American Revolution - a short look at how Americans gained their Independence

This ppt shows a brief look at how the Americans fought for their independence

1. American Revolution 1775-83 World History

2. Washington Crossing the Delaware , oil on canvas by Emanuel Leutze, 1851; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. It depicts George Washington and his army dramatically crossing the icy Delaware River for a surprise dawn attack on the British at Trenton, New Jersey, on December 25, 1776.

3. The American Revolution (1775–83), also called the United States War of Independence or American Revolutionary War, was a war in which 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies won political independence and went on to form the United States of America.

4. The conflict started as a civil war within the British Empire until early 1778 when France joined the war in support of the colonists. Spain joined on the side of the colonies in 1779. The Netherlands provided both official recognition of the United States and financial support. The colonial forces were made up of the Continental Army (231,771 soldiers) and state militias (164,087), but American forces rarely numbered more than 20,000 at any one time. The British army numbered about 42,000 soldiers. The British government purchased the services of about 30,000 troops from various German princes. These hired soldiers were called Hessians. The British also received significant assistance from loyalists—American colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain during the war—and from various Native American tribes. Numerous taxes, such as the Sugar Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Acts (1767), had been enforced on the colonists by Britain and were intended to raise money for the British crown. Benjamin Franklin argued in Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. He later was instrumental in getting military aid from France and helped draft the Declaration of Independence.

5. King George III sent British troops to the colony of Massachusetts to quell protests and disobedience there. On March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd in Boston and killed several Americans, an event known as the Boston Massacre.

6. Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) Boston Tea Party, (December 16, 1773), incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Americans were protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company. The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770, saving the duty on tea, which was retained by Parliament to demonstrate its presumed right to raise such colonial revenue without colonial approval. The merchants of Boston circumvented the act by continuing to receive tea smuggled in by Dutch traders.

7. In 1773, Parliament passed a Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled East India Company by granting it (1) a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies, (2) an exemption on the export tax, and (3) a “drawback” (refund) on duties owed on certain surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea sent to the colonies was to be carried only in East India Company ships and sold only through its own agents, bypassing the independent colonial shippers and merchants. The company thus could sell the tea at a less-than-usual price in either America or Britain; it could undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove the normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with radicals led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty. In such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, tea agents resigned or canceled orders, and merchants refused consignments. In Boston, however, the royal governor Thomas Hutchinson determined to uphold the law and maintained that three arriving ships, the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, should be allowed to deposit their cargoes and that appropriate duties should be honoured . On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of about 60 men, encouraged by a large crowd of Bostonians, donned blankets and Indian headdresses, marched to Griffin’s wharf, boarded the ships, and dumped the tea chests, valued at £18,000, into the water.

8. In response to the Boston Tea Party, British Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts in an effort to threaten Massachusetts and isolate it from the other colonies. Instead, the colonists united and formed a Continental Congress in 1774. Patrick Henry delivers his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech in 1775.

9. Intolerable Acts (1774) Intolerable Acts, (1774), in U.S. colonial history, four punitive measures enacted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance, together with the Quebec Act establishing a new administration for the territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War (1754–63). The cumulative effect of the reports of colonial resistance to British rule during the winter of 1773–74 was to make Parliament more determined than ever to assert its authority in America. The main force of its actions fell on Boston, which seemed to be the centre of colonial hostility. First, the British government, angered by the Boston Tea Party (1773), passed the Boston Port Bill, closing that city’s harbour until restitution was made for the destroyed tea.

10. Second, the Massachusetts Government Act abrogated the colony’s charter of 1691, reducing it to the level of a crown colony, replacing the elective local council with an appointive one, enhancing the powers of the military governor, Gen. Thomas Gage, and forbidding town meetings without approval. Third, the Administration of Justice Act was aimed at protecting British officials charged with capital offenses during law enforcement by allowing them to go to England or another colony for trial. The fourth Intolerable Act included new arrangements for housing British troops in occupied American dwellings, thus reviving the indignation that surrounded the earlier Quartering Act, which had been allowed to expire in 1770. Passed on June 2, 1774, the new Quartering Act applied to all of British America and gave colonial governors the right to requisition unoccupied buildings to house British troops. However, in Massachusetts the British troops were forced to remain camped on the Boston Common until the following November because the Boston patriots refused to allow workmen to repair the vacant buildings General Gage had obtained for quarters.

