- US History: Road to Revolution Posted on June 11, 2013 by cccurry Today students created an annotated timeline of key events leading up to the American Revolution.
- SSUSH4 The student will identify the ideological, military, and diplomatic aspects of the American Revolution. Analyze George Washington as a military leader; include the creation of a professional military and the life of a common soldier, and describe the significance of the crossing of the Delaware River and Valley Forge.
- Concept 4: American Revolution (Events) Standard: SSUSH4 The student will identify the ideological, military, and diplomatic aspects of the American Revolution b. Explain the reason for and significance of the French alliance and foreign assistance and the roles of Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Meanwhile, the Americans at Valley Forge survived a hungry winter, which was made worse by quartermaster and commissary mismanagement, graft of contractors, and unwillingness of farmers to sell produce for paper money. Order and discipline among the troops were improved by the arrival of the Freiherr von (baron of) Steuben, a Prussian officer in the service of France. Steuben instituted a training program in which he emphasized drilling by officers, marching in column, and using firearms more effectively.
Ssush4: American Revolution Us History Definition
The program paid off at Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, on June 28, 1778, when Washington attacked the British, who were withdrawing from Philadelphia to New York. Although Sir Henry Clinton, who had replaced Howe, struck back hard, the Americans stood their ground. Thereafter (except in the winter of 1779, which was spent at Morristown) Washington made his headquarters at West Point on the Hudson, and Clinton avowed himself too weak to attack him there.
During the American Revolution, the overmatched colonists found a leader in George Washington and badly-needed French assistance after the Battle of Saratoga. When the war ended, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 brought independence and the formation of the United States. This unit covers content from the Spanish American War through World War 1. Specific curricular resources include close reading activities on the Spanish American War, the Roosevelt Corollary, and Schenck v. Additionally, there is a graphic organizer that supports students in examining the causes and effects of US participation.
French aid now materialized with the appearance of a strong fleet under the comte d’Estaing. Unable to enter New York harbour, d’Estaing tried to assist Maj. Gen. John Sullivan in dislodging the British from Newport, Rhode Island. Storms and British reinforcements thwarted the joint effort.
Setbacks in the North
Action in the North was largely a stalemate for the rest of the war. The British raided New Bedford, Massachusetts, and New Haven and New London, Connecticut, while loyalists and Indians attacked settlements in New York and Pennsylvania. The Americans under “Mad” Anthony Wayne stormed Stony Point, New York, on July 16, 1779, and “Light-Horse Harry” Lee took Paulus Hook, New Jersey, on August 19. More lasting in effect was Sullivan’s expedition of August 1779 against Britain’sIndian allies in New York, particularly the destruction of their villages and fields of corn. Farther west, Col. George Rogers Clark campaigned against British posts on the northwest frontier. With a company of volunteers, Clark captured Kaskaskia, the chief post in the Illinois country, on July 4, 1778, and later secured the submission of Vincennes. The latter was recaptured by Gen. Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, but, in the spring of 1779, Clark raised another force and retook Vincennes from Hamilton. That expedition did much to free the frontier from Indian raids, gave the Americans a hold upon the northwest, and encouraged expansion into the Ohio valley.
Potentially serious blows to the American cause were Arnold’s defection in 1780 and the army mutinies of 1780 and 1781. Arnold’s attempt to betray West Point to the British miscarried, and his British contact, Maj. John André, was captured by the Americans and hanged as a spy. Mutinies were sparked by misunderstandings over terms of enlistment, poor food and clothing, gross arrears of pay, and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar. Suppressed by force or negotiation, the mutinies shook the morale of the army.
Final campaigns in the South and the surrender of Cornwallis
British strategy from 1778 called for offensives that were designed to take advantage of the flexibility of sea power and the loyalistsentiment of many of the people. British forces from New York and St. Augustine, Florida, occupied Georgia by the end of January 1779. Gen. Augustine Prevost, who had commanded in Florida, made Savannah his headquarters and defended that city in the fall against d’Estaing and a Franco-American army. Hrabia (count) Kazimierz Pułaski, a Polish officer who was serving on the American side, was mortally wounded in an unsuccessful assault on Savannah on October 9, 1779.
Having failed to achieve any decisive advantage in the North in 1779, Clinton headed a combined military and naval expedition southward. He evacuated Newport on October 25, left New York under the command of German Gen. Wilhelm, Freiherr von Knyphausen, and in December sailed with some 8,500 men to join Prevost in Savannah. Cornwallis accompanied him, and later Lord Rawdon joined him with an additional force. Marching on Charleston, Clinton cut off the city from relief and, after a brief siege, compelled Gen. Benjamin Lincoln to surrender on May 12, 1780. The loss of Charleston and the 5,000 troops of its garrison—virtually the entire Continental Army in the South—was a serious blow to the American cause. Learning that Newport was threatened by a French expeditionary force under the comte de Rochambeau, Clinton returned to New York in June, leaving Cornwallis at Charleston.
