chapter 7: america seceeds from the empire (1771 - 1783) - part 2

part 2 (7.10 - 7.17)

What was the British plan for 1777?

• The goal was to capture the Hudson River Valley and cut New England off from the other states.

• General John Burgoyne would push south from Canada along Lake Champlain.

• General Howe could move north from New York to meet him near Albany.

• Colonel Barry St. Leger would come from the west through the Mohawk Valley.

How did Benedict Arnold delay the British invasion in 1776?

• The British needed control of Lake Champlain to carry their supplies south.

• Arnold built a small fleet, so the British had to stop and build their own.

• His fleet was destroyed, but winter arrived and the British had to go back to Canada.

Why was Burgoyne's advance in 1777 so slow?

• He had 7,000 regular troops and a heavy baggage train.

• His men had to chop a path through the forest.

• American militiamen gathered on his flanks.

What did General Howe do instead of helping Burgoyne?

• He took the main British army to attack Philadelphia, the rebel capital.

• He beat Washington at Brandywine Creek and Germantown in late 1777.

• He then settled into Philadelphia for the winter, while Washington's army camped at Valley Forge.

What happened at Saratoga (October 17, 1777)?

• The Americans drove back St. Leger's force at Oriskany.

• Burgoyne could not advance or retreat, and he surrendered his entire army to American general Horatio Gates.

Why was Saratoga one of the most decisive battles of the war?

• It revived the struggling American cause.

• It made possible the aid from France that helped ensure American independence.

Why did France want to help the Americans?

• France wanted revenge on Britain for its defeat in the Seven Years' War.

• If Britain lost its American colonies, it might stop being a leading power, and France could regain its position.

What was the Model Treaty (1776)?

• Congress wrote it to guide American diplomats going to France, and John Adams was a chief author.

• Its principles were no political connection, no military connection, and only a commercial connection.

What new ideas about foreign affairs did the Model Treaty reflect?

• Americans wanted free trade and freedom of the seas.

• They wanted an end to colonialism and mercantilism.

• They hoped trade ties and the rule of law would replace military power in relations among nations.

How did Benjamin Franklin present himself in Paris, and why?

• He wore plain homespun clothes and a fur cap, and he carried a walking stick instead of a ceremonial sword.

• He wanted his appearance to represent a new democratic social order.

• He shocked the royal court, but ordinary Parisians adored him.

Why did France offer the Americans an alliance in 1778?

• After Saratoga, Parliament offered the Americans home rule within the empire.

• Franklin played on French fears that America and Britain would reconcile.

• France offered a treaty of alliance on February 6, 1778.

What did the French alliance (1778) do?

• France officially recognized American independence and gave military support.

• Both sides promised to fight until America was free and until both agreed to peace terms with Britain.

• It broke the Model Treaty's ideal of no military connections, and it turned the Revolution into a world war.

How did the war widen after 1778?

• Spain and Holland entered the war against Britain in 1779.

• The combined French and Spanish fleets outnumbered Britain's.

• Russia led other naval powers in the Armed Neutrality, which passively resisted Britain.

What did France provide to the Americans from 1778 to 1783?

• France gave guns, money, and huge amounts of equipment.

• It provided about half of America's regular armed forces and almost all of its naval strength.

• Americans won independence only after the conflict became a world war too big for Britain to handle.

How did France's entry change British strategy in America?

• French fleets now threatened Britain's blockade and supply lines.

• The British left Philadelphia and concentrated their forces in New York City.

What happened at the Battle of Monmouth (June 1778)?

• Washington attacked the British as they withdrew through New Jersey on an extremely hot day.

• The battle was indecisive, and the British escaped to New York.

• Afterward, Washington stayed near New York to hem in the British until Yorktown.

Who was the Comte de Rochambeau?

• He commanded a French army of 6,000 regular troops that arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780.

• Americans were suspicious of their former enemies at first, but French gold and goodwill won them over.

What was Benedict Arnold's treason (1780)?

• Arnold was a brilliant general who felt his services were not appreciated.

• He plotted to hand West Point, which controlled the Hudson River, to the British for money and a British officer's rank.

• The plot was discovered by accident, and Arnold fled to the British.

What was Britain's southern strategy?

• The British planned to roll up the colonies starting in the South, where Loyalists were numerous.

• They overran Georgia in 1778 and 1779.

• They took Charleston in 1780 and captured 5,000 men and 400 cannon, a very heavy American loss.

What was the fighting like in the Carolinas, and when did the tide turn?

• Patriots and Loyalists fought each other bitterly, and prisoners on both sides were sometimes killed.

• American riflemen wiped out a British force at King's Mountain in late 1780.

• They defeated a smaller British force at Cowpens in early 1781.

Who was Nathanael Greene, and what was his strategy?

• He was a Quaker-raised general known as the "Fighting Quaker."

• He used a strategy of delay. He would stand, then retreat, and wear out General Charles Cornwallis.

• He lost battles but won campaigns, and he cleared most of Georgia and South Carolina of British troops.

Which side did Native nations take in the war, and why?

• Most sided with Britain, hoping to protect their land from American settlers.

• The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy split. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras joined the Americans.

• The Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas, and Onondagas joined the British.

Who was Joseph Brant?

• He was a Mohawk chief and a convert to Anglicanism.

• He believed a British victory would hold back American expansion into the West.

• He and the British raided backcountry Pennsylvania and New York until an American force stopped them in 1779.

What was the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784)?

• It was the first treaty between the United States and the pro-British Haudenosaunee nations.

• They were forced to give up most of their land and their claims in the Ohio Country.

• This included land of other Native peoples who had not fought or negotiated.

What did George Rogers Clark do in 1778 and 1779?