11. The First Continental Congress, a group of delegates who spoke for the colonial states, adopted a declaration of personal rights. The Congress included George Washington, Patrick Henry, and John and Samuel Adams. The Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) marked the beginning of the American Revolution. In Lexington, officers on both sides ordered their men to hold their positions and not to fire their weapons. It’s unclear who fired “the shot heard ’round the world.” By the end of both battles, the number killed and wounded totaled 273 British and 95 Americans. Battle of Lexington: A line of minutemen being fired upon by British troops during the Battle of Lexington in Massachusetts, April 19, 1775.

12. The first major battle of the war, the Battle of Bunker Hill, was fought June 17, 1775, primarily on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Although the British won, the hard-fought battle proved that the colonists could stand up against the British Empire. During the first years of the war Benedict Arnold was a respected American general who led several successful battles for the patriot cause. He later switched allegiances to the British, and his name since then became synonymous with the word traitor. The Second Continental Congress met in 1775 and formed the Continental Army. It appointed George Washington commander in chief of the newly formed army. New members of the Congress included Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin

13. On July 2, 1776, the Congress, with New York abstaining, unanimously resolved “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” Two days later it approved the Declaration of Independence. Washington and his troops won a series of engagements at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton (1776–77) against Hessian and British forces in New Jersey. Spanning nine days, the battles were the first notable successes won by Washington. The 1777 Battles of Saratoga are considered a turning point in the war. After General John Burgoyne surrendered to colonial troops in October, the American victory persuaded the French, who had been secretly furnishing financial and material aid to the colonists since 1776, to formally join the war in 1778.

14. During the American Revolution the Americans received military aid from several foreign officers. George Washington (left) stands with officers, including (from left) Johann Kalb and Frederick William, baron von Steuben, of Germany; Kazimierz Pułaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko of Poland; and the marquis de Lafayette of France.

15. Key European soldiers, including the marquis de Lafayette of France, Baron (Friedrich) von Steuben of Germany, and Kazimierz Pułaski of Poland, joined the Continental Army and proved instrumental in the fight for American independence. Women also played a critical role in the war. Mary Ludwig Hays McCauly (“Molly Pitcher”), carried water to cool both the cannons and the exhausted American soldiers at the Battle of Monmouth. When her husband was wounded, she took over his post at the cannon. In 1777 Sybil Ludington rode more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) in one night to warn forces of a British attack. Deborah Sampson served for more than a year (1782–83) in the Continental Army while disguised as a man. Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, lithograph by Nathaniel Currier. Accounts of the battle assert that when her husband, artilleryman William Hays, was incapacitated, she took his place in the gun crew. She was later immortalized in patriotic prints and literature.

16. In 1775 the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Navy and established the Marine Corps. The war at sea in its later stages was fought mainly between Britain and the American colonies’ European allies. The last major battle of the war was the defeat of British General Charles Cornwallis at the siege of Yorktown in Virginia, virtually ending military campaigns in the American Revolution. The Articles of Confederation defined the new government of the United States and became the first U.S. constitution in March 1781. The war ended in 1783, and the United States of America was officially recognized as an independent country.

17. Causes and Effects – in Short The French and Indian War put the British crown in debt. In order to increase revenues for the costs of defending the expanding British Empire, Britain taxed the colonies. It imposed the Sugar Act in 1764, and, one year later, it added the Stamp Act. Colonists protested the added taxes. The Stamp Act was repealed. In another effort to raise money and exert its authority over the colonies, Britain established the Townshend Acts in 1767. This series of acts placed taxes on tea, lead, paint, paper, and glass imported to the colonies. The acts were resisted through violence, deliberate refusal to pay, and hostility toward British agents.

18. Colonial opposition to the British grew, and the British sent troops to Boston, Massachusetts. As punishment for the colonists’ resistance, the British Parliament enacted four measures known as the Intolerable Acts. Meant to divide the colonies, the act united the colonies and provided justification for organizing the First Continental Congress in 1774. After representatives for the colonists called on Britain to cancel the Intolerable Acts, Britain responded by sending more troops. Fighting ensued, and the colonies officially declared independence on July 4, 1776.

19. Effects The Peace of Paris, a collection of treaties signed by both sides, ended the war. Britain recognized the United States of America as an independent country and ceded territory to the new United States. A new plan of government, the Articles of Confederation, were written in 1776–77 and adopted by Congress on November 15, 1777. The articles were not fully ratified by the states until March 1, 1781. This new government organization served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continental Congress and the federal government provided under the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was written in 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution organized the country’s basic political institutions and formed the three branches of government: judicial, executive, and legislative.

20. The signing of the U.S. Constitution by 39 members of the Constitutional Congress on September 17, 1787, is depicted in a painting by Howard Chandler Christy. George Washington is standing to the right.