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Unit I:  Founding the New Nation

ca. 33,000 B.C.E.-1783 C.E.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1:     New World Beginnings

AP Focus:

*Students should have an understanding of the pre-Columbian Americas, before European exploration

*Worldwide exploration begins in the fifteenth century.  Students need a good chronology of the voyages of Columbus and other    explorers of the New World

*European contact with the New World has an ecological impact

*The Spanish conquer indigenous New World cultures in both North and South America, creating an enormous empire.

 

Focus Questions:

1.     What was Native American society like before European contact?  What similarities and differences existed?

2.     What factors led to Europe's increased exploration and to the discovery of the New World?

3.     What is the Columbian Exchange?  What are some of the results of the Columbian Exchange?

4.     What was the role of conquistadores and encomienda in establishing a Spanish Empire in the New World?

5.     What was the geographic extent of the Spanish Empire in the New World?  What nations were challenging Spain's dominance         in the New World and where?

 

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Moctezuma II (1466-1520)

 

Hernan Cortes (1485-1547)

 

Three-Sister Farming (from page 10) (check it out on Wikipedia)

Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

 

Questions for Class Discussion:

1.  How did Indian societies of South and North America differ from European societies at the time the two came into contact?  In what ways did Indians retain a worldview different from that of the Europeans?

 

2.  What role did disease and forced labor (including slavery) play in the early settlement of America?  Is the view of the Spanish and Portuguese as especially harsh conquerors  and exploiters valid--or is this image just another version of the English black legend concerning the Spanish role in the Americas?

 

3.  Are the differences between Latin America and North America due primarily to the differences between the respective Indian societies that existed in the two places, or to the disparity between Spanish and English culture?  What wold have happened if the English had conquered densely settled Mexico and Peru, and the Spanish had settled more thinly populated North America?

 

4.  In what ways are the early (pre-1600) histories of Mexican and the present-day American Southwest understood differently now that the United States is being so substantially affected by Mexican and Latin American immigration and culture?  To what extent should this now be regarded as part of our American history?

 

5.  Why was the Old World able to dominate the New World?  What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Old World?  What were the strengths and weaknesses of the New World?

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2:  The Planting of English America, 1500-1733

 

 

Chapter Summary

The Planting of English America, 1500–1733

The defeat of the Spanish Armada and rising Elizabethan [i-liz-uh-bee-thuhn] nationalism brought England into the race to colonize America. The first permanent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia faced harsh conditions and hostile Indians, but cultivating tobacco brought wealth and greater population. It also guaranteed colonists the same rights as Englishmen and led to an early form of representative self-government.

English settlers’ interactions with the Powhatans [pou-uh-tans] in Virginia began many of patterns of later Indian-white relations in North America. Indian societies changed substantially because of warfare, disease, trade, and the mingling and migration of Atlantic coast Indians to inland areas.

Colonies were also established in Maryland and the Carolinas [kār'ə-lī'nəz]. South Carolina thrived on close ties with British sugar colonies in the West Indies. It also borrowed from the West Indies slave codes and large plantation agriculture. North Carolina had fewer slaves and more white colonists who owned small farms, while Georgia served as a buffer against the Spanish and a haven for debtors.

Despite some differences, all the southern colonies depended on staple plantation agriculture, indentured servitude and African slavery. They developed relatively weak religious and social institutions and hierarchical economic and social orders because of their widely scattered rural settlements.

 

 

Checklist of Learning Objectives

1. Explain why England was slow to enter the colonization race and what factors finally led it to launch colonies in the early seventeenth century.

2. Describe the development of the Jamestown colony from its disastrous beginnings to its later prosperity.

3. Describe the cultural and social interaction and exchange between English settlers and Indians in Virginia and the effects of the Virginians’ policy of warfare and forced removal on Indians and whites.

4. Compare the tobacco-based economic development of Virginia and Maryland with South Carolina’s reliance on large-plantation rice-growing and African slavery based on West Indian models.

