The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History
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Forty-three-year-old George Washington, now a prosperous Virginia planter, was accustomed to long odds. He had played them during his militia service in the French and Indian War. Sometimes he had won. Mostly, he had lost. On June 15, 1775, at the suggestion of John Adams of Massachusetts, the Second Continental Congress asked Washington to lead the as-yet nonexistent Continental Army. Washington accepted.
A Thousand Fall Near Bunker Hill
The colonies' new commander set off for New England to lead the Minutemen. Before Washington arrived, however, British General Thomas Gage (who had been reinforced on May 25 by fresh troops from Britain and additional generals, including John Burgoyne, William Howe, and Henry Clinton) offered to call the Revolution quits--no harm, no foul. General Gage would grant an amnesty to everyone except Sam Adams and John Hancock, the two chief troublemakers. In response, the Massachusetts Committee of Public Safety ordered General Artemus Ward to fortify Bunker Hill on Charlestown Heights, overlooking Boston harbor. Ward instead sent Colonel William Prescott with 1,200 men to occupy nearby Breed's Hill, which was lower and more vulnerable. Gage opened up on Breed's Hill with a naval bombardment at dawn on June 17, 1775. Then he launched an amphibious attack with 2,500 men under General Howe. Twice, the superior British force attempted to take the hill, and twice they were repelled. A third assault, with fixed bayonets, succeeded only after the colonials had run out of ammunition. Misnamed for Bunker Hill (the superior position that should have been defended), the battle was a tactical defeat for the colonists, but it was a tremendous psychological victory for them. They had been defeated only because of a shortage of ammunition.
An Olive Branch Breaks and a Declaration Is Written
The Second Continental Congress made its own final attempt to stop the revolution by sending to King George III and Parliament the so-called Olive Branch Petition. Meanwhile, Washington formed the first parade of the Continental Army on Cambridge Common in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1775. In September, Britain contemptuously rejected the Olive Branch Petition. Georgia, final holdout from the Second Continental Congress, joined that assembly and the Revolution. Congress next moved to organize a post office department, a commission for negotiating with Indians, and a navy. By December 1775, Virginia and North Carolina militia defeated the forces of the royal governor of Virginia and destroyed his base at Norfolk.
Common Sense and Confederation
With the rebellion in full swing, it was time to create a feeling of historical purpose to catch up with the rush of events. In January 1776, Thomas Paine, a Philadelphia patriot and orator, anonymously published a modest pamphlet called Common Sense. In brilliant, even melodramatic prose, Paine outlined the reasons for breaking free from England, portraying the American Revolution as a world event, an epoch-making step in the history of humankind.
With the colonies united as never before, the next great document to emerge from the gathering storm was a formal declaration of independence. On July 1, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, one of Virginia's delegates to the Continental Congress, presented a draft proposal for a document asserting that "these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent States." Congress passed the draft document but sent it to a committee for discussion, debate, and amendment. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, who had a fine reputation as a writer, was selected to revise the committee's draft. He ended up wholly rewriting it.
The Declaration of Independence, like Thomas Paine's Common Sense, cast the American struggle for independence in a noble light as a profound gesture "in the course of human events," Inspired by the great English political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Jefferson listed the "inalienable rights" of humankind. These included life and liberty, but where Locke had listed property as the third right, Jefferson specified "the pursuit of happiness." The purpose of government, Jefferson declared, was "to secure these rights," and the authority of government to do so derived "from the consent of the governed." When a government ceased to serve its just purpose, it was the right and duty of "the governed" to withdraw their allegiance. And that is precisely what the colonies had done. Jefferson's document was adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776.
The Least You Need to Know
Unfair taxation, limits on westward settlement, and the involuntary quartering of British soldiers united the colonies in rebellion.
Thomas Paine (Common Sense) and Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence helped elevate a colonial revolution to the status of a momentous world event.
American troops were citizen soldiers, fighting at home and committed to their cause. The British soldiers were a professional army doing a grim job in a distant land.
Real Life
Samuel Adams (1722-1803) inherited a one-third interest in his father's prosperous brewery but lost most of his fortune through mismanagement. If he was not very adept at handling money, Adams was highly skilled at politics; after attending Harvard, he attracted a wide following among members of Boston's many political clubs. Adams was instrumental in creating the most influential and radical of the clubs, the Sons of Liberty. In 1765, Adams organized the protest against the Stamp Act.
