The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History
Page 11
Army commanded by Horatio Gates and supported by Benedict Arnold and Daniel
Morgan. At the opening of the Battle of Saratoga, Burgoyne charged the Americans
twice, on September 19 and October 7, 1777, only to be beaten back with heavy
losses both times. Blocked to the south and without aid from Clinton, Gentleman
John surrendered 6,000 regulars plus various auxiliaries to the Patriot forces
on October 17, 1777.
Trouble in the City of Brotherly Love
Despite the triumph at Saratoga, the news was not all good for the Americans.
Howe took his army by sea and landed on upper Chesapeake Bay, 57 miles outside
of Philadelphia, poised for an assault on that city. On October 4, 1777, Howe
won Philadelphia, the American capital.
But what, really, had the British gained? An entire army, Burgoyne's, was lost.
Howe had paid dearly for the prize he now held. In contrast, the American forces
remained intact, and the rebellion continued. Most important of all, the French
were deeply impressed by the American victory at Saratoga, not the British
capture of Philadelphia.
Viva La France!
As early as 1776, Louis XVI's foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes,
persuaded his king to aid--albeit secretly--the American cause. Prudently,
Vergennes withheld overt military aid until he was confident of the Americans'
prospects for victory. He did not want to risk a losing war with Britain. The
victory at Saratoga, rumors that Britain was going to offer America major
territorial concessions to bring peace, and the extraordinary diplomatic skills
of Benjamin Franklin (whom Congress had installed in Paris as its representative
during this period) finally propelled France openly into the American camp. An
alliance was formally concluded on February 6, 1778, whereby France granted
diplomatic recognition to the "United States of America." Shortly after the
treaty of alliance was signed, Spain, a French ally, also declared war on
Britain.
A Hard Forge
Nations may disagree and fight one another, and they may agree and fight
together, but nature takes no notice in either case. The winter of 1778 visited
great suffering on the Continental Army, which was encamped at Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania. Yet on the cruel, cold anvil of that terrible winter, a stronger
army was forged, in large part through the efforts of Baron von Steuben
(1730-94), a Prussian officer who trained American troops to European standards.
(A number of Europeans played valiant roles as volunteers in the service of the
American Revolution. In addition to Baron von Steuben, these included Johann,
Baron de Kalb [1721-80], a German in the French army, and two Polish patriots,
Tadeusz Kocluszko [1746-1817] and Kasimierz Pulaski [ca. 1747-79]. Most famous
of all was the Marquis de Lafayette [1757-1834], a brilliant commander fiercely
loyal to Washington.) Spring brought Washington new recruits and the promise of
French auxiliary forces, while it brought the British nothing but new pressures.
The Howe brothers, having failed to crush the Revolution, resigned their
commands and returned to England. Sir Henry Clinton assumed principal command in
North America and evacuated his army from Philadelphia (which had proved a prize
of no military value), concentrated his forces at New York City, and dispatched
troops to the Caribbean in anticipation of French action there.
Washington pursued Clinton through New Jersey, fighting him to a stand at
Monmouth Courthouse on June 28, 1778. The result, a draw, was nevertheless a
moral victory for the Continentals, who had stood up to the best soldiers
England could field. If Monmouth was not decisive, it did mark the third year of
a war in which the British could show no results whatsoever.
White War, Red Blood
The American Revolution was really two wars. Along the eastern seaboard, it was
a contest of one army against another. Farther inland, the fighting resembled
that of the French and Indian War. Both sides employed Indian allies, but the
British recruited more of them and used them as agents of terror to raid and
burn outlying settlements. From the earliest days of the war, the royal
lieutenant governor of Detroit, Henry Hamilton, played a key role in stirring
the Indians of the Indiana-Illinois frontier to wage ferocious war on Patriot
settlers. Hamilton's Indian nickname tells the tale: they called him "Hair
Buyer." In 1778, the young George Rogers Clark (1752-1818), a hard-drinking
Kentucky militia leader, overran the British-controlled Illinois and Indiana
region and took "Hair Buyer" prisoner. Even more celebrated in the western war
campaign--albeit less militarily significant--was the intrepid frontiersman
Daniel Boone.
Bloody though the Kentucky frontier was, conditions were even worse on the New
York--Pennsylvania frontier, which was terrorized by the Iroquois. Washington
dispatched Major General John Sullivan into western New York with instructions
to wipe out tribal towns wherever he found them. Nevertheless, the Iroquois
persisted in raiding, as did the tribes throughout the Ohio country. They were
supported and urged on by Loyalist elements in this region, and their combined
activity would not come to an end even with the conclusion of the war. Indeed,
this western frontier would smolder and be rekindled periodically, bursting into
open flame as the War of 1812.
