Transcript Document

APUSH Ch. 8
America Secedes From the Empire
Second Continental Congress
• May 10, 1775—representatives from all 13
colonies meet
• Adopted measures to raise money and create
an army and navy
• Drafted new appeals to the British and the
king—rejected
• Select George Washington as the head of the
colonial army
George Washington
• Had never been higher rank than a colonel in the
militia
• Never commanded more than 1200 men
• Leadership and strength of character were his
gifts—a symbol and a rallying point
• Even though the Continental Congress didn’t
know it, this was an extremely wise choice
• Virginia was the largest and most populous
colony, and people were jealous and distrustful of
the large New England army surrounding Boston
War Begins
• May 1775– Americans capture Ticonderoga
and Crown Point in upper New York
– Led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold
– Gunpowder and artillery for siege of Boston
• Bunker Hill (actually Breed’s Hill)
– British launch a frontal assault on the American
position and outnumbered them 2 to 1
– Americans forced to abandon the hill when they
ran out of gunpowder
Olive Branch Petition
• July 1775
• Professes American loyalty to the crown and
asking the king to end hostilities
• Following Bunker Hill, there is no chance of
this in George III’s eyes, and in August 1775 he
proclaims the colonies to be in rebellion
• Fighting against the crown is now treason
• Hessians start to be hired in September 1775
Invasion of Canada
• Americans believed the French in Canada
would rise up against the British
• Change for the Americans—offensive warfare
• The attack on Quebec failed with General
Montgomery being killed and General
Benedict Arnold being wounded
Map 8.1:
Revolution the
North, 1775–1776
Copyright © by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
7
Thomas Paine Interjects Common
Sense
• The burning of Norfolk Virginia in January 1776 and Falmouth
in Maine in October 1775 began to shock some colonists into
realizing they had to separate from the crown
• Thomas Paine writes Common Sense, and sold 120,000 copies
within a few months
– Called not just for independence, but for the creation of a
new political society, a republic
– Power must flow from the people themselves
• Some felt that Paine went too far; that republicanism should
end hereditary aristocracy, but not all social hierarchy. The
masses have to be kept in check.
Independence
• Richard Henry Lee puts forth the motion that
“these United Colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent states”
• Motion adopted on July 2, 1776
• Committee to draft the statement on the
separation to be led by Thomas Jefferson
• Declaration of Independence agreed to on July
4, 1776
Declaration of Independence
• King is ignoring the natural rights of the
colonists
• List of the misdeeds of George III
• “The world’s greatest editorial”
• The phrase “all men are created equal” would
be one that troubled the new nation for a very
long time
Washington’s Battles
• Army routed at the Battle of Long Island
• Washington escapes to New Jersey and
crosses the Delaware River
• Wins two important battles at Trenton and
Princeton during December 1776-January
1777.
• Important battles because they forced the
British into a defensive mode temporarily
Battle of Saratoga
• The British had a plan to capture the Hudson River Valley in
1777
• Burgoyne had been stopped at Lake Champlain by Arnold
• General Howe had defeated Washington twice near
Philadelphia and had stopped there
• Washington is stuck at Valley Forge
• Burgoyne gets caught at Saratoga with no reinforcements
from Howe or St. Leger, and has to surrender his entire army
• Turning point of the Revolution—foreign aid from France now
possible
Map 8.2: New York–Pennsylvania
Theater, 1777–1778
Copyright © by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
13
Diplomacy with France
• Model Treaty
– No political connection
– No military connection
– Only a commercial connection
• France-American Alliance—February 1778
– An entangling alliance that would give America
weapons, war material and money as well as an
official recognition of American independence
American Revolution becomes a
World War
• Spain and Holland enter the war against England in
1779
• Catherine the Great of Russia forms the “Armed
Neutrality”—passive hostility of neutral European
nations toward England
• Americans kept the war going through 1778, but the
French really helped the Continental Army win
• From 1778-1783, guns, money, equipment, half of
America’s regular armed forces, and nearly all naval
strength came from France
British change tactics
• British withdraw from Philadelphia to
concentrate strength in New York City
• British decide to come up from the South
• Take Georgia in 1778-79, Charleston, SC in
1780 (5,000 men and 400 cannon)
Americans and the Frontier
• Most of the Iroquois confederacy supported
the British—restrain American expansion into
the West
• 1784- Treaty of Fort Stanwix
– The Iroquois cede most of their land to the United
States
• George Rogers Clark
– Takes British forts in Illinois—forces the British to
cede the region north of the Ohio River at the
Paris peace conference
Yorktown
• General Cornwallis’ forces are trapped when
Washington’s forces march from New York City
to surround them at Yorktown along with the
French leader, Comte de Rochambeau
• Cornwallis is trapped from escaping to sea by
the French navy
• War continued for a year after Yorktown
Treaty of Paris (1783)
• British formally recognize the independence
of the United States
• Granted boundaries from the Mississippi River
to the Great Lakes to Spanish Florida
• Americans were not to persecute Loyalists any
more
• Britain gave up so much at Paris because they
wanted America to give up their alliance with
France