Cornwallis, however, took the offensive. On August 16 he shattered General Gates’s army at Camden, South Carolina, and German Continental Army officer Johann Kalb was mortally wounded in the fighting. The destruction of a force of loyalists at Kings Mountain on October 7 led Cornwallis to move against the new American commander, Gen. Nathanael Greene. When Greene put part of his force under Gen. Daniel Morgan, Cornwallis sent his cavalry leader, Col. Banastre Tarleton, after Morgan. At Cowpens on January 17, 1781, Morgan destroyed practically all of Tarleton’s column. Subsequently, on March 15, Greene and Cornwallis fought at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. Cornwallis won but suffered heavy casualties. After withdrawing to Wilmington, he marched into Virginia to join British forces sent there by Clinton.
Greene then moved back to South Carolina, where he was defeated by Rawdon at Hobkirk’s Hill on April 25 and at Ninety Six in June and by Lieut. Col. Alexander Stewart at Eutaw Springs on September 8. In spite of that, the British—harassed by partisan leaders such as Francis Marion (whose guerrilla tactics earned him the nickname “the Swamp Fox”), Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens—soon retired to the coast and remained locked up in Charleston and Savannah.
Meanwhile, Cornwallis entered Virginia, reaching Petersburg on May 20, 1781. Sending Tarleton on raids across the colony, the British asserted a sphere of control as far north as Fredericksburg and west to Charlottesville. There Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of Virginia, barely escaped capture by Tarleton’s men. Cornwallis started to build a base at Yorktown, at the same time fending off American forces under Wayne, Steuben, and the marquis de Lafayette.
Learning that the comte de Grasse had arrived in the Chesapeake with a large fleet and 3,000 French troops, Washington and Rochambeau moved south to Virginia. By mid-September the Franco-American forces had placed Yorktown under siege, and British rescue efforts proved fruitless. Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on October 19. Thus, for the second time during the war, the British had lost an entire army.
Thereafter, land action in America died out, though the war persisted in other theatres and on the high seas. Eventually Clinton was replaced by Sir Guy Carleton. While the peace treaties were under consideration and afterward, Carleton evacuated thousands of loyalists from America, including many from Savannah on July 11, 1782, and others from Charleston on December 14. The last British forces finally left New York on November 25, 1783. Washington then reentered the city in triumph.
American Revolution- Land campaigns to 1778
- Land campaigns from 1778
- The war at sea
On July 3 Washington assumed command of the American forces at Cambridge. Not only did he have to contain the British in Boston, but he also had to recruit a Continental army. During the winter of 1775–76 recruitment lagged so badly that fresh drafts of militia were called up to help maintain the siege. The balance shifted in late winter, when Gen. Henry Knox arrived with artillery from Fort Ticonderoga in New York. The British fort, which occupied a strategic point between Lake George and Lake Champlain, had been surprised and taken on May 10, 1775, by the Green Mountain Boys, a Vermont militia group under the command of Col. Ethan Allen. The cannons from Ticonderoga were mounted on Dorchester Heights, above Boston. The guns forced Howe, who had replaced Gage in command in October 1775, to evacuate the city on March 17, 1776. Howe then repaired to Halifax to prepare for an invasion of New York, and Washington moved units southward for its defense.
Meanwhile, action flared in the North. In the fall of 1775 the Americans invaded Canada. One force under Gen. Richard Montgomery captured Montreal on November 13. Another under Benedict Arnold made a remarkable march through the Maine wilderness to Quebec. Unable to take the city, Arnold was joined by Montgomery, many of whose troops had gone home because their enlistments had expired. An attack on the city on the last day of the year failed, Montgomery was killed, and many troops were captured. The Americans maintained a siege of the city but withdrew with the arrival of British reinforcements in the spring. Pursued by the British and decimated by smallpox, the Americans fell back to Ticonderoga. British Gen. Guy Carleton’s hopes of moving quickly down Lake Champlain, however, were frustrated by Arnold’s construction of a fighting fleet. Forced to build one of his own, Carleton destroyed most of the American fleet in October 1776 but considered the season too advanced to bring Ticonderoga under siege.
As the Americans suffered defeat in Canada, so did the British in the South. North Carolina patriots trounced a body of loyalists at Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. Charleston, South Carolina, was successfully defended against a British assault by sea in June.
