or land tenure had raged during the decades before 1776. The loyalists' deepest fear was that the break from Britain would plunge America into anarchy or civil war.

The Fighting in the North

British troops under General William Howe prepared to wage a conventional war in America, by capturing cities and luring the main American force into a decisive battle. As George Washington took command of the Continental Army outside of Boston, he faced daunting odds. The British army was a seasoned professional fighting force, while the Continentals lacked both numbers and military discipline. Indeed, Americans prized "citizen-solder" short-term militias over a permanent, regular "standing Army." So Washington had to design a defensive, hit-and-run strategy to offset the weakness of his force.

In 1776 the British evacuated Boston, took New York City, and drove the Continentals into a retreat through New York and New Jersey. But as winter set in, Washington recouped some credibility at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Many civilians in that region, alienated by the British army's harsh treatment, switched to the rebel cause. In the summer campaign of 1777, Howe's army took Philadelphia, but British forces under John Burgoyne suffered a disastrous defeat at Saratoga, New York.

The Turning Point

The victory at Saratoga marked a turning point. In 1778, France openly allied with American rebels, and shortly thereafter, Spain joined France. What had been a colonial rebellion had now widened into a European war, forcing the British to disperse their army to fend off challenges all over the world.

So British forces pulled back from Philadelphia to New York City, barely escaping disaster at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in June 1778. The previous winter had been a harrowing one for the Continentals at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but they broke camp with a newly instilled training and discipline that showed at Monmouth. But thereafter, with the king's troops holed up in New York City, the morale of Washington's Continentals began to fray, occasionally leading to mutinies. Since the end of 1776, the Continental rank-and-file had been drawn from the most propertyless and desperate Americans; Congress found it easy to neglect their needs.

Though fierce skirmishes continued on the Ohio and New York frontiers, most northerners were free of fighting for the rest of the conflict. Yet men and women alike continued to feel the impact of the war.

The Struggle in the South

The British now turned to a southern strategy, expecting support from those loyal to the crown. They easily captured Savannah, Georgia, and, after a long siege, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. But though loyalists were numerous in the Georgia and Carolina backcountry, they met determined resistance from rebel irregulars led by men like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter.

As a vicious, partisan war seared the backcountry, the Continentals, after a humiliating defeat at Camden, South Carolina, secured an important victory at Cowpens. Soon after, they forced exhausted British troops under Lord Cornwallis to give up their pursuit of the rebel army at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.

Nathanael Greene, in command of the Continental Army in the South, proved an ingenious strategist. His support for the rebel partisans and his careful treatment of a civilian population disenchanted by Cornwallis's marauding army frustrated British efforts to take the Carolinas. The British, fearful of estranging whites, had chosen not to mobilize one large group of southerners who might have fought with them to win liberty-African American slaves. Instead, blacks were recruited, eventually and reluctantly, for the Continental Army.

The World Turned Upside Down

Cornwallis made a bid for victory at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. But he found himself outflanked by the Continentals, their ranks swelled by militia, French regulars, and the French navy. With the tide of war in Europe turning against them as well, the British decided to cut their losses in America and agreed to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The pact granted not only independence, but a generous boundary settlement as well. As Cornwallis' humiliating surrender showed, Americans had, indeed, been willing to fight for independence, but always on their own terms.

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