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Chapter 7 The American Revolution

1776 -1786

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

OUT OF MANY A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Part One

Introduction

2 © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter Focus Questions

! What were the major alignments and divisions among Americans during the American Revolution?

! What were the major campaigns of the Revolution? ! What role did the Articles of Confederation and the

Confederation Congress play in the Revolution? ! In what ways were the states the sites for significant

political change?


Part Two

American Communities: A National Community Evolves

at Valley Forge


American Communities: A National Community Evolves at Valley Forge

! Drawn from all parts of the country, approximately 11,000 men and 700 women gathered in Valley Forge.

! Amid the suffering, the men and women at Valley Forge created a common identity and strong bonds among themselves.

! Leaving Valley Forge five months later, Washington commanded a much stronger and united army.


Part Three

The War for Independence


The War for Independence

! The British falsely assumed the colonial rebellion was the work of a small group of disgruntled conspirators.

! Resistance was widespread and geography stymied British strategy.


The Patriot Forces

! The militia was important in the defense of their own homes.

! Final victories resulted from consistent struggles of the Continental Army.

! Both Continentals and militias played political roles, pressuring Congress when shortages of food and pay erupted.


Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, a French officer serving with the Continental Army, made these watercolors of American soldiers during the Revolution. Some 200,000 men saw action, including at least 5,000 African Americans; more than half of these troops served with the Continental Army.


The Toll of War

! Regiments of the Continental Army suffered casualty rates as high as 40 percent.

! The South suffered more civilian casualties than New England or the mid-Atlantic states.


The Loyalists

! Between a fifth and a third of the colonial population remained loyal to the Crown, including African Americans, Indians, ethnic minorities, tenant farmers, British colonial officials, and Anglican clergy.

! Patriots cracked down on Loyalists. ! As many as 50,000 fought for the king and 80,000

fled the country after the Revolution. ! The most infamous British supporter was Benedict

Arnold.


A Patriot mob torments Loyalists in this print published during the Revolution. One favorite punishment was the “grand Tory ride,” in which a crowd hauled the victim through the streets astride a fence rail. In another, men were stripped to “buff and breeches” and their naked flesh coated liberally with heated tar and feathers.


Women and the War

! Women remained at home and ran the family farms and businesses.

! Many women joined their men in the military camps.

! On rare occasions, women played roles on the battlefields.


John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Mercy Otis Warren captured her at the age of thirty-six, in 1765. During the Revolution, her home in Boston was a center of patriotic political activity.

SOURCE: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738-1815), “Mrs. James Warren (Mercy Otis),”ca.1763. Oil on canvas. 49 5/8 x 39 ½ in. (126 x 100.3 cm). Bequest of Winslow Warren. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (31.212). Reproduced with permission. © 2000 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved.


The Campaign for New York and New Jersey

! Map: Campaign for New York and New Jersey, 1775 - 77

! The British plan was to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies by: ! Marching north from New York; and ! Marching south from Canada.

! The British drove Washington out of New York City and pursued him into New Jersey.

! After Washington’s Christmas Eve victory at Trenton, he adopted a defensive strategy of avoiding confrontation to insure survival of the Continental Army.


MAP 7.1 Campaign for New York and New Jersey, 1775–77


The Northern Campaigns of 1777

! Map: Northern Campaigns, 1777 -78 ! In 1777, the British tried to achieve the goal of

cutting new England off from the rest of the colonies.

! General Burgoyne’s large army was surrounded at Saratoga and surrendered.

! American forces in Pennsylvania were forced to retreat into Valley Forge.

! After two years of war, Britain had not been successful in suppressing the rebellion.


MAP 7.2 Northern Campaigns, 1777–1778


A Global Conflict

! During the first two years of conflict, French and Spanish loans helped finance the American cause.

! The victory at Saratoga led to an alliance with France. One year later, Spain joined the war, though without a formal American alliance.

