THREE
Britain’s triumph in the Great War for Empire contained the seeds of the American Revolution. England emerged from the war with an expanded empire and a staggering national debt, much of it resulting from the struggle in North America. Britain wanted to administer its new empire with maximum efficiency, which in part meant enforcing the Navigation Acts, a series of laws designed to regulate colonial trade for the mother country’s benefit. Americans had consistently violated laws through smuggling and bribery. Strict enforcement would help alleviate England’s financial distress but would crimp the colonial economy.
The North American interior also concerned Britain. It had fought the war primarily to ensure colonial security; the interior had been wrested from France for that purpose. But even as the Canadian menace waned, it became apparent that the colonies were still not secure. During the war settlers and speculators continued to push westward, threatening to oust the Indians from their hunting grounds. In the spring of 1763 an Ottawa chief named Pontiac led a coalition of tribes against whites in the Old Northwest. Pontiac represented a new type of Indian leader who emerged from the colonial wars. By the 1740s some sachems had concluded that all Indians were a single people, united by their “color” or race, with a mutual interest in halting British-American expansion. These “nativists” attempted to overcome traditional Indian localism and ethnic rivalries and advocated unified action against the advancing whites. Although efforts to forge a pan-Indian movement persisted into the early nineteenth century, neither Pontiac nor his nativist successors could overcome Indian factionalism or the influence of “accommodationist” leaders who believed that the whites were too strong to be resisted effectively.
Under Pontiac’s direction, Indians attacked frontier posts from Pennsylvania to Virginia, captured or forced the abandonment of almost a dozen forts, and besieged Fort Pitt and Detroit. However, neither siege was successful, and the Indians’ campaign perceptibly slowed. In 1764 General Thomas Gage, Amherst’s successor, launched an offensive that pacified many of the tribes that had supported Pontiac. As more and more of his followers submitted to the British, Pontiac’s cause became hopeless, and in July 1765 he agreed to preliminary peace terms. A year later the Ottawa chief signed a final agreement, formally ending the war.
Pontiac’s rebellion demonstrated the need for a British policy that would keep peace on the frontier. England responded by adopting three interrelated measures. It established the Proclamation Line of October 1763 that temporarily closed the area beyond the Appalachians to white settlement, thus removing Indian fears of illegal land purchases and encroachments. Britain also decided to garrison the west with regulars to enforce the Proclamation Line and regulate the fur trade equitably, thereby eliminating abuses that fueled Indian resentment. Finally, England began taxing the colonies to help pay for the army in America. From the British government’s perspective, these actions represented a tidy package that would protect the colonists, prevent the outbreak of costly Indian wars, and help meet the expenses of administering the empire. And, a few officials noted, if the colonists misbehaved, the army would be conveniently located to compel obedience to imperial rule.
Every element in England’s postwar policy rankled the colonists. Efforts to enforce the Navigation Acts threatened the colonial desire for economic growth. With France’s removal from the continent, land speculators, fur traders, and frontiersmen anticipated an unhindered westward surge. It seemed inexplicable that England should prevent them from exploiting the resources of the west. And why was a standing army needed now? Colonists had always defended themselves against Indians, and they could continue to do so. Some people suspected that the army was intended to coerce the colonies into obeying unpopular Parliamentary laws. As if to confirm the suspicion, in 1765 England passed two laws—the Stamp and Quartering Acts—that Americans considered illegal because they taxed the colonies. Colonists asserted that only their own legislatures could tax them, that Parliament had no right to levy any direct taxes on the colonies.
The imperial program sparked colonial resistance. In the west, Americans refused to conform to the Proclamation Line or obey the trade regulations. But on the seaboard resistance was more ominous, as colonists defiantly challenged Parliament’s authority to impose taxes, especially the Stamp Act. An intercolonial Stamp Act Congress met in New York and issued protests. People adopted nonimportation agreements, uniting most Americans in an attempt to put economic pressure on England to repeal the act. Most important, colonists responded with violence. Groups calling themselves “Sons of Liberty” enforced the nonimportation agreements, forced stamp agents to resign, and mobilized mobs to ransack the homes of unpopular Crown officials. The Connecticut and New York Sons of Liberty even signed a treaty pledging mutual aid if British troops tried to enforce the Stamp Act. In the face of this opposition, Parliament repealed the act but passed a Declaratory Act proclaiming Parliament’s right “to bind” the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
The series of events that led the colonies from resistance to Parliamentary sovereignty in 1765 to outright rebellion in 1775 cannot be recapitulated here. But two points need to be made. First, the crisis represented a clash between a mature colonial society and a mother country anxious to assert parental authority. Britain had previously never exercised much direct control over the colonies. Prospering under this “salutary neglect,” the colonies enjoyed de facto independence and developed a remarkable degree of self-reliance. Colonial aspirations thus collided with England’s desire to enforce subordination and diminish colonial autonomy.
Second, the Revolution began in 1765, not 1775. The events of 1765–1775 marked the first phase in a colonial war of national liberation. Only a handful of colonists advocated outright independence in 1765, but they vigorously championed their cause and slowly gained adherents over the next decade. During this initial stage colonial leaders organized themselves politically while subverting the established government’s authority through terrorism and propaganda. The Stamp Act Congress, followed by the two Continental Congresses, reflected the emergence of a national political organization. At the local level the Sons of Liberty evolved into a network of committees of correspondence and of safety. These extralegal bodies coordinated the opposition against Parliament, prevented the Revolutionary movement from degenerating into anarchy, and intimidated individuals who supported England. Radical leaders also organized riots against important symbols of British rule. Mob actions were not spontaneous but instead represented purposeful violence by what were, in essence, urban volunteer militia units. Supplementing the violence was a propaganda campaign portraying every English action in the darkest hues.
The violence and nonviolent protests had the cumulative effect of undermining confidence in the British government. Frightened Loyalists found the government unable to protect them, while other colonists were persuaded that the ministry and Parliament weredespotic. Either way, Americans lost faith in England. Mistrust bred contempt, creating a political vacuum that was filled by radical political agencies. John Adams correctly observed that “the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and in the union of the colonies; both of which were substantially effected before hostilities commenced.” By 1775 many colonists were convinced, as one town meeting stated, that the British government had “a design to take away our liberties and properties and enslave us forever.” Rather than submit to what they perceived to be an iniquitous government, the colonies united through the Continental Congress to defend themselves against England’s alleged schemes.
As resistance broadened, England’s attitude toward the colonies hardened. In late 1774 King George III stated that the New England colonies, which were at the center of colonial turmoil, were in rebellion and that “blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.” Both sides were determined to fight rather than retreat over the issue of Parliament’s authority. The stage was set for Lexington and Concord, which did not begin the Revolution, but only escalated the war to a higher level of violence.
The Strategic Balance
By the spring of 1775 colonial leaders and the British commander in chief, General Gage, were expecting a fight. In September 1774, Congress recommended that the colonies begin military preparations, and many of them stockpiled supplies and undertook militia training with a long-absent seriousness. Activity was particularly feverish in New England, where the British army was concentrated. After the Stamp Act crisis, the turbulence in the seaboard cities had replaced the frontier as the primary concern of the ministry, which had ordered Gage to redeploy most of the army eastward. Gage had a large garrison in Boston, where he fortified the city’s approaches, trained his troops rigorously, and gathered intelligence from spies, including Dr. Benjamin Church, a trusted member of the Revolutionary inner circle. Church informed Gage of the buildup of military supplies in Concord. When Gage received secret instructions to restore royal rule in Massachusetts through force, Concord was the logical target.
On April 18, 1775, Gage dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to destroy the Concord supplies. In the early-morning hours of the 19th, as Smith’s men tramped down the road, rebels alerted the countryside. Irritated by the slow advance and worried by the prospect of resistance, Smith sent Major John Pitcairn ahead with six light companies and asked Gage for reinforcements. Pitcairn arrived at Lexington as the rising sun revealed about seventy militiamen in martial array. No one knows who fired first, but in a brief confrontation eight Americans died and another ten were wounded. The British pushed on to Concord, where a skirmish with several hundred militiamen occurred, resulting in casualties on both sides.
The fighting at Lexington and Concord did not last five minutes, but as the British withdrew from Concord a real battle began. Responding in a massive popular uprising, thousands of irate militiamen hemmed in the redcoats and fired at them from concealed positions. By the time Smith reached Lexington, his men were panicked, and only the arrival of reinforcements saved them. The reinforced column fought its way back to Boston, but about 20 percent of the 1,500 regulars engaged were casualties. Worse yet, 20,000 New England militiamen soon besieged Gage. For the first time, the British had experienced the damage that an armed and angry populace employing irregular tactics could inflict on a conventional military organization.