5. Identify the major similarities and differences among the southern colonies of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

 

Chapter Themes

 

Theme: The English hoped to follow Spain’s example of finding great wealth in the New World, and that influenced the financing and founding of the early southern colonies. The focus on making the southern colonies profitable shaped colonial decisions, including choice of crops and the use of indentured and slave labor. This same focus also helped create economic and cultural ties between the early southern colonies and English settlements in the West Indies.

Theme: The early southern colonies’ encounters with Indians and African slaves established the patterns of race relations that would shape the North American experience—in particular, warfare and reservations for the Indians and lifelong slave codes for African Americans.

Theme: After a late start, a proud, nationalistic England joined the colonial race and successfully established five colonies along the southeastern seacoast of North America. Although varying somewhat in origins and character, all these colonies exhibited plantation agriculture, indentured and slave labor, a tendency toward strong economic and social hierarchies, and a pattern of widely scattered, institutionally weak settlements.

 

Key Terms from Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video Clips:

 

Jamestown

 

 

 

Chapter 3:  Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619-1700

 

Chapter 3 Summary

 

The New England colonies were founded by English Puritans [pyŏŏr'ĭ-tnz]. Most Puritans sought to purify the Church of England from within instead of breaking away from it, but a small group of Separatists (Pilgrims) founded the Plymouth[plim-uhth] Colony in New England. Led by John Winthrop, a larger group of non-separating Puritans founded the Massachusetts / [mas-uh-choo-sits] Bay Colony as part of the great migration of Puritans fleeing English persecution in the 1630s.

A strong sense of common purpose among the first settlers shaped the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Because religion and politics were closely aligned, those like Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams who challenged religious orthodoxy were driven out of Massachusetts for sedition. Williams founded Rhode Island, by far the most religiously and politically tolerant of the colonies. Massachusetts Bay inspired other New England settlements in Connecticut/ [kuh-net-i-kuht], Maine, and New Hampshire. Although they shared a common way of life, the New England colonies developed considerable independence.

The middle colonies developed differently. New York was founded as New Netherland by the Dutch and later conquered by England. It was diverse economically and ethnically, but socially hierarchical and politically divisive. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker haven. It attracted an economically ambitious, politically troublesome and ethnically diverse population.

The middle colonies were the most typically American of England’s thirteen Atlantic seaboard colonies because of their economic variety, ethnic diversity, and political factionalism.

 

Learning Objectives

 

1. Describe the Puritans and their beliefs, and explain why they left England for the New World.

2. Explain how the Puritans’ theology shaped the government and society of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

3. Explain how Massachusetts Bay’s conflict with religious dissenters, as well as new economic opportunities, led to the expansion of New England into Rhode Island, Connecticut, and elsewhere.

4. Describe the conflict between colonists and Indians in New England and the effects of King Philip’s War.

5. Summarize early New England attempts at intercolonial unity and the consequences of England’s Glorious Revolution in America.

6. Describe the founding of New York and Pennsylvania, and explain why these two settlements as well as the other middle colonies became so ethnically, religiously, and politically diverse.

7. Describe the central features of the middle colonies, and explain how they differed from New England and the southern colonies.

 

Chapter 3 Themes

 

Theme: Religious and political turmoil in England shaped settlement in New England and the middle colonies. Religious persecution in England pushed the Separatists into Plymouth and Quakers into Pennsylvania. England’s Glorious Revolution also prompted changes in the colonies.

Theme: The Protestant Reformation, in its English Calvinist (Reformed) version, provided the major impetus and leadership for the settlement of New England. The New England colonies developed a fairly homogeneous social order based on religion and semicommunal family and town settlements.

Theme: Principles of American government developed in New England with the beginnings of written constitutions (Mayflower Compact and Massachusetts’s royal charter) and with glimpses of self-rule seen in town hall meetings, the New England Confederation, and colonial opposition to the Dominion of New England.

Theme: The middle colonies of New Netherland (New York), Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware developed with far greater political, ethnic, religious, and social diversity, and they represented a more cosmopolitan middle ground between the tightly knit New England towns and the scattered, hierarchical plantation in the South.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4:  American Life in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1692

 

The Middle Passage

 

 

 

 

Chapter Summary

Life was hard in the seventeenth-century southern colonies. Disease drastically shortened life spans in the Chesapeake region, even for the young single men who made up the majority of settlers. Families were few and fragile, with men greatly outnumbering women, who were much in demand and seldom remained single for long.