The battle for New York
Having made up its mind to crush the rebellion, the British government sent General Howe and his brother, Richard, Admiral Lord Howe, with a large fleet and 34,000 British and German troops to New York. It also gave the Howes a commission to treat with the Americans. The British force sailed on June 10, 1776, from Halifax to New York and on July 5 encamped on Staten Island. The Continental Congress, which had proclaimed the independence of the colonies, at first thought that the Howes were empowered to negotiate peace terms but discovered that they were authorized only to accept submission and assure pardons.
Their peace efforts getting nowhere, the Howes turned to force. Washington, who had anticipated British designs, had already marched from Boston to New York and fortified the city, but his position was far from ideal. His left flank was thrown across the East River, beyond the village of Brooklyn, while the remainder of his lines fronted the Hudson River, making them open to a combined naval and ground attack. The position was untenable since the British absolutely dominated the waters about Manhattan. Howe drove Washington out of New York and forced the abandonment of the whole of Manhattan Island by employing three well-directed movements upon the American left. On August 22, 1776, under his brother’s guns, General Howe crossed the narrows to the Long Island shore with 15,000 troops, increasing the number to 20,000 on the 25th. He then scored a smashing victory on August 27, driving the Americans into their Brooklyn works and inflicting a loss of about 1,400 men. Washington skillfully evacuated his army from Brooklyn to Manhattan that night under cover of a fog.
On September 15 Howe followed up his victory by invading Manhattan. Though checked at Harlem Heights the next day, he drew Washington off the island in October by a move to Throg’s Neck and then to New Rochelle, northeast of the city. Leaving garrisons at Fort Washington on Manhattan and at Fort Lee on the opposite shore of the Hudson River, Washington hastened to block Howe. The British commander, however, defeated him on October 28 at Chatterton Hill near White Plains. Howe slipped between the American army and Fort Washington and stormed the fort on November 16, seizing guns, supplies, and nearly 3,000 prisoners. British forces under Lord Cornwallis then took Fort Lee and on November 24 started to drive the American army across New Jersey. Though Washington escaped to the west bank of the Delaware River, his army nearly disappeared. Howe then put his army into winter quarters, with outposts at towns such as Bordentown and Trenton.
On Christmas night Washington struck back with a brilliant riposte. Crossing the ice-strewn Delaware with 2,400 men, he fell upon the Hessian garrison at Trenton at dawn and took nearly 1,000 prisoners. Though almost trapped by Cornwallis, who recovered Trenton on January 2, 1777, Washington made a skillful escape during the night, won a battle against British reinforcements at Princeton the next day, and went into winter quarters in the defensible area around Morristown. The Trenton-Princeton campaign roused the country and saved the struggle for independence from collapse.
The surrender at Saratoga and French involvement
Britain’s strategy in 1777 aimed at driving a wedge between New England and the other colonies. An army under Gen. John Burgoyne was to march south from Canada and join forces with Howe on the Hudson. But Howe seems to have concluded that Burgoyne was strong enough to operate on his own and left New York in the summer, taking his army by sea to the head of Chesapeake Bay. Once ashore, he defeated Washington badly but not decisively at Brandywine Creek on September 11. Then, feinting westward, he entered Philadelphia, the American capital, on September 25. The Continental Congress fled to York. Washington struck back at Germantown on October 4 but, compelled to withdraw, went into winter quarters at Valley Forge.
In the North the story was different. Burgoyne was to move south to Albany with a force of about 9,000 British, Germans, Indians, and American loyalists; a smaller force under Lieut. Col. Barry St. Leger was to converge on Albany through the Mohawk valley. Burgoyne took Ticonderoga handily on July 5 and then, instead of using Lake George, chose a southward route by land. Slowed by the rugged terrain, strewn with trees cut down by American axmen under Gen. Philip Schuyler, and needing horses, Burgoyne sent a force of Germans to collect them at Bennington, Vermont. The Germans were nearly wiped out on August 16 by New Englanders under Gen. John Stark and Col. Seth Warner. Meanwhile, St. Leger besieged Fort Schuyler (present-day Rome, New York), ambushed a relief column of American militia at Oriskany on August 6, but retreated as his Indians gave up the siege and an American force under Arnold approached. Burgoyne himself reached the Hudson, but the Americans, now under Gen. Horatio Gates, checked him at Freeman’s Farm on September 19 and, thanks to Arnold’s battlefield leadership, decisively defeated him at Bemis Heights on October 7. Ten days later, unable to get help from New York, Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga.
Ssush4: American Revolution Us History Quizlet
The most-significant result of Burgoyne’s capitulation was the entrance of France into the war. The French had secretly furnished financial and material aid since 1776. Now they prepared fleets and armies, although they did not formally declare war until June 1778.