It looked as if the colonies were embarked upon an unequal war. A population of two and a half million (20 percent of whom were slaves), without an army, navy, or adequate financial resources, confronted a nation of eight million with a professional army, large navy, and vast wealth. Yet many colonists were confident and determined. They believed in the “natural courage” of Americans and in God’s divine protection. Congress admitted that colonial soldiers lacked experience and discipline but insisted that “facts have shown, that native Courage warmed with Patriotism is sufficient to counterbalance these Advantages.” And a British captain wrote that Americans “are just now worked up to such a degree of enthusiasm and madness that they are easily persuaded the Lord is to assist them in whatever they undertake, and that they must be invincible.” Colonists were determined because they struggled for high stakes, summed up by George Washington: “Remember, officers and soldiers, that you are freemen, fighting for the blessings of liberty; that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity if you do not acquit yourselves like men.” The Revolution was no European dynastic squabble, but a war involving an ideological question that affected the population far more than did the kingly quarrels of the age of limited warfare. Large numbers of colonists ardently believed freedom was the issue, not only for themselves but for generations yet unborn.
While Americans claimed natural courage, God, freedom, and posterity as invisible allies, Britain encountered difficulties that negated its advantages in men, ships, and money. England had underestimated the militia’s military potential and rebel numerical strength. Officials, remembering the pathetic provincial soldiers of the last war and ignorant of the distinction between the wartime units and the actual militia, believed sustained resistance was impossible. Compounding this misunderstanding was England’s belief that the rebels were a small minority. British hopes for Loyalist support were high, but Loyalist strength was an illusion: Tories represented less than 20 percent of all white Americans.
Britain also misunderstood the difficulties of conquering a localized, thinly populated society. Colonial decentralization meant the colonies had no strategic heart. To win the war, England had to occupy vast expanses of territory, a task beyond its military resources because of logistical problems and manpower shortages. The British never solved the difficulties involved in waging war across three thousand miles of ocean in a relatively primitive country. Part of the problem was England’s cumbersome administrative machinery, staffed with incompetent patronage appointees, and the lack of coordination among departments. Uncertain communications across the Atlantic and over crude North American roads hindered every military operation. During the Great War for Empire, America had for the most part fed the British army, but now rations had to come primarily from the mother country. They often arrived moldy, sour, rancid, or maggoty; even worse, many ships fell victim to storms or hostile craft. No matter how many supplies came from England, the army still foraged in America for hay, firewood, and some fresh food. But foraging often became indiscriminate plundering, which alienated colonials and drove many of them into the rebel camp. The rebels also tried to deny the enemy access to supplies by conducting guerrilla operations against foraging parties.
The British populace at home was not united behind the war because some people doubted its wisdom and justness. One result of the antiwar sentiment was difficulty in recruiting troops, a difficulty aggravated by George III’s reluctance to incur the huge expenses necessary to expand the army. To fill the ranks, England hired German soldiers, collectively known as Hessians, and sent almost 30,000 of them to America. But Hessians alone were insufficient, and England also enlisted slaves, mobilized Indians, and depended on Loyalist soldiers. England still suffered manpower shortages, and these expedients were also partially counterproductive. Hiring mercenaries, using slaves, inciting “savages,” and fomenting a civil war within a civil war heightened colonial disaffection.
Perhaps England’s fundamental error was its inability to implement an unambiguous strategy early in the war. Although most authorities believed the rebellion could be crushed by brute force, some questioned the expediency of ramming Parliamentary supremacy down the colonists’ throats. Unable to form a consensus on this question, England wavered between coercion and conciliation, vacillating between a punitive war to impose peace and an attempt to negotiate a settlement through appeasement. Unclear about its objectives, Britain inspired neither fear nor affection in the colonies.
Finally, England had no William Pitt to rally the population and direct the war effort. The two men most responsible for conducting the war were Prime Minister Sir Frederick North and Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the American colonies. Neither possessed a charismatic personality or an abundance of wisdom. As for the generals, no one would mistake any of them for another Frederick the Great or, for that matter, George Washington. A series of cautious and weak commanders plagued British strategy. The odds against the colonists were not as great as they appeared. Britain’s difficulties in projecting military power into the colonies offset America’s obvious deficiencies. The war began as a balance of military weakness, ensuring a long conflict despite optimistic expectations by both sides that the war would be short.
The “Dual Army”
The Revolution created a “dual army” tradition that combined a citizen-soldier reserve (the militia), which supplied large numbers of partially trained soldiers, with a small professional force that provided military expertise and staying power. As much as Americans mistrusted a standing army, Congress realized one was necessary and created the Continental Army. By establishing this national regular army, Congress implicitly accepted the ideology of English moderate Whigs, who had argued that a regular force under firm legislative control was not only consistent with constitutional freedoms but also essential to preserve those liberties. Throughout the war the Continental Army complemented rather than supplanted the state militias, and at practically every critical juncture these disparate forces acted in concert.
Even before Lexington and Concord, the colonial assemblies had revitalized the militia system by increasing the number of training days, stiffening punishment for missing musters, tightening exemption lists, stockpiling powder and shot, and, in some colonies, creating a distinction between militiamen and minutemen. The latter were generally younger men who received special training and took the field on short notice. Rebels also purified the militia by purging Tory officers, ensuring that only “the inflexible friends to the rights of the people” held commissions. The militia’s renaissance had a profound impact. With every colony’s military establishment under rebel control, British armies encountered an unfriendly reception wherever they went. Loyalists were immediately on the defensive and never gained the initiative, as rebel militias beat down counterrevolutionary uprisings. For example, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, tried to mobilize Loyalists and appealed to runaway slaves, but in December 1775 the Virginia militia, reinforced by 200 Continentals, defeated Dunmore at the Battle of Great Bridge. Two months later a similar fate befell Josiah Martin, the royal governor of North Carolina, when the North Carolina militia defeated his Loyalist forces at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge. In both states the militia had extinguished Loyalist power and expelled royal authority. Greeting enemy forces with small-scale warfare and maintaining internal security were only two of the militia’s functions. Militiamen patrolled against slave insurrections, fought Indians, repelled seaborne raiding parties, garrisoned forts, guarded prisoners of war, collected intelligence, rallied the war-weary, transported supplies, and battled British foragers.
One thing the militia usually could not do was stand alone against large numbers of enemy regulars. But in most battles militiamen did fight alongside Continental troops. The militia had a mixed battlefield record. Sometimes it behaved shamefully, sometimes valiantly. The militia’s performance often depended on the commanding officer; one who understood its limitations against disciplined regulars could utilize militiamen with surprising effectiveness. A British general, while barely suppressing his distaste for such undisciplined irregulars, perhaps best assessed the militia’s battlefield contribution. “I will not say much in praise of the militia of the Southern Colonies,” Lord Cornwallis wrote, “but the list of British officers and soldiers killed and wounded by them . . . proves but too fatally they are not wholly contemptible.”
Although many men shirked militia duty by paying commutation fees, hiring substitutes, or running away, a large percentage of adult males did some service because few localities escaped mobilizing their militias. Units formed quickly, executed their short-term tasks, and vanished. British commanders never understood how these militia forces proliferated. Steeped in the traditions of limited warfare, they did not perceive that the Revolutionary War was one in which military service was being democratized and nationalized. Military authority no longer resided in a sovereign, but in the people and their chosen representatives. War aims were not tangible and limited but abstract and not easily compromised—the colonies could not be half independent—and the politically alert population cared about the outcome.
Since the militia generally adhered to its parochial traditions, Congress realized it needed a national army that could be kept in the field and sent to fight beyond the boundaries of any particular colony. It was for this purpose that it organized the Continental Army, which initially consisted of the New England militiamen penning Gage’s force inside Boston. In mid-June 1775, Congress adopted the besieging throng and then voted to raise ten companies of riflemen from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to give the army a more “continental” flavor. Having formed an army, Congress selected George Washington to command it. Washington had been with Braddock and with Forbes’s expedition to Fort Duquesne, and in between service with the regulars he had commanded the Virginia militia. As the crisis with England worsened, Washington played an active role in Virginia’s evolution from resistance to revolution, and he attended both the First and Second Continental Congresses. He was the only delegate attending the deliberations in Philadelphia attired in a military uniform, perhaps symbolizing his readiness to fight for American rights. Washington was a reasonably experienced soldier, a firm advocate of American liberties, impressive in looks, and articulate without being flamboyant. Equally important, he was a Virginian whose appointment, like the rifle companies, gave the army a continental appearance.