The tobacco economy first thrived on the labor of white indentured servants, who hoped to work their way up to become landowners and perhaps even become wealthy. But by the late seventeenth century, this hope was increasingly frustrated and the discontents of the poor whites exploded in Bacon’s Rebellion.

With white labor increasingly troublesome, slaves (earlier a small fraction of the workforce) began to be imported from West Africa by the tens of thousands in the 1680s and soon became essential to the colonial economy. Slaves in the Deep South died rapidly of disease and overwork, but those in the Chesapeake tobacco region survived longer. Their numbers eventually increased by natural reproduction and they developed a distinctive African American way of life that combined African elements with features developed in the New World.

By contrast with the South, New England’s clean water and cool air contributed to a healthy way of life, which added ten years to the average English life span. The New England way of life centered on strong families and tightly knit towns and churches, which were relatively democratic and equal by seventeenth-century standards. By the late seventeenth century, however, social and religious tensions developed in these narrow communities, as the Salem witch hysteria dramatically illustrates.

Rocky soil forced many New Englanders to turn to fishing and merchant shipping for their livelihoods. Their difficult lives and stern religion made New Englanders tough, idealistic, purposeful, and resourceful. In later years they spread these same values across much of American society.

Seventeenth-century American society was still almost entirely simple and agrarian. Would-be aristocrats who tried to recreate the social hierarchies of Europe were generally frustrated.

 

Focus Questions

1.     How did the climate in the southern colonies influence life expectancy, family life, immigration, and economic development?

2.     What role did Bacon’s Rebellion play in the adoption and expansion of slavery in the southern colonies?

3.     What contributions did enslaved Africans provide the colonies?

4.     How was life expectancy, family life, immigration, and economic development different in New England as compared with the southern colonies?

5.     What are the differences in the legal standing of women in southern colonies and New England colonies?

6.     In what ways were all American colonists similar?

 

Chapter Themes

Theme: In the Chesapeake region, seventeenth-century colonial society was characterized by disease-shortened lives, weak family life, and a social hierarchy that included hardworking planters at the top and restless poor whites and enslaved Africans at the bottom. Despite the substantial disruption of their traditional culture and the mingling of African peoples, slaves in the Chesapeake developed a culture that mixed African and new-world elements, and developed one of the few slave societies that grew through natural reproduction.

Theme: By contrast, early New England life was characterized by healthy, extended life spans, strong family life, closely knit towns and churches, and a demanding economic and moral environment.

 

 

 

Nathaniel Bacon (1647–1676)

Although his followers were mostly poor, landless white farmers who hated the planter aristocrats, rebel leader Nathaniel Bacon was a well-off planter.

Bacon, descended from a famous English family, immigrated to Virginia in 1674 after obtaining a gentlemanly education at Cambridge University and the Inns of Court in London. After the initial phase of his rebellion, which consisted of leading unauthorized attacks on Indians, he was arrested by Governor Berkeley but then pardoned and even appointed to the colonial council in an attempt to appease him. But he and his supporters refused to be conciliated, and when Berkeley tried to suppress them, they went on a rampage that ended in the burning of Jamestown. Bacon seemed on the verge of seizing complete control of the colony when he suddenly died of illness—a development that enabled Berkeley to crush the leaderless rebels.

Quote: “For having upon specious pretences of publick works raised greate unjust taxes upon the commonality for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends…for having wronged his Majesty’s prerogative and interesting by assuming monopoly of the beaver trade…and for having protected, favored, and imboldened the Indian’s against his Majesty’s loyall subjects…we do demand that the said Sir William Berkeley…be forthwith delivered up or surrender [himself] within four days of this notice forthwith.” (Declaration of the People, 1676)

 

 

Cotton Mather (1662–1728)

Cotton Mather’s notorious involvement in the Salem witch trials was only one episode in his long, remarkable career, but it showed many of the contradictions of his complex personality.

