The American Revolution

481 Pages·2007·15.13 MB·English

by  David F. Burg

E Y E W I T N E S S H I S TO RY

The American
Revolution
Updated Edition
David F. Burg
In memory of Richard William Burg
and Rollin Henry Rendlesham
The American Revolution, Updated Edition
Copyright © 2007, 2001 by David F. Burg
Maps on pages 427–439, copyright © 2007, 2001 by Infobase Publishing
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burg, David F.
The American Revolution / David F. Burg—Updated ed.
p. cm.—(Eyewitness history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-10: 0-8160-6482-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6482-3 (alk. paper)
1. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Personal narratives. 2. United States—
History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Sources. I. Title.
E275.A2B87 2007
973.3—dc22 2006033096
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Text design by Joan M. McEvoy
Cover design by Cathy Rincon
Maps by Sholto Ainslie
Printed in the United States of America
VB JM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments iv
Preface v
Preface to the Updated Edition vii
Introduction viii
1. Prelude to Revolt: 1756–1774 1
2. Shots Heard Round the World: 1775 65
3. Declaring Independence: 1776 113
4. Victories and Losses: 1777 169
5. From Valley Forge to Vincennes: 1778 213
6. A Great Sea Battle: 1779 252
7. Defeat and Treachery: 1780 289
8. An Improbable Triumph: 1781 317
9. An Unpromising Outcome: 1782–1783 349
Appendix A: Documents 369
Appendix B: Biographies of Major Personalities 395
Appendix C: Maps 426
Notes 440
Bibliography 445
Index 453
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The plethora of materials available on the era of the American Revolution forces
a certain happy dependence on the work of many others in preparing a book
such as this one, and so I would like to offer a broad thanks to the historians
of the era. I wish to thank the University of Kentucky Libraries and also the J.
Douglas Gay, Jr., Library at Transylvania University for the use of their collec-
tions and facilities. My special thanks to Robert W. Kenny, Jr., military researcher,
and Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at
Brown University Library, for their kind help in providing photographs and
illustrations. For their assistance with photographs, I also thank the staffs of the
Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration
and Martha King of the National Gallery of Canada. And I thank as well Gary
Berton, president of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association Museum,
for permission to quote from Paine’s works. Finally, once more, I thank my wife,
Helen Rendlesham Burg, for her patience and support and her friendly ear.
iv
P
REFACE
As we know to our discomfort, we live in a time when ignorance of the past is
widespread in the United States. Recent studies indicate that even graduates of
top-tier colleges and universities cannot accurately answer even the most rudi-
mentary questions about American history, let alone the history of Europe or
other continents. In fairness, perhaps it has always been the case that Americans
by preference tend to focus most intently on the present and the future and
that the Internet and other recent technologies, augmented by extensive televi-
sion viewing, have merely increased this tendency and promoted the view that
the past is irrelevant. Perhaps even, without acknowledging it, we accept the
validity of Henry Ford’s judgment: “History is bunk.” And perhaps much of his-
tory—or, rather, much of historiography, at least—is bunk. If it seems so, then the
fault probably lies largely with historians for presenting the past as indigestible
food—narrowly conceived, pedantically presented, tiresomely written, insuf-
ficiently seasoned.
The Eyewitness History series, I like to think, provides one of the better anti-
dotes to this mistaken view of history and our ignoring of the past. Admittedly, a
book in this series lacks the visual and aural impact of television and film, but it
can certainly offer plenty of plot, personal experience, compelling characters, and
engaging action. The book’s large canvas—constructed of narrative, chronicle,
quotation, and biography—appeals to the eye, the mind, and the imagination.
The viewer can enter the canvas at whatever point seems most attractive and can
reenter repeatedly, finding something new on each visit. Through this process, or
so we hope, the viewer will be inspired to go beyond the canvas, desiring to learn
more about some event, person, or statement and therefore seeking out added
information with the help of the book’s bibliography.
The reader should of course keep in mind that this book affords only an
overview of the American Revolution. To experience the full story, you must
search out other books. The most exhaustive study I am familiar with on the
subject is Mark Mayo Boatner III’s Encyclopedia of the American Revolution—a
1,251-page tome that is indispensable to the historian but likely forbidding to
the student or general reader. Perhaps the most inclusive narrative history is Page
Smith’s very engaging A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American
Revolution, published for the 1976 bicentennial, although its two volumes total-
ing 1,838 pages (not including the index) may exceed many readers’ interest in
the subject. Even Robert Middlekauff’s outstanding and highly readable The
Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 comprises 687 pages, but it
serves the reader well. These three works should at least suggest to the inquir-
ing reader that solid individual histories and ample material exist to reward any
v
vi The American Revolution
search. And with the experience of reading this Eyewitness History as a starting
point, you can pursue these other sources knowledgeably.