“I declare with the utmost sincerity,” Washington wrote the president of Congress, “I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honoured with.” He probably meant it, since his frontier service had given him no opportunity to become acquainted with cavalry tactics, massed artillery, or the deployment of large forces. Yet Washington eventually embodied the Revolution, with the cause and the commander so intertwined in rebel eyes that they became synonymous.
During the war with France, Washington had developed an aversion to militiamen and an appreciation for British professionals. He had experienced nothing but problems with the Virginia militia. They never turned out in sufficient numbers, and those who did he considered insolent and prone to panic and desertion. His opinion did not change during the Revolution, and most Continental officers shared his conviction that “to place any dependence upon Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff.” Paradoxically, Washington repeatedly depended on the militia to buttress the Continental Army during innumerable crises. If the militia dismayed Washington, British regulars impressed him, and he strove to mold the Continental Army into a mirror image of Britain’s army. He insisted it should be “a respectable Army,” not only well organized and disciplined but also officered by “Gentlemen, and Men of Character.” He believed the prospect of such an army endangering civilian supremacy was remote; the slight risk was necessary because the consequence of fighting without a regular army was “certain, and inevitable Ruin.”
Although Washington intended to fight the British as they had fought the French, employing a regular army commanded by long-serving officers and using citizen-soldiers only as auxiliaries, he never quite succeeded. The reasons were a dearth of competent officers and too few Continentals. America had no reservoir of men experienced in conventional warfare, and it took long years and hard trials to develop effective battlefield leadership. The consistent shortage of Continental soldiers forced militiamen to fill gaps in the fighting line. Ironically, the militia’s existence was one reason regulars were so few: Given the choice between a militia unit or a Continental regiment, most men chose the former. Militia duty carried no stigma, being patriotic, necessary, and often dangerous. But brief militia service entailed little of the long-term misery Continentals experienced. The high wages paid laborers and the possibility of profit from privateering also retarded recruiting. Despite land and monetary bounties, despite the resort to state militia drafts to fill manpower quotas set by Congress, and despite varied enlistment terms—from one year to the duration of the war—the army never approached its authorized strength. For example, in the fall of 1775 Congress voted for an army of 28 regiments (20,000 men), and a year later it increased this to 88 regiments (75,000 men), but the army’s actual size was invariably less than half, and frequently less than a third, of its paper strength.
In terms of social composition the rank and file approximated that of the British army. The ranks contained some farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics, but they included many more recent immigrants, enemy deserters and prisoners of war, Loyalists and criminals (both of whom sometimes had the option of joining or hanging), vagrants, indentured servants, apprentices, free black men, and slaves. The soldiers thus overwhelmingly came from the bottom strata of society. Although the social origins of many Continentals resembled those of British regulars, the similarity fades when one asks why men served. Obviously, some Continentals, like their British counterparts, had little choice. But most American recruits served willingly. The methods of avoiding service were so numerous that few people became regulars against their will. Poor and propertyless men may have found substitute payments, bounties, and army pay attractive, but less dangerous ways to make money and acquire land abounded in American society. Financial benefits simply reinforced the primary motivation to serve, which was probably ideological. Appeals to freedom and liberty—and the vision of a better future these abstractions conveyed—could strike an especially intense chord in men of humble means and origins. One soldiers’ song emphasized this ideological motivation:
No Foreign Slaves shall give us Laws, No Brittish Tyrant Reign
Tis Independence made us Free and Freedom We’ll Maintain.
Proof of the Continentals’ willing service was the way so many of them endured continuous hardships with a fortitude that made foreign observers marvel. Baron von Closen of the French army exclaimed: “I admire the American troops tremendously! It is incredible that soldiers composed of men of every age, even children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.” And a Hessian captain asked in wonderment:
With what soldiers in the world could one do what was done by these men, who go about nearly naked and in the greatest privation? Deny the best-disciplined soldiers of Europe what is due them and they will run away in droves, and the general will soon be alone. But from this one can perceive what an enthusiasm—which these poor fellows call “Liberty”—can do!
Money could not buy, and discipline could not instill, the Continentals’ type of loyalty; an ideological motivation that promised a better life for themselves and their posterity held them in the ranks. Of course, not every Continental could tolerate prolonged deprivation, and many deserted. But the desertion rate declined as the war progressed, and the army became the heart of resistance.
Shouldering arms freely and believing freedom was the issue, Continentals never became regulars in the European sense. They became good soldiers, but they remained citizens who refused to surrender their individuality. They asserted their personal independence by wearing jaunty hats and long hair despite (or perhaps to spite) their officers’ insistence upon conformity in dress and appearance. Furthermore, they were only temporary regulars. Unlike European professionals, they understood the war’s goals and would fight until they were achieved, but then they intended to return to civilian life.
Congress was mindful of the irony in creating a standing army. Americans had consistently inveighed against regulars, their threat to liberty, and the taxes necessary to maintain them. Now Congress, having established its own regular army, shouldered two onerous burdens. First, as Samuel Adams said, since a “Standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People,” it had to “be watched with a jealous Eye.” Congress was careful to keep the army subservient to civil authority. It enjoined Washington to “observe and follow” all orders from Congress and to report regularly to the legislature, and appointed all subordinate generals, who would look to Congress, not Washington, for preferment. It also determined the war’s objectives, controlled the army’s size and composition, provided money and resources for its maintenance, established disciplinary regulations, and conducted foreign affairs. At times Congress even directly guided strategy.
Considering the hypersensitive fear of military ascendancy, Congress’s selection of Washington was fortuitous. He repeatedly stated his belief in civil supremacy, remaining deferential to Congress even when its inefficiency threatened the army’s survival. Having served in the Virginia assembly and in Congress, he understood the often maddeningly slow political process in representative governments and the nation’s inadequate administrative machinery for conducting a large-scale war. By reporting to Congress on all matters great or trivial, by religiously adhering to congressional dictates, and through his immense patience in the face of nearly unbearable frustrations, Washington alleviated concern that he would capitalize on his growing military reputation to become a dictator. Although revolutions have frequently given birth to permanent presidents, kings, and emperors, Washington had no desire to become an American Cromwell. Like the men he commanded, he never forgot that he was a citizen first and only second a soldier.
The second congressional burden was furnishing logistical support for the army. The fundamental difficulties were insufficient financial resources, inadequate administrative organization, and primitive transportation facilities. War is never cheap: As General Jedediah Huntington observed, “Money is the Sinews of war.” But the colonists, having rebelled against English taxation, refused to give Congress the power to tax. To finance the war, Congress resorted to the printing press, emitting $200 million worth of paper money by the fall of 1779, when it ceased printing money. Since Congress had no source of revenue from taxation, the value of Continental bills depreciated rapidly, reducing their purchasing power. With the states also issuing paper money and many counterfeit bills in circulation, the nation wallowed in worthless paper. As the currency depreciated, inflation soared, further fueled by war-induced dislocations in agriculture and commerce and by shortages of manufactured goods. Only foreign loans, primarily from France, allowed Congress to muddle through.
To administer the army, Congress initially relied on ad hoc committees to deal with problems as they arose. Not until June 1776 did it form a five-member Board of War and Ordnance to give continuity to army administration. But board members devoted only a fraction of their time to army matters, since congressmen serving on the board usually sat on several other committees and also attended to their regular congressional duties. Congressional membership also changed rapidly, and few delegates remained long enough to comprehend the army’s needs. Thus in October 1777 Congress reconstituted the board to include military officers. Congress also created rudimentary staff departments such as a commissary general of stores and provisions and a quartermaster general. Neither the board nor the supply departments were efficient. They never attained institutional stability because of frequent reorganizations and changes in both civilian and military personnel as Congress strove to find a combination that would produce results. Finding good men was not easy. The United States had few men experienced in large-scale logistical management. Like battlefield officers, staff officers had to be nurtured, and they made mistakes as they matured. Many appointees proved to be incompetent or corrupt; others were simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of their responsibilities contrasted with the meager resources at their disposal. Persuading talented officers to forsake field command for a desk job was especially difficult. Soldiers knew that their way to glory and historical immortality lay with the sword, not the pen. Another problem was the feeble coordination among the staff departments, which often competed with each other—and with state logistical agencies and civilians—for scarce goods, driving prices up. Worst of all, the perpetual financial crisis made supplying the army virtually impossible. Supply officers had too many items to buy and too little money to pay for them.