The influential Puritan minister’s role in the Salem witch trials arose partly because of his strong scientific interest in spirits and the invisible world. Even before the trials, he took into his home a girl believed to be a victim of witchcraft so that he could study her case in detail. By seventeenth-century standards Mather was actually quite cautious about witchcraft. He believed that where witchcraft existed, it should be treated by prayer and fasting, not by prosecutions and executions. But once the Salem trials got under way, he defended them in public, despite his apparent private belief that the evidence was questionable and the executions unjust.

Mather was hot-tempered, arrogant, and power-hungry but also extremely introspective and given to anxiety and self-doubt. Although he sometimes experienced hallucinations and severe depressions, and engaged in harsh attacks on his enemies, some of his writings are brilliant.

Quote: “Albeit the business of this witchcraft may be very much transacted upon the stage of imagination, yet we know that, as in treason, there is an imagining which is a capital crime, and here also the business, though managed in imagination, yet may not be called imaginary. The effects are dreadfully real.… Our neighbors at Salem Village are blown up, after a sort, with an infernal gunpowder; the train is laid in the laws of the kingdom of darkness…. Now the question is, who gives fire to this train? And by what acts is the match applied?” (1692)

 

 

 

Matthew Hopkins's Witch Finder

 

Rachel Clinton (1629–1694)

Clinton is one of the few Salem witches whose biography historians have been able to reconstruct. Her childhood was extremely unhappy as, evidently, was the rest of her life. After both her parents died when she was very young, she was placed under the control of her mentally unstable stepmother. Her father had left a substantial estate, but Clinton was never able to get a fair share of it because she was constantly exploited by others, including Thomas Clinton, her brother-in-law, whom she married at age thirty-six (he was twenty-two at the time). After her divorce from Thomas Clinton, she was reduced to poverty and dependency, which likely made her extremely bitter and hostile. It is known that she threw stones at people and called them names like “hellhound” and “whoremasterly rogue.” Among the witchcraft activities she was accused of, even before the Salem trials, were taking away a girl’s power of speech for three hours, sending animals to cross people’s paths, and making beer disappear from kegs.

Although convicted in the Salem trials and imprisoned for several months, Clinton was not executed. Released from prison in 1693, she died the following year.

 

 

 

Eyewitness to History:  Salem Witch Trials - Click here to read more!

The Salem Witch Trials

Video

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5: Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700-1775

 

Chapter Summary

By 1775, the thirteen American colonies east of the Appalachians were inhabited by a burgeoning population of two million whites and half a million blacks. The white population was increasingly a melting pot of diverse ethnic groups, including Germans and the Scots-Irish.

Compared with Europe, America was a land of equality and opportunity (for whites), but relative to the seventeenth-century colonies, there was a rising economic hierarchy and increasing social complexity. Ninety percent of Americans remained agriculturalists. But a growing class of wealthy planters and merchants appeared at the top of the social pyramid, in contrast with slaves and “jayle birds” from England, who formed a visible lower class.

By the early eighteenth century, the established New England Congregational Church was losing religious fervor. The Great Awakening, sparked by fiery preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, spread a new style of emotional worship that revived religious zeal. Colonial education and culture were generally undistinguished, although science and journalism displayed some vigor. Politics was everywhere an important activity, as representative colonial assemblies battled on equal terms with politically appointed governors from England.

 

Focus Questions

1.     How did the population growth in the eventually rebellious colonies compare with England’s?

2.     What ethnicities contributed to the mosaic of the thirteen colonies?

3.     How did eighteenth-century America’s social hierarchy compare with seventeenth-century America’s social hierarchy? How did both compare with the Old World’s?

4.     What was the leading industry in eighteenth-century America? What other industries were important?

5.     How did the Great Awakening influence religion in America?

6.     Who are some of America’s noteworthy artists and writers from the eighteenth century?

7.     How were the colonial governments similar and different, and how influential was England in colonial governance?

 

Chapter Themes

Theme: Compared with its seventeenth-century counterpart, eighteenth-century colonial society became more complex and hierarchical, more ethnically and religiously diverse, and more economically and politically developed.

Theme: Colonial culture, while still limited, took on distinct American qualities in such areas as evangelical religion, education, press freedom, and self-government.

