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Welcome to Our Generation USA!
Herein, We Cover
Liberty
and the Resulting Freedom We Enjoy!
The U.S. Statue of Liberty
- YouTube Video: Statue of Liberty Centennial: opening ceremony
- YouTube Video: Liberty Weekend - Opening Ceremonies - 7/3/86
- YouTube Video: Statue of Liberty / Ellis Island Tour - New York City
Statue of Liberty:
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, within New York City.
The copper-clad statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
The statue is a figure of a classically draped woman, likely inspired by the Roman goddess of liberty, Libertas. In a contrapposto pose, she holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
With her left foot she steps on a broken chain and shackle, commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication the statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
The idea for the statue was conceived in 1865, when the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American democracy and the liberation of the nation's slaves.
The Franco-Prussian War delayed progress until 1875, when Laboulaye proposed that the people of France finance the statue and the United States provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.
The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (equivalent to $35 in 2024).
The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.
The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933, it has been maintained by the National Park Service as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, and is a major tourist attraction.
Limited numbers of visitors can access the rim of the pedestal and the interior of the statue's crown from within; public access to the torch has been barred since 1916.
Development:
Origin:
According to the National Park Service, the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time.
The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations."
The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870.
In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences,
"With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy."
According to sculptor Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's alleged comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi. Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye.
Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects. In 1856, he traveled to Egypt to study ancient works. In the late 1860s, he approached Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build Progress or Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said.
Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios.
This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships. Both the khedive and Ferdinand de Lesseps, developer of the Suez Canal, declined the proposed statue from Bartholdi, citing the high cost. The Port Said Lighthouse was built instead, by François Coignet in 1869.
Upon his return from Egypt, Bartholdi visited Giovanni Battista Crespi's sculpture Sancarlone, a 76-foot statue of St Charles Borromeo in repoussé copper covering an iron armature at Lago Maggiore in Italy.
He was also familiar with the similar construction of the Vercingétorix monument by Aimé Millet; the restoration of Millet's statue a century later would call international attention to the Statue of Liberty's own poor state of preservation. Bartholdi chose copper over bronze or stone due to its lower cost, weight, and ease of transportation.
Any large project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France.
As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans. In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye.
Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island (now named Liberty Island) as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense.
It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states." As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue.
Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans whom he thought would be sympathetic to the project. But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign.
Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870. The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, artist John LaFarge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his visit to La Farge's Rhode Island studio.
Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France. He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians.
One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months.
The defiant lion, 73 feet (22 m) long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty.
Design, style, and symbolism:
Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation.
One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom, and Marianne came to represent France.
Columbia had supplanted the traditional European Personification of the Americas as an "Indian princess", which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans.
The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves.
A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time, and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building.
The statue's design evokes iconography evident in ancient history including the Egyptian goddess Isis, the ancient Greek deity of the same name, the Roman Columbia and the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary.
Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Libertas as an allegorical symbol. A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France. However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix's famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's July Revolution, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen.
Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi's figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes. Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold.
Its second toe on both feet is longer than its big toe, a condition known as Morton's toe or 'Greek foot'. This was an aesthetic staple of ancient Greek art and reflects the classical influences on the statue.
Crawford's statue was designed in the early 1850s. It was originally to be crowned with a pileus or "liberty cap", the cap given to emancipated slaves in ancient Rome. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a Southerner who would later serve as President of the Confederate States of America, was concerned that the pileus would be taken as an abolitionist symbol.
He ordered that it be changed to a helmet. Delacroix's figure wears a pileus, and Bartholdi at first considered placing one on his figure as well. Instead, he used a radiate halo, nimbus, to top its head. In so doing, he avoided a reference to Marianne, who invariably wears a pileus. Many believed they evoke the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents, and represent another means, besides the torch, whereby Liberty enlightens the world, but research has not confirmed this.
Bartholdi's early models were all similar in concept: a female figure in neoclassical style representing liberty, wearing a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holding a torch aloft.
According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Augusta Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother, but Regis Huber, the curator of the Bartholdi Museum is on record as saying that this, as well as other similar speculations, have no basis in fact.
He designed the figure with austere face and a strong, uncomplicated silhouette, which would be set off well by its dramatic harbor placement and allow passengers on vessels entering New York Bay to experience a changing perspective on the statue as they proceeded toward Manhattan. He gave it bold classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose.
Bartholdi wrote of his technique:
"The surfaces should be broad and simple, defined by a bold and clear design, accentuated in the important places. The enlargement of the details or their multiplicity is to be feared. By exaggerating the forms, in order to render them more clearly visible, or by enriching them with details, we would destroy the proportion of the work. Finally, the model, like the design, should have a summarized character, such as one would give to a rapid sketch. Only it is necessary that this character should be the product of volition and study, and that the artist, concentrating his knowledge, should find the form and the line in its greatest simplicity."
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, within New York City.
The copper-clad statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.
The statue is a figure of a classically draped woman, likely inspired by the Roman goddess of liberty, Libertas. In a contrapposto pose, she holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
With her left foot she steps on a broken chain and shackle, commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication the statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
The idea for the statue was conceived in 1865, when the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American democracy and the liberation of the nation's slaves.
The Franco-Prussian War delayed progress until 1875, when Laboulaye proposed that the people of France finance the statue and the United States provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.
The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (equivalent to $35 in 2024).
The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.
The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933, it has been maintained by the National Park Service as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, and is a major tourist attraction.
Limited numbers of visitors can access the rim of the pedestal and the interior of the statue's crown from within; public access to the torch has been barred since 1916.
Development:
Origin:
According to the National Park Service, the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time.
The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations."
The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870.
In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences,
"With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy."
According to sculptor Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's alleged comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi. Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye.
Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects. In 1856, he traveled to Egypt to study ancient works. In the late 1860s, he approached Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build Progress or Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said.
Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios.
This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships. Both the khedive and Ferdinand de Lesseps, developer of the Suez Canal, declined the proposed statue from Bartholdi, citing the high cost. The Port Said Lighthouse was built instead, by François Coignet in 1869.
Upon his return from Egypt, Bartholdi visited Giovanni Battista Crespi's sculpture Sancarlone, a 76-foot statue of St Charles Borromeo in repoussé copper covering an iron armature at Lago Maggiore in Italy.
He was also familiar with the similar construction of the Vercingétorix monument by Aimé Millet; the restoration of Millet's statue a century later would call international attention to the Statue of Liberty's own poor state of preservation. Bartholdi chose copper over bronze or stone due to its lower cost, weight, and ease of transportation.
Any large project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France.
As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans. In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye.
Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island (now named Liberty Island) as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense.
It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye: "land common to all the states." As well as meeting many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue.
Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans whom he thought would be sympathetic to the project. But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign.
Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870. The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, artist John LaFarge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his visit to La Farge's Rhode Island studio.
Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France. He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians.
One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months.
The defiant lion, 73 feet (22 m) long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty.
Design, style, and symbolism:
Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation.
One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom, and Marianne came to represent France.
Columbia had supplanted the traditional European Personification of the Americas as an "Indian princess", which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans.
The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves.
A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time, and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building.
The statue's design evokes iconography evident in ancient history including the Egyptian goddess Isis, the ancient Greek deity of the same name, the Roman Columbia and the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary.
Artists of the 18th and 19th centuries striving to evoke republican ideals commonly used representations of Libertas as an allegorical symbol. A figure of Liberty was also depicted on the Great Seal of France. However, Bartholdi and Laboulaye avoided an image of revolutionary liberty such as that depicted in Eugène Delacroix's famed Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's July Revolution, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen.
Laboulaye had no sympathy for revolution, and so Bartholdi's figure would be fully dressed in flowing robes. Instead of the impression of violence in the Delacroix work, Bartholdi wished to give the statue a peaceful appearance and chose a torch, representing progress, for the figure to hold.
Its second toe on both feet is longer than its big toe, a condition known as Morton's toe or 'Greek foot'. This was an aesthetic staple of ancient Greek art and reflects the classical influences on the statue.
Crawford's statue was designed in the early 1850s. It was originally to be crowned with a pileus or "liberty cap", the cap given to emancipated slaves in ancient Rome. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a Southerner who would later serve as President of the Confederate States of America, was concerned that the pileus would be taken as an abolitionist symbol.
He ordered that it be changed to a helmet. Delacroix's figure wears a pileus, and Bartholdi at first considered placing one on his figure as well. Instead, he used a radiate halo, nimbus, to top its head. In so doing, he avoided a reference to Marianne, who invariably wears a pileus. Many believed they evoke the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents, and represent another means, besides the torch, whereby Liberty enlightens the world, but research has not confirmed this.
Bartholdi's early models were all similar in concept: a female figure in neoclassical style representing liberty, wearing a stola and pella (gown and cloak, common in depictions of Roman goddesses) and holding a torch aloft.
According to popular accounts, the face was modeled after that of Augusta Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, the sculptor's mother, but Regis Huber, the curator of the Bartholdi Museum is on record as saying that this, as well as other similar speculations, have no basis in fact.
He designed the figure with austere face and a strong, uncomplicated silhouette, which would be set off well by its dramatic harbor placement and allow passengers on vessels entering New York Bay to experience a changing perspective on the statue as they proceeded toward Manhattan. He gave it bold classical contours and applied simplified modeling, reflecting the huge scale of the project and its solemn purpose.
Bartholdi wrote of his technique:
"The surfaces should be broad and simple, defined by a bold and clear design, accentuated in the important places. The enlargement of the details or their multiplicity is to be feared. By exaggerating the forms, in order to render them more clearly visible, or by enriching them with details, we would destroy the proportion of the work. Finally, the model, like the design, should have a summarized character, such as one would give to a rapid sketch. Only it is necessary that this character should be the product of volition and study, and that the artist, concentrating his knowledge, should find the form and the line in its greatest simplicity."
Bartholdi made alterations in the design as the project evolved. Bartholdi considered having Liberty hold a broken chain, but decided this would be too divisive in the days after the Civil War.
The erected statue does stride over a broken chain, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground. Her right foot is raised and set back, in a classical contrapposto pose that looks stationary when viewed from the front, but dynamic when viewed from the side signifying a solid footing and a posture more relaxed than that of two feet set side by side, and introducing a sense of tension between standing and moving forward, both physically and mentally.
The upright form and outstretched leg may have also helped to stabilize the statue. Bartholdi was initially uncertain of what to place in Liberty's left hand; he settled on a tabula ansata, used to evoke the concept of law. Though Bartholdi greatly admired the United States Constitution, he chose to inscribe JULY IV MDCCLXXVI on the tablet, thus associating the date of the country's Declaration of Independence with the concept of liberty.
Bartholdi interested his friend and mentor, architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in the project. As chief engineer, Viollet-le-Duc proposed designing a brick pier filled with sand within the statue up to the hips, with iron bars like veins of a leaf to which the skin would be anchored.
After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers.
An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only 0.094 inches (2.4 mm) thick. Bartholdi had decided on a height of just over 151 feet (46 m) for the statue, double that of Italy's Sancarlone and the German statue of Arminius, both made with the same method. Viollet le Duc also designed the pleats of the dress.
Announcement and early work:
By 1875, France was enjoying improved political stability and a recovering postwar economy. Growing interest in the upcoming Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia led Laboulaye to decide it was time to seek public support. In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco-American Union as its fundraising arm.
With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World. The French people were to finance the statue (contrary to the common misconception of it being funded by the French national government); and Americans would be expected to pay for the pedestal.
The announcement provoked a generally favorable reaction in France, though many Frenchmen resented the United States for not coming to their aid during the war with Prussia. French monarchists opposed the statue, if for no other reason than it was proposed by the liberal Laboulaye, who had recently been elected a senator for life.
Laboulaye arranged events designed to appeal to the rich and powerful, including a special performance at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, that featured a new cantata by the composer Charles Gounod. The piece was titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, the French version of the statue's announced name.
Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities. Laboulaye's political allies supported the call, as did descendants of the French contingent in the American Revolutionary War.
Less idealistically, contributions came from those who hoped for American support in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. The copper may have come from multiple sources and some of it is said to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway, though this has not been conclusively determined after testing samples.
According to Cara Sutherland in her book on the statue for the Museum of the City of New York, 200,000 pounds (91,000 kg) was needed to build the statue, and the French copper industrialist Eugène Secrétan donated 128,000 pounds (58,000 kg) of copper.
Although plans for the statue had not been finalized, Bartholdi moved forward with fabrication of the right arm, bearing the torch, and the head. Work began at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop.
In May 1876, Bartholdi traveled to the United States as a member of a French delegation to the Centennial Exhibition, and arranged for a huge painting of the statue to be shown in New York as part of the Centennial festivities.
The arm did not arrive in Philadelphia until August; because of its late arrival, it was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, and while some reports correctly identified the work, others called it the "Colossal Arm" or "Bartholdi Electric Light". The exhibition grounds contained a number of monumental artworks to compete for fairgoers' interest, including an outsized fountain designed by Bartholdi.
Nevertheless, the arm proved popular in the exhibition's waning days, and visitors would climb up to the balcony of the torch to view the fairgrounds. After the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York City, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for several years before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue.
During his second trip to the United States, Bartholdi addressed a number of groups about the project, and urged the formation of American committees of the Franco-American Union. Committees to raise money to pay for the foundation and pedestal were formed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
The New York group eventually took on most of the responsibility for American fundraising and is often referred to as the "American Committee". One of its members was 19-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the future governor of New York and president of the United States.
On March 3, 1877, on his final full day in office, President Grant signed a joint resolution that authorized the President to accept the statue when it was presented by France and to select a site for it. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who took office the following day, selected the Bedloe's Island site that Bartholdi had proposed.
Construction in France
The erected statue does stride over a broken chain, half-hidden by her robes and difficult to see from the ground. Her right foot is raised and set back, in a classical contrapposto pose that looks stationary when viewed from the front, but dynamic when viewed from the side signifying a solid footing and a posture more relaxed than that of two feet set side by side, and introducing a sense of tension between standing and moving forward, both physically and mentally.
The upright form and outstretched leg may have also helped to stabilize the statue. Bartholdi was initially uncertain of what to place in Liberty's left hand; he settled on a tabula ansata, used to evoke the concept of law. Though Bartholdi greatly admired the United States Constitution, he chose to inscribe JULY IV MDCCLXXVI on the tablet, thus associating the date of the country's Declaration of Independence with the concept of liberty.
Bartholdi interested his friend and mentor, architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in the project. As chief engineer, Viollet-le-Duc proposed designing a brick pier filled with sand within the statue up to the hips, with iron bars like veins of a leaf to which the skin would be anchored.
After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers.
An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only 0.094 inches (2.4 mm) thick. Bartholdi had decided on a height of just over 151 feet (46 m) for the statue, double that of Italy's Sancarlone and the German statue of Arminius, both made with the same method. Viollet le Duc also designed the pleats of the dress.
Announcement and early work:
By 1875, France was enjoying improved political stability and a recovering postwar economy. Growing interest in the upcoming Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia led Laboulaye to decide it was time to seek public support. In September 1875, he announced the project and the formation of the Franco-American Union as its fundraising arm.
With the announcement, the statue was given a name, Liberty Enlightening the World. The French people were to finance the statue (contrary to the common misconception of it being funded by the French national government); and Americans would be expected to pay for the pedestal.
The announcement provoked a generally favorable reaction in France, though many Frenchmen resented the United States for not coming to their aid during the war with Prussia. French monarchists opposed the statue, if for no other reason than it was proposed by the liberal Laboulaye, who had recently been elected a senator for life.
Laboulaye arranged events designed to appeal to the rich and powerful, including a special performance at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, that featured a new cantata by the composer Charles Gounod. The piece was titled La Liberté éclairant le monde, the French version of the statue's announced name.
Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities. Laboulaye's political allies supported the call, as did descendants of the French contingent in the American Revolutionary War.
Less idealistically, contributions came from those who hoped for American support in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. The copper may have come from multiple sources and some of it is said to have come from a mine in Visnes, Norway, though this has not been conclusively determined after testing samples.