By the winter of 1779–1780, with the treasury depleted and army storehouses empty, Congress abdicated much of its responsibility for the army to the states. It asked each state to pay its own troops in the Continental Army and adopted a system of requisitioning the states for “specific supplies.” Under this plan Congress apportioned quotas of food, clothing, fodder, and other necessities among the states according to their special resources. Unfortunately for the starving Continentals, the situation did not improve. States did not have adequate administrative machinery and were reluctant to commandeer supplies from their citizens. Almost every state argued that its quota was unfairly high and refused to cooperate until Congress made adjustments—which never quite met all the objections. The requisition system’s failure compelled Congress to reassert its own authority, and in 1781 it centralized the management of financial and military matters in executive departments. But by then active hostilities were drawing to a close.
Even if Congress had enjoyed unlimited funds and an efficient logistical organization, the army’s supply situation would have remained precarious because of the nation’s underdeveloped transportation network. The British blockade hampered coastal trade, forcing reliance on land transportation. But roads were few and all but impassible during inclement weather, wagons were in short supply, and horses and oxen were scarce. At times the army nearly perished in the midst of plenty when supplies could not be moved from wharves and warehouses to the famished troops. Unpaid, unfed, unclothed, and unsheltered, many Continentals became stoical, viewing themselves as martyrs to the “glorious cause.” As one colonel wrote, “We have this consolation, however, that it cannot be said that we are bought or bribed into the service.”
The militia and the Continental Army were two sides of a double-edged sword. Neither blade was keenly honed, and even in combination they usually did not make a lethal weapon. Washington’s task was never easy, but without either army it would have been impossible.
The Militia’s War, 1775–1776
The majority of men who took up arms during the “popular uprising” phase of the war in 1775–1776 were not fighting for independence, but for their rights as Englishmen within the empire. Although a growing number believed independence inevitable, most maintained allegiance to George III, who, they assumed, was being misled by corrupt ministers conspiring to enslave the colonies. Congress insisted that the colonies were only protecting themselves from these conspirators, that reconciliation would occur as soon as the King restrained his advisers.
Although colonists issued proclamations portraying the English as aggressors and themselves as aggrieved defenders, rebel forces quickly assumed the offensive. On May 10, 1775, frontiersmen under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold overwhelmed the British garrison at Ticonderoga, and two days later another rebel force captured Crown Point. Meanwhile, the New Englanders around Boston were organized into a makeshift army, with the men enlisted until the end of the year. British General Gage considered their entrenched positions strong and pleaded for more men. Instead of reinforcements, the government sent Major Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne to act as advisers. They demanded that Gage take the offensive. In mid-June, when colonists ordered to entrench on Bunker Hill mistakenly dug in on Breed’s Hill, he consented to let Howe oust them. When Howe’s effort to outflank the colonial position failed, he believed that he had no choice but to make a frontal assault. Three times the redcoats advanced, and twice the colonists hurled them off the hill. On the third try, with the colonists weary and short of ammunition, the British swarmed over the parapet and the Americans fled.
British success at the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill was costly; more than 1,000 of the 2,500 regulars engaged were casualties. If the immediate price of victory was exorbitant, even more disturbing for British prospects was the fighting spirit Americans displayed. Gage recognized that opinions formed during the French and Indian War were wrong, and he advised the ministry to “proceed in earnest or give the business up.” The government, realizing that it faced a genuine war requiring a regular campaign, replaced Gage with Howe and began to plan for 1776.
When Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 2, he was eager to pursue an aggressive strategy. But he could do little immediately. A severe shortage of weapons and powder prevented him from attacking the British army, and his own army appalled him. The New Englanders struck him as “exceedingly dirty and nasty people” characterized by “an unaccountable kind of stupidity” and a lack of discipline. Knowing the eyes of the continent were upon him and expecting some momentous event, Washington found the inactivity around Boston galling, so in late summer 1775 he ordered Arnold to advance through the Maine wilderness to capture Quebec. Unknown to Washington, Congress had meanwhile ordered General Philip Schuyler to attack Montreal. Americans hoped the invasion would incite a Canadian revolt against Britain and convert the region into the fourteenth colony. Washington also struggled to discipline the army, but before he could achieve much success, that army almost disappeared. When enlistments expired at year’s end, most men refused to reenlist. Washington had to discharge one army and recruit another while the enemy was only a musket shot away. He did it by calling on militiamen to fill the gaps until new Continental recruits arrived.
In November 1775 the novice commander sent Henry Knox, a self-taught soldier, to Ticonderoga to fetch the artillery captured there. Knox dragged the ordnance across three hundred miles of ice and snow, arriving back at Boston in January 1776, and Washington shrewdly placed it behind hastily constructed entrenchments atop Dorchester Heights outside Boston. American artillery now dominated the British position, and Howe, unwilling to fight another Bunker Hill to dislodge the guns, had to evacuate the city. On March 17, 1776, the enemy army sailed for Halifax, leaving no British force anywhere on American soil.
Grim news from Canada offset the good news from Boston. Schuyler had relinquished command to General Richard Montgomery, who had occupied Montreal in mid-November. Arnold’s men, reduced to walking skeletons by their arduous trek, reached the St. Lawrence simultaneously, and Montgomery hastened downriver to unite forces. The commanders audaciously stormed Quebec in late December during a raging blizzard, but when Montgomery fell dead and Arnold was wounded, the attack fizzled. Arnold doggedly directed a siege from his hospital cot, but when British reinforcements arrived in May, the demoralized Americans retreated in disorder to Ticonderoga.
Even as the invasion force retreated, sentiment for independence advanced. On balance, the first year of fighting went to the Americans. The British retreat from Concord, the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the militia successes at Great Bridge and Moore’s Creek Bridge, and the evacuation of Boston all augured well for American success. But although doing tolerably well on their own, Americans believed they needed assistance to win. However, neither France nor Spain was likely to aid them openly unless independence, rather than reconciliation, was the American goal. English actions also alienated Americans. Both King and Parliament rejected conciliatory appeals for redress of grievances and instead showed a determination to conquer the colonies. Employing mercenaries, instigating Indians, and appealing to slaves to join royal armies angered men who previously favored reconciliation, as did the senseless destruction of Falmouth, Maine, in October 1775, and Norfolk, Virginia, four months later.
When Thomas Paine’s Common Sense excoriated monarchy in principle and George III in person and declared that “the weeping voice of nature cries, ’Tis time to part,” it found a receptive audience. Jefferson’s famous document severed the last strand of colonial allegiance. Americans had already rejected Parliamentary sovereignty, and now the Declaration renounced fealty to the King. Americans were aware, as John Adams said, “of the toil and blood and treasure” entailed in maintaining independence. “Yet,” Adams continued, “through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.”
From Disaster to Victory, 1776–1781
By July 1776 the war’s “uprising” phase had ended and the last stage of the war of liberation had begun. In this phase rebels fielded their own regular army, which represented a new government claiming sovereign status. Although conventional operations never fully replaced guerrilla activity, the roles of opposing regular forces became increasingly important. The conventional war consisted of a northern period that climaxed at Saratoga in 1777 and a southern period that culminated at Yorktown in 1781.
Both the Continental Army and America’s very claim to sovereignty received a severe test in 1776 when the ministry made its largest effort of the war, hurling 32,000 troops and almost half the Royal Navy against New York City. Howe commanded the land forces; his brother, Richard, Lord Howe, commanded the naval component. Down from Canada came Sir Guy Carleton with 13,500 men, following the Richelieu River–Lake Champlain route. England aimed these formidable forces against the Hudson River for strategic reasons. New York was a superb harbor from which the navy could conduct operations. Control of the Hudson would link British forces in Canada and those in the colonies and split America’s resources and population by isolating New England. The middle colonies reportedly teemed with Loyalists, who would provide manpower and logistical support.
Washington brought the army from Boston to defend New York, splitting his forces between Manhattan Island and Long Island. To the latter’s defense he committed about half his 20,000 fit soldiers (mostly raw Continentals and even rawer militia), under the command of General Israel Putnam. The Americans entrenched on Brooklyn Heights, hoping Howe would attempt a frontal assault, but Putnam also deployed about 4,000 men in forward positions. On August 27 the British general, who had landed more than 20,000 British and Hessian troops on Long Island, moved around the left flank of the advanced units and routed them. But Howe failed to smash the rebels by assailing Brooklyn Heights and instead began a formal siege of the American position. His caution allowed the Americans to escape to Manhattan, uniting the two wings of Washington’s army.