Theme: England’s Atlantic sea-board colonies, with their population growth and substantial agricultural exports, grew and developed in importance to the English Empire. Thus, the relationship between England and these colonies was shifting economically, politically, and culturally. Colonists sold their agricultural abundance not only to England, but also to France and the West Indies. Royal authority was checked by colonial legislatures that sometimes refused to pay governors’ salaries and the famous Zenger case. Schools and colleges emerged, and the cultural reliance on England began to fade.

 

 

 

Schoolhouse Rocks!  Boston Tea Party!                Declaration of Independence!

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6:  The Duel for North America, 1608-1763

 

Chapter Summary

 

Like Britain, France entered the American colonial race late. Its extensive but thinly settled empire was based on the fur trade. Britain and France struggled for power struggle throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often resulting in worldwide wars. In North America these wars were fought for imperial control of the continent.

The struggle came to a head when George Washington’s troops ventured into the sharply contested Ohio country. After early failures, the British under William Pitt defeated the French in the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), with a decisive victory at Quebec [kwi-bek]. The French were forced from North America.

American colonists were crucial to Britain’s imperial wars with France, resulting in greater colonial self-confidence. With the French and Spanish threat gone, tensions increased between the colonists and Britain. The Ottawa [ot-uh-wuh] chief Pontiac’s[pon-tee-ak] unsuccessful uprising in 1763 convinced the British they needed a permanent troop presence in America. But with foreign threats gone, colonists resisted British taxes for protection, and resented continued British authority.

 

 

Learning Objectives

 

1. Explain what caused the great contest for North America between Britain and France, and why Britain won.

2. Describe France’s colonial settlements and their expansion, and compare New France with Britain’s colonies in North America.

3. Explain how Britain’s colonists became embroiled in the home country’s wars with France.

4. Describe the colonists’ role in the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), and indicate the consequences of the French defeat for Americans.

5. Indicate how and why the British victory in the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War) became one of the causes of the American Revolution.

 

 

Chapter 6 Themes

 

Theme: As part of their worldwide rivalry, Great Britain and France engaged in a great struggle for colonial control of North America, culminating in the British victory in the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War) that drove France from the continent.

Theme: Before the Seven Years’ War, Britain and its American colonies had already been facing some tensions, as can be seen in sporadic British efforts to enforce trade laws and colonial reaction to the peace treaty in 1748. During the Seven Years’ War, the relationship between British military regulars and colonial militias added to the tensions. The French defeat in the Seven Years’ War created conditions for a growing conflict between Britain and its American colonies. The lack of a threatening European colonial power in North America gave the American colonists a sense of independence that clashed with new British imperial demands, such as stationing soldiers in the colonies and the Proclamation of 1763.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7:  The Road to Revolution, 1763-1775

 

Summary:

 

The American War of Independence was a military conflict fought from 1775 to 1783. The American Revolution transformed both thought and loyalty, beginning with the first settlements and culminating in political separation from Britain.

Long-term conflict resulted from the tension between the colonists’ freedom and self-government at home and their participation in the British mercantile [mur-kuhn-tahyl] system. While British mercantilism [mur-kuhn-ti-liz-uhm] provided both economic benefits and liabilities, Americans resented its limits on freedom and patronizing goal of keeping America perpetually dependent.

The short-term roots of Independence lay in higher British taxes and tighter imperial controls after the French and Indian War. These were reasonable measures to the British, as the colonists would simply bear a fair share of the empire’s costs. To the colonists, however, the measures constituted attacks on fundamental rights.

Colonists used well-orchestrated agitation and boycotts to force repeal of both the Stamp Act of 1765 and the subsequent Townshend Acts, except for the symbolic tax on tea. The Massachusetts governor’s attempt to enforce that law broke a temporary lull in conflict between 1770 and 1773, causing Boston agitators to conduct the Boston Tea Party.

Britain’s response to the Tea Party was the harsh Intolerable [/[[in-tol-er-uh-buhl] Acts, coincidentally passed along with the Quebec Act. Ferocious resistance inflamed the colonies, resulting in the First Continental Congress and the battles of Lexington[lek-sing-tuhn] and Concord [kon-kawrd].