! Both France and Spain worried about American expansion. ! The French entry into the conflict forced the British to

withdraw troops from the mainland to protect their Caribbean colonies.

! The war at sea was mainly fought between British and French vessels, but Continental ships raided the British merchant shipping.


Indian Peoples and the Revolution

! Although many Indians preferred a policy of neutrality, their fears of American expansion led many to side with Britain including: ! The Iroquois except for the Oneidas and

Tuscaroras ! The Ohio Indians


Joseph Brant, the brilliant chief of the Mohawks who sided with Great Britain during the Revolution, in a 1786 painting by the American artist Gilbert Stuart. After the Treaty of Paris, Brant led a large faction of Iroquois people north into British Canada, where they established a separate Iroquois Confederacy.


The War in the South

! Maps: Fighting in the South, 1778-81 ! By the late 1770s, the British had shifted

their focus to the South. ! Violence between Loyalists and Patriots

created unrest. ! General Greene harassed British forces and

they had to march towards the Chesapeake where they were trapped by Washington’s army; the British Army surrendered.


MAP 7.4 Fighting in the South, 1778–81


The War in the West ! Map: Fighting in the West, 1778–79

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. 24

Yorktown

! In 1781, Washington marched 16,000 troops to southern Virginia.

! The maneuver was successful and Cornwallis surrendered.


In 1845 Artist William Ranney depicted a famous moment during the Battle of Cowpens that took place in January 1781. Lieutenant Colonel William Washington, leader of the Patriot cavalry and a relative of George Washington, was attacked by a squadron of British dragoons. As Washington was about to be cut down, he was saved by his servant William Ball, who fired a pistol that wounded the attacker. Nothing more is known about Ball, he was one of a number of African Americans who fought on the Patriot side in the battle.

SOURCE: William Ranney, “The Battle of Cowpens.” Oil on canvas. Photo by Sam Holland. Courtesy, South Carolina State House.


Seeing History The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.


Part Four

The United States in Congress Assembled


The Articles of Confederation

! Map: State Claims to Western Lands ! The Articles of Confederation created a loose

union of autonomous states. ! Congress had limited central power, reserving

powers such as taxation to the states. ! Maryland held up ratification for three years until

the eight states with western land claims ceded them to the national government.


MAP 7.5 State Claims to Western Lands The ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781 awaited settlement of the western claims of eight states. Vermont, claimed by New Hampshire and New York, was not made a state until 1791, after disputes were settled the previous year. The territory north of the Ohio River was claimed in whole or in part by Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. All of them had ceded their claims by 1786, except for Connecticut, which had claimed an area just south of Lake Erie, known as the Western Reserve; Connecticut ceded this land in 1800. The territory south of the Ohio was claimed by Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; in 1802, the latter became the last state to cede its claims.


Financing the War

! Though benefiting from foreign subsidies, Congress and the states financed the revolution mainly by issuing paper currency that caused runaway inflation.

! Secretary of Finance, Robert Morris, met interest payments on the debt, but did not persuade Congress to come up with an independent source of income.


The Continental Congress printed currency to finance the Revolution. Because of widespread counterfeiting, engravers attempted to incorporate complex designs, like the unique vein structure in the leaf on this eighteen-pence note. In case that wasn’t enough, the engraver of this note also included the warning: “To counterfeit is Death.”


Negotiating Independence

! Peace negotiations began in 1782 and resulted in a series of separate treaties between Great Britain and the United States, France, and Spain.

! The United States gained: ! independence; ! the promise of the withdrawal of British troops; ! land to the Mississippi River; and ! fishing rights.



American artist Benjamin West never completed his painting of the “American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain, 1783-1785,” but he left this “cartoon” or study. It features portraits (left to right) John Jay, John Adams, Henry Laurens, Benjamin Franklin, and William Temple Franklin, who served as secretary for his grandfather. West intended to include the British commissioners, but the death of one and the uncooperative attitude of the other aborted the project. SOURCE: Benjamin West, 1783. “American Commissioners of Preliminary Negotiations”. Courtesy, Winterthur Museum.