On Southern Fronts
In the lower South, the British found effective Indian allies in the Cherokee,
who, despite suffering early defeats at the hands of the American militia in
1776, continued to raid the frontier. As the war ground on, the British regular
army, which had generally neglected the South following early failures there,
began to shift attention to the region by late 1778. The British reasoned that
the region had a higher percentage of Loyalists than any other part of America
and also offered more of the raw materials--indigo, rice, cotton--valued by the
British.
In December 1778, British forces subdued Georgia, then, during 1779, fought
inconclusively along the Georgia-South Carolina border. A combined French and
American attempt to recapture British-held Savannah was defeated. In February
1780, Sir Henry Clinton arrived in South Carolina from New York with 8,700 fresh
troops and laid siege to Charleston. In a stunning defeat, Charleston was
surrendered on May 12 by American General Benjamin Lincoln, who gave up some
5,000 soldiers as prisoners. Quickly, General Horatio Gates led a force to
Camden in upper South Carolina but was badly defeated on August 16, 1780, by
troops under Lord Cornwallis, whom Clinton, returning to New York, had put in
command of the Southern forces.
With the Tidewater towns in British hands, the Piedmont shouldered the task of
carrying on the resistance. Such legendary guerrilla leaders as the "Swamp Fox"
Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter cost the British dearly. Then, on October 7,
1780, a contingent of Patriot frontiersmen--most from the Watauga settlements in
present-day eastern Tennessee--engaged and destroyed a force of 1,000 Loyalist
troops at the Battle of King's Mountain o
n the border of the Carolinas.
Triumph at Yorktown
Fresh from his seaboard conquests, Cornwallis was now pinned down by frontier
guerrillas. A third American army under Major General Nathanael Greene launched
a series of rapid operations in brilliant coordination with the South Carolina
guerrillas. Dividing his small army, Greene dispatched Brigadier General Daniel
Morgan into western South Carolina, where he decimated the "Tory Legion" of
Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of the Cowpens on January 17,
1781. Breaking free of the guerrillas, Cornwallis pursued Morgan, who linked up
with Greene and the main body of the Southern army. Together, Morgan and Greene
led Cornwallis on a punishing wilderness chase into North Carolina, then fought
him to a draw at Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781.
Cornwallis, effectively neutralized, withdrew to the coast. Greene returned to
South Carolina, where he retook every British-held outpost, except for
Charleston and Savannah. Although the enemy would hold these cities for the rest
of the war, its possession was of negligible military value, because the
occupying garrisons were cut off from the rest of the British forces.
Cornwallis had withdrawn to Virginia, where he joined forces with a raiding unit
led by the most notorious turncoat in American history, Benedict Arnold.
Cornwallis reasoned that Virginia was the key to possession of the South.
Therefore, he established his headquarters at the port of Yorktown. General
Washington combined his Continental troops with the French army of the Comte de
Rochambeau and laid siege to Yorktown on October 6, 1781. Simultaneously, a
French fleet under Admiral de Grasse prevented escape by sea. Seeing the
situation, General Clinton dispatched a British naval squadron from New York to
the Chesapeake, only to be driven off by de Grasse. Washington and Rochambeau
relentlessly bombarded Yorktown. At last, the British general surrendered his
8,000 troops to the allies' 17,000 men on October 19, 1781. As Cornwallis
presented Washington with his sword, the British regimental band played a
popular tune of times. It was called "The World Turned Upside Down."
The Least You Need to Know
George Washington's greatest accomplishments were to hold his armies together
during a long, hard war, to exploit British strategic and tactical blunders
effectively, and to make each British victory extremely costly.
The Revolution did not end in American victory, so much as in the defeat of
England's will to continue to fight.
The Revolution was instantly perceived as a worldwide event--a milestone in the
history of humankind.
Word for the Day
Following the practice of the day, King George III paid foreign mercenary troops
to do much of his fighting in America. The Hessians came from the German
principality of Hesse-Kassel. Although not all of the German mercenaries
employed in the war came from this principality, most of them did. The name was
applied to all the hired soldiers-about 30,000 in all-who fought in most of the
major campaigns, usually answering to British commanders. Some Hessians stayed
here after the war and became American citizens.
Word for the Day
The Tidewater is the traditional name for the coastal South. In colonial times
the Piedmont (literally, "foot of the mountains") was the region just east of
the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Tidewater was the more settled and affluent
region, whereas the Piedmont was the poorer, more sparsely settled frontier
region.
