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 1. Home
 2. Topics
 3. American Revolution
 4. Revolutionary War


REVOLUTIONARY WAR

The American Revolutionary War was an insurrection by Patriots in the 13
colonies against British rule, resulting in American independence.

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 24, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art


TABLE OF CONTENTS

 1. Causes of the Revolutionary War
 2. Declaring Independence (1775‑76)
 3. Saratoga: Revolutionary War Turning Point (1777‑78)
 4. Stalemate in the North, Battle in the South (1778‑81)
 5. Revolutionary War Draws to a Close (1781‑83)

The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose
from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American
colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.

Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and
Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following
summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence.

France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778,
turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict.
After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender
at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their
independence, though fighting did not formally end until 1783.


CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

American Revolution History

For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775,
tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.

The French and Indian War, or Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), brought new
territories under the power of the crown, but the expensive conflict lead to new
and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by
taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767
and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who
resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights
as other British subjects. 

Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire
on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston
Massacre. After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their
appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of
tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party, an outraged Parliament
passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts)
designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts.

> Did you know? Now most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General
> Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes,
> helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.

In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of
Virginia, John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and
John Jay of New York) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to
their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did
not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation
without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the
colonies without their consent. It issued a declaration of the rights due every
citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury. The
Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action,
but by that time violence had already broken out. 

On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston
to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere
and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to
intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British
soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the
“shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War. 


HISTORY VAULT: THE REVOLUTION

From the roots of the rebellion to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution,
explore this pivotal era in American history through sweeping cinematic
recreations.

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DECLARING INDEPENDENCE (1775-76)

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia,
delegates—including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—voted
to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June
17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy
casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in
Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ended in British
victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause. 

Throughout that fall and winter, Washington’s forces struggled to keep the
British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New
York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British
evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to
prepare a major invasion of New York.

Washington Commands the Continental Army – David McCullough

By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of
the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the
Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by
a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by
Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British
government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York.
In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island;
Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September.
Pushed across the Delaware River, Washington fought back with a surprise attack
in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton
to revive the rebels’ flagging hopes before making winter quarters at
Morristown.


SARATOGA: REVOLUTIONARY WAR TURNING POINT (1777-78)

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating
New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the
other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne’s army marched south from
Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe’s forces on the Hudson River.
Burgoyne’s men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking
Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York
to confront Washington’s army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the
Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on September 11 and entered
Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early
October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge.

Howe’s move had left Burgoyne’s army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the
British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American
force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman’s Farm in the first
Battle of Saratoga. After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights
(the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on
October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of
the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding
the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it
would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American
Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its
colonies, had become a world war.


STALEMATE IN THE NORTH, BATTLE IN THE SOUTH (1778-81)

During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington’s troops benefited from
the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von
Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis
de Lafayette. On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who
had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia
to New York, Washington’s army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The
battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but
Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a
French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast,
ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport,
Rhode Island, in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a
stalemate phase in the North.

The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the
defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious
mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia
by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British
forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region,
crushing Gates’ American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans
scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King’s Mountain in early October.
Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that
December. Under Green’s command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against
a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on
January 17, 1781.


HOW THE SOUTH HELPED WIN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Although not as iconic as those fought in the North, battles waged in the South
determined the outcome of the Revolutionary War.

Read more


7 EVENTS THAT ENRAGED COLONISTS AND LED TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Colonists didn’t just take up arms against the British out of the blue. A series
of events escalated tensions that culminated in America’s war for independence.

Read more


HOW THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION SPURRED INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS AROUND THE WORLD

After the Revolutionary War, a series of revolutions took place throughout
Europe and the Americas.

Read more


REVOLUTIONARY WAR DRAWS TO A CLOSE (1781-83)

By the fall of 1781, Greene’s American forces had managed to force Cornwallis
and his men to withdraw to Virginia’s Yorktown peninsula, near where the York
River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by
General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a
total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore
prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered,
Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming
illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O’Hara, to surrender;
after O’Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman
deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin
Lincoln, who accepted it.

Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the
Battle of Yorktown, contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive
victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the
powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take
decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal
of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the
end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed
preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783,
Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the
Treaty of Paris. At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with
France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American
Revolution to a close after eight long years.


HISTORY VAULT: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Stream American Revolution documentaries and your favorite HISTORY series,
commercial-free.

WATCH NOW

By: History.com Editors

HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate
and informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the
HISTORY.com team. Articles with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline have been
written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy
Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




CITATION INFORMATION

Article TitleRevolutionary War
AuthorHistory.com Editors
Website NameHISTORY
URLhttps://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history
Date AccessedSeptember 17, 2024
PublisherA&E Television Networks
Last UpdatedJune 24, 2024
Original Published DateOctober 29, 2009


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MORE ON THIS TOPIC | AMERICAN REVOLUTION


HOW THE COERCIVE ACTS HELPED SPARK THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

As colonists grew increasingly defiant, the British government responded with
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America’s earliest founding document survived war, fire, mistreatment, insects
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The document was designed to prove to the world (especially France) that the
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