Many teachers, myself included, like to believe that students should regard
knowledge as its own reward. Certainly the acquisition of knowledge through
books should provide an enduring reward that can be recalled with pleasure,
satisfaction, and insight in future years. For that to occur, however, the reader
must bring to the reading an attitude of engagement, interaction, imagination,
and inquiry. As that great sage Ralph Waldo Emerson declared in “The American
Scholar,” “One must be an inventor to read well.” Books are meant to inspire, he
said, when well used, but using them well requires “creative reading.” To learn
from books, then, is to invent, to create, and to grow. Creative reading is an active
sport that strength-trains the mind. The trophy for creatively reading history is
increased understanding of the past as a continuing event that creates the con-
text for your own life today. You cannot hope to understand the influences that
created that context that created you and that frame the events of your contem-
porary world without some solid understanding of past events. You cannot truly
know who you are, and hence you cannot grow, without a knowledge of history.
Cicero, the renowned Roman orator, philosopher, and defender of the Republic,
stated this truth well: “Not to know what has been transacted in former times is
to be always a child.” Read history, then, or risk stunting your growth.
P
REFACE TO THE
U E
PDATED DITION
This enhanced and updated edition features much new material. All of the nar-
rative sections have been expanded, with inclusion of extended discussion of the
arts and new entries concerning the roles of American Indians, blacks, Jews, and
women in the Revolution. More than two-dozen pages of extracts from personal
journals kept by junior officers, soldiers, and noncombatants have been added
to the Eyewitness Testimony sections of every chapter. The biographical section
includes a dozen additional entries. Fifteen new illustrations appear throughout
the work. More than 40 new titles may be found in the bibliography.
The first chapter on the years 1756–74 contains additional information on
the population of the colonies and on such cultural figures as Phillis Wheatley,
John Trumbull, and Charles Wilson Peale, as well as added material on archi-
tecture, theater, and music. In chapter 2 (1775) appears an augmented discus-
sion of George Washington’s assumption of command as well as added material
on both slaves and smallpox. An analysis of the inherent conflict between the
American system of slavery and the revolutionaries’ quest for liberty casts some
new light on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence central to the
third chapter’s content on the year 1776. Chapter 4 (1777) contains added infor-
mation on women’s contributions to the war effort. A new discussion in chapter
5 (1778) focuses on difficulties in providing supplies for both men and horses
and on the role theater played during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, which
reveals some insights into both Washington and his soldiers during that crisis.
Additional discussion of both the struggles of American Indians and the roles
of blacks and women fleshes out the sixth chapter (1779). In chapter 7 (1780),
there is additional information on Sir Henry Clinton’s expedition to and siege
of Charleston and on Benedict Arnold’s treason. Chapter 8 (1781) contains an
expanded description of the British surrender at Yorktown and a discussion of
the roles Robert Morris and Haym Salomon played in Continental finances.
The final chapter covering the years 1782–83 provides more information on the
experiences of women and blacks as well as a look at the fate of rebel veterans
upon their return home from war. This new edition also contains a section of
notes and several additional maps.
vii
I
NTRODUCTION
Even at the time, the advent of the War of the American Revolution in April 1775
may have seemed almost accidental. If the American Patriots had been allowed to
disperse peacefully at Lexington Green, as they appeared to be doing, and no blood
had been spilled on that grassy site, reconciliation between the colonists and the
“mother country” would at least have remained a possibility. But the bloodshed
there generated the resistance at Concord Bridge, where outraged minutemen
“fired the shot heard round the world,” and as the British troops fell back toward
Boston, beleaguered by Patriot snipers, news of the slaughter at Lexington spread
throughout Massachusetts and to the colonies beyond—time, chance, and death
forced the turning of a historic corner. The battles at Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill,
where the British eventually won but after suffering unexpected and demoralizing
losses, confirmed that the distance could not be retraced nor the hostility retracted.
As some already perceived at that moment, unless soundly defeated and subjugated,
the American colonies were destined for independence from Great Britain.