The American situation was still desperate. Thousands of dejected militiamen deserted, and the army’s position in New York City could be outflanked by a British amphibious landing anywhere farther north on Manhattan. On September 15 the enemy landed at Kip’s Bay, threatening to trap the American army. But Howe moved across the island lethargically, and Washington escaped. The Americans took up a prepared defensive position at Harlem Heights near the northern tip of Manhattan Island, leaving New York City to the British, who made it their headquarters for the remainder of the war. Howe sent a probing party against Washington’s defenses, but in the Battle of Harlem Heights that followed the Americans repulsed the enemy and the campaign settled into another prolonged lull.
Washington’s new position was no safer than Brooklyn or New York. As long as the British could ferry men up the Hudson or East Rivers, they could outflank the Americans. A month after Kip’s Bay, Howe did just that with disembarkations at Throg’s Neck and then Pell’s Point. Had the British made a rapid thrust inland, they could have cut off Washington’s retreat from Manhattan Island. But Howe again acted with caution, allowing the Americans to escape and assume another strong defensive position at White Plains, where Washington again hoped Howe would make a frontal attack. At the Battle of White Plains, Howe refused to accept the bait and instead executed a flanking movement, forcing the Americans to retreat and presenting the British with still another opportunity to annihilate Washington. But Howe again dallied, and Washington withdrew five miles to North Plains.
Throughout the entire New York campaign, Howe never utilized his maneuverability—which command of the waterways in the area gave him—to trap and destroy the Continental Army. He has been criticized for his failure to do so, but he faced at least two constraints. Howe fought according to the precepts of eighteenth-century warfare, which emphasized avoiding battles and deemphasized ruthless exploitation of success. Furthermore, as members of a peace commission that accompanied the military forces, the Howe brothers had a dual role as soldiers and diplomats. Sympathetic to America, they hoped to end the rebellion with a minimum of bloodshed by a judicious combination of the sword and the olive branch. Their peacemaking faltered because the United States had declared independence, which the Howes could not concede. Their warmaking failed because they allowed Washington to escape when he should have been crushed.
The British had nevertheless jostled Washington’s army from Manhattan. As the Americans withdrew northward, Washington left garrisons at Forts Washington and Lee, on opposite banks of the Hudson. Rather than pursue Washington to North Plains, Howe suddenly turned southward, captured Fort Washington and its garrison, and forced the evacuation of Fort Lee. Howe then dispatched Clinton to capture Newport, Rhode Island, while the remainder of his army fanned out into New Jersey. Washington fled across the Delaware River, trying to stay between the advancing enemy and the rebel capital at Philadelphia.
With Washington’s army numbering fewer than 3,000 men, the Revolution seemed about to expire. However, one bit of success pierced the gloom: The British advance from the north had failed. Arnold, recovered from his wound sustained at Quebec, built a flotilla of small ships on Lake Champlain, and Carleton paused to construct his own fleet. At the Battle of Valcour Island, Arnold’s outgunned fleet fought a stout delaying action that unnerved Carleton, who retired northward. Washington saw other possibilities for successful operations. Howe’s army was scattered throughout New Jersey in winter quarters. Perhaps one or more of these encampments could be surprised. Washington knew it would be a daring enterprise, but something had to be attempted “or we must give up the cause.” With an unorthodoxy born of desperation, he began a winter campaign. On Christmas night his men crossed the Delaware and assaulted the Hessian outpost at Trenton, capturing or killing almost 1,000 men. He retreated back behind the Delaware, called up militia reinforcements, recrossed the river, and occupied Trenton. When Cornwallis approached with 6,000 troops, Washington sidestepped them and attacked Princeton, inflicting another 400 casualties. The Americans then took refuge near Morristown. Trenton and Princeton revived the Revolutionary cause, and Howe, twice stung, withdrew his garrisons from almost all New Jersey. The 1776 campaign ended with the Continental Army small but intact and with the British in control of only New York City and Newport, which were minimal gains for England’s maximum effort.
The British had learned a sobering lesson. Washington was a clever commander whose army could fight well, even though the men were so ill-shod that they left bloody footprints in the snow. Henceforth the American commander would be an even more formidable adversary, for Washington had gained great insights from the 1776 campaign. He knew he was fortunate to have survived his eagerness to fight around New York. And he realized that the Revolution would continue as long as the Continental Army, the backbone of the Revolution, existed. Since his army was inferior to the enemy’s, it should not be risked except in an emergency. No city, except perhaps Philadelphia, could warrant hazarding the army because, said Washington, “it is our arms, not defenceless towns, they have to subdue.” After 1776 Washington assumed the strategic defensive and became determined to win the war by not losing the Continental Army in battle, fighting only when conditions were extraordinarily advantageous. He would frustrate the British by raids, continual skirmishing, and removing supplies from their vicinity, always staying just beyond the enemy’s potentially lethal grasp. This strategy entailed risks. Americans might interpret it as cowardice or weakness, and since defensive war meant protracted war, they might lose heart. But Washington believed he could be active enough to prevent excessive war-weariness. Prolonged resistance would also fuel opposition to the conflict in England, as well as strengthen America’s hand in European diplomacy.
England made its second greatest effort in 1777, but the campaign demonstrated the government’s inability to provide coherent strategic guidance. When operations began, the men who played major roles in the planning—Germain, Howe, and Burgoyne—were unsure of each other’s precise orders and intentions, resulting in two uncoordinated expeditions. Burgoyne followed the Champlain route southward while a secondary force under Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger moved eastward along the Mohawk River. These forces were to unite on the Hudson and capture Albany, where, Burgoyne assumed, they would cooperate with Howe. But Howe left a garrison in New York and took 13,000 troops to capture Philadelphia. Instead of marching overland, he went by sea, which ensured that he and Burgoyne would be incapable of mutual assistance. The movement baffled Washington, who mistakenly believed British plans would be logical. Britain’s flawed strategy allowed Washington to plan wisely. He accurately estimated Burgoyne’s strength and calculated that the Continentals in upstate New York, reinforced by militia, would stop him. He also guessed Howe’s destination and wheeled his army toward Philadelphia.
For political and psychological reasons Washington had to defend the capital. He took up a position behind Brandywine Creek, but Howe outflanked him and defeated, but once again did not destroy, the army. Howe garrisoned Philadelphia, but he quartered part of his army at nearby Germantown and used another detachment to reconnoiter Forts Mercer and Mifflin on the Delaware, which had to be cleared so the army could be supplied. Noting the dispersed deployments, Washington attacked Germantown. His army again fought hard but lost, and by mid-November Howe had also captured the Delaware River forts. Washington’s twin defeats and the capital’s loss were troublesome but not disheartening. The army had performed well and rapidly replaced its losses, and word from the north was joyous.
Burgoyne had started his campaign successfully by capturing Ticonderoga. From there he inched forward, burdened by an enormous artillery and baggage train. The troops under Philip Schuyler, commander of the American forces in upstate New York, hampered the advance by felling trees into a tangled labyrinth and hastening crops and cattle out of Burgoyne’s reach. In mid-August, Burgoyne sent a detachment to Bennington, Vermont, to raid a rebel supply depot. Angered by atrocities committed by Burgoyne’s Indian allies and elated that Horatio Gates had replaced the hated Schuyler, militiamen annihilated the column. At almost the same time St. Leger turned back after an unsuccessful siege of Fort Stanwix. The arrival of Continental reinforcements, especially a corps of riflemen, made Burgoyne’s situation worse. The riflemen drove his scouts inside their own lines, leaving the British blind in a swelling sea of militiamen. “Wherever the King’s forces point,” moaned Burgoyne, “militia, to the amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours.” Reinforced by the militia, Gates’s regulars fortified a position on Bemis Heights, on the west bank of the Hudson, barring the route south. At the Battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights the English failed to penetrate this barrier and Burgoyne retreated to Saratoga, where militiamen and Continentals hovered about his dying army like vultures. On October 17 he surrendered.
After two mighty exertions England was no closer to victory than it had been at Lexington and Concord, and support for the war plummeted. British forces held enclaves at New York, Newport, and Philadelphia, but the Continental Army and rebel militias controlled the countryside. As the rival armies entered winter quarters, their mutual weakness remained in equilibrium.