According to Cara Sutherland in her book on the statue for the Museum of the City of New York, 200,000 pounds (91,000 kg) was needed to build the statue, and the French copper industrialist Eugène Secrétan donated 128,000 pounds (58,000 kg) of copper.
Although plans for the statue had not been finalized, Bartholdi moved forward with fabrication of the right arm, bearing the torch, and the head. Work began at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop.
In May 1876, Bartholdi traveled to the United States as a member of a French delegation to the Centennial Exhibition, and arranged for a huge painting of the statue to be shown in New York as part of the Centennial festivities.
The arm did not arrive in Philadelphia until August; because of its late arrival, it was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, and while some reports correctly identified the work, others called it the "Colossal Arm" or "Bartholdi Electric Light". The exhibition grounds contained a number of monumental artworks to compete for fairgoers' interest, including an outsized fountain designed by Bartholdi.
Nevertheless, the arm proved popular in the exhibition's waning days, and visitors would climb up to the balcony of the torch to view the fairgrounds. After the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York City, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for several years before it was returned to France to join the rest of the statue.
During his second trip to the United States, Bartholdi addressed a number of groups about the project, and urged the formation of American committees of the Franco-American Union. Committees to raise money to pay for the foundation and pedestal were formed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
The New York group eventually took on most of the responsibility for American fundraising and is often referred to as the "American Committee". One of its members was 19-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the future governor of New York and president of the United States.
On March 3, 1877, on his final full day in office, President Grant signed a joint resolution that authorized the President to accept the statue when it was presented by France and to select a site for it. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who took office the following day, selected the Bedloe's Island site that Bartholdi had proposed.
Construction in France
On his return to Paris in 1877, Bartholdi concentrated on completing the head, which was exhibited at the 1878 Paris World's Fair. Fundraising continued, with models of the statue put on sale.
Tickets to view the construction activity at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop were also offered. The French government authorized a lottery; among the prizes were valuable silver plate and a terracotta model of the statue. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs had been raised.
The head and arm had been built with assistance from Viollet-le-Duc, who fell ill in 1879. He soon died, leaving no indication of how he intended to transition from the copper skin to his proposed masonry pier. The following year, Bartholdi was able to obtain the services of the innovative designer and builder Gustave Eiffel.
Eiffel and his structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin, decided to abandon the pier and instead build an iron truss tower. Eiffel opted not to use a completely rigid structure, which would force stresses to accumulate in the skin and lead eventually to cracking.
A secondary skeleton was attached to the center pylon, then, to enable the statue to move slightly in the winds of New York Harbor, and, since the metal would expand on hot summer days, he loosely connected the support structure to the skin using flat iron bars or springs, which culminated in a mesh of metal straps, known as "saddles", that were riveted to the skin, providing firm support.
In a labor-intensive process, each saddle had to be crafted individually. To prevent galvanic corrosion between the copper skin and the iron support structure, Eiffel insulated the skin with asbestos impregnated with shellac.
Eiffel's design made the statue one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework. He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown.
Access to an observation platform surrounding the torch was also provided, but the narrowness of the arm allowed for only a single ladder, 40 feet (12 m) long. As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure. The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret.
The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead, he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island.
In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton. The skin was not, however, crafted in exact sequence from low to high; work proceeded on a number of segments simultaneously in a manner often confusing to visitors.
Some work was performed by contractors—one of the fingers was made to Bartholdi's exacting specifications by a coppersmith in the southern French town of Montauban. By 1882, the statue was complete up to the waist, an event Bartholdi celebrated by inviting reporters to lunch on a platform built within the statue.
Laboulaye died in 1883. He was succeeded as chairman of the French committee by Lesseps.
The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884, and Lesseps announced that the French government had agreed to pay for its transport to New York. The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal; by January 1885, this had occurred and the statue was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage.
The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade.
The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete.
There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue.
There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once."
The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances." Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years.
Design:
The foundation of Bartholdi's statue was to be laid inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on Bedloe's Island constructed between 1807 and 1811. Since 1823, it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station. The fortifications of the structure were in the shape of an eleven-point star.
The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. In 1881, the New York committee commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the pedestal. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months. He proposed a pedestal 114 feet (35 m) in height; faced with money problems, the committee reduced that to 89 feet (27 m).
Hunt's pedestal design contains elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture. The large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue.
In form, it is a truncated pyramid, 62 feet (19 m) square at the base and 39.4 feet (12.0 m) at the top. The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states (between 1876 and 1889, there were 38 of them), although this was not done. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises.
According to author Louis Auchincloss, the pedestal "craggily evokes the power of an ancient Europe over which rises the dominating figure of the Statue of Liberty". The committee hired former army General Charles Pomeroy Stone to oversee the construction work.
Construction on the 15-foot-deep (4.6 m) foundation began in 1883, and the pedestal's cornerstone was laid in 1884. In Hunt's original conception, the pedestal was to have been made of solid granite. Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, faced with granite blocks.
This Stony Creek granite came from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut The concrete mass was the largest poured to that time.
Norwegian immigrant civil engineer Joachim Goschen Giæver designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty. His work involved design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction. In completing his engineering for the statue's frame, Giæver worked from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel.
Fundraising
Fundraising in the U.S. for the pedestal had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events. As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue.
At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.
The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the lines "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty in American culture and is inscribed on a plaque in its museum. Lazarus's poem contrasted the classical Colossus of Rhodes as a frightening symbol, with the new "American colossus" as a "beacon to the lost and hopeless".
Tickets to view the construction activity at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop were also offered. The French government authorized a lottery; among the prizes were valuable silver plate and a terracotta model of the statue. By the end of 1879, about 250,000 francs had been raised.
The head and arm had been built with assistance from Viollet-le-Duc, who fell ill in 1879. He soon died, leaving no indication of how he intended to transition from the copper skin to his proposed masonry pier. The following year, Bartholdi was able to obtain the services of the innovative designer and builder Gustave Eiffel.
Eiffel and his structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin, decided to abandon the pier and instead build an iron truss tower. Eiffel opted not to use a completely rigid structure, which would force stresses to accumulate in the skin and lead eventually to cracking.
A secondary skeleton was attached to the center pylon, then, to enable the statue to move slightly in the winds of New York Harbor, and, since the metal would expand on hot summer days, he loosely connected the support structure to the skin using flat iron bars or springs, which culminated in a mesh of metal straps, known as "saddles", that were riveted to the skin, providing firm support.
In a labor-intensive process, each saddle had to be crafted individually. To prevent galvanic corrosion between the copper skin and the iron support structure, Eiffel insulated the skin with asbestos impregnated with shellac.
Eiffel's design made the statue one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction, in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework. He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown.
Access to an observation platform surrounding the torch was also provided, but the narrowness of the arm allowed for only a single ladder, 40 feet (12 m) long. As the pylon tower arose, Eiffel and Bartholdi coordinated their work carefully so that completed segments of skin would fit exactly on the support structure. The components of the pylon tower were built in the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret.
The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead, he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island.
In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P. Morton. The skin was not, however, crafted in exact sequence from low to high; work proceeded on a number of segments simultaneously in a manner often confusing to visitors.
Some work was performed by contractors—one of the fingers was made to Bartholdi's exacting specifications by a coppersmith in the southern French town of Montauban. By 1882, the statue was complete up to the waist, an event Bartholdi celebrated by inviting reporters to lunch on a platform built within the statue.
Laboulaye died in 1883. He was succeeded as chairman of the French committee by Lesseps.
The completed statue was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on July 4, 1884, and Lesseps announced that the French government had agreed to pay for its transport to New York. The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal; by January 1885, this had occurred and the statue was disassembled and crated for its ocean voyage.
The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade.
The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete.
There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue.
There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once."
The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances." Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years.
Design:
The foundation of Bartholdi's statue was to be laid inside Fort Wood, a disused army base on Bedloe's Island constructed between 1807 and 1811. Since 1823, it had rarely been used, though during the Civil War, it had served as a recruiting station. The fortifications of the structure were in the shape of an eleven-point star.
The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean. In 1881, the New York committee commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the pedestal. Within months, Hunt submitted a detailed plan, indicating that he expected construction to take about nine months. He proposed a pedestal 114 feet (35 m) in height; faced with money problems, the committee reduced that to 89 feet (27 m).
Hunt's pedestal design contains elements of classical architecture, including Doric portals, as well as some elements influenced by Aztec architecture. The large mass is fragmented with architectural detail, in order to focus attention on the statue.
In form, it is a truncated pyramid, 62 feet (19 m) square at the base and 39.4 feet (12.0 m) at the top. The four sides are identical in appearance. Above the door on each side, there are ten disks upon which Bartholdi proposed to place the coats of arms of the states (between 1876 and 1889, there were 38 of them), although this was not done. Above that, a balcony was placed on each side, framed by pillars. Bartholdi placed an observation platform near the top of the pedestal, above which the statue itself rises.
According to author Louis Auchincloss, the pedestal "craggily evokes the power of an ancient Europe over which rises the dominating figure of the Statue of Liberty". The committee hired former army General Charles Pomeroy Stone to oversee the construction work.
Construction on the 15-foot-deep (4.6 m) foundation began in 1883, and the pedestal's cornerstone was laid in 1884. In Hunt's original conception, the pedestal was to have been made of solid granite. Financial concerns again forced him to revise his plans; the final design called for poured concrete walls, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, faced with granite blocks.
This Stony Creek granite came from the Beattie Quarry in Branford, Connecticut The concrete mass was the largest poured to that time.
Norwegian immigrant civil engineer Joachim Goschen Giæver designed the structural framework for the Statue of Liberty. His work involved design computations, detailed fabrication and construction drawings, and oversight of construction. In completing his engineering for the statue's frame, Giæver worked from drawings and sketches produced by Gustave Eiffel.
Fundraising
Fundraising in the U.S. for the pedestal had begun in 1882. The committee organized a large number of money-raising events. As part of one such effort, an auction of art and manuscripts, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to donate an original work. She initially declined, stating she could not write a poem about a statue.
At the time, she was also involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe. These refugees were forced to live in conditions that the wealthy Lazarus had never experienced. She saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.
The resulting sonnet, "The New Colossus", including the lines "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", is uniquely identified with the Statue of Liberty in American culture and is inscribed on a plaque in its museum. Lazarus's poem contrasted the classical Colossus of Rhodes as a frightening symbol, with the new "American colossus" as a "beacon to the lost and hopeless".
Even with these efforts, fundraising lagged. Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed. The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal.
With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000 (equivalent to $3,500,000 in 2024). Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial."
One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with." Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman."
Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn—the cities would not merge until 1898—donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons. A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.
As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal. France raised about $250,000 to build the statue, while the United States had to raise up to $300,000 to build the pedestal.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Statue of Liberty:
With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000 (equivalent to $3,500,000 in 2024). Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial."
One donor gave "five cents as a poor office boy's mite toward the Pedestal Fund." A group of children sent a dollar as "the money we saved to go to the circus with." Another dollar was given by a "lonely and very aged woman."
Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York's rival city of Brooklyn—the cities would not merge until 1898—donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons. A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.
As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal. France raised about $250,000 to build the statue, while the United States had to raise up to $300,000 to build the pedestal.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Statue of Liberty:
- Construction
- Dedication
- After dedication
- Access and attributes
- Historical designations
- Measurements
- Depictions
- See also:
- Goddess of Liberty, 1888 statue by Elijah E. Myers atop the Texas State Capitol dome in Austin, Texas
- List of tallest statues
- Miss Freedom, 1889 statue on the dome of the Georgia State Capitol (US)
- Place des États-Unis, in Paris, France
- The Statue of Liberty (film), a 1985 Ken Burns documentary film
- Statues and sculptures in New York City
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan on smaller islands
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan on islands
- Statue of Liberty National Monument
- Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation
- Statue of Liberty – UNESCO World Heritage
- "A Giant's Task – Cleaning Statue of Liberty", Popular Mechanics (February 1932)
- Views from the webcams affixed to the Statue of Liberty
- Made in Paris The Statue of Liberty 1877–1885 – many historical photographs
- Front page of The Evening Post (New York) extensively describing October 28, 1886, dedication
- Statue of Liberty at Structurae
- Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. NY-138
- 404 photos,
- 59 color transparencies,
- 41 measured drawings,
- 10 data pages,
- 33 photo caption pages
- The Statue of Liberty, BBC Radio 4:
- discussion with:
- Robert Gildea,
- Kathleen Burk
- & John Keane (In Our Time, February 14, 2008)
- discussion with:
Liberty
- YouTube Video: American Patriots fighting for Libery
- YouTube Video: Patriots Massacred at The Waxhaws | The Liberty Trail
- YouTube Video: Early Settlers Fight For Freedom | America: The Story of Us (S1, E1) | Full Episode
Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional law of the United States, ordered liberty means creating a balanced society where individuals have the freedom to act without unnecessary interference (negative liberty) and access to opportunities and resources to pursue their goals (positive liberty), all within a fair legal system.
Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved.
In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment. In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of criminal acts.
Liberty's etymology is from the Latin word liber, from Proto-Italic *louðeros, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁léwdʰeros, from *h₁lewdʰ- ('people') (thus cognate to archaic English lede meaning 'man, person').
The word "liberty" is commonly used in slogans or quotes, such as in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" from the United States Declaration of Independence, and France's national motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".
Philosophy
Philosophers from the earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) wrote: "a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed."
According to compatibilist Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do."
— Leviathan, Part 2, Ch. XXI.
John Locke (1632–1704) rejected that definition of liberty. While not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke:
John Stuart Mill, in his 1859 work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.
In his 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty", Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty.
The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former refers to the liberty that comes from self-mastery, the freedom from inner compulsions such as weakness and fear.
Politics
Main article: Political freedom
History
The modern day concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery. To be free, to the Greeks, was not to have a master, to be independent from a master (to live as one likes).
That was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it: "This, then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second characteristic of democracy, whence has arisen the claim of men to be ruled by none, if possible, or, if this is impossible, to rule and be ruled in turns; and so it contributes to the freedom based upon equality."
This applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative.
The populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the same rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men, and slavery was abolished (550 BC).
All the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era when slaves typically did such work.
In the Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had some rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka the Great, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government.
The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war also appears to have been condemned by Ashoka. Slavery also appears to have been non-existent in the Maurya Empire. However, according to Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, "Ashoka's orders seem to have been resisted right from the beginning."
Roman law also embraced certain limited forms of liberty, even under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, these liberties were accorded only to Roman citizens. Many liberties established under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were generally limited to the nobility and ruling classes, seldom extending to common people.
The idea of inalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.
Social contract
The social contract theory, most influentially formulated by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau (though first suggested by Plato in The Republic), was among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment reasoned that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. This conception of law would find its culmination in the ideas of Montesquieu.
The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would be as universal as possible.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill sought to define the "...nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual," and as such, he describes an inherent and continuous antagonism between liberty and authority and thus, the prevailing question becomes "how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control".
Origins of political freedom
According to a 2024 study, a global conception of liberty took form during the late Middle Ages (circa 1000–1600), as "emic terms used across Afro-Eurasia to denote liberty were interconnected through various translingual practices resulting from multilingual governance, courtly encounters, and the spread of religions. Words for liberty in different languages paralleled each other in bilingual legal documents, resonated with each other in different translations of religious texts, and stood next to each other in bureaucratic glossaries and dictionaries."
The study concludes, "thus, the concept(s) of liberty, instead of being a product of the West, is more accurately seen as a result of interactions among different parts of the world; the globalization of liberty did not start with the global expansion of the Euro-American empires but has a rich and complex history that predates them."
England and Great Britain
Timeline:
United States
According to the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, all people have a natural right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". This declaration of liberty was troubled for 90 years by the continued institutionalization of legalized Black slavery, as slave owners argued that their liberty was paramount since it involved property, their slaves, and that Blacks had no rights that any White man was obliged to recognize. The Supreme Court, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, upheld this principle. In 1866, after the American Civil War, the US Constitution was amended to extend rights to persons of color, and in 1920 voting rights were extended to women.