• He floated down the Ohio River with about 175 men.

• He captured the British forts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes in the Illinois country.

• His admirers claim this forced Britain to give up the region north of the Ohio River in the peace treaty.

What did the small American navy accomplish?

• It had only a handful of ships. Its most famous officer was the Scotsman John Paul Jones.

• It never seriously hurt the British navy.

• Its main contribution was destroying British merchant ships.

What were privateers?

• They were privately owned armed ships that Congress authorized to attack enemy shipping.

• More than a thousand American privateers sailed, and they captured about 600 British ships.

What were the drawbacks and benefits of privateering?

• It pulled men away from the main war effort and encouraged speculation and graft.

• It brought in gold, harassed the enemy, and raised morale.

• British shipping losses led merchants to pressure Parliament to end the war.

Why were 1780 and 1781 one of the darkest periods of the war for Americans?

• Inflation was out of control, and the government was nearly bankrupt.

• The government said it would repay many debts at only 2.5 cents on the dollar.

• Unity faded, and mutiny threatened the army.

How did Cornwallis become trapped at Yorktown?

• He fell back to Yorktown on Chesapeake Bay to wait for supplies by sea, assuming Britain controlled the water.

• French Admiral de Grasse brought a fleet from the West Indies and blockaded him by sea.

• Washington and Rochambeau marched more than 300 miles from New York and surrounded him by land.

What happened at Yorktown on October 19, 1781?

• Cornwallis surrendered his entire force of 7,000 men.

• His band played "The World Turn'd Upside Down."

• It was the last decisive victory of the war.

How important was France to the victory at Yorktown?

• The French provided essentially all the sea power.

• They provided about half of the regular troops in the army of 16,000.

Did the war end at Yorktown?

• No. George III wanted to keep fighting, and Britain still had 54,000 troops in North America.

• Fighting continued for more than a year, with savage Patriot and Loyalist warfare in the South.

• Washington kept the army and the states together during this time.

Why were the British ready to make peace after Yorktown?

• Many Britons were tired of war, and Britain had suffered losses in India and the West Indies.

• Lord North's government fell in March 1782.

• A Whig ministry that was friendlier to the Americans replaced it.

Who were the American peace negotiators, and what were their instructions?

• They were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay.

• Congress ordered them to consult the French at every stage and make no separate peace.

What did France and Spain want from the peace?

• France wanted an independent but weak United States, kept east of the Allegheny Mountains.

• France had promised to help Spain win Gibraltar from Britain.

• Spain also wanted the land west of the Alleghenies.

What did John Jay do in the peace negotiations?

• He suspected France would sacrifice America's western claims to satisfy Spain.

• He secretly approached Britain, against Congress's instructions.

• Britain wanted to split America from France, so it quickly agreed to terms.

What did the United States gain in the Treaty of Paris (1783)?

• Britain formally recognized American independence.

• The boundaries reached the Mississippi River in the west, the Great Lakes in the north, and Spanish Florida in the south.

• Americans kept a share in the Newfoundland fisheries.

What did the Americans promise in the Treaty of Paris (1783)?

• Loyalists would not be persecuted further.

• Congress would recommend that the states return confiscated Loyalist property.

• States would not block British creditors from collecting old debts.

• These promises were not carried out as Britain hoped, which caused later tension.

How did the Treaty of Paris affect Native Americans?

• They had fought on both sides but were left out of the negotiations.

• Land-hungry American settlers, not officials in London, would now control policy in the West.

How did accepting defeat in America help Britain in the long run?

• Continuing the war might have drained Britain.

• Ending it let Britain rebuild its army and navy.

• Britain later defeated Napoleon and became the leading world power of the 1800s.

How did Friedrich von Gentz compare the American and French revolutions?

• In 1800, this Prussian statesman argued that the Americans avoided experiments with abstract theories and untried systems.

• John Quincy Adams translated the essay because it separated the American Revolution from the principles of the French one.

Why were Britain's peace terms so generous?

• Britain wanted to pull America away from its French alliance.

• The Whig ministry was friendlier to Americans than the Tories were.

• It wanted to heal wounds, reopen trade, and prevent future wars over the land west of the Appalachians.

Did the Americans make a separate peace with Britain?

• In spirit they did, which went against the French alliance.

• Technically they did not, because France formally approved the terms.

• France was relieved to end the costly war and escape its promises to Spain.

Who gained and who lost from the war?

• America alone gained. It began as a nation with a huge territory and a heritage of freedom.

• Britain was battered and beaten, though it soon recovered.

• France got revenge but slid toward bankruptcy and its own revolution.

How did American goals change between April 1775 and July 1776?

• At first, colonists fought for their rights within the British Empire and hoped for reconciliation.

• The king's rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, the Hessians, and the burning of towns hardened opinion.

• Common Sense and then the Declaration turned the fight into one for independence.

What were the three turning-point American victories of the war?

• Trenton in 1776 restored morale when the cause was nearly lost.

• Saratoga in 1777 brought the French alliance.

• Yorktown in 1781 was the last decisive victory and led to peace talks.

How have historians explained the causes of the American Revolution?

• The Whig view, from George Bancroft, saw it as a step in the progress of human liberty.

• Progressive historians like Carl Becker saw class conflict and a fight over "who should rule at home."

• Consensus historians of the 1950s said colonists of all ranks shared a belief in self-government.

What do historians since the 1950s debate about the Revolution?

• Bernard Bailyn stresses ideas: colonists read English political writers and feared a conspiracy against liberty.

• Gary Nash and others stress social and economic divisions among Americans.

• Recent scholars see the war as a civil war that also reshaped the continent for Native peoples.