Elected to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, Adams served from 1765 to 1774 and composed the great protest documents of the era, including the Circular Letter (1768) against the Townshend Acts. He fanned the flames of resistance and rebellion in the popular press, and after 1770, was chief architect of intercolonial "committees of correspondence," which coordinated the developing revolution. Adams was a prime mover behind the Boston Tea Party of 1773.
A principal member of the First Continental Congress, Samuel Adams participated in drafting the 1781 Articles of Confederation, preecursor of the Constitution.
Main Event
First to die in the cause of American liberty was the leader of the Boston mob, Crispus Attucks (born about 1723). He was almost certainly a black man, perhaps of partly Indian descent.
Stats
The protesters dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The cargo was valued at £9,000--a tremendous amount of money in a day when a man earning E100 a year was considered moderately wealthy.
Voice from the Past
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, / Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, / Here once the embattled farmers stood, / And fired the shot heard round the world."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836"
Stats
Of the 2,500 British troops engaged at Bunker Hill, 1,000 perished, a devastating casualty rate of 42 percent--the heaviest loss the British would suffer during the long war.
Voice from the Past
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered."--Common Sense
THE FIRES OF LIBERTY (1776-1783)
In This Chapter
Articles of confederation
Early Patriot triumphs and losses
Victory at Saratoga
Surrender of Cornwallis
Great though it is, the Declaration of Independence, a human document, is
imperfect. It failed to deal with the issue of slavery (Jefferson's fellow
southerners. struck the references he had included), and it failed to specify
just how the separate colonies, each with its own government and identity, could
unite in a single government. Throughout the early years of the Revolution, the
Continental Congress struggled with this issue and finally produced, in November
1777, the Articles of Confederation.
A timid document, the Articles gave the individual states--not the federal
government--most of the power, including the authority to levy taxes; after all,
"taxation without representation" had triggered the
rupture with England.
Eventually, the Articles would be scrapped in favor of a brand-new, much bolder
Constitution. But the earlier document, the product of agonizing debate, would
hold the nation together through a Revolutionary War that, like most wars, went
on much longer than either side had any reason to expect.
The Longest Odds
While the framers of the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia did battle
with words and ideas, soldiers in the field fought with powder and lead.
Politician and militiaman alike were well aware that, if King George earnestly
willed it, if he sent to America everything lie had, the colonies would, in all
likelihood, be defeated. But during the early years of the war, Britain was
surprisingly slow to take the offensive.
Siege of Boston
Most of the "Lobsterbacks" (as the colonials called the red-coated British
troops) were bottled up in Boston, to which Washington's forces laid siege. Try
as they might, the British were unable to break out of their entrenchments.
Then, when Washington arrayed his artillery on Dorchester Heights, British
commanders gave the order to evacuate by sea in March 1776, reestablishing their
headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Down South
While His Majesty's forces were being humiliated in New England, Sir Henry
Clinton sailed with his troops along the southern coast. His purpose was to
rally property-rich Loyalists against the upstart, ragtag rabble of the newly
established "American" governments in the Carolinas and Georgia. As he prepared
to disembark at Cape Fear, North Carolina, Clinton received news that a Loyalist
uprising had been squelched by Patriot forces at the Battle of Moore's Creek
Bridge near Wilmington, North Carolina, on February 27, 1776, Clinton pressed
southward, reaching Charleston Harbor. Seeking to establish a base for Loyalist
resistance, Clinton bombarded Charleston's harbor fortifications, but Patriot
forces drove off the British by June 28, 1776. It was a valuable triumph, which
stalled British activity in the South for more than two years.
A Pale Flush of Victory
The first 12 months of the war had gone far better than any self-respecting
oddsmaker would have predicted. The British had been forced out of New England
and the South. However, a key American hope had also been dashed. The Patriots
had tried to persuade the French citizens of Quebec to make common cause with
them against the British. American strategists understood that, as long as the
British conducted the war from far-off London, the Patriot cause would enjoy a
great advantage. However, if the British should begin to use nearby Canada as
the staging area for an invasion of the colonies, that advantage would
evaporate. Unfortunately, the French Canadians were unwilling to initiate any
action themselves. But, fortified by successes in defending against the British
in New England and the South, the Americans decided to take the offensive.
An army under General Richard Montgomery marched from upper New York and
captured Montreal on November 10, 1775. Simultaneously, troops commanded by
Colonel Benedict Arnold advanced through the wilderness of Maine to unite with
Montgomery's units in an attack on the walled city of Quebec. The invaders were
beaten back, and Montgomery was killed on December 30. American forces
maintained a blockade of the Canadian capital through May 1776, but the
offensive in Canada had petered out, and Americans would stay out of the region
for the rest of the war.