By the later half of the 20th century, liberty was expanded further to prohibit government interference with personal choices. In the 1965 United States Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice William O. Douglas argued that liberties relating to personal relationships, such as marriage, have a unique primacy of place in the hierarchy of freedoms. Jacob M. Appel has summarized this principle:
"I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square – but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber. Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress."
In modern America, various competing ideologies have divergent views about how best to promote liberty.
France
Pictured below: Eugène Delacroix – Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple) (1830)
The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional law of the United States, ordered liberty means creating a balanced society where individuals have the freedom to act without unnecessary interference (negative liberty) and access to opportunities and resources to pursue their goals (positive liberty), all within a fair legal system.
Sometimes liberty is differentiated from freedom by using the word "freedom" primarily, if not exclusively, to mean the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; and using the word "liberty" to mean the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved.
In this sense, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others. Thus liberty entails the responsible use of freedom under the rule of law without depriving anyone else of their freedom. Liberty can be taken away as a form of punishment. In many countries, people can be deprived of their liberty if they are convicted of criminal acts.
Liberty's etymology is from the Latin word liber, from Proto-Italic *louðeros, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁léwdʰeros, from *h₁lewdʰ- ('people') (thus cognate to archaic English lede meaning 'man, person').
The word "liberty" is commonly used in slogans or quotes, such as in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" from the United States Declaration of Independence, and France's national motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".
Philosophy
Philosophers from the earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) wrote: "a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed."
According to compatibilist Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do."
— Leviathan, Part 2, Ch. XXI.
John Locke (1632–1704) rejected that definition of liberty. While not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke:
- "In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule.
- In political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it.
- Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.' Freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society.
- Freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.
- Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it.
- Persons have a right or liberty to
- (1) follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited
- and (2) not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others."
John Stuart Mill, in his 1859 work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.
In his 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty", Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty.
The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former refers to the liberty that comes from self-mastery, the freedom from inner compulsions such as weakness and fear.
Politics
Main article: Political freedom
History
The modern day concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery. To be free, to the Greeks, was not to have a master, to be independent from a master (to live as one likes).
That was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it: "This, then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second characteristic of democracy, whence has arisen the claim of men to be ruled by none, if possible, or, if this is impossible, to rule and be ruled in turns; and so it contributes to the freedom based upon equality."
This applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative.
The populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the same rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men, and slavery was abolished (550 BC).
All the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era when slaves typically did such work.
In the Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had some rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka the Great, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government.
The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war also appears to have been condemned by Ashoka. Slavery also appears to have been non-existent in the Maurya Empire. However, according to Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, "Ashoka's orders seem to have been resisted right from the beginning."
Roman law also embraced certain limited forms of liberty, even under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, these liberties were accorded only to Roman citizens. Many liberties established under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were generally limited to the nobility and ruling classes, seldom extending to common people.
The idea of inalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.
Social contract
The social contract theory, most influentially formulated by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau (though first suggested by Plato in The Republic), was among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment reasoned that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. This conception of law would find its culmination in the ideas of Montesquieu.
The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would be as universal as possible.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill sought to define the "...nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual," and as such, he describes an inherent and continuous antagonism between liberty and authority and thus, the prevailing question becomes "how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control".
Origins of political freedom
According to a 2024 study, a global conception of liberty took form during the late Middle Ages (circa 1000–1600), as "emic terms used across Afro-Eurasia to denote liberty were interconnected through various translingual practices resulting from multilingual governance, courtly encounters, and the spread of religions. Words for liberty in different languages paralleled each other in bilingual legal documents, resonated with each other in different translations of religious texts, and stood next to each other in bureaucratic glossaries and dictionaries."
The study concludes, "thus, the concept(s) of liberty, instead of being a product of the West, is more accurately seen as a result of interactions among different parts of the world; the globalization of liberty did not start with the global expansion of the Euro-American empires but has a rich and complex history that predates them."
England and Great Britain
Timeline:
- 1066 – as a condition of his coronation William the Conqueror assented to the London Charter of Liberties which guaranteed the "Saxon" liberties of the City of London.
- 1100 – the Charter of Liberties is passed which sets out certain liberties of nobles, church officials and individuals.
- 1166 – Henry II of England transformed English law by passing the Assize of Clarendon. The act, a forerunner to trial by jury, started the abolition of trial by combat and trial by ordeal.
- 1187-1189 – publication of Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie which contains authoritative definitions of freedom and servitude.
- 1215 – Magna Carta (see below for complete text) was enacted, becoming the cornerstone of liberty in England, then Great Britain, and later the world.
- 1628 – the English Parliament passed the Petition of Right which set out specific liberties of English citizens.
- 1679 – the English Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act which outlawed unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment.
- 1689 – the Bill of Rights granted "freedom of speech in Parliament", and reinforced existing civil rights in England. The Scots law equivalent the Claim of Right is passed.
- 1772 – the Somerset v Stewart judgement found that slavery was unsupported by common law in England and Wales.
- 1859 – an essay by philosopher John Stuart Mill, entitled On Liberty, argued for toleration and individuality. "If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility."
- 1948 – British representatives attempted to but were prevented from adding a legal framework to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was not until 1976 that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights came into force, giving a legal status to most of the Declaration.
- 1958 – Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, identified "negative liberty" as an obstacle, as distinct from "positive liberty" which promotes self-mastery and the concepts of freedom.
United States
According to the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, all people have a natural right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". This declaration of liberty was troubled for 90 years by the continued institutionalization of legalized Black slavery, as slave owners argued that their liberty was paramount since it involved property, their slaves, and that Blacks had no rights that any White man was obliged to recognize. The Supreme Court, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, upheld this principle. In 1866, after the American Civil War, the US Constitution was amended to extend rights to persons of color, and in 1920 voting rights were extended to women.
By the later half of the 20th century, liberty was expanded further to prohibit government interference with personal choices. In the 1965 United States Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice William O. Douglas argued that liberties relating to personal relationships, such as marriage, have a unique primacy of place in the hierarchy of freedoms. Jacob M. Appel has summarized this principle:
"I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square – but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber. Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress."
In modern America, various competing ideologies have divergent views about how best to promote liberty.
- Liberals in the original sense of the word see equality as a necessary component of freedom.
- Progressives stress freedom from business monopoly as essential.
- Libertarians disagree, and see economic and individual freedom as best.
- The Tea Party movement sees "big government" as an enemy of freedom.
- Other major participants in the modern American libertarian movement include
- the Libertarian Party,
- the Free State Project,
- and the Mises Institute.
France
Pictured below: Eugène Delacroix – Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple) (1830)
France supported the Americans in their revolt against English rule and, in 1789, overthrew their own monarchy, with the cry of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".
The bloodbath that followed, known as the reign of terror, soured many people on the idea of liberty. Edmund Burke, considered one of the fathers of conservatism, wrote "The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world."
Ideologies
Liberalism
Main article: Liberalism
According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, liberalism is "the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice". But they point out that there is considerable discussion about how to achieve those goals.
Every discussion of freedom depends on three key components:
John Gray argues that the core belief of liberalism is toleration. Liberals allow others freedom to do what they want, in exchange for having the same freedom in return. This idea of freedom is personal rather than political.
William Safire points out that liberalism is attacked by both the Right and the Left: by the Right for defending such practices as abortion, homosexuality, and atheism, and by the Left for defending free enterprise and the rights of the individual over the collective.
Libertarianism
Main article: Libertarianism
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, libertarians hold liberty as their primary political value. Their approach to implementing liberty involves opposing any governmental coercion, aside from that which is necessary to prevent individuals from coercing each other.
Libertarianism is guided by the principle commonly known as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The Non-Aggression Principle asserts that aggression against an individual or an individual's property is always an immoral violation of one's life, liberty, and property rights.
Utilizing deceit instead of consent to achieve ends is also a violation of the Non-Aggression principle. Therefore, under the framework of the Non-Aggression principle, rape, murder, deception, involuntary taxation, government regulation, and other behaviors that initiate aggression against otherwise peaceful individuals are considered violations of this principle.
This principle is most commonly adhered to by libertarians. A common elevator pitch for this principle is, "Good ideas don't require force."
Republican liberty
According to republican theorists of freedom, like the historian Quentin Skinner or the philosopher Philip Pettit, republican liberty consists not simply in the absence of interference (negative liberal freedom), but in the absence of arbitrary dependence on others (as non-domination).
A citizen is free when they are not subject to the discretionary will of any other party, public or private. According to this view, which originates in the Roman Digest, to be a free man, means not being subject to another's arbitrary will, that is to say, dominated by another.
They cite Machiavelli who asserted that you must be a member of a free self-governing civil association, a republic, if you are to enjoy individual liberty.
While republican ideas of liberty influenced parliamentarians during the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes developed a distinct conception of liberty in Leviathan, that emphasizes freedom as non-interference, partly in response to the political instability, rather than as a direct continuation of republican non-domination.
Socialism
Main article: Socialism
Socialists view freedom as a concrete situation as opposed to a purely abstract ideal. Freedom is a state of being where individuals have agency to pursue their creative interests unhindered by coercive social relationships, specifically those they are forced to engage in as a requisite for survival under a given social system.
Freedom thus requires both the material economic conditions that make freedom possible alongside social relationships and institutions conducive to freedom.
The socialist conception of freedom is closely related to the socialist view of creativity and individuality. Influenced by Karl Marx's concept of alienated labor, socialists understand freedom to be the ability for an individual to engage in creative work in the absence of alienation, where "alienated labor" refers to work people are forced to perform and un-alienated work refers to individuals pursuing their own creative interests.
Marxism
Main article: Marxism
For Karl Marx, meaningful freedom is only attainable in a communist society characterized by superabundance and free access. Such a social arrangement would eliminate the need for alienated labor and enable individuals to pursue their own creative interests, leaving them to develop and maximize their full potentialities.
This goes alongside Marx's emphasis on the ability of socialism and communism progressively reducing the average length of the workday to expand the "realm of freedom", or discretionary free time, for each person. Marx's notion of communist society and human freedom is thus radically individualistic.
Anarchism
Main article: Anarchism
While many anarchists see freedom slightly differently, all oppose authority, including the authority of the state, of capitalism, and of nationalism.
For the Russian revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, liberty did not mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity."
Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation.
In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."
Historical writings on liberty
See also
Magna Carta
Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights sealed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215.
First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.
Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.
After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause.
At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name "Magna Carta", to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes.
His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. However, Magna Carta was not unique; other legal documents of its time, both in England and beyond, made broadly similar statements of rights and limitations on the powers of the Crown.
The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn. As time went by and the fledgling Parliament of England passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.
At the end of the 16th century, there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms. They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights and that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus.
Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke invoked Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings.
Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta. The political myth of Magna Carta that it dealt with the protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century.
It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the United States Constitution, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States.
Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, and not ordinary subjects. The majority of historians now see the interpretation of the charter as a unique and early charter of universal legal rights as a myth that was created centuries later.
Despite the changes in views of historians, the charter has remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it in 1956 as "the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot". In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Castle and one at Salisbury Cathedral.
These are recognised by UNESCO on its Memory of the World international register. There are also a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia.
The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015 included extensive celebrations and discussions, and the four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library. None of the original 1215 Magna Carta is currently in force since it has been repealed; however, three clauses of the original charter are enshrined in the 1297 reissued Magna Carta and do still remain in force in England and Wales.
Click on the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Magna Carta:
The bloodbath that followed, known as the reign of terror, soured many people on the idea of liberty. Edmund Burke, considered one of the fathers of conservatism, wrote "The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world."
Ideologies
Liberalism
Main article: Liberalism
According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, liberalism is "the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice". But they point out that there is considerable discussion about how to achieve those goals.
Every discussion of freedom depends on three key components:
- who is free,
- what they are free to do,
- and what forces restrict their freedom.
John Gray argues that the core belief of liberalism is toleration. Liberals allow others freedom to do what they want, in exchange for having the same freedom in return. This idea of freedom is personal rather than political.
William Safire points out that liberalism is attacked by both the Right and the Left: by the Right for defending such practices as abortion, homosexuality, and atheism, and by the Left for defending free enterprise and the rights of the individual over the collective.
Libertarianism
Main article: Libertarianism
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, libertarians hold liberty as their primary political value. Their approach to implementing liberty involves opposing any governmental coercion, aside from that which is necessary to prevent individuals from coercing each other.
Libertarianism is guided by the principle commonly known as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The Non-Aggression Principle asserts that aggression against an individual or an individual's property is always an immoral violation of one's life, liberty, and property rights.
Utilizing deceit instead of consent to achieve ends is also a violation of the Non-Aggression principle. Therefore, under the framework of the Non-Aggression principle, rape, murder, deception, involuntary taxation, government regulation, and other behaviors that initiate aggression against otherwise peaceful individuals are considered violations of this principle.
This principle is most commonly adhered to by libertarians. A common elevator pitch for this principle is, "Good ideas don't require force."
Republican liberty
According to republican theorists of freedom, like the historian Quentin Skinner or the philosopher Philip Pettit, republican liberty consists not simply in the absence of interference (negative liberal freedom), but in the absence of arbitrary dependence on others (as non-domination).
A citizen is free when they are not subject to the discretionary will of any other party, public or private. According to this view, which originates in the Roman Digest, to be a free man, means not being subject to another's arbitrary will, that is to say, dominated by another.
They cite Machiavelli who asserted that you must be a member of a free self-governing civil association, a republic, if you are to enjoy individual liberty.
While republican ideas of liberty influenced parliamentarians during the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes developed a distinct conception of liberty in Leviathan, that emphasizes freedom as non-interference, partly in response to the political instability, rather than as a direct continuation of republican non-domination.
Socialism
Main article: Socialism
Socialists view freedom as a concrete situation as opposed to a purely abstract ideal. Freedom is a state of being where individuals have agency to pursue their creative interests unhindered by coercive social relationships, specifically those they are forced to engage in as a requisite for survival under a given social system.
Freedom thus requires both the material economic conditions that make freedom possible alongside social relationships and institutions conducive to freedom.
The socialist conception of freedom is closely related to the socialist view of creativity and individuality. Influenced by Karl Marx's concept of alienated labor, socialists understand freedom to be the ability for an individual to engage in creative work in the absence of alienation, where "alienated labor" refers to work people are forced to perform and un-alienated work refers to individuals pursuing their own creative interests.
Marxism
Main article: Marxism
For Karl Marx, meaningful freedom is only attainable in a communist society characterized by superabundance and free access. Such a social arrangement would eliminate the need for alienated labor and enable individuals to pursue their own creative interests, leaving them to develop and maximize their full potentialities.
This goes alongside Marx's emphasis on the ability of socialism and communism progressively reducing the average length of the workday to expand the "realm of freedom", or discretionary free time, for each person. Marx's notion of communist society and human freedom is thus radically individualistic.
Anarchism
Main article: Anarchism
While many anarchists see freedom slightly differently, all oppose authority, including the authority of the state, of capitalism, and of nationalism.
For the Russian revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, liberty did not mean an abstract ideal but a concrete reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense, liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and by material prosperity."
Such a conception of liberty is "eminently social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation.
In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against all divine, collective, and individual authority."
Historical writings on liberty
- John Locke (1689). Two Treatises of Government: In the Former, the False Principles, and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and His Followers, Are Detected and Overthrown. the Latter Is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government. London: Awnsham Churchill.
- Frédéric Bastiat (1850). The Law. Paris: Guillaumin & Co.
- John Stuart Mill (1859). On Liberty. London: John W Parker and Son.
- James Fitzjames Stephen (1874). Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.
See also
- Gratis versus libre
- Harm principle
- Intentional living
- List of freedom indices
- Real freedom
- Refusal of work
- Rule according to higher law
Magna Carta
Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights sealed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215.
First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.
Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.
After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause.
At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name "Magna Carta", to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes.
His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. However, Magna Carta was not unique; other legal documents of its time, both in England and beyond, made broadly similar statements of rights and limitations on the powers of the Crown.
The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn. As time went by and the fledgling Parliament of England passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.
At the end of the 16th century, there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms. They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights and that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus.
Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke invoked Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings.
Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta. The political myth of Magna Carta that it dealt with the protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century.