Real Life
Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and served as a
teenager in the French and Indian War. During the Revolution, he handled himself
brilliantly, but became embittered when he was passed over for promotion. When
he served as commander of forces in Philadelphia, Arnold was accused of
overstepping his authority, and he made matters worse by marrying Margaret
Shippen (1779), the daughter of a prominent Loyalist. His new wife, accustomed
to affluence, encouraged Arnold to spend freely, and he was soon buried in debt.
Arnold was the British as a means of gaining promotion and cash. He offered them
a plan to betray the fortifications at West Point, New York, but his treachery
was revealed when British Major John Andre was captured in September 1780
carrying the turncoat's message in his boot. Andre was executed as a spy, but
Arnold escaped to enemy lines and was commissioned a brigadier general in the
British army. In that capacity, he led two expeditions, one that burned
Richmond, Virginia, and another against New London in his native Connecticut.
However, he never received all of the career advancement and fortune the British
has promised. He went to England in 1781, was plagued by a "nervous disease,"
and died in London in 1801.
FROM MANY, ONE (1787-1797)
In This Chapter
Treaty of Paris and the end of the Revolution
Government of territories by the Northwest Ordinance
Creation and ratification of the Constitution
The Bill of Rights
Hamilton vs. Jefferson
For all intents and purposes, the Battle of Yorktown ended the American Revolution. Yet triumph here did not mean total victory for the Americans. Sir Henry Clinton still occupied key cities, and Britain continued to skirmish in this hemisphere with France and Spain. But Yorktown marked the end of Britain's will to fight its colonies, and it put America's treaty negotiators, Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) and John Jay (1745-1829), in a strong bargaining position. They understood that Britain was anxious to pry America free of the French sphere of influence; therefore, they correctly calculated that the British negotiators would be inclined to hammer out generous peace terms. Jay and Franklin obtained not only British recognition of American independence, but also the cession of the vast region from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River as part of the United States.
The treaty also made navigation of the Mississippi free to all signatories (France, Spain, and Holland), restored Florida to Spain and Senegal to France, and granted to the United States valuable fishing rights off Newfoundland. The definitive Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified by the Continental Congress on January 14, 1784.
Rope of Sand
Drafted in 1777 and ratified in 1781, the Articles of Confederation became the first constitution of the United States. As the document was conceived by John Dickinson (1732-1808) in 1776, it provided for a strong national government. But the states clamored for more rights--especially the power of taxation--and Dickinson's document was watered down by revision and amendment. Instead of a nation, the Articles created a "firm league of friendship" among 13 sovereign states. The Articles provided for a permanent national Congress, consisting of two to seven delegates from each state (yet each state was given one vote, regardless of its size or population), but did not establish an executive or judicial branch. Congress was charged with conducting foreign relations, declaring war, making peace, maintaining an army and navy, and so on, yet it was essentially powerless, since it was wholly at the mercy of the states. Congress could issue directives and pass laws, but it could not enforce them. The states either chose to comply or not. Miraculously, the Articles held the states together during the Revolution, but it soon became clear that the Articles had created no union, but what various lawmakers cal
led "a rope of sand."
Northwest Ordinance
Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress enacted at least one momentous piece of legislation. The Northwest Ordinance (July 13, 1787) spelled out how territories and states were to be formed from the western lands won in the Revolution. What was then called the Northwest--the vast region bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and by the Great Lakes--was to be divided into three to five territories. Congress was empowered to appoint a governor, a secretary, and three judges to govern each territory. When the adult male population of a territory reached 5,000, elections would be held to form a territorial legislature and to send a nonvoting representative to Congress. When the territorial adult male population reached 60,000, a territory could write a constitution and apply for statehood. Whereas Britain had refused to make its American colonies full members of a national commonwealth, the Articles ensured that the frontier regions would never be mere colonies of the Tidewater, but equal partners in a common enterprise.
Of equal importance, the Ordinance was the first national stand against slavery. The law prohibited slavery in the territories and also guaranteed in them such basic rights as trial by jury and freedom of religion.
We the People...
Despite the boldness of the Northwest Ordinance, the weakness of Congress under the Articles of Confederation was demonstrated almost daily. For example, the federal government could do nothing to help Massachusetts, which was faced with its own minor insurrection when a farmer named Daniel Shays led an attack on the state judicial system. Nor could the government intervene when Rhode Island issued a mountain of absolutely worthless paper money. In 1786, a convention was held in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss problems of interstate commerce. The delegates soon recognized that these issues were only part of a much larger issue that could be addressed by nothing less than a revision of the Articles. The Annapolis delegates called for a constitutional convention, which met in Philadelphia in May 1787. The task of revision grew into a project of building anew. By the end of May, the delegates agreed that what was required was a genuine national government, not a mere hopeful confederation of states.