The Crisis of Demobilization ! Congress had neither paid the soldiers nor

delivered the officers their promised postwar bounties or land warrants.

! Several officers stationed at Newburgh contemplated action if Congress failed to act, but they were shamed into accepting civilian rule by George Washington.


North America after the Treaty of Paris

! Map: North America after the Treaty of Paris, 1783


MAP 7.6 North America after the Treaty of Paris, 1783 The map of European and American claims to North America was radically altered by the results of the American Revolution.



The last page of the Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris on September 3, 1783, by David Hartley for Great Britain, and for the United States by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay.

The Problem of the West

! Western land settlement raised new issues, including: ! land losses for several Indian tribes. ! tens of thousands of Americans rushing into the newly acquired

Ohio River Valley. ! Map: The Northwest Territory and the Land Survey

System of the United States ! Three land ordinances provided for organizing the land for

settlement, self-government and eventual statehood. ! They also provided for orderly division of land into

townships, regular land sales, and the abolition of slavery in the Northwest Territory.


MAP 7.7 The Northwest Territory and the Land Survey System of the United States The Land Ordinance of 1785 created an ordered system of survey (revised by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787), dividing the land into townships and sections.


The Land Ordinance of 1785 created an ordered system of survey (revised by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787), diving the land into townships and sections.!


Part Five

Revolutionary Politics in the States


The Broadened Base of Politics

! Most states had greatly expanded the electorate.

! By eliminating Tories from politics, there was a shift to the left.

! Many Americans accepted a new democratic ideology that asserted that governments should directly reflect popular wishes.


The First State Constitutions ! Conservatives argued for balanced government, fearing

majority tyranny could lead to a violation of property rights.

! Fourteen states adopted constitutions between 1776 and 1780.

! The new state constitutions were shaped by the debates between radicals and conservatives.

! Democrats had seized power in Pennsylvania in 1776 and drafted a constitution that placed all power in a unicameral assembly elected by all free male taxpayers.

! Conservatives controlled Maryland and designed a constitution to keep rulers and citizens separate.

! Other states drafted constitutions between these extremes.


Declaration of Rights ! Virginia’s Declaration of Rights provided the model

for other state guarantees of such rights as freedom of speech, assembly, and the press.

! State bills of rights were important precedents of the United States Bill of Rights.

! The 1776 New Jersey constitution enfranchised women, but most questions regarding women were related to the family.

! Led by Thomas Jefferson, states abolished aristocratic inheritance customs and established religious freedom.


By giving the vote to “all free inhabitants,” the 1776 constitution of New Jersey enfranchised women as well as men who met the property requirements. The number of women voters eventually led to male protests. Wrote one: “What tho’ we read, in days of yore, / The woman’s occupation / Was to direct the wheel and loom, / Not to direct the nation.” In 1807, a new state law explicitly limited the right of franchise to “free white male citizens.”


A Spirit of Reform

! The 1776 New Jersey constitution enfranchised women, but most questions regarding women were related to the family.

! Led by Thomas Jefferson, states abolished aristocratic inheritance customs and established religious freedom.


African Americans and the Revolution

! Recognizing the contradiction between a revolution for liberty and the continued support for slavery: ! northern states began to abolish slavery; and ! the Upper South relaxed its bans on emancipation.

! A free African American community emerged with racially defined churches, schools and other institutions.

! Several African American writers became prominent.


This portrait of the African American poet Phyllis Wheatley was included in the collection of her work published in London in 1773, when she was only twenty years old. Kidnapped in Africa when a girl, then purchased off the Boston docks, she was more like a daughter than a slave to the Wheatley family. She later married and lived as a free woman of color before her untimely death in 1784.


Part Six

Conclusion


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