It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the United States Constitution, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States.
Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, and not ordinary subjects. The majority of historians now see the interpretation of the charter as a unique and early charter of universal legal rights as a myth that was created centuries later.
Despite the changes in views of historians, the charter has remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it in 1956 as "the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot". In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Castle and one at Salisbury Cathedral.
These are recognised by UNESCO on its Memory of the World international register. There are also a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia.
The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015 included extensive celebrations and discussions, and the four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library. None of the original 1215 Magna Carta is currently in force since it has been repealed; however, three clauses of the original charter are enshrined in the 1297 reissued Magna Carta and do still remain in force in England and Wales.
Click on the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Magna Carta:
- History
- Copies
- Clauses
- See also
- Civil liberties in the United Kingdom
- Charter of Liberties
- Charter of the Forest
- Fundamental Laws of England
- Haandfæstning
- History of democracy
- History of human rights
- List of most expensive books and manuscripts
- Magna Carta (An Embroidery), 2015 artwork
- Magna Carta Hiberniae – an issue of the English Magna Carta, or Great Charter of Liberties in Ireland
- Ordinances of 1311
- Statutes of Mortmain
- Government websites
- Academic websites
- The Magna Carta Project
- Digital Bodleian: Charters and Seals (high-resolution scans of three 1217 exemplifcations)
- Texts
- Text of the Magna Carta 1297 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.
- Text of Magna Carta English translation, with introductory historical note. From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
- Magna Carta public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Civil liberties including the ACLU
- YouTube Video: Understanding Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the U.S.: Definitions and Distinctions
- YouTube: Civil Liberties in the United States: From Foundational Concepts to Modern Challenges
- YouTube Video: Trump’s Executive Orders on Civil Liberties | Kristen Waggoner
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties often include:
- the freedom of conscience,
- freedom of press,
- freedom of religion,
- freedom of expression,
- freedom of assembly,
- the right to security and liberty,
- freedom of speech,
- the right to privacy,
- the right to equal treatment under the law and due process,
- the right to a fair trial,
- and the right to life.
Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights.
Libertarians advocate for the negative liberty aspect of civil liberties, emphasizing minimal government intervention in both personal and economic affairs. Influential advocates of this interpretation include John Stuart Mill, whose work On Liberty argues for the protection of individual freedoms from government encroachment, and Friedrich Hayek, whose The Road to Serfdom warns against the dangers of expanding state power.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto further emphasize the importance of safeguarding personal autonomy and limiting government authority. These contributions have played a significant role in shaping the discourse on civil liberties and the appropriate scope of government.
Overview
Broken Liberty: Istanbul Archaeology Museum
Many contemporary nations have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee civil liberties.
Other nations have enacted similar laws through a variety of legal means, including signing and ratifying or otherwise giving effect to key conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The existence of some claimed civil liberties is a matter of dispute, as are the extent of most civil rights. Controversial examples include:
In authoritarian regimes in which government censorship impedes on perceived civil liberties, some civil liberty advocates argue for the use of anonymity tools to allow for free speech, privacy, and anonymity.
The degree to which societies acknowledge civil liberties is affected by the influence of terrorism and war. Whether the existence of victimless crimes infringes upon civil liberties is also a matter of dispute.
Another matter of debate is the suspension or alteration of certain civil liberties in times of war or state of emergency, including whether and to what extent this should occur.
The formal concept of civil liberties is often dated back to Magna Carta, an English legal charter agreed in 1215 which in turn was based on pre-existing documents, namely the Charter of Liberties.[SEE ABOVE]
United States
Main article: Civil liberties in the United States
The United States Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights, protects civil liberties. The passage of the Fourteenth Amendment further protected civil liberties by introducing the:
Human rights within the United States are often called civil rights, which are those rights, privileges, and immunities held by all people, in distinction to political rights, which are the rights that inhere to those who are entitled to participate in elections, as candidates or voters.
Before universal suffrage, this distinction was important, since many people were ineligible to vote but still were considered to have the fundamental freedoms derived from the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This distinction is less important now that Americans enjoy near universal suffrage, and civil rights are now taken to include the political rights to vote and participate in elections, being furthermore classified with civil liberties in general as either positive rights or negative rights.
Because Native American tribal governments retain sovereignty over tribal members, the U.S. Congress in 1968 enacted a law that essentially applies most of the protections of the Bill of Rights to tribal members, to be enforced mainly by tribal courts.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed into effect by President Ronald Reagan on August 10, 1988. The act was passed by Congress to issue a public apology for those of Japanese ancestry who lost their property and liberty due to discriminatory actions by the United States Government during the internment period.
This act also provided many other benefits within various sectors of the government. Within the treasury, it established a civil liberties public education fund. It directed the Attorney General to identify and locate each individual affected by this act and to pay them $20,000 from the Civil Liberties public education fund.
It also established a board of directors who is responsible for making disbursements from this fund. Finally, it required that all documents and records that are created or received by the commission be kept by the Archivist of the United States.
Other Countries:
See also:
- Civil and political rights
- Civil libertarianism
- Drug liberalization
- Equality and Human Rights Commission
- Fundamental freedoms
- Human rights
- Libertarianism
- Liberalism
- Liberty (pressure group)
- List of civil rights leaders
- Privacy
- Proactive policing
- Rule according to higher law
- Rutherford Institute
- State of World Liberty Index
- Statewatch
- Teaching for social justice
American Civil Liberties Union ("UCLU")
Overview:
Predecessor:: National Civil Liberties Bureau
Formation: January 19, 1920
Founders
- Jeannette Rankin
- Roger Nash Baldwin
- Crystal Eastman
- Helen Keller
- Walter Nelles
- Morris Ernst
- Albert DeSilver
- Arthur Garfield Hays
- Jane Addams
- Felix Frankfurter
- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Type: 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization
Tax ID: no.13-3871360
Purpose: Civil liberties advocacy
Headquarters: 125 Broad Street, New York City, U.S.
Region served: United States
Membership: 1.7 million (2024)
President: Deborah Archer
Executive Director: Anthony Romero
Budget: $383 million (2024; combined ACLU and Foundation, excludes affiliates): 22–3
Staff: 500 staff including attorneys
Volunteers: Several thousand attorneys
Website: www.aclu.org
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million.
The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases where it considers civil liberties at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation. In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions established by its board of directors.
The ACLU's current positions include:
- opposing the death penalty;
- supporting same-sex marriage and the right of LGBTQ+ people to adopt;
- supporting reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion rights;
- eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people;
- decarceration in the United States;
- protecting housing and employment rights of veterans;
- reforming sex offender registries
- protecting housing and employment rights of convicted first-time offenders;
- supporting the rights of prisoners and opposing torture;
- upholding the separation of church and state by opposing government preference for religion over non-religion or for particular faiths over others;
- and supporting the legality of gender-affirming treatments, including those that are government funded, for transgender youth.
Leadership:
The ACLU is led by a president and an executive director, Deborah Archer and Anthony D. Romero, respectively, as of March 2024.
The president acts as chair of the ACLU's board of directors, leads fundraising, and facilitates policy-setting.
The executive director manages the day-to-day operations of the organization.[9]
The board of directors consists of 80 persons, including representatives from each state affiliate and at-large delegates.
The organization has its headquarters in 125 Broad Street, a 40-story skyscraper located in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
The leadership of the ACLU does not always agree on policy decisions; differences of opinion within the ACLU leadership have sometimes grown into major debates.
In 1937, an internal debate erupted over whether to defend Henry Ford's right to distribute anti-union literature. In 1939, a heated debate took place over whether to prohibit communists from serving in ACLU leadership roles.
During the early 1950s and Cold War McCarthyism, the board was divided on whether to defend communists.
In 1968, a schism formed over whether to represent Benjamin Spock's anti-war activism.
In 1973, as the Watergate Scandal continued to unfold, leadership was initially divided over whether to call for President Richard Nixon's impeachment and removal from office.
In 2005, there was internal conflict about whether or not a gag rule should be imposed on ACLU employees to prevent the publication of internal disputes.
Funding:
The ACLU solicits donations to its charitable foundation. The local affiliates solicit their own funding; however, some also receive funds from the national ACLU, with the distribution and amount of such assistance varying from state to state.
At its discretion, the national organization provides subsidies to smaller affiliates that lack sufficient resources to be self-sustaining; for example, the Wyoming ACLU chapter received such subsidies until April 2015, when, as part of a round of layoffs at the national ACLU, the Wyoming office was closed.
In October 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation because the foundations had adopted language from the USA PATRIOT Act in their donation agreements, including a clause stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities".
The ACLU views this clause, both in federal law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties, saying it is overly broad and ambiguous.
Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse monetary judgments; a town, state, or federal agency may be required to change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages except by an explicit statutory waiver. In some cases, the law permits plaintiffs who successfully sue government agencies to collect money damages or other monetary relief.
In particular, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 leaves the government liable in some civil rights cases. Fee awards under this civil rights statute are considered "equitable relief" rather than damages, and government entities are not immune from equitable relief.
Under laws such as this, the ACLU and its state affiliates sometimes share in monetary judgments against government agencies. In 2006, the Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act sought to prevent monetary judgments in the particular case of violations of church-state separation.
The ACLU has received court-awarded fees from opponents; for example, the Georgia affiliate was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its courthouse; a second Ten Commandments case in the state, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment.
The State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases.
In 2024, the ACLU received $268M in grants and donations from supporters.
Policy positions:
The ACLU's 2024 annual report states that it engages in legal advocacy in support of civil rights, including:
When the ACLU was formed in 1919, free speech was the civil right that it concentrated on. The ACLU has supported free speech, even when the speech is unpopular or offensive. The ACLU opposes limits on campaign contributions, since such limits generally limit free speech and could be used to restrict the rights of unions.
The ACLU also opposes state censorship of the Confederate flag. Free speech on college campuses has been the subject of several lawsuits the ACLU has supported. In the employment realm, the ACLU has supported the rights of employees to engage in free speech.
Protests outside religious buildings are supported by the ACLU, even when perceived as offensive.
Combating discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender has been a focus of the ACLU since the civil rights era in the 1960s. The ACLU frequently participates in legal actions in support of the LGBTQ community.
Criminal justice has been long-standing goal of the ACLU, focusing on constitutional issues such as excessive punishment and the right to an attorney. Immigrant rights, for undocumented immigrants in particular, is an area of the law that the ACLU frequently acts as an advocate
Many of the ACLU positions are rooted in the U.S. Constitution, such as the Second Amendment: the ACLU opposes any effort to create a national registry of gun owners and has worked with the National Rifle Association of America to prevent a registry from being created, and it has favored protecting the right to carry guns under the Second Amendment.
However, the ACLU also supports some degree of gun control.
The ACLU supports women's rights to make health care decisions, including access to abortions.
Support and opposition:
A variety of persons and organizations support the ACLU. Allies of the ACLU in legal actions have included:
The ACLU has been criticized by liberals, such as:
Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools or when it opposed the Patriot Act.
The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as: as well as liberal figures such as:
The ACLU is often criticized when it represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints, such as:
The ACLU's official policy is "... [we have] represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBTQ activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone."
Organization and state affiliants:
At the national level, the ACLU consists of two legal entities:
Both are non-profit organizations that engage in civil rights litigation, advocacy, and education. The two organizations are closely related, and share common goals and some common leadership.
Donations to the 501(c)(3) foundation are tax-deductible, but donations to the 501(c)(4) are not. The 501(c)(4) group can engage in unlimited political advocacy (including lobbying), but the 501(c)(3) foundation cannot.
Most of the organization's workload is performed by its local affiliates. There is at least one affiliate organization in each state, as well as one in Washington, D.C., and in Puerto Rico.
California has three affiliates.
The affiliates operate autonomously from the national organization; each affiliate has its own staff, executive director, board of directors, and budget.
Each affiliate consists of two non-profit corporations: a 501(c)(3) corporation–called the ACLU Foundation–that does not perform lobbying, and a 501(c)(4) corporation–called ACLU–which is entitled to lobby. Both organizations share staff and offices.
ACLU affiliates are the basic unit of the ACLU's organization and engage in litigation, lobbying, and public education. For example, in 2020, the ACLU's New Jersey chapter argued 26 cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court, about one-third of the total cases heard in that court. They sent over 50,000 emails to officials or agencies and had 28 full-time staff.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the ACLU:
At its discretion, the national organization provides subsidies to smaller affiliates that lack sufficient resources to be self-sustaining; for example, the Wyoming ACLU chapter received such subsidies until April 2015, when, as part of a round of layoffs at the national ACLU, the Wyoming office was closed.
In October 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation because the foundations had adopted language from the USA PATRIOT Act in their donation agreements, including a clause stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities".
The ACLU views this clause, both in federal law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties, saying it is overly broad and ambiguous.
Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse monetary judgments; a town, state, or federal agency may be required to change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages except by an explicit statutory waiver. In some cases, the law permits plaintiffs who successfully sue government agencies to collect money damages or other monetary relief.
In particular, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 leaves the government liable in some civil rights cases. Fee awards under this civil rights statute are considered "equitable relief" rather than damages, and government entities are not immune from equitable relief.
Under laws such as this, the ACLU and its state affiliates sometimes share in monetary judgments against government agencies. In 2006, the Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act sought to prevent monetary judgments in the particular case of violations of church-state separation.
The ACLU has received court-awarded fees from opponents; for example, the Georgia affiliate was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its courthouse; a second Ten Commandments case in the state, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment.
The State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases.
In 2024, the ACLU received $268M in grants and donations from supporters.
Policy positions:
The ACLU's 2024 annual report states that it engages in legal advocacy in support of civil rights, including:
- abortion rights,
- LGBTQ equality,
- immigrants' rights,
- criminal law reform,
- free speech,
- and voting rights.
When the ACLU was formed in 1919, free speech was the civil right that it concentrated on. The ACLU has supported free speech, even when the speech is unpopular or offensive. The ACLU opposes limits on campaign contributions, since such limits generally limit free speech and could be used to restrict the rights of unions.
The ACLU also opposes state censorship of the Confederate flag. Free speech on college campuses has been the subject of several lawsuits the ACLU has supported. In the employment realm, the ACLU has supported the rights of employees to engage in free speech.
Protests outside religious buildings are supported by the ACLU, even when perceived as offensive.
Combating discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender has been a focus of the ACLU since the civil rights era in the 1960s. The ACLU frequently participates in legal actions in support of the LGBTQ community.
Criminal justice has been long-standing goal of the ACLU, focusing on constitutional issues such as excessive punishment and the right to an attorney. Immigrant rights, for undocumented immigrants in particular, is an area of the law that the ACLU frequently acts as an advocate
Many of the ACLU positions are rooted in the U.S. Constitution, such as the Second Amendment: the ACLU opposes any effort to create a national registry of gun owners and has worked with the National Rifle Association of America to prevent a registry from being created, and it has favored protecting the right to carry guns under the Second Amendment.
However, the ACLU also supports some degree of gun control.
The ACLU supports women's rights to make health care decisions, including access to abortions.
Support and opposition:
A variety of persons and organizations support the ACLU. Allies of the ACLU in legal actions have included:
- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
- the American Jewish Congress;
- the National Rifle Association of America;
- Planned Parenthood,
- the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
- and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The ACLU has been criticized by liberals, such as:
- when it excluded communists from its leadership ranks,
- when it defended Neo-Nazis,
- when it declined to defend Paul Robeson,
- or when it opposed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act,
- In 2014, an ACLU affiliate supported anti-Islam protesters,
- and in 2018 the ACLU was criticized when it supported the NRA.
Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools or when it opposed the Patriot Act.
The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as: as well as liberal figures such as:
The ACLU is often criticized when it represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints, such as:
- the Ku Klux Klan,
- neo-Nazis,
- the Nation of Islam,
- the North American Man/Boy Love Association,
- the Westboro Baptist Church
- or the Unite the Right rally.
The ACLU's official policy is "... [we have] represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBTQ activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone."
Organization and state affiliants:
At the national level, the ACLU consists of two legal entities:
- the American Civil Liberties Union, a 501(c)(4) social welfare group;
- and the ACLU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity.