The British Lion Roars
There was worse, much worse, to come.
Beginning in the summer of 1776, British forces wrested the initiative from the
Americans. British general Guy Carleton, the very able governor of Quebec, was
ordered to chase the Americans out of Canada and down through the region of Lake
Champlain and the Hudson River. This action would sever the far northern tier of
colonies from the southern. Simultaneously, a much larger army led by General
William Howe (who had replaced Gage as supreme commander of Britain's North
American forces) was assigned to capture New York City and its strategically
vital harbor.
Carleton succeeded handily in driving the remaining Americans out of Canada,
but, plagued by supply problems and the approach of winter, was unable to pursue
them back below the border. This setback, however, did not stop Howe, who hurled
against New York City the largest single force the British would ever field in
the Revolution: 32,000 troops, 400 transports, 73 warships (commanded by his
vice-admiral brother, Richard Howe, with whom he shared the American supreme
command), It was all too apparent to General Washington that, militarily, the
situation in New York was hopeless. In the course of the war, the American
commander would prove highly skilled at the art of the strategic withdrawal,
pulling back in a manner that cost the attacker and yet left his own forces
intact to fight another day. This is precisely what he wanted to do in the case
of New York, but Congress, fearing that the loss of a major city would dispirit
Patriots throughout the colonies, ordered him to defend the position. Washington
met with defeat on Long Island on August 27, 1776.
If Washington and the Continental Congress had weighed the odds more soberly,
perhaps they would have raised the white flag. But Washington did not surrender.
Instead, he fought a series of brilliant rearguard actions against Howe on
Manhattan Island, which cost the British time, money, and energy. It took Howe
from August to November to clear Washington's forces from New York City and its
environs. Then, instead of moving inland via the Hudson, Howe simply pushed
Washington across New Jersey. If he had hoped to corner and fight the
Continental Army to a standstill, Howe was mistaken. The Americans escaped
across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania on December 7, 1776.
Recrossing the Delaware
"These are the times that try men's souls," Thomas Paine had written just two
years earlier. The present times transformed Washington's men into a determined
and disciplined army, even in the depths of the war's first vicious winter.
Washington, as General Howe saw the situation, was defeated, crushed. Certainly,
he had no business striking back, especially not in this inclement season. Howe
was a competent European general. In Europe, the proper times of year for
fighting were spring, summer, and fall. In Europe, armies did not fight in
winter. But Washington understood: This was not Europe. Collecting his scattered
regulars and militiamen, General Washington reorganized his army and led it back
across the Delaware River, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
On December 26, 1776, Washington surprised and overran a garrison of Hessian
mercenaries at Trenton, New Jersey, then went on to an even bigger victory at
Princeton on January 3, 1777. The triumphs were a sharp slap in General Howe's
face. Fortified by these miraculous victories, Congress rejected the peace terms
the Howe brothers, in their capacity as peace commissioners, proposed. The fight
for independence would continue.
Saratoga Morning
Wearily, the British laid out plans for a new assault on the northern colonies.
Major General Burgoyne was in charge of Britain's Canadian-based army, but he
and Howe failed to work out a plan for coordinating their two forces. Burgoyne
led his army down the customary Lake Champlain-Hudson River route, while Howe
was stalled by indecision. Finally, he decided not to support Burgoyne's
offensive but to leave a garrison under Sir Henry Clinton in New York City and
to transport the bulk of his army by sea to attack Philadelphia. It was a fatal
blunder.
Burgoyne's operation began promisingly, as the American Northern army, suffering
from lack of supply and disputes among its own commanders, fell back before the
British advance. Burgoyne, popularly known as "Gentleman John," was so confident
of victory that he invited officers to bring wives and mistresses on the
campaign. He staged sumptuous dinner parties for all engaged in the grand
enterprise of teaching the rebels a lesson they would never forget. At his
arrogant leisure, Burgoyne advanced on and recaptured Fort Ticonderoga on July
5, 1777, but he moved at such an unhurried pace that American forces had plenty
of time to regroup for guerrilla combat in the wilderness of upstate New York.
The Americans destroyed roads, cut lines of communication and supply, and
generally harassed Burgoyne's columns. At Bemis Heights, on the west bank of the
Hudson River, he was met by the revitalized Northern forces of the Continental