As the two sides prepared for war, British advantages included a larger population, a professional army, and much greater economic strength. Americans’ greatest asset was the Patriots’ deep commitment to sacrifice for their rights.

 

 

Learning Objectives:

 

1. Explain the ideas of republicanism and radical Whiggery that Britain’s American colonists had adopted by the eighteenth century.

2. Describe the theory and practice of mercantilism, and explain why Americans resented it.

3. Explain why Britain adopted policies of tighter political control and higher taxation of Americans after 1763 and how these policies sparked fierce colonial resentment.

4. Describe the first major new British taxes on the colonies and how colonial resistance forced repeal of all taxes, except the tax on tea, by 1770.

5. Explain how colonial agitators kept resistance alive from 1770–1773.

6. Indicate why the forcible importation of taxable British tea sparked the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, and the outbreak of conflict between Britain and the colonists.

7. Assess the balance of forces between the British and the American rebels as the two sides prepared for war.

 

 

Chapter 7 Themes:

 

Theme: Tension between the colonies and Britain centered on the issues of mercantilism and its implementation. The British Empire attempted to more strictly enforce laws aimed at maintaining a system of mercantilism, while colonists objected to this change from the earlier salutary neglect.

Theme: The American Revolution occurred because the American colonists, who had long been developing a strong sense of autonomy and self-government, furiously resisted British attempts to impose tighter imperial controls and higher taxes after the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. The sustained conflict over political authority and taxation, enhanced by American agitators and British bungling, gradually moved Americans from asserting rights within the British Empire to openly warring with the mother country.

Theme: At the outset of the Revolutionary War, Britain appeared to be a mighty empire, but it was weaker than it seemed at first glance. Poor leadership in London, along with second-rate generals in the colonies, reduced the impact of the larger British population and its naval supremacy. Americans, on the other hand, had many advantages such as George Washington’s leadership and fighting a defensive war. However, the colonists also faced disorganization, jealousy, and economic difficulties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8:     America Secedes from the Empire, 1775-1783

 

Chapter Summary:

Even after Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress did not, at first, pursue independence. The Congress’s most important action was selecting George Washington as military commander.

After further armed clashes, George III formally proclaimed the colonists in rebellion, and Thomas Paine’s Common Sensefinally persuaded Americans to fight for independence as well as liberty. Paine and other leaders promoted the Revolution as an opportunity for self-government by the people, though more conservative republicans wanted to retain political hierarchy without monarchy. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence deepened the meaning of the struggle by proclaiming its foundation in self-evident and universal human rights.

The committed Patriots, only a minority of the American population, had to fight both Loyalist Americans and the British. Loyalists were strongest among conservatives, city-dwellers, and Anglicans (except in Virginia), while Patriots were strongest in New England and among Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

In the first phase of the war, Washington stalemated the British, who botched their plan to quash the rebellion quickly at Saratoga. When the French and others then aided the Americans, the Revolutionary War became a world war.

American fortunes fell badly in 1780–1781, but the colonial army in the South held on until Cornwallis stumbled into a French-American trap at Yorktown. Lord North’s ministry collapsed in Britain, and American negotiators achieved an extremely generous settlement from the Whigs.

 

Learning Objectives:

 

1. Explain how American colonists could continue to proclaim their loyalty to the British crown even while they engaged in major military hostilities with Britain after April 1775.

2. Explain why Thomas Paine’s Common Sense finally inspired Americans to declare their independence in the summer of 1776, and outline the principal ideas of republicanism that Paine and other American revolutionary leaders promoted.

3. Explain both the specific political grievances and the universal ideals and principles that Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence used to justify America’s separation from Britain.

4. Show why the American Revolution should be understood as a civil war between Americans as well as a war with Britain, and describe the motivations and treatment of the Loyalists.

5. Describe how Britain’s original strategic plan to crush the Revolution was foiled, especially by the Battle of Saratoga.

6. Describe the fundamental military strategy that Washington and his generals, especially Nathanael Greene, adopted, and why it proved successful.

7. Describe the key role of the French alliance in winning American independence, including the final victory at Yorktown.

8. Describe the terms of the Treaty of Paris, and explain why America was able to achieve a diplomatic victory that far exceeded its military and economic strength.