Others on both sides of the Atlantic sustained the hope that a reconciliation
could still be effected. But if the war already proceeding in North America was
not yet in itself irreversible, then the unrelenting policies of King George III and
his government, headed by Lord North, sealed the ultimate fate of the conflict.
Their adamant insistence, against the entreaties of the Whig opposition, that the
Americans must, in effect, bow to the will of Parliament ensured continuing
American resistance. Aroused delegates to the Second Continental Congress
that convened in Philadelphia a few weeks following Lexington and Concord
made two fateful decisions—assuming control of the Patriot army and choosing
George Washington as the army’s commander in chief. Although driven from the
heights around Boston, the new Continental army under Washington effectively
surrounded the city, bottling up the British army that had come under the com-
mand of Gen. William Howe. The Patriots expanded the war effort by launching
a daring but unsuccessful expedition into Canada.
Entering 1776, American artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga rendered
the British occupation of Boston untenable, and Howe withdrew from the city.
Washington moved the Continental army to New York City, intent on engag-
ing the British there. The impetus toward independence came to dominate the
deliberations of the Continental Congress, and on July 4, 1776, the delegates
approved a final draft of the Declaration of Independence, largely the work
of Thomas Jefferson. The engagement in New York City that Washington had
anticipated occurred in October but proved disastrous for the American cause,
and by the end of the year, the British held control of the city and most of New
Jersey. Tempted by despair, the Patriots revived their hopes after Washington
viii
Introduction ix
crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night and achieved a stunning victory
at Trenton.
Washington followed up with a victory at Princeton in January 1777 and
then pushed the British out of most of New Jersey before sequestering the
Continental army in winter quarters at Morristown. Adopting a new strategy, the
British government sent an expeditionary force under Gen. John Burgoyne to
Quebec with orders to march southward and drive the Patriots from upper New
York, to secure Albany, and to help sever the northern and New England colonies
from the middle and southern colonies. Howe’s army sailed out of New York
Harbor to invade the Chesapeake Bay. After inconclusive battles at Germantown
and Brandywine, he captured Philadelphia, forcing the Continental Congress to
withdraw to York (where the delegates adopted the Articles of Confederation)
and then to Lancaster. Although Burgoyne recaptured Ticonderoga and other
sites, fortunately for the American cause Horatio Gates’s army soundly defeated
him at Saratoga and forced the surrender of his army—a victory that decided
the French government to officially recognize the United States. With his army
exhausted, Washington moved into winter headquarters at Valley Forge.
In February 1778, the French signed treaties of alliance and commerce
with the United States, signaling their entry into the war on the American side.
Changing tactics again, the British government replaced Howe with Gen. Sir
Henry Clinton and determined to focus on the South, where the Loyalists were
believed to be in the majority. Concerned over French involvement, the North
ministry in London also dispatched the Carlisle Commission to North America
to negotiate a reconciliation—a doomed effort, as the Americans insisted on
independence. As Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and moved his troops over-
land toward New York City, Washington led his army, reorganized and retrained
with the help of a Prussian general, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, into battle
at Monmouth Court House, New Jersey. The battle ended indecisively, but
the British force was nearly decimated before retreating to New York City. On
the western frontier, George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and
Vincennes from the British. The year ended with the British pushing their south-
ern strategy, as General Augustine Prévost captured Savannah.
As the war in the North stagnated in 1779, the British rampaged in the South,
capturing Augusta and other sites in Georgia, attacking Portsmouth and Norfolk in
Virginia, and advancing on Charleston in South Carolina. Although an American
army under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln laid siege to Savannah, the effort aborted
when the assisting French fleet and troops commanded by Adm. Comte Charles
d’Estaing sailed off. Clinton did dispatch troops to capture West Point, New York,
but Gen. Anthony Wayne’s astonishing victory at Stony Point stymied the effort,
and Clinton’s troops simply returned to hunkering down in New York City. In
addition, Washington sent Gen. John Sullivan on a punitive expedition against the
Six Nations that left the Iroquois devastated. Certainly the most enthralling story of
the year occurred in September, when John Paul Jones’s Bonhomme Richard engaged
the British ship Serapis in ferocious battle to win a stunning victory.
The year 1780 opened with a mutiny among Washington’s hungry, poorly
clothed, and unpaid troops in winter quarters at Morristown, but fighting in
the North effectively ceased, except for periodic skirmishes. Although Comte
de Rochambeau landed safely with 6,000 French troops at Newport, Rhode
Island, Washington’s army was too weakened to join the French in a campaign.