Both are non-profit organizations that engage in civil rights litigation, advocacy, and education. The two organizations are closely related, and share common goals and some common leadership.
Donations to the 501(c)(3) foundation are tax-deductible, but donations to the 501(c)(4) are not. The 501(c)(4) group can engage in unlimited political advocacy (including lobbying), but the 501(c)(3) foundation cannot.
Most of the organization's workload is performed by its local affiliates. There is at least one affiliate organization in each state, as well as one in Washington, D.C., and in Puerto Rico.
California has three affiliates.
The affiliates operate autonomously from the national organization; each affiliate has its own staff, executive director, board of directors, and budget.
Each affiliate consists of two non-profit corporations: a 501(c)(3) corporation–called the ACLU Foundation–that does not perform lobbying, and a 501(c)(4) corporation–called ACLU–which is entitled to lobby. Both organizations share staff and offices.
ACLU affiliates are the basic unit of the ACLU's organization and engage in litigation, lobbying, and public education. For example, in 2020, the ACLU's New Jersey chapter argued 26 cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court, about one-third of the total cases heard in that court. They sent over 50,000 emails to officials or agencies and had 28 full-time staff.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the ACLU:
- Organization and state affiliants
- History
- See also:
- American Civil Rights Union
- British Columbia Civil Liberties Association
- Canadian Civil Liberties Association
- Common Cause
- Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
- Institute for Justice
- Liberty, a British equivalent
- List of court cases involving the American Civil Liberties Union
- National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
- Political freedom
- Southern Poverty Law Center
- Official website
- "American Civil Liberties Union". Internal Revenue Service filings. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
The Rutherford Institute
The Rutherford Institute is a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of civil liberties, human rights, and religious liberties. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, the non-profit organization's motto is "It's our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution."
The organization was founded in 1982 by John W. Whitehead, who continued to be its president as of 2015. The Rutherford Institute offers free legal services to those who have had their rights threatened or violated. The Rutherford Institute has a network of affiliate attorneys across the United States and funds its efforts through donations. In addition to its offer of legal services, the organization offers free educational materials for those interested in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
While once primarily concerned with the defense of religious liberties, the organization later expanded its mission to encompass other constitutional issues such as search and seizure, free speech, and zero tolerance policy.
Some of the institute's legal actions were widely reported, including:
Declaring that we live in a police state where "freedom has become fascism", the institute has denounced no-knock warrants and granting police qualified immunity. It also defended state laws banning homosexual conduct in Bowers v. Hardwick.
The Rutherford Institute has worked with a number of similar groups across the political spectrum, including the ACLU and the Cato Institute. Whitehead was described by jazz historian and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff as "this nation's Paul Revere of protecting civil liberties."
Foundation:
The Rutherford Institute was named after Samuel Rutherford, a 17th-century theologian who wrote a book, Lex, Rex, which challenged the concept of the divine right of kings. When The Rutherford Institute was founded, conservative Protestants in the United States were reconsidering their role in American political and legal life, perceiving that the federal government was intent on encroaching on Americans' religious liberties.
Organizations such as The Rutherford Institute pursued matters of religious liberties in the courts, and The Rutherford Institute became the model for groups such as the National Legal Foundation, the Liberty Counsel, and the American Center for Law and Justice.
Bryan McKenzie of the Charlottesville Daily Progress described the institute as "a more conservative American Civil Liberties Union" (ACLU).
History and legal actions:
Since its founding, The Rutherford Institute has expanded its aims from defending the religious liberties of Christians to include defending the religious liberties of all Americans, as well as working to preserve rights such as free speech and the right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. However, the institute has sometimes taken pro-government positions, such as defending laws which banned gay sex.
Religious liberty:
In 2004, the group filed a lawsuit against Muskogee Public Schools in Oklahoma on behalf of Nashala Hearn, an 11-year-old Muslim student who was suspended for wearing a religious headscarf to school.
In 2007, they filed a lawsuit against Freehold Township, New Jersey on behalf of an Orthodox rabbi, Avraham Bernstein, alleging that the town was persecuting Bernstein for holding prayer meetings in his home on the Sabbath.
In 2011, the group took up the cause of Laura George, founder of the Oracle Institute, who wanted to build a "Peace Pentagon", a proposed interfaith study center and retreat, on the banks of the New River in Independence, Virginia. After George was refused a building permit when the local Board of Supervisors voted to deny the project on health, safety and welfare grounds, attorneys acting on behalf of The Rutherford Institute pursued a legal action to acquire the permit, alleging religious discrimination; eventually the building permit was granted.
Freedom of speech:
In 2012, The Rutherford Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of Harold Hodge, a man arrested in January 2011 for standing outside the United States Supreme Court Building carrying a sign which read, "The U.S. Gov allows police to illegally murder and brutalize African-Americans and Hispanic people."
Other cases include defending an Albemarle High School student's right to wear a National Rifle Association T-shirt to school and contesting the dismissal of a California teacher who referred to "Zionist Jews" during an Occupy Movement protest.
The Rutherford Institute was also involved with the ACLU in defending the 2017 Unite the Right rally effort to hold a rally on August 11 and 12 in Charlottesville's Emancipation Park.
Opposition to Government surveillance:
In 2012, The Rutherford Institute took legal action against the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, on behalf of high school student, Andrea Hernandez, who risked consequences from school administrators for refusing to wear a "name badge containing a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip."
The school district sought to increase student attendance rates with tracking devices on students. Attorneys for the Rutherford Institute argued that the school's actions violated Texas' Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
After the lawsuit in federal court and the negative publicity it generated, the Northside Independent School District abandoned the tracking program.
In 2023, The Rutherford Institute urged the City Council in Charlottesville, Virginia against adopting the use of license plate readers in the Charlottesville Police Department.
In 2023, The Rutherford Institute issued a public warning about Ancestry.com DNA Kits and the "associated privacy risks posed by police and hackers." John W. Whitehead, president of
The Rutherford Institute said “The debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning,”
Search and seizure:
In 2008, The Rutherford Institute joined a coalition of civil libertarians and activists who called upon President George W. Bush to release a number of Muslim Uighurs who were being detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2010, the group took on a number of cases regarding the Transportation Security Administration's controversial security procedures at American airports. The organization filed a lawsuit in November 2010 against Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, on behalf of airline pilots Michael Roberts and Ann Poe.
The pilots objected to being subjected to "whole body imaging" scanners, which reveal the nude body of the subject being searched, as well as a pat-down. John W. Whitehead said of the matter, "Forcing Americans to undergo a virtual strip search as a matter of course in reporting to work or boarding an airplane when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing is a grotesque violation of our civil liberties."
The next month The Rutherford Institute filed another lawsuit on the behalf of three passengers who took issue with the TSA screening procedures: a 12-year-old girl placed in a body scanner without parental consent, a man who was subjected to an invasive pat down in his genital area due to an abnormality caused by a childhood injury, and a woman who had undergone a mastectomy and was required to be patted down in her breast area.
In 2010, Whitehead sent a letter to Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia, decrying his legal opinion that school officials could seize and search student cellphones and laptop computers upon suspicion that a student had broken school rules or the law.
In 2011, the group filed a friend of the court brief in the case U.S. v. Jones, imploring the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the placement of a GPS tracking device on the defendant's car without first obtaining a warrant constituted an illegal search. In January 2012 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police must obtain a warrant before placing a physical GPS tracking unit on a suspect's car.
Following the 2020 Anti-police protests over the murder of George Floyd, but without mentioning it, Rutherford published an article denouncing no knock warrants and the granting of "qualified immunity" to police.
The article argued that Americans live in a "police state" and that "freedom has become fascism" due to the Supreme Court's refusal to uphold the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and limit the police, stating that there is a "nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat."
Ballot access:
In July 2014, The Rutherford Institute supported the Libertarian Party of Virginia and alleged that Virginia ballot laws favored "the election chances of Democrat and Republican candidates at the expense of Libertarian Party and independent candidates."
See also:
The Rutherford Institute is a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of civil liberties, human rights, and religious liberties. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, the non-profit organization's motto is "It's our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution."
The organization was founded in 1982 by John W. Whitehead, who continued to be its president as of 2015. The Rutherford Institute offers free legal services to those who have had their rights threatened or violated. The Rutherford Institute has a network of affiliate attorneys across the United States and funds its efforts through donations. In addition to its offer of legal services, the organization offers free educational materials for those interested in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
While once primarily concerned with the defense of religious liberties, the organization later expanded its mission to encompass other constitutional issues such as search and seizure, free speech, and zero tolerance policy.
Some of the institute's legal actions were widely reported, including:
- helping Paula Jones pursue a sexual harassment lawsuit in 1997 against President Bill Clinton,
- and its defense of middle and high school students suspended and expelled under inflexible zero tolerance policies,
- and the free speech rights of preachers and political protestors.
Declaring that we live in a police state where "freedom has become fascism", the institute has denounced no-knock warrants and granting police qualified immunity. It also defended state laws banning homosexual conduct in Bowers v. Hardwick.
The Rutherford Institute has worked with a number of similar groups across the political spectrum, including the ACLU and the Cato Institute. Whitehead was described by jazz historian and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff as "this nation's Paul Revere of protecting civil liberties."
Foundation:
The Rutherford Institute was named after Samuel Rutherford, a 17th-century theologian who wrote a book, Lex, Rex, which challenged the concept of the divine right of kings. When The Rutherford Institute was founded, conservative Protestants in the United States were reconsidering their role in American political and legal life, perceiving that the federal government was intent on encroaching on Americans' religious liberties.
Organizations such as The Rutherford Institute pursued matters of religious liberties in the courts, and The Rutherford Institute became the model for groups such as the National Legal Foundation, the Liberty Counsel, and the American Center for Law and Justice.
Bryan McKenzie of the Charlottesville Daily Progress described the institute as "a more conservative American Civil Liberties Union" (ACLU).
History and legal actions:
Since its founding, The Rutherford Institute has expanded its aims from defending the religious liberties of Christians to include defending the religious liberties of all Americans, as well as working to preserve rights such as free speech and the right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. However, the institute has sometimes taken pro-government positions, such as defending laws which banned gay sex.
Religious liberty:
In 2004, the group filed a lawsuit against Muskogee Public Schools in Oklahoma on behalf of Nashala Hearn, an 11-year-old Muslim student who was suspended for wearing a religious headscarf to school.
In 2007, they filed a lawsuit against Freehold Township, New Jersey on behalf of an Orthodox rabbi, Avraham Bernstein, alleging that the town was persecuting Bernstein for holding prayer meetings in his home on the Sabbath.
In 2011, the group took up the cause of Laura George, founder of the Oracle Institute, who wanted to build a "Peace Pentagon", a proposed interfaith study center and retreat, on the banks of the New River in Independence, Virginia. After George was refused a building permit when the local Board of Supervisors voted to deny the project on health, safety and welfare grounds, attorneys acting on behalf of The Rutherford Institute pursued a legal action to acquire the permit, alleging religious discrimination; eventually the building permit was granted.
Freedom of speech:
In 2012, The Rutherford Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of Harold Hodge, a man arrested in January 2011 for standing outside the United States Supreme Court Building carrying a sign which read, "The U.S. Gov allows police to illegally murder and brutalize African-Americans and Hispanic people."
Other cases include defending an Albemarle High School student's right to wear a National Rifle Association T-shirt to school and contesting the dismissal of a California teacher who referred to "Zionist Jews" during an Occupy Movement protest.
The Rutherford Institute was also involved with the ACLU in defending the 2017 Unite the Right rally effort to hold a rally on August 11 and 12 in Charlottesville's Emancipation Park.
Opposition to Government surveillance:
In 2012, The Rutherford Institute took legal action against the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, on behalf of high school student, Andrea Hernandez, who risked consequences from school administrators for refusing to wear a "name badge containing a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip."
The school district sought to increase student attendance rates with tracking devices on students. Attorneys for the Rutherford Institute argued that the school's actions violated Texas' Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
After the lawsuit in federal court and the negative publicity it generated, the Northside Independent School District abandoned the tracking program.
In 2023, The Rutherford Institute urged the City Council in Charlottesville, Virginia against adopting the use of license plate readers in the Charlottesville Police Department.
In 2023, The Rutherford Institute issued a public warning about Ancestry.com DNA Kits and the "associated privacy risks posed by police and hackers." John W. Whitehead, president of
The Rutherford Institute said “The debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning,”
Search and seizure:
In 2008, The Rutherford Institute joined a coalition of civil libertarians and activists who called upon President George W. Bush to release a number of Muslim Uighurs who were being detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2010, the group took on a number of cases regarding the Transportation Security Administration's controversial security procedures at American airports. The organization filed a lawsuit in November 2010 against Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, on behalf of airline pilots Michael Roberts and Ann Poe.
The pilots objected to being subjected to "whole body imaging" scanners, which reveal the nude body of the subject being searched, as well as a pat-down. John W. Whitehead said of the matter, "Forcing Americans to undergo a virtual strip search as a matter of course in reporting to work or boarding an airplane when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing is a grotesque violation of our civil liberties."
The next month The Rutherford Institute filed another lawsuit on the behalf of three passengers who took issue with the TSA screening procedures: a 12-year-old girl placed in a body scanner without parental consent, a man who was subjected to an invasive pat down in his genital area due to an abnormality caused by a childhood injury, and a woman who had undergone a mastectomy and was required to be patted down in her breast area.
In 2010, Whitehead sent a letter to Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia, decrying his legal opinion that school officials could seize and search student cellphones and laptop computers upon suspicion that a student had broken school rules or the law.
In 2011, the group filed a friend of the court brief in the case U.S. v. Jones, imploring the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the placement of a GPS tracking device on the defendant's car without first obtaining a warrant constituted an illegal search. In January 2012 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police must obtain a warrant before placing a physical GPS tracking unit on a suspect's car.
Following the 2020 Anti-police protests over the murder of George Floyd, but without mentioning it, Rutherford published an article denouncing no knock warrants and the granting of "qualified immunity" to police.
The article argued that Americans live in a "police state" and that "freedom has become fascism" due to the Supreme Court's refusal to uphold the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and limit the police, stating that there is a "nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat."
Ballot access:
In July 2014, The Rutherford Institute supported the Libertarian Party of Virginia and alleged that Virginia ballot laws favored "the election chances of Democrat and Republican candidates at the expense of Libertarian Party and independent candidates."
See also:
- The Rutherford Institute
- John W. Whitehead's Commentaries at The Huffington Post
- John Whitehead's appearances on C-SPAN
- Police State America Interview with Guns and Butter Archived 2018-12-16 at the Wayback Machine's Bonnie Faulkner, June 4, 2014.
Paul Revere
Pictures below: A compilation of illustrations of Paul Revere, with lower right illustration "The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5, 1770, a copper engraving by Paul Revere modeled on a drawing by Henry Pelham, 1770."
- YouTube Video: PAUL REVERE: The Midnight Ride that Changed History
- YouTube Video: Paul Revere's midnight ride reenacted
- YouTube Video: Paul Revere's Midnight Ride - The Detail Most Don't Know 💥 American Revolution
Pictures below: A compilation of illustrations of Paul Revere, with lower right illustration "The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5, 1770, a copper engraving by Paul Revere modeled on a drawing by Henry Pelham, 1770."
Paul Revere was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, engaging in a midnight ride in 1775 to alert nearby minutemen of the approach of British troops prior to the battles of Lexington and Concord.
Born in the North End of Boston, Revere eventually became a prosperous and prominent Bostonian, deriving his income from silversmithing and engraving.
During the American Revolution, he was a strong supporter of the Patriot cause and joined the Sons of Liberty. His midnight ride transformed him into an American folk hero, being dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride". He also helped to organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the movements of British forces.
Revere later served as an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, though his service ended after the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous American campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.
Following the war, Revere returned to his silversmith trade. He used the profits from his expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. In 1800, he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for additional information about Paul Revere:
Born in the North End of Boston, Revere eventually became a prosperous and prominent Bostonian, deriving his income from silversmithing and engraving.