 

 

 

Chapter Themes:

Theme: When hostilities began in 1775, the colonists were still fighting for their rights as British citizens within the empire, but in 1776, they declared their independence, based on a proclamation of universal, self-evident truths. Inspired by revolutionary idealism, they also fought for an end to monarchy and the establishment of a free republic.

Theme: A combination of Washington’s generalship and British bungling in 1776–1777 prevented a quick British victory and brought French assistance, which enabled the Patriots to achieve victory after several more years of struggle.

Theme: American independence was recognized by the British only after the conflict had broadened to include much of Europe. American diplomats were able to secure generous peace terms because of the international political scene: Britain’s recently reorganized government that favored peace and France’s inability to make good on its promises to Spain.

 

Character Sketches

Admiral de Grasse (1722–1788): French admiral, whose fleet 

blocked British reinforcements, allowing Washington and 

Rochambeau to trap Cornwallis at Yorktown.

 

Allen, Ethan (1738–1789): Revolutionary war officer who, along 

with Benedict Arnold, fought British and Indian forces in frontier 

New York and Vermont.

 

Arnold, Benedict (1741–1801): Revolutionary war general turned 

traitor, who valiantly held off a British invasion of upstate New York 

at Lake Champlain, but later switched sides, plotting to sell out the 

Continental stronghold at West Point to the redcoats. His scheme 

was discovered and the disgraced general fled to British lines.

 

Brant, Joseph (1743–1807): Mohawk chief and Anglican convert, 

who sided with the British during the Revolutionary war, believing 

that only a British victory  could halt American westward expansion.

 

Burgoyne, John (“Gentleman Johnny”) (1722–1792): British general 

who led an ill-fated invasion of upstate New York, suffering a crushing

defeat by George Washington at Saratoga.

 

Clark, George Rogers (1752–1818): American frontiersman who 

captured a series of British forts along the Ohio River during the 

Revolutionary war.

 

Cornwallis, Lord Charles (1738–1805): British general during the 

Revolutionary War who, having failed to crush Greene’s forces in 

South Carolina, retreated to Virginia, where his defeat at Yorktown 

marked the beginning of the end for Britain’s efforts to suppress the 

colonial rebellion.

 

 

Franklin, Benjamin (1706–1790): American printer, inventor, 

statesman and revolutionary. Franklin first established himself in 

Philadelphia as a leading newspaper printer, inventor and author of 

Poor Richard’s Almanac. Franklin later became a leading revolutionary

and signatory of the Declaration of Independence. During the 

Revolutionary War, Franklin served as commissioner to France, 

securing the nation’s support for the American cause.

 

Greene, Nathanael (1742–1786): General in command of the 

Continental army in the Carolina campaign of 1781, the “Fighting 

Quaker” successfully cleared most of Georgia and South Carolina of 

British troops despite loosing a string of minor battles.

 

Howe, William (1729–1814): British general who, despite victories 

on the battle field, failed to deal a crushing blow to Washington’s 

Continental army. By attacking Philadelphia instead of reinforcing 

General Burgoyne at Saratoga, Howe also inadvertently contributed 

to that crucial American victory.

 

Lee, Richard Henry (1733–1794): Virginia planter and revolutionary,

who served as a member of the Continental Congress. He first 

introduced the motion asserting America’s in de pen dence from 

Britain, later supplanted by  Thomas Jefferson’s more formal and 

rhetorically moving declaration. Lee went on to become the first 

U.S. senator from Virginia under the new constitution.

 

Montgomery, Richard (1738–1775): Irish-born British army veteran,

who served as a general in the Continental army during the 

Revolution. He joined Benedict Arnold in a failed attempt to seize 

Quebec in 1775

 

Paine,  Thomas (1737–1809): British-born pamphleteer and author 

of Common Sense, a fiery tract that laid out the case for American 

in de pen dence. Later an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, 

Paine became increasingly radical in his views, publishing the anticlerical

The Age of Reason in 1794, which cost him the support of 

his American allies.

 

Rochambeau, Comte de (1725–1807): General in command of 

French forces during the American Revolution, he fought alongside 

George Washington at Yorktown.