The winter at Valley Forge was one of discontent and privation. Rumors about a plot to replace Washington with Gates, although without foundation, kept the commander in ill humor. The troops’ plight did not improve his disposition. Without adequate shelter, food, or clothing, they huddled around their campfires exercising a soldier’s inalienable right to complain. In particular the forlorn men cursed Congress, which they blamed for their distress. In truth, Congress was doing the best it could. The soldiers’ condition was caused by soaring inflation, currency depreciation, the scarcity of goods, primitive transportation, and a rudimentary administrative organization. These were beyond the control of Congress, which was a weak central government that could neither tax nor enforce its requests to the states for resources.
But Valley Forge was not entirely bleak, and the army emerged a better fighting force and with high morale. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a former captain in the Prussian army, introduced a training system emphasizing simplicity and standardization in drill and musketry, and the men, who had experienced enough confusion under the old system, responded readily. In February, Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s best subordinates, became quartermaster general and miraculously improved the logistical system. The soldiers, tempered in the fires of adversity, developed a common pride in their military proficiency and ability to survive.
Best of all, in February 1778, France, convinced by Saratoga that America could win the war, signed a treaty of alliance. France had been providing covert aid, but America could now anticipate far greater assistance. In 1779 Spain also declared war on England, and in 1780 so did the Dutch. Thus a colonial rebellion had expanded into a world war, a development that was essential to the American cause. After 1778 England’s European enemies diverted British resources from North America, disrupted British operations there, and provided loans and equipment that helped sustain the rebels during some of the war’s darkest periods. Equally important, a French army and fleet eventually deployed in North America, providing direct support to Washington’s army. After the French alliance the scales of weakness became unbalanced in America’s favor, although it would be three years before the tilt brought conclusive results.
After 1778 England considered America a secondary theater and consequently reevaluated its strategy there, resulting in a shift in strategic focus to the south. It would be necessary to coordinate operations on the mainland and in the Caribbean, where the French threat was acute. Some officials believed southerners would not be as intransigent as New Englanders because “their numerous slaves in the bowells of their country, and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet.” But the most compelling factor was the belief in widespread Loyalism in the region. The ministry pinned its hopes on the existence of southern Loyalists, who would have to carry the burden of the fighting, since Parliament refused to send many reinforcements.
As a prelude to southern operations Clinton, who replaced Howe as commander in chief, abandoned Philadelphia and consolidated his forces at New York. As he marched north with 10,000 men, the New Jersey militia mobilized to resist the advance, so that, as a Hessian officer succinctly phrased it, “Each step cost human blood.” Washington also attacked the rear of the extended British column near Monmouth Courthouse. He entrusted the initial assault to General Charles Lee, a retired British major who had settled in America and adopted the rebel cause, but Lee’s halfhearted assault soon fell back in disorder. Riding to the sound of the guns, Washington rallied the men, and in weather so hot that soldiers died from heatstroke, the armies exchanged volleys and bayonet charges in European fashion. The Continentals, displaying the benefits of von Steuben’s training, more than matched the British for five hours until darkness ended the battle. Washington resolved to renew the assault in the morning, but Clinton escaped during the night. Monmouth Courthouse was the last major battle in the north. For the next three years the British remained in New York City and Washington’s army kept watch on them from an arc of defensive positions in the Hudson Highlands above the city. The armies skirmished and raided constantly, but they engaged in no battles. At least Washington had the satisfaction of knowing that after two years of maneuvers and battles in the north, “both Armies are brought back to the very point they set out from.”
England’s southern strategy began in November 1778 when Clinton embarked 3,500 men under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell to attack Savannah, which was easily captured. A full year elapsed before Clinton followed up the initial success by investing Charleston from its landward side. In May 1780 the city surrendered, including the entire American army in the south. Two weeks later Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, commanding the Loyalist British Legion, defeated South Carolina’s last organized rebel force at the Waxhaws, killing those soldiers who surrendered. The British quickly established posts throughout the state. In June Clinton departed, leaving Cornwallis to consolidate British gains by protecting and encouraging Loyalists. Hundreds of men renewed their allegiance to the Crown, and Major Patrick Ferguson organized a potent Loyalist militia force. Rebel resistance in South Carolina and Georgia had apparently collapsed.
The Charleston and Waxhaws disasters capped a very bad winter and spring for the Americans. The army, which had its 1779–1780 winter quarters at Morristown, had endured a more miserable experience than it had at Valley Forge, since the weather was colder with more snow, and most of the causes of privation at Valley Forge had grown worse. On three occasions between January and June, Continental units mutinied. The men were incapable of suffering further misery and believed that the populace had betrayed the foremost defenders of the Revolution by failing to support them. The wonder is that no mutinies occurred sooner. Because the soldiers wanted to continue to serve the Revolutionary cause and mutinied only as a means of self-preservation, officers quickly quelled the outbreaks. But the mutinies were an ominous sign that the Revolution had reached its lowest point since Washington’s flight across New Jersey in 1776.
The rebel situation deteriorated further when Congress, against Washington’s wishes, appointed Gates to command a new southern army formed around 1,400 Continentals, reinforced by militiamen. In August Gates marched into South Carolina, met Cornwallis’s advancing army at Camden, and deployed his regulars on his right wing while entrusting his left to militiamen alone. When Cornwallis attacked, the militiamen threw down their weapons and fled. The outnumbered Continentals fought valiantly but were overwhelmed. In just three months, two American armies had disappeared.
Compounding the agony was the treason of Benedict Arnold, who conspired to sell the plans of West Point—the crucial fortress in Washington’s Hudson Highlands defense system—to the British. While some Americans believed the conspiracy’s failure afforded, as Greene said, “the most convincing proofs that the liberties of America are the object of divine protection,” others wondered whether the cause would survive. If Arnold, who served so nobly at Quebec, at Valcour Island, and during the Saratoga campaign, had lost all sense of honor and patriotism, how many others might follow his treasonous path?
Despite Morristown, the southern calamities, and Arnold’s defection, three factors furthered the American cause in 1780. First, in July a 5,000-man French expeditionary force commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau and accompanied by a small fleet arrived at Newport, which the British had evacuated. Second, the Revolutionary spirit revived in the south. British troops and Loyalists plundered and raped, and they angered the neutral Scotch-Irish by persecuting the Presbyterian Church. The British decreed that anyone who failed to take an oath of allegiance would be considered in rebellion. Men who had adopted a passive stance had to choose collaboration or resistance, and many chose the latter. The dying embers of the Revolution ignited in guerrilla warfare under men like Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens. Convincing proof of resurgent resistance came at King’s Mountain, where five backcountry partisan bands coalesced against Ferguson’s Loyalist militia and annihilated it. Finally, bowing to Washington’s request, Congress appointed Greene to replace Gates. Greene found the difficulties of his command “infinitely exceed what I apprehended.” His minuscule army was in wretched condition, and the bonds of society had disintegrated as rebels and Tories committed “dreadful, wanton Mischiefs, Murders, and Violences of every kind, unheard of before.” But Greene skillfully coordinated rebel maraudings with the activities of his army, which slowly grew larger and stronger. Greene was especially heartened by the arrival of Daniel Morgan, who had commanded the rifle corps that had fought so well against Burgoyne.
Greene was an unorthodox strategist who took grave risks that yielded great dividends. He assumed command in December 1780 and divided his outnumbered army between himself and Morgan, inviting defeat in detail. Somewhat mystified, Cornwallis split his own army, sending Tarleton directly after Morgan while he took a circuitous route to cut off Morgan’s retreat. Morgan stopped retreating at Cowpens. Shrewdly deploying his mixed force of Continentals, cavalry, and militiamen, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the British, and 90 percent of Tarleton’s 1,100 men became casualties or prisoners.
After Cowpens, Morgan hastened to join Greene. Anxious to refurbish British prestige, Cornwallis gave chase. A game of hounds and hare ensued, with Greene playing the rabbit’s role willingly. By luring Cornwallis away from South Carolina, the partisans could harass enemy outposts with relative impunity. Still, the race was desperate. Frequently the American rear guard skirmished with the British van, but Greene always eluded the main body and finally crossed the Dan River into Virginia. His men exhausted, Cornwallis reversed course to Hillsborough to refit his army, but Greene decided the time to fight had arrived and recrossed the Dan. The armies met at Guilford Courthouse in a furious battle in which the British won a Pyrrhic victory. Cornwallis’s losses were so severe that he moved to Wilmington, where he could recuperate and be resupplied by sea. Soon he marched into Virginia, which he believed was the Revolution’s southern center. The move betrayed southern Loyalists, who had offered support and in return expected protection.