During the American Revolution, he was a strong supporter of the Patriot cause and joined the Sons of Liberty. His midnight ride transformed him into an American folk hero, being dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, "Paul Revere's Ride". He also helped to organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the movements of British forces.
Revere later served as an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, though his service ended after the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous American campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.
Following the war, Revere returned to his silversmith trade. He used the profits from his expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. In 1800, he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for additional information about Paul Revere:
- Early life and education
- 1765–1774: the gathering storm of revolution
- Midnight Ride
- War years
- Later years: entrepreneurship, manufacturing, and politics
- Legacy
- See also
- Israel Bissell, who rode to Philadelphia with news of the battles of Lexington and Concord
- Sybil Ludington, who is said to have performed a similar ride in New York
- Jack Jouett, rode to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of a British raid
- Revere Bells, one of Revere's highest-profile products
- Revere Copper Company, the business founded by Paul Revere and later managed by his son and grandsons
- Johnny Tremain, 1943 children's novel by Esther Forbes set in Boston prior to and during the outbreak of the Revolution
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Revere, Paul" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Paul Revere Heritage Project
- The Paul Revere House
- Revere Rolling Mill – about the endangered original Revere copper works site in Canton, MA
- Booknotes interview with David Hackett Fischer on Paul Revere's Ride, July 17, 1994.
- Works by or about Paul Revere at the Internet Archive
- Works by Paul Revere at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Patriot (American Revolution)
Patriots (also known as Revolutionaries, Continentals, Rebels, or Whigs) were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who opposed the Kingdom of Great Britain's control and governance during the colonial era and supported and helped launch the American Revolution that ultimately established American independence.
Patriot politicians led colonial opposition to British policies regarding the American colonies, eventually building support for the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
After the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, many patriots assimilated into the Continental Army, which was commanded by George Washington and which ultimately secured victory against the British Army, leading the British to end their involvement in the war and acknowledge the sovereign independence of the colonies, reflected in the Treaty of Paris, which led to the establishment of the United States in 1783.
The patriots were inspired by English and American republican ideology that was part of the Age of Enlightenment, and rejected monarchy and aristocracy and supported individual liberty and natural rights and legal rights. Prominent patriot political theorists, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, spearheaded the American Enlightenment, which was in turn inspired by European thinkers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Though slavery existed in all of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution, the issue divided patriots, with some supporting its abolition while others espoused proslavery thought.
The patriots included members of every social and ethnic group in the colonies, though support for the patriot cause was strongest in the New England Colonies and weakest in the Southern Colonies.
The American Revolution divided the colonial population into three groups:
African Americans who supported the patriots were known as Black Patriots, with their counterparts on the British side being referred to as Black Loyalists.
Terminology
The critics of British policy towards the Thirteen Colonies called themselves "Whigs" after 1768, identifying with members of the British Whig party who favored similar colonial policies. Samuel Johnson writes that, at the time, the word "patriot" had a negative connotation and was used as a negative epithet for "a factious disturber of the government".
Prior to the American Revolution, colonists who supported British authority called themselves Tories or royalists, identifying with the political philosophy of traditionalist conservatism as it existed in Great Britain. During the American Revolution, these persons became known primarily as Loyalists. Afterward, some 15% of Loyalists emigrated north to the remaining British territories in the Canadas. There, they called themselves the United Empire Loyalists. 85% of the Loyalists decided to stay in the new United States and were granted American citizenship.
Composition
Prior to the formal beginning of the American Revolution, many patriots were active in groups including the Sons of Liberty. The most prominent patriot leaders are referred to today as the Founding Fathers, who are generally defined as the 56 men who, as delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, signed the Declaration of Independence.
Patriots included a cross-section of the population of the Thirteen Colonies and came from varying backgrounds. Roughly 40 to 45 percent of the white population in the Thirteen Colonies supported the patriots' cause, between 15 and 20 percent supported the Loyalists, and the remainder were neutral or kept a low profile regarding their loyalties. The great majority of Loyalists remained in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution; a minority, however, fled the nation for Canada, Great Britain, Florida, or the West Indies.
Motivations:
Historians have explored the motivations that pulled men to one side or the other.
Yale historian Leonard Woods Labaree used the published and unpublished writings and letters of leading men on each side, searching for how personality shaped their choice. He finds eight characteristics that differentiated the two groups. Loyalists were older, better established, and more likely to resist innovation than the patriots.
Loyalists felt that the Crown was the legitimate government and resistance to it was morally wrong, while the patriots felt that morality was on their side because the British government had violated the constitutional rights of Englishmen. Men who were alienated by physical attacks on Royal officials took the Loyalist position, while those who were offended by British responses to actions such as the Boston Tea Party became patriots. Merchants in the port cities with long-standing financial attachments to Britain were likely to remain loyal, while few patriots were so deeply enmeshed in the system.
Some Loyalists, according to Labaree, were "procrastinators" who believed that independence was bound to come some day but wanted to "postpone the moment", while the patriots wanted to "seize the moment". Loyalists were cautious and afraid of anarchy or tyranny that might come from mob rule; patriots made a systematic effort to take a stand against the British government. Finally, Labaree argues that Loyalists were pessimists who lacked the patriots' confidence that independence lay ahead.
The patriots rejected taxes imposed by legislatures in which the taxpayer was not represented. "No taxation without representation" was their slogan, referring to the lack of representation in the British Parliament. The British countered that there was "virtual representation" in the sense that all members of Parliament represented the interests of all the citizens of the British Empire.
Some patriots declared that they were loyal to the king, but they insisted that they should be free to run their own affairs. In fact, they had been running their own affairs since the period of "salutary neglect" before the French and Indian War. Some radical patriots tarred and feathered tax collectors and customs officers, making those positions dangerous; according to Benjamin Irvin, the practice was especially prevalent in Boston where many patriots lived.
See also
Patriot politicians led colonial opposition to British policies regarding the American colonies, eventually building support for the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
After the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, many patriots assimilated into the Continental Army, which was commanded by George Washington and which ultimately secured victory against the British Army, leading the British to end their involvement in the war and acknowledge the sovereign independence of the colonies, reflected in the Treaty of Paris, which led to the establishment of the United States in 1783.
The patriots were inspired by English and American republican ideology that was part of the Age of Enlightenment, and rejected monarchy and aristocracy and supported individual liberty and natural rights and legal rights. Prominent patriot political theorists, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, spearheaded the American Enlightenment, which was in turn inspired by European thinkers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Though slavery existed in all of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution, the issue divided patriots, with some supporting its abolition while others espoused proslavery thought.
The patriots included members of every social and ethnic group in the colonies, though support for the patriot cause was strongest in the New England Colonies and weakest in the Southern Colonies.
The American Revolution divided the colonial population into three groups:
- patriots, who supported the end of British rule;
- loyalists, who supported Britain's continued control over the colonies;
- and those who remained neutral.
African Americans who supported the patriots were known as Black Patriots, with their counterparts on the British side being referred to as Black Loyalists.
Terminology
The critics of British policy towards the Thirteen Colonies called themselves "Whigs" after 1768, identifying with members of the British Whig party who favored similar colonial policies. Samuel Johnson writes that, at the time, the word "patriot" had a negative connotation and was used as a negative epithet for "a factious disturber of the government".
Prior to the American Revolution, colonists who supported British authority called themselves Tories or royalists, identifying with the political philosophy of traditionalist conservatism as it existed in Great Britain. During the American Revolution, these persons became known primarily as Loyalists. Afterward, some 15% of Loyalists emigrated north to the remaining British territories in the Canadas. There, they called themselves the United Empire Loyalists. 85% of the Loyalists decided to stay in the new United States and were granted American citizenship.
Composition
Prior to the formal beginning of the American Revolution, many patriots were active in groups including the Sons of Liberty. The most prominent patriot leaders are referred to today as the Founding Fathers, who are generally defined as the 56 men who, as delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, signed the Declaration of Independence.
Patriots included a cross-section of the population of the Thirteen Colonies and came from varying backgrounds. Roughly 40 to 45 percent of the white population in the Thirteen Colonies supported the patriots' cause, between 15 and 20 percent supported the Loyalists, and the remainder were neutral or kept a low profile regarding their loyalties. The great majority of Loyalists remained in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution; a minority, however, fled the nation for Canada, Great Britain, Florida, or the West Indies.
Motivations:
Historians have explored the motivations that pulled men to one side or the other.
Yale historian Leonard Woods Labaree used the published and unpublished writings and letters of leading men on each side, searching for how personality shaped their choice. He finds eight characteristics that differentiated the two groups. Loyalists were older, better established, and more likely to resist innovation than the patriots.
Loyalists felt that the Crown was the legitimate government and resistance to it was morally wrong, while the patriots felt that morality was on their side because the British government had violated the constitutional rights of Englishmen. Men who were alienated by physical attacks on Royal officials took the Loyalist position, while those who were offended by British responses to actions such as the Boston Tea Party became patriots. Merchants in the port cities with long-standing financial attachments to Britain were likely to remain loyal, while few patriots were so deeply enmeshed in the system.
Some Loyalists, according to Labaree, were "procrastinators" who believed that independence was bound to come some day but wanted to "postpone the moment", while the patriots wanted to "seize the moment". Loyalists were cautious and afraid of anarchy or tyranny that might come from mob rule; patriots made a systematic effort to take a stand against the British government. Finally, Labaree argues that Loyalists were pessimists who lacked the patriots' confidence that independence lay ahead.
The patriots rejected taxes imposed by legislatures in which the taxpayer was not represented. "No taxation without representation" was their slogan, referring to the lack of representation in the British Parliament. The British countered that there was "virtual representation" in the sense that all members of Parliament represented the interests of all the citizens of the British Empire.
Some patriots declared that they were loyal to the king, but they insisted that they should be free to run their own affairs. In fact, they had been running their own affairs since the period of "salutary neglect" before the French and Indian War. Some radical patriots tarred and feathered tax collectors and customs officers, making those positions dangerous; according to Benjamin Irvin, the practice was especially prevalent in Boston where many patriots lived.
See also
Thirteen ColoniesPictured (below the flags): The Thirteen Colonies (shown in red) in 1775 with modern borders overlaid
The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America.
The Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were:
These colonies were part of British America, which also included territory in The Floridas, the Caribbean, and what is today Canada.
The Thirteen Colonies were separately administered under the Crown, but had similar
political, constitutional, and legal systems, and each was dominated by Protestant English-speakers.
The first of the colonies, Virginia, was established at Jamestown in 1607. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the New England Colonies were substantially motivated by their founders' concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The Middle Colonies were established on the former Dutch colony of New Netherland.
Between 1625 and 1775, the colonial population grew from 2 thousand to 2.4 million, largely displacing the region's Native Americans. The population included people subject to a system of slavery, which was legal in all of the colonies. In the 18th century, the British government operated under a policy of mercantilism, in which the central government administered its colonies for Britain's economic benefit.
The 13 colonies had a degree of self-governance and active local elections, and they resisted London's demands for more control over them. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) against France and its Indian allies led to growing tensions between Britain and the 13 colonies.
During the 1750s, the colonies began collaborating instead of dealing directly with Britain.
With the help of colonial printers and newspapers, these inter-colonial activities and concerns were shared and led to calls for protection of the colonists' "Rights as Englishmen", especially the principle of "no taxation without representation".
Late 18th century conflicts with the British government over taxes and rights led to the American Revolution, in which the Thirteen Colonies joined for the first time to form the Continental Congress and raised the Continental Army, declaring independence in 1776.
They fought the Revolutionary War with the aid of the Kingdom of France and, to a much lesser degree, the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Spain.
British colonies
The Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were:
- the New England Colonies consisting of:
- the Middle Colonies consisting of:
- New York,
- New Jersey,
- Pennsylvania,
- and Delaware;
- and the Southern Colonies consisting of:
These colonies were part of British America, which also included territory in The Floridas, the Caribbean, and what is today Canada.
The Thirteen Colonies were separately administered under the Crown, but had similar
political, constitutional, and legal systems, and each was dominated by Protestant English-speakers.
The first of the colonies, Virginia, was established at Jamestown in 1607. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the New England Colonies were substantially motivated by their founders' concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The Middle Colonies were established on the former Dutch colony of New Netherland.
Between 1625 and 1775, the colonial population grew from 2 thousand to 2.4 million, largely displacing the region's Native Americans. The population included people subject to a system of slavery, which was legal in all of the colonies. In the 18th century, the British government operated under a policy of mercantilism, in which the central government administered its colonies for Britain's economic benefit.
The 13 colonies had a degree of self-governance and active local elections, and they resisted London's demands for more control over them. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) against France and its Indian allies led to growing tensions between Britain and the 13 colonies.
During the 1750s, the colonies began collaborating instead of dealing directly with Britain.
With the help of colonial printers and newspapers, these inter-colonial activities and concerns were shared and led to calls for protection of the colonists' "Rights as Englishmen", especially the principle of "no taxation without representation".
Late 18th century conflicts with the British government over taxes and rights led to the American Revolution, in which the Thirteen Colonies joined for the first time to form the Continental Congress and raised the Continental Army, declaring independence in 1776.
They fought the Revolutionary War with the aid of the Kingdom of France and, to a much lesser degree, the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Spain.
British colonies
In 1606, King James I of England granted charters to both the Plymouth Company and the London Company for the purpose of establishing permanent settlements in America. The London Company established the Colony of Virginia in 1607, the first permanently settled English colony on the continent.
The Plymouth Company founded the Popham Colony on the Kennebec River, but it was short-lived. The Plymouth Council for New England sponsored several colonization projects, culminating with Plymouth Colony in 1620 which was settled by English Puritan separatists, known today as the Pilgrims.
The Dutch, Swedish, and French also established successful American colonies at roughly the same time as the English, but they eventually came under the English crown. The Thirteen Colonies were complete with the establishment of the Province of Georgia in 1732, although the term "Thirteen Colonies" became current only in the context of the American Revolution.
In London, beginning in 1660, all colonies were governed through a state department known as the Southern Department, and a committee of the Privy Council called the Board of Trade and Plantations. In 1768, a specific state department was created for America, but it was disbanded in 1782 when the Home Office took responsibility.
New England colonies
Main article: New England Colonies
Middle colonies
Main article: Middle Colonies
Southern colonies
Main article: Southern Colonies
See also: Chesapeake Colonies and Tobacco colonies
Earlier, along the coast, the Roanoke Colony was established in 1585, re-established in 1587, and found abandoned in 1590.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the 13 Colonies:
The Plymouth Company founded the Popham Colony on the Kennebec River, but it was short-lived. The Plymouth Council for New England sponsored several colonization projects, culminating with Plymouth Colony in 1620 which was settled by English Puritan separatists, known today as the Pilgrims.
The Dutch, Swedish, and French also established successful American colonies at roughly the same time as the English, but they eventually came under the English crown. The Thirteen Colonies were complete with the establishment of the Province of Georgia in 1732, although the term "Thirteen Colonies" became current only in the context of the American Revolution.
In London, beginning in 1660, all colonies were governed through a state department known as the Southern Department, and a committee of the Privy Council called the Board of Trade and Plantations. In 1768, a specific state department was created for America, but it was disbanded in 1782 when the Home Office took responsibility.
New England colonies
Main article: New England Colonies
- Province of Massachusetts Bay, chartered as a royal colony in 1691
- Popham Colony, established in 1607; abandoned in 1608
- Plymouth Colony, established in 1620; merged with Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691
- Province of Maine, patent issued in 1622 by Council for New England; patent reissued by Charles I in 1639; absorbed by Massachusetts Bay Colony by 1658
- Massachusetts Bay Colony, established in 1628; merged with Plymouth Colony in 1691
- Province of New Hampshire, established in 1629; merged with Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641; chartered as royal colony in 1679
- Connecticut Colony, established in 1636; chartered as royal colony in 1662
- Saybrook Colony, established in 1635; merged with Connecticut Colony in 1644
- New Haven Colony, established in 1638; merged with Connecticut Colony in 1664
- Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations chartered as royal colony in 1663
- Providence Plantations, established by Roger Williams in 1636
- Portsmouth, established in 1638 by John Clarke, William Coddington, and others
- Newport, established in 1639 after a disagreement and split among the settlers in Portsmouth
- Warwick, established in 1642 by Samuel Gorton
- These four settlements merged into a single Royal colony in 1663: Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven Colonies formed the New England Confederation in 1643, and all New England colonies were included in the Dominion of New England (1686–1689).
Middle colonies
Main article: Middle Colonies
- Delaware Colony (before 1776, the Lower Counties on Delaware), established in 1664 as proprietary colony
- Province of New York, established as a proprietary colony in 1664; chartered as royal colony in 1686; included in the Dominion of New England (1686–1689)
- Province of New Jersey, established as a proprietary colony in 1664; chartered as a royal colony in 1702
- East Jersey, established in 1674; merged with West Jersey to re-form Province of New Jersey in 1702; included in the Dominion of New England
- West Jersey, established in 1674; merged with East Jersey to re-form Province of New Jersey in 1702; included in the Dominion of New England
- Province of Pennsylvania, established in 1681 as a proprietary colony
Southern colonies
Main article: Southern Colonies
See also: Chesapeake Colonies and Tobacco colonies
- Colony of Virginia, established in 1607 as a proprietary colony; chartered as a royal colony in 1624.
- Province of Maryland, established 1632 as a proprietary colony
- Province of North Carolina, previously part of the Carolina province (see below) until 1712; chartered as a royal colony in 1729.
- Province of South Carolina, previously part of the Carolina province (see below) until 1712; chartered as a royal colony in 1729.
- Province of Georgia, established as a proprietary colony in 1732; royal colony from 1752.
Earlier, along the coast, the Roanoke Colony was established in 1585, re-established in 1587, and found abandoned in 1590.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the 13 Colonies:
- 17th century
- 18th century
- American Revolutionary War (see below)
- Population of Thirteen Colonies
- Religion
- Education
- Government
- Other British colonies
- Historiography
- See also:
- American Revolutionary War § Prelude to revolution
- British colonization of the Americas
- Colonial American military history
- Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies
- Colonial history of the United States
- Colonial South and the Chesapeake
- Credit in the Thirteen Colonies
- Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies
- History of the United States (1776–1789)
- Shipbuilding in the American colonies
- Social history of soldiers and veterans in the United States
- United Colonies, the name used by the Second Continental Congress in 1775–1776
- 840+ volumes of colonial records; useful for advanced scholarship
American Revolutionary War
- YouTube Video: The American Revolution: Telling Our Origin Story | PBS
- YouTube Video: Lexington & Concord: The Shot Heard 'Round the World | The American Revolution | PBS
- YouTube Video: The American Revolution: Telling Our Origin Story | PBS
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army.
The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.
In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of Stamp and Townshend Acts.
The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War.
In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, the British Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion.
In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4.
In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston.
British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton.
In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility.
France signed a commercial agreement with the rebels, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois who were largely allied with the British. Indian raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans.
Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia in September and October 1781.
The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end.
The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.
Prelude to war
Main article: American Revolution
Further information:
Map showing the territorial gains of Great Britain and Spain following the French and Indian War with lands held by the British prior to 1763 (in red), land gained by Britain in 1763 (in pink), and lands ceded to the Kingdom of Spain in secret during 1762 (in light yellow).
The French and Indian War, part of the wider global conflict known as the Seven Years' War, ended with the 1763 Peace of Paris, which expelled France from their possessions in New France.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was designed to refocus colonial expansion north into Nova Scotia and south into Florida, with the Mississippi River as the dividing line between British and Spanish possessions in America. Settlement was tightly restricted beyond the 1763 limits, and claims west of this line, including by Virginia and Massachusetts, were rescinded.
With the exception of Virginia and others deprived of rights to western lands, the colonial legislatures agreed on the boundaries but disagreed on where to set them. Many settlers resented the restrictions entirely, and enforcement required permanent garrisons along the frontier, which led to increasingly bitter disputes over who should pay for them.
Taxation and legislation
Further information:
The huge debt incurred by the Seven Years' War and demands from British taxpayers for cuts in government expenditure meant Parliament expected the colonies to fund their own defense.
The 1763 to 1765 Grenville ministry instructed the Royal Navy to cease trading smuggled goods and enforce customs duties levied in American ports. The most important was the 1733 Molasses Act; routinely ignored before 1763, it had a significant economic impact since 85% of New England rum exports were manufactured from imported molasses.
These measures were followed by the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, which imposed additional taxes on the colonies to pay for defending the western frontier. The taxes proved highly burdensome, particularly for the poorer classes, and quickly became a source of discontent.
In July 1765, the Whigs formed the First Rockingham ministry, which repealed the Stamp Act and reduced tax on foreign molasses to help the New England economy, but re-asserted Parliamentary authority in the Declaratory Act.
However, this did little to end the discontent; in 1768, a riot started in Boston when the authorities seized the sloop Liberty on suspicion of smuggling. Tensions escalated in March 1770 when British troops fired on rock-throwing civilians, killing five in what became known as the Boston Massacre.
The Massacre coincided with the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts by the Tory-based North Ministry. North insisted on retaining duty on tea to enshrine Parliament's right to tax the colonies; the amount was minor, but ignored the fact it was that very principle Americans found objectionable.
In April 1772, colonialists staged the first American tax revolt against British royal authority in Weare, New Hampshire, later referred to as the Pine Tree Riot. This would inspire the design of the Pine Tree Flag.
Tensions escalated following the destruction of a customs vessel in the June 1772 Gaspee Affair, then came to a head in 1773. A banking crisis led to the near-collapse of the East India Company, which dominated the British economy; to support it, Parliament passed the Tea Act, giving it a trading monopoly in the Thirteen Colonies.
Since most American tea was smuggled by the Dutch, the act was opposed by those who managed the illegal trade, while being seen as another attempt to impose the principle of taxation by Parliament.
In December 1773, a group called the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dumped crates of tea into Boston Harbor, an event later known as the Boston Tea Party. The British Parliament responded by passing the so-called Intolerable Acts, aimed specifically at Massachusetts, although many colonists and members of the Whig opposition considered them a threat to liberty in general.
This increased sympathy for the Patriot cause locally, in the British Parliament, and in the London press.
Break with the British Crown
Further information:
Throughout the 18th century, the elected lower houses in the colonial legislatures gradually wrested power from their governors. Dominated by smaller landowners and merchants, these assemblies now established ad-hoc provincial legislatures, effectively replacing royal control.
With the exception of Georgia, twelve colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to agree on a unified response to the crisis. Many of the delegates feared that a boycott would result in war and sent a Petition to the King calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts.
After some debate, on September 17, 1774, Congress endorsed the Massachusetts Suffolk Resolves and on October 20 passed the Continental Association, which instituted economic sanctions and a boycott of goods against Britain.
While denying its authority over internal American affairs, a faction led by James Duane and future Loyalist Joseph Galloway insisted Congress recognize Parliament's right to regulate colonial trade.
Expecting concessions by the North administration, Congress authorized the colonial legislatures to enforce the boycott; this succeeded in reducing British imports by 97% from 1774 to 1775.
However, on February 9 Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in rebellion and instituted a blockade of the colony. In July, the Restraining Acts limited colonial trade with the British West Indies and Britain and barred New England ships from the Newfoundland cod fisheries. The tension led to a scramble for control of militia stores, which each assembly was legally obliged to maintain for defense.
On April 19, a British attempt to secure the Concord arsenal culminated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War.
Political reactions
Main article: Olive Branch Petition
The Committee of Five, who were charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence, including: John Adams (chair), Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson (the Declaration's principal author), and Benjamin Franklin
After the Patriot victory at Concord, moderates in Congress led by John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, offering to accept royal authority in return for George III mediating in the dispute.
However, since the petition was immediately followed by the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth viewed the offer as insincere and refused to present the petition to the king.
Although constitutionally correct, since the monarch could not oppose his own government, it disappointed those Americans who hoped he would mediate in the dispute, while the hostility of his language annoyed even Loyalist members of Congress. Combined with the Proclamation of Rebellion, issued on August 23 in response to the Battle at Bunker Hill, it ended hopes of a peaceful settlement.
Backed by the Whigs, Parliament initially rejected the imposition of coercive measures by 170 votes, fearing an aggressive policy would drive the Americans towards independence.
However, by the end of 1774 the collapse of British authority meant both Lord North and George III were convinced war was inevitable.
After Boston, Gage halted operations and awaited reinforcements; the Irish Parliament approved the recruitment of new regiments, while allowing Catholics to enlist for the first time. Britain also signed a series of treaties with German states to supply additional troops. Within a year, it had an army of over 32,000 men in America, the largest ever sent outside Europe at the time.
The employment of German soldiers against people viewed as British citizens was opposed by many in Parliament and by the colonial assemblies; combined with the lack of activity by Gage, opposition to the use of foreign troops allowed the Patriots to take control of the legislatures.
Declaration of Independence
Main article: United States Declaration of Independence
Support for independence was boosted by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published on January 10, 1776, and argued for American self-government and was widely reprinted.
To draft the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress appointed the Committee of Five:
The declaration was written almost exclusively by Jefferson.
Identifying inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies as "one people", the declaration simultaneously dissolved political links with Britain, while including a long list of alleged violations of "English rights" committed by George III.
This is also one of the first times that the colonies were referred to as "United States", rather than the more common United Colonies.
On July 2, Congress voted for independence and published the declaration on July 4.
At this point, the revolution ceased to be an internal dispute over trade and tax policies between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, becoming a civil war, with each state represented in Congress engaged in a struggle with Britain.
The conflict was also a civil war between American Patriots and American Loyalists. Patriots generally supported independence from Britain and a new national union in Congress, while Loyalists remained aligned with British rule. Estimates of numbers vary, one suggestion being the population as a whole was split evenly between committed Patriots, committed Loyalists, and those who were indifferent. Others calculate the split as 40% Patriot, 40% neutral, 20% Loyalist, but with considerable regional variations
At the onset of the war, the Second Continental Congress realized defeating Britain required foreign alliances and intelligence-gathering. The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed for "the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain and other parts of the world".
From 1775 to 1776, the committee shared information and built alliances through secret correspondence, as well as employing secret agents in Europe to gather intelligence, conduct undercover operations, analyze foreign publications, and initiate Patriot propaganda campaigns.
Paine served as secretary, while Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, sent to France, Britain's longtime rival, to recruit military engineers, were instrumental in securing French aid in Paris.
Pictured below: Map showing the territorial gains of Great Britain and Spain following the French and Indian War with lands held by the British prior to 1763 (in red), land gained by Britain in 1763 (in pink), and lands ceded to the Kingdom of Spain in secret during 1762 (in light yellow).
The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.
In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of Stamp and Townshend Acts.
The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War.
In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, the British Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion.
In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4.
In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston.
British commander in chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton.
In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility.
France signed a commercial agreement with the rebels, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois who were largely allied with the British. Indian raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans.
Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American army in Yorktown, Virginia in September and October 1781.
The French navy cut off Cornwallis's escape and he was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end.
The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain, and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.
Prelude to war
Main article: American Revolution
Further information:
- American Enlightenment,
- Colonial history of the United States,
- Thirteen Colonies,
- and French and Indian War
Map showing the territorial gains of Great Britain and Spain following the French and Indian War with lands held by the British prior to 1763 (in red), land gained by Britain in 1763 (in pink), and lands ceded to the Kingdom of Spain in secret during 1762 (in light yellow).
The French and Indian War, part of the wider global conflict known as the Seven Years' War, ended with the 1763 Peace of Paris, which expelled France from their possessions in New France.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was designed to refocus colonial expansion north into Nova Scotia and south into Florida, with the Mississippi River as the dividing line between British and Spanish possessions in America. Settlement was tightly restricted beyond the 1763 limits, and claims west of this line, including by Virginia and Massachusetts, were rescinded.
With the exception of Virginia and others deprived of rights to western lands, the colonial legislatures agreed on the boundaries but disagreed on where to set them. Many settlers resented the restrictions entirely, and enforcement required permanent garrisons along the frontier, which led to increasingly bitter disputes over who should pay for them.
Taxation and legislation
Further information:
The huge debt incurred by the Seven Years' War and demands from British taxpayers for cuts in government expenditure meant Parliament expected the colonies to fund their own defense.
The 1763 to 1765 Grenville ministry instructed the Royal Navy to cease trading smuggled goods and enforce customs duties levied in American ports. The most important was the 1733 Molasses Act; routinely ignored before 1763, it had a significant economic impact since 85% of New England rum exports were manufactured from imported molasses.
These measures were followed by the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, which imposed additional taxes on the colonies to pay for defending the western frontier. The taxes proved highly burdensome, particularly for the poorer classes, and quickly became a source of discontent.
In July 1765, the Whigs formed the First Rockingham ministry, which repealed the Stamp Act and reduced tax on foreign molasses to help the New England economy, but re-asserted Parliamentary authority in the Declaratory Act.
However, this did little to end the discontent; in 1768, a riot started in Boston when the authorities seized the sloop Liberty on suspicion of smuggling. Tensions escalated in March 1770 when British troops fired on rock-throwing civilians, killing five in what became known as the Boston Massacre.
The Massacre coincided with the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts by the Tory-based North Ministry. North insisted on retaining duty on tea to enshrine Parliament's right to tax the colonies; the amount was minor, but ignored the fact it was that very principle Americans found objectionable.
In April 1772, colonialists staged the first American tax revolt against British royal authority in Weare, New Hampshire, later referred to as the Pine Tree Riot. This would inspire the design of the Pine Tree Flag.
Tensions escalated following the destruction of a customs vessel in the June 1772 Gaspee Affair, then came to a head in 1773. A banking crisis led to the near-collapse of the East India Company, which dominated the British economy; to support it, Parliament passed the Tea Act, giving it a trading monopoly in the Thirteen Colonies.
Since most American tea was smuggled by the Dutch, the act was opposed by those who managed the illegal trade, while being seen as another attempt to impose the principle of taxation by Parliament.
In December 1773, a group called the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dumped crates of tea into Boston Harbor, an event later known as the Boston Tea Party. The British Parliament responded by passing the so-called Intolerable Acts, aimed specifically at Massachusetts, although many colonists and members of the Whig opposition considered them a threat to liberty in general.
This increased sympathy for the Patriot cause locally, in the British Parliament, and in the London press.
Break with the British Crown
Further information:
Throughout the 18th century, the elected lower houses in the colonial legislatures gradually wrested power from their governors. Dominated by smaller landowners and merchants, these assemblies now established ad-hoc provincial legislatures, effectively replacing royal control.
With the exception of Georgia, twelve colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to agree on a unified response to the crisis. Many of the delegates feared that a boycott would result in war and sent a Petition to the King calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts.
After some debate, on September 17, 1774, Congress endorsed the Massachusetts Suffolk Resolves and on October 20 passed the Continental Association, which instituted economic sanctions and a boycott of goods against Britain.
While denying its authority over internal American affairs, a faction led by James Duane and future Loyalist Joseph Galloway insisted Congress recognize Parliament's right to regulate colonial trade.
Expecting concessions by the North administration, Congress authorized the colonial legislatures to enforce the boycott; this succeeded in reducing British imports by 97% from 1774 to 1775.
However, on February 9 Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in rebellion and instituted a blockade of the colony. In July, the Restraining Acts limited colonial trade with the British West Indies and Britain and barred New England ships from the Newfoundland cod fisheries. The tension led to a scramble for control of militia stores, which each assembly was legally obliged to maintain for defense.
On April 19, a British attempt to secure the Concord arsenal culminated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolutionary War.
Political reactions
Main article: Olive Branch Petition
The Committee of Five, who were charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence, including: John Adams (chair), Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson (the Declaration's principal author), and Benjamin Franklin
After the Patriot victory at Concord, moderates in Congress led by John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, offering to accept royal authority in return for George III mediating in the dispute.
However, since the petition was immediately followed by the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth viewed the offer as insincere and refused to present the petition to the king.
Although constitutionally correct, since the monarch could not oppose his own government, it disappointed those Americans who hoped he would mediate in the dispute, while the hostility of his language annoyed even Loyalist members of Congress. Combined with the Proclamation of Rebellion, issued on August 23 in response to the Battle at Bunker Hill, it ended hopes of a peaceful settlement.
Backed by the Whigs, Parliament initially rejected the imposition of coercive measures by 170 votes, fearing an aggressive policy would drive the Americans towards independence.
However, by the end of 1774 the collapse of British authority meant both Lord North and George III were convinced war was inevitable.
After Boston, Gage halted operations and awaited reinforcements; the Irish Parliament approved the recruitment of new regiments, while allowing Catholics to enlist for the first time. Britain also signed a series of treaties with German states to supply additional troops. Within a year, it had an army of over 32,000 men in America, the largest ever sent outside Europe at the time.
The employment of German soldiers against people viewed as British citizens was opposed by many in Parliament and by the colonial assemblies; combined with the lack of activity by Gage, opposition to the use of foreign troops allowed the Patriots to take control of the legislatures.
Declaration of Independence
Main article: United States Declaration of Independence
Support for independence was boosted by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published on January 10, 1776, and argued for American self-government and was widely reprinted.
To draft the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress appointed the Committee of Five:
The declaration was written almost exclusively by Jefferson.
Identifying inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies as "one people", the declaration simultaneously dissolved political links with Britain, while including a long list of alleged violations of "English rights" committed by George III.
This is also one of the first times that the colonies were referred to as "United States", rather than the more common United Colonies.
On July 2, Congress voted for independence and published the declaration on July 4.
At this point, the revolution ceased to be an internal dispute over trade and tax policies between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, becoming a civil war, with each state represented in Congress engaged in a struggle with Britain.
The conflict was also a civil war between American Patriots and American Loyalists. Patriots generally supported independence from Britain and a new national union in Congress, while Loyalists remained aligned with British rule. Estimates of numbers vary, one suggestion being the population as a whole was split evenly between committed Patriots, committed Loyalists, and those who were indifferent. Others calculate the split as 40% Patriot, 40% neutral, 20% Loyalist, but with considerable regional variations
At the onset of the war, the Second Continental Congress realized defeating Britain required foreign alliances and intelligence-gathering. The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed for "the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain and other parts of the world".
From 1775 to 1776, the committee shared information and built alliances through secret correspondence, as well as employing secret agents in Europe to gather intelligence, conduct undercover operations, analyze foreign publications, and initiate Patriot propaganda campaigns.
Paine served as secretary, while Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, sent to France, Britain's longtime rival, to recruit military engineers, were instrumental in securing French aid in Paris.
Pictured below: Map showing the territorial gains of Great Britain and Spain following the French and Indian War with lands held by the British prior to 1763 (in red), land gained by Britain in 1763 (in pink), and lands ceded to the Kingdom of Spain in secret during 1762 (in light yellow).
War breaks out
Main articles:
- Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War
- Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War
- See also: Western theater of the American Revolutionary War
- Further information: Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War
Early engagements
Further information: Battles of Lexington and Concord and Shot heard round the world
On April 14, 1775, Sir Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief, North America and Governor of Massachusetts, received orders to take action against the Patriots. He decided to destroy militia ordnance stored at Concord, Massachusetts, and capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were considered the principal instigators of the rebellion. The operation was to begin around midnight on April 19, in the hope of completing it before the American Patriots could respond.
However, Paul Revere learned of the plan and notified Captain Parker, commander of the Concord militia, who prepared to resist.
The first action of the war, commonly referred to as the shot heard round the world, was a brief skirmish at Lexington, followed by the full-scale Battles of Lexington and Concord. British troops suffered around 300 casualties before withdrawing to Boston, which was then besieged by the militia.
In May 1775, 4,500 British reinforcements arrived under Generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Sir Henry Clinton. On June 17, they seized the Charlestown Peninsula at the Battle of Bunker Hill, a frontal assault in which they suffered over 1,000 casualties. Dismayed at the costly attack which had gained them little, Gage appealed to London for a larger army, but instead was replaced as commander by Howe.
On June 14, 1775, Congress took control of Patriot forces outside Boston, and Congressional leader John Adams nominated Washington as commander-in-chief of the newly formed Continental Army.
On June 16, Hancock officially proclaimed Washington "General and Commander in Chief of the army of the United Colonies." He assumed command on July 3, preferring to fortify Dorchester Heights outside Boston rather than assaulting it. In early March 1776, Colonel Henry Knox arrived with heavy artillery acquired in the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga.
Under cover of darkness, on March 5, Washington placed these on Dorchester Heights,[99] from where they could fire on the town and British ships in Boston Harbor. Fearing another Bunker Hill, Howe evacuated the city on March 17 without further loss and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, while Washington moved south to New York City.
Beginning in August 1775, American privateers raided towns in Nova Scotia, including Saint John, Charlottetown, and Yarmouth. In 1776, John Paul Jones and Jonathan Eddy attacked Canso and Fort Cumberland respectively. British officials in Quebec began negotiating with the Iroquois for their support, while US envoys urged them to remain neutral.
Aware of Native American leanings toward the British and fearing an Anglo-Indian attack from Canada, Congress authorized a second invasion in April 1775. After the defeat at the Battle of Quebec on December 31, the Americans maintained a loose blockade of the city until they retreated on May 6, 1776. A second defeat at Trois-Rivières on June 8 ended operations in Quebec.
British pursuit was initially blocked by American naval vessels on Lake Champlain until victory at Valcour Island on October 11 forced the Americans to withdraw to Fort Ticonderoga, while in December an uprising in Nova Scotia sponsored by Massachusetts was defeated at Fort Cumberland.
These failures impacted public support for the Patriot cause, and aggressive anti-Loyalist policies in the New England colonies alienated the Canadians.
In Virginia, Dunmore's Proclamation on November 7, 1775, promised freedom to any slaves who fled their Patriot masters and agreed to fight for the Crown. British forces were defeated at Great Bridge on December 9 and took refuge on British ships anchored near Norfolk. When the Third Virginia Convention refused to disband its militia or accept martial law, Lord Dunmore ordered the Burning of Norfolk on January 1, 1776.
The siege of Savage's Old Fields began on November 19 in South Carolina between Loyalist and Patriot militias, and the Loyalists were subsequently driven out of the colony in the Snow Campaign. Loyalists were recruited in North Carolina to reassert British rule in the South, but they were decisively defeated in the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. A British expedition sent to reconquer South Carolina launched an attack on Charleston in the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776, but it failed.
A shortage of gunpowder led Congress to authorize a naval expedition against the Bahamas to secure ordnance stored there. On March 3, 1776, an American squadron under the command of Esek Hopkins landed at the east end of Nassau and encountered minimal resistance at Fort Montagu. Hopkins' troops then marched on Fort Nassau.
Hopkins had promised governor Montfort Browne and the civilian inhabitants that their lives and property would not be in any danger if they offered no resistance; they complied. Hopkins captured large stores of powder and other munitions that was so great he had to impress an extra ship in the harbor to transport the supplies back home, when he departed on March 17. A month later, after a brief skirmish with HMS Glasgow, they returned to New London, Connecticut, the base for American naval operations.
British New York counter-offensive
Main article: New York and New Jersey campaign
Further information: Battle of Fort Washington and Battle of Long Island
After regrouping at Halifax in Nova Scotia, Howe set sail for New York in June 1776 and began landing troops on Staten Island near the entrance to New York Harbor on July 2. The Americans rejected Howe's informal attempt to negotiate peace on July 30; Washington knew that an attack on the city was imminent and realized that he needed advance information to deal with disciplined British regular troops.
On August 12, 1776, Patriot Thomas Knowlton was ordered to form an elite group for reconnaissance and secret missions. Knowlton's Rangers, which included Nathan Hale, became the Army's first intelligence unit. When Washington was driven off Long Island, he soon realized that he would need to professionalize military intelligence.
With aid from Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington launched the six-man Culper spy ring. The efforts of Washington and the Culper Spy Ring substantially increased the effective allocation and deployment of Continental regiments in the field. Throughout the war, Washington spent more than 10 percent of his total military funds on military intelligence.
Washington split the Continental Army into positions on Manhattan and across the East River in western Long Island. On August 27 at the Battle of Long Island, Howe outflanked Washington and forced him back to Brooklyn Heights, but he did not attempt to encircle Washington's forces.
Through the night of August 28, Knox bombarded the British. Knowing they were up against overwhelming odds, Washington ordered the assembly of a war council on August 29; all agreed to retreat to Manhattan.
Washington quickly had his troops assembled and ferried them across the East River to Manhattan on flat-bottomed freight boats without any losses in men or ordnance, leaving General Thomas Mifflin's regiments as a rearguard.
Howe met with a delegation from the Second Continental Congress at the September Staten Island Peace Conference, but it failed to conclude peace, largely because the British delegates only had the authority to offer pardons and could not recognize independence.
On September 15, Howe seized control of New York City when the British landed at Kip's Bay and unsuccessfully engaged the Americans at the Battle of Harlem Heights the following day.
On October 18, Howe failed to encircle the Americans at the Battle of Pell's Point, and the Americans withdrew. Howe declined to close with Washington's army on October 28 at the Battle of White Plains and instead attacked a hill that was of no strategic value.
Washington's retreat isolated his remaining forces and the British captured Fort Washington on November 16. The British victory there amounted to Washington's most disastrous defeat with the loss of 3,000 prisoners. The remaining American regiments on Long Island fell back four days later. General Henry Clinton wanted to pursue Washington's disorganized army, but he was first required to commit 6,000 troops to capture Newport, Rhode Island, to secure the Loyalist port. General Charles Cornwallis pursued Washington, but Howe ordered him to halt.
The outlook following the defeat at Fort Washington appeared bleak for the American cause. The reduced Continental Army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 men and was reduced further when enlistments expired at the end of the year. Popular support wavered, and morale declined.
On December 20, 1776, the Continental Congress abandoned the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia and moved to Baltimore, where it remained until February 27, 1777. Loyalist activity surged in the wake of the American defeat, especially in New York state.
In London, news of the victorious Long Island campaign was well received with festivities held in the capital. Public support reached a peak. Strategic deficiencies among Patriot forces were evident: Washington divided a numerically weaker army in the face of a stronger one, his inexperienced staff misread the military situation, and American troops fled in the face of enemy fire.
The successes led to predictions that the British could win within a year.[142] The British established winter quarters in the New York City area and anticipated renewed campaigning the following spring.
Patriot resurgence
Further information below:
Pictured below: Washington Crossing the Delaware, an iconic 1851 Emanuel Leutze portrait depicting Washington's covert crossing of the Delaware River on December 25–26, 1776
On the night of December 25–26, 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware River, leading a column of Continental Army troops from today's Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to today's Mercer County, New Jersey, in a logistically challenging and dangerous operation.
Meanwhile, the Hessians were involved in numerous clashes with small bands of Patriots and were often aroused by false alarms at night in the weeks before the actual Battle of Trenton.
By Christmas they were tired, while a heavy snowstorm led their commander, Coloel Johann Rall, to assume no significant attack would occur.
At daybreak on the 26th, the American Patriots surprised and overwhelmed Rall and his troops, who lost over 20 killed including Rall, while 900 prisoners, German cannons and supplies were captured.
The Battle of Trenton restored the American army's morale, reinvigorated the Patriot cause, and dispelled their fear of what they regarded as Hessian "mercenaries". A British attempt to retake Trenton was repulsed at Assunpink Creek on January 2; during the night, Washington outmaneuvered Cornwallis, then defeated his rearguard in the Battle of Princeton the following day.
The two victories helped convince the French that the Americans were worthy military allies.
After his success at Princeton, Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, where he remained until May and received Congressional direction to inoculate all Patriot troops against smallpox. With the exception of a minor skirmishing between the two armies which continued until March, Howe made no attempt to attack the Americans.
British northern strategy fails
Further information:
The 1776 campaign demonstrated that regaining New England would be a prolonged affair, which led to a change in British strategy to isolating the north by taking control of the Hudson River, allowing them to focus on the south where Loyalist support was believed to be substantial.
In December 1776, Howe wrote to the Colonial Secretary Lord Germain, proposing a limited offensive against Philadelphia, while a second force moved down the Hudson from Canada. Burgoyne supplied several alternatives, all of which gave him responsibility for the offensive, with Howe remaining on the defensive.
The option selected required him to lead the main force south from Montreal down the Hudson Valley, while a detachment under Barry St. Leger moved east from Lake Ontario. The two would meet at Albany, leaving Howe to decide whether to join them. Reasonable in principle, this did not account for the logistical difficulties involved and Burgoyne erroneously assumed Howe would remain on the defensive; Germain's failure to make this clear meant he opted to attack Philadelphia instead.
With a mixed force of British regulars, professional German soldiers and Canadian militia Burgoyne set out on June 14, 1777, and captured Fort Ticonderoga on July 5.
As General Horatio Gates retreated, his troops blocked roads, destroyed bridges, dammed streams, and stripped the area of food. This slowed Burgoyne's progress and forced him to send out large foraging expeditions; one of more than 700 British troops were captured at the Battle of Bennington on August 16.
St Leger moved east and besieged Fort Stanwix; despite defeating an American relief force at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, St. Leger was abandoned by his Indian allies and withdrew to Quebec on August 22. Now isolated and outnumbered by Gates, Burgoyne continued onto Albany rather than retreating to Fort Ticonderoga, reaching Saratoga on September 13. He asked Clinton for support while constructing defenses around the town.
Morale among his troops rapidly declined, and an unsuccessful attempt to break past Gates at the Battle of Freeman Farms on September 19 resulted in 600 British casualties. When Clinton advised he could not reach them, Burgoyne's subordinates advised retreat; a reconnaissance in force on October 7 was repulsed by Gates at the Battle of Bemis Heights, forcing them back into Saratoga with heavy losses.
By October 11, all hope of British escape had vanished; persistent rain reduced the camp to a "squalid hell" and supplies were dangerously low. Burgoyne capitulated on October 17; around 6,222 soldiers, including German forces commanded by General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, surrendered their arms before being taken to Boston, where they were to be transported to England.
After securing additional supplies, Howe made another attempt on Philadelphia by landing his troops in Chesapeake Bay on August 24. He now compounded failure to support Burgoyne by missing repeated opportunities to destroy his opponent: despite defeating Washington at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, he then allowed him to withdraw in good order.
After dispersing an American detachment at Paoli on September 20, Cornwallis occupied Philadelphia on September 26, with the main force of 9,000 under Howe based just to the north at Germantown. Washington attacked them on October 4, but was repulsed.
To prevent Howe's forces in Philadelphia being resupplied by sea, the Patriots erected Fort Mifflin and nearby Fort Mercer on the east and west banks of the Delaware respectively, and placed obstacles in the river south of the city. This was supported by a small flotilla of Continental Navy ships on the Delaware, supplemented by the Pennsylvania State Navy, commanded by John Hazelwood.
An attempt by the Royal Navy to take the forts in the October 20 to 22 Battle of Red Bank failed; a second attack captured Fort Mifflin on November 16, while Fort Mercer was abandoned two days later when Cornwallis breached the walls. His supply lines secured, Howe tried to tempt Washington into giving battle, but after inconclusive skirmishing at the Battle of White Marsh from December 5 to 8, he withdrew to Philadelphia for the winter.
On December 19, the Americans followed suit and entered winter quarters at Valley Forge. As Washington's domestic opponents contrasted his lack of battlefield success with Gates' victory at Saratoga, foreign observers such as Frederick the Great were equally impressed with Washington's command at Germantown, which demonstrated resilience and determination.
Over the winter, poor conditions, supply problems and low morale resulted in 2,000 deaths, with another 3,000 unfit for duty due to lack of shoes.
However, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben took the opportunity to introduce Prussian Army drill and infantry tactics to "model companies" in each Continental Army regiment, who then instructed their home units. Despite Valley Forge being only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, an action some critics argue could have ended the war.
Foreign intervention
Main articles:
Like his predecessors, French foreign minister Vergennes considered the 1763 Peace a national humiliation and viewed the war as an opportunity to weaken Britain. He initially avoided open conflict, but allowed American ships to take on cargoes in French ports, a technical violation of neutrality. Vergennes persuaded Louis XVI to secretly fund a government