When Cornwallis entered the Old Dominion, Greene marched southward to reclaim the Carolinas and Georgia, where 8,000 enemy troops under Francis Lord Rawdon remained in scattered garrisons. At Hobkirk’s Hill, Greene fought Rawdon, who won another hollow British victory. While the American main army kept Rawdon occupied, guerrillas picked off isolated British posts. In early September, Greene tangled with Rawdon’s successor, Alexander Stewart, at Eutaw Springs in a three-hour slugfest. If the militia failed at Camden, it now redeemed itself by fighting splendidly. As at Guilford Courthouse and Hobkirk’s Hill, the British won the battlefield but suffered irreplaceable losses. Eutaw Springs was Greene’s last battle. He could not claim a single victory—Morgan deserves credit for Cowpens—but he and the partisans had reconquered all the south except Savannah and Charleston. Greene’s operations rank with Washington’s performance at Trenton and Princeton as the war’s most brilliant campaigns.
As Greene’s activities diminished, the war’s final drama unfolded in Virginia. In December 1780, Clinton sent Benedict Arnold—now a British general after his treason—to Virginia with 1,200 men, and Washington countered by dispatching the Marquis de Lafayette’s division. Like a magnet Virginia attracted reinforcements on both sides, and when Cornwallis arrived in the spring of 1781, he assumed command of the British forces there. As Lafayette’s army expanded, Cornwallis fortified Yorktown in order to have access to the sea should he need to receive reinforcements—or escape.
Far to the north the French expeditionary force finally left Newport and united with the Continental Army in July 1781. Washington and Rochambeau knew that a powerful fleet commanded by the Comte de Grasse had departed France under orders to cooperate with them. Washington hoped de Grasse would come to New York and seal it off so that the Franco-American army could capture Clinton, but on August 14 Washington received a message from de Grasse saying he was sailing for Chesapeake Bay. Bagging Clinton was thus impossible, but perhaps Cornwallis could be cornered. Washington ordered the army southward and directed the French naval squadron still at Newport to bring siege artillery and provisions.
The movement of land and naval forces to Yorktown was unique in the war because nothing went wrong. Lafayette kept Cornwallis from fleeing to the Carolinas; de Grasse fended off a British fleet at the Battle of the Virginia Capes, preventing seaborne succor from reaching the garrison at Yorktown; the Newport fleet arrived unscathed; and the army rapidly reached Virginia. The concentration of two naval squadrons and 5,700 Continentals, 3,100 militiamen, and 7,000 French troops at Yorktown was a tour de force that trapped Cornwallis, whose situation was hopeless. On the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne’s capitulation, surrender negotiations began, and two days later 8,000 British troops marched out of Yorktown and stacked arms. The southern phase of the war ended with a British disaster comparable to Saratoga.
Fighting on the Frontier and at Sea
Like the colonial wars, the American Revolution involved the Indians, although they played a minor role compared to the main armies. Resenting the aggressive expansionism of Americans and desiring English trade goods, Native Americans generally supported the British. Frontier warfare took place in three distinct theaters: a central front in the Ohio Valley and Kentucky, a southern front in the Carolina and Georgia backcountry, and a northern front in western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Indian wars in the Ohio country actually began in 1774 when the Shawnees resisted the land encroachments of Virginia settlers. In order to force the Indians to cede their lands, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, organized an expedition into Shawnee territory. Lord Dunmore’s War involved only one battle, when 1,000 Indians attacked an equal number of militiamen at Point Pleasant on the Ohio. The assault failed to prevent Dunmore’s column from penetrating to the Shawnee villages, which compelled the Indians to give up extensive land claims. An uneasy peace prevailed until 1777, when the British commander at Detroit, Henry Hamilton, dispatched raiding parties to Kentucky to divert American attention from Burgoyne, forcing the Kentucky pioneers to huddle together in Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and other strongholds. The Indian raids continued into 1778, making life on the Kentucky frontier dangerous and miserable.
George Rogers Clark proposed to end the Indian menace by first attacking British-controlled settlements in the Illinois country, then assaulting Detroit. Virginia, the parent state of Kentucky, authorized the expedition, and in 1778 Clark captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. With a small force that included Indians allied to the British, Hamilton marched from Detroit and recaptured Vincennes in December. Clark immediately left Kaskaskia to retake the town. To discourage Hamilton’s Indian allies, Clark had six captured Indians tomahawked to death in sight of the British defenses. “It had,” he said, “the effect that I expected.” Vincennes surrendered, but it was Clark’s last important triumph. He never received enough reinforcements to attack Detroit, and Kentucky was on the defensive after 1779, as intermittent Indian raids scourged the Ohio Valley.
In the south, the Cherokees rose against white settlers in May 1776, but the uprising was ill-timed. With no British forces in the region, Georgia and the two Carolinas could concentrate on subduing the Indians. The three states committed 4,500 militiamen to a three-pronged campaign that inflicted severe devastation on the Cherokees, forcing them to sue for peace. The display of American might dampened the warlike ardor of other southern tribes, and for the next two years England received much sympathy but little military aid from them. With the capture of Savannah and the subsequent British conquests in the south, England persuaded a few Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws to assist them. The rebels responded in late 1780 with a punitive expedition against the Cherokees, who again endured the loss of villages and crops. This second chastisement of the Cherokees, combined with England’s deteriorating position in the south throughout 1781, ended Indian participation in the southern war.
In the New York–Pennsylvania region the war shattered the Iroquois Confederacy, as the Oneidas and Tuscaroras supported the United States and the other four tribes assisted the British. Joseph Brant, a well-educated Mohawk chief, led the pro-British Iroquois and worked closely with Loyalist leaders. In 1778 Tory-Indian raiding parties operating out of Niagara terrorized the frontier, destroying the communities of Wyoming Valley, German Flats, and Cherry Valley. Pleas for protection resulted in General John Sullivan’s 1779 expedition. Washington told Sullivan he wanted Iroquois country not “merely overrun, but destroyed.” Aside from punishing the Indians, Washington had a second motive: He did not want the United States confined to the seaboard, and Sullivan’s activities, like Clark’s, might allow America to acquire the west during peace negotiations. Sullivan’s force was powerful, consisting of some of the best Continentals and commanded by excellent officers. Unprepared for such a massive invasion, Brant and the Loyalists made only one effort to stop Sullivan. At the Battle of Newton they fought briefly before fleeing, leaving Iroquois territory open to the invaders. Although Sullivan inflicted extensive damage, the campaign was not decisive. As one participant observed, “The nests are destroyed, but the birds are still on the wing.” They roosted that winter at Niagara, more dependent than ever on British aid, and in the spring they returned to the frontier bent on revenge. Northern wilderness warfare pitting rebels against Loyalists and Indians continued until the war’s end, although it never again matched the scope of 1778–1779.
If frontier warfare saw the repetition of a familiar—and frightening—theme, Americans also fought on a new frontier, the sea. During the colonial wars Americans helped man the Royal Navy and served as privateers, but they never tried to maintain a separate navy. As soon as the Revolution began, some men contemplated confronting Britain on the ocean as well as on land. No one advocated building a fleet to challenge British supremacy, since in 1775 the British navy included 270 ships of the line, frigates, and sloops (the three largest categories of warships), while America did not have a single warship. Although the Royal Navy could not be directly challenged, an American naval effort could still hurt England by attacking its lucrative seaborne commerce and disrupting its military lines of supply and communication. Drawing upon its extensive shipbuilding experience, vast timber supplies, large seafaring population, substantial merchant and fishing fleets, and strong maritime tradition, the United States floated not just one navy, but four distinct types.
Washington created a private navy during the siege of Boston. His army was destitute, while the besieged enemy received ample supplies via the sea. Capturing supply ships would reduce American distress and increase enemy logistical problems. In September 1775 Washington chartered the schooner Hannah, put a few cannons and a volunteer crew aboard, and sent it into Massachusetts Bay. During the next few months he chartered another half-dozen small ships. Before the enemy evacuated Boston, Washington’s ships had captured fifty-five prizes, providing valuable cargoes of muskets, gunpowder, flints, and artillery to the rebel army.
All the colonies except for New Jersey and Delaware organized state navies, primarily for coastal defense. The state navies generally consisted of shallow-draft barges, galleys, and gunboats, but a few states, such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, also commissioned small deep-water vessels that could prey upon British merchantmen. Often the navies acted as maritime militia, fending off British naval raids to gather provisions and preventing Loyalists from supplying ships lying offshore. Occasionally a state navy saw more dangerous action. Pennsylvania’s navy, for instance, participated in the defense of Forts Mercer and Mifflin during Howe’s Philadelphia campaign in 1777.
A third type of navy consisted of privateers, which were privately owned armed ships sailing under a commission or letter of marque authorizing the vessel to attack enemy merchantmen. Privateering was licensed piracy, and it had great appeal. The proceeds from the sale of captured ships and cargoes went to the privateer’s owner, officers, and crew, so the capture of a few merchantmen could make everyone rich. Before the war ended, an estimated 2,000 privateers had sailed under commissions from Congress, state governments, and diplomats abroad. They harmed Britain more than any other facet of the American naval war. England’s losses exceeded $65 million; maritime insurance rates skyrocketed; and to protect merchantmen, England resorted to convoys, which siphoned warships from other vital tasks. The privateers also disrupted communications between England and its forces in America.
The fourth navy was the Continental Navy, established by Congress in the autumn of 1775, when it created a Naval Committee and authorized the acquisition of armed ships. The first were eight converted merchantmen commanded by Esek Hopkins, who had limited qualifications but was the brother of a member of the Naval Committee. Nepotism played a role in the selection of commanding officers for all the vessels. Symptomatic of the officers’ questionable competence was the infant fleet’s first voyage, which, as it turned out, was the only fleet operation by the Continental Navy during the war. Hopkins disobeyed orders to cruise in Chesapeake Bay and instead raided Nassau in the Bahamas. On the return voyage the fleet encountered HMS Glasgow, which, though outnumbered and outgunned, outfought the Americans.
Congress was not content to rely on converted merchantmen. In December 1775 it voted to build thirteen frigates and eventually authorized construction of approximately thirty more vessels. But shipyards, hindered by shortages of cannons, iron, canvas, and seasoned timber, never completed the authorized vessels, and the fate of most ships that slid down the ways was dismal. For example, of the thirteen frigates, the Americans burned three to keep them out of enemy hands, the British burned two and captured seven, and one sank in battle.
The Continental Navy’s worst handicap was a shortage of trained seamen. Privateering was more attractive than naval service because crews received a greater share of prize money, discipline was lax, and it was relatively danger-free, since privateers avoided enemy warships. Continental ships often sat in port for lack of crewmen, and squadron operations became difficult. Thus ships usually sailed alone and, like privateers, concentrated on commerce raiding. Several captains carried the commerce war to European waters with spectacular success. Lambert Wickes and Gustavus Conyngham captured dozens of ships at England’s doorstep, and John Paul Jones won his renowned victory over Serapis while trying to plunder a convoy off Britain’s coast.
One aspect of the naval war deserves special mention. In 1772 David Bushnell, a brilliant mathematics student at Yale, proved that gunpowder would explode underwater, and by 1774 he had developed a submarine mine. He then designed and built the Turtle,the world’s first submarine. This one-man craft could be used to deliver a mine to an enemy warship’s hull. When Howe’s force appeared at New York in 1776, Washington consented to let Bushnell try the Turtle against Eagle, Lord Howe’s flagship. Although Ezra Lee, who operated Turtle, positioned the submarine under Eagle, he was unable to attach the mine to the hull. Two subsequent efforts against other ships also failed. Despite the Turtle’s failure, Bushnell’s efforts foretold the future. Not only did submarines eventually become potent weapons, but Bushnell had also mated engineering science to war.
Approximately fifty ships saw service in the Continental Navy, most of them small and of limited usefulness. By 1780, with only five warships in commission, the navy had practically disappeared and America was relying totally on privateers and the French navy. Indicative of the navy’s negligible role was Yorktown, where de Grasse had forty ships of the line and the United States did not have a single ship. Had there been no national navy, its absence would not have affected the war’s outcome. John Adams, one of the navy’s earliest proponents, provided its epitaph when he wrote that, looking back “over the long list of vessels belonging to the United States taken and destroyed, and recollecting the whole history of the rise and progress of our navy, it is very difficult to avoid tears.”
After Yorktown
Although no one was thinking about the navy, few dry eyes could be seen in Fraunces Tavern in New York during the afternoon of December 4, 1783. Washington had assembled a small group of officers to bid farewell before departing for Congress to submit his resignation. The commander offered a brief toast to his subordinates, thanking them and wishing them well. Then, one by one, the battle-hardened veterans filed by to embrace Washington in an emotional scene suffused with that special affection that develops among soldiers who have triumphed against seemingly impossible odds. Washington did not greatly exaggerate the sense of wonderment at their own success that many of the revolutionaries felt when he wrote to Nathanael Greene:
If Historiographers should be hardy enough to fill the page of History with the advantages that have been gained with unequal numbers (on the part of America) in the course of this contest, and attempt to relate the distressing circumstances under which they have been obtained, it is more than probable that Posterity will bestow on their labors the epithet and marks of fiction: for it will not be believed that such a force as Great Britain has employed for eight years in this Country could be baffled in their plan of Subjugating it by numbers infinitely less, composed of Men sometimes half starved; always in Rags, without pay, and experiencing, at times, every species of distress which human nature is capable of undergoing.
The fighting had ended unexpectedly. No one, least of all Washington, believed Yorktown would be the war’s last campaign. The British had already lost one army at Saratoga and the Americans two armies in the south, yet both sides were able to persist. England still held Charleston, Savannah, and New York with more than 20,000 troops, which was more men than Washington had. He expected that the spring of 1782 would see new campaigns, but none took place in America. The war was going badly for England around the globe. In the Caribbean, the French captured several important islands and threatened Jamaica. Minorca in the Mediterranean fell to the French, Gibraltar was under siege, Spain conquered West Florida, and in India the British precariously held on in the face of intense French pressure. Yorktown broke Parliament’s will to continue the American war, thereby reducing a drain on England’s resources that could be used to preserve the rest of its empire. Carleton, who replaced Clinton, received orders to remain on the defensive. Peace negotiations, which began in 1780, intensified, and on September 3, 1783, the combatants signed the Peace of Paris. The liberal terms England granted the United States astounded Europeans and Americans alike. The former colonies achieved not only independence but also the right of navigation on the Mississippi, access to the Newfoundland fisheries, and enormous territorial acquisitions in the west.
It had been a long and costly war, resulting in at least 25,000 American war-related deaths, which represented almost 1 percent of the entire population. Except for the Civil War, which killed 2 percent of the population, no other United States war took such a frightful toll.4 Like most revolutionaries, Americans improvised with extraordinary ingenuity. Starting from scratch they organized a government, a navy, and an army, and they conducted diplomacy with an astuteness that achieved the indispensable French alliance and an incredibly favorable peace. Even though England confronted great difficulties fighting in its distant colonies, especially after 1778, the American performance was still remarkable.
Equally remarkable was the Revolution’s impact on political and military affairs. Politically, it sparked the feeling in Europe that a new era was dawning. News of American events and institutions filtered into Europe through the press, the efforts of American propagandists, discussions in literary clubs, and reports of returning soldiers. The Enlightenment’s liberal philosophical ideas lost their abstractness as Americans seemingly put them into practice, thereby intensifying the revolutionary and democratic spirit in Europe. In France the new spirit mingled with rising discontent fomented by a soaring cost of living and a bankrupt treasury, both of which resulted primarily from France’s support of the United States. Six years after the Treaty of Paris, France exploded in its own revolution, plunging Europe into a generation of nearly ceaseless violence.
War after 1789 was radically different from what it had been during the age of limited warfare. Restraints on warfare began eroding during the American Revolution, and the French Revolution completely washed them away. Americans reintroduced ideology into warfare, fought for the unlimited goal of independence, and mobilized citizen-soldiers rather than professionals. In the spring of 1783, Washington summarized the drastic implications of these changes. “It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system,” he wrote, “that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal service to the defense of it.” To protect the nation, “the Total strength of the Country might be called forth.” Mass citizen-soldier armies would be motivated by patriotic zeal as they fought for freedom, equality, and other abstract ideological virtues.
The French followed Washington’s prescription for national defense when the government issued a levee en masse in 1793, theoretically conscripting the entire population. France’s national mobilization portended a new, more destructive type of warfare that would culminate in the twentieth century. Huge armies required large-scale production to equip, feed, and transport them, which in turn necessitated economic regimentation. The line between soldiers and civilians, both indispensable to the war effort, became blurred. To sustain the patriotic ardor of troops and workers, governments resorted to mass indoctrination. And since national survival seemed at stake, nations fought with grim determination, surrendering only when battered into abject helplessness. The American and French Revolutions, politically and militarily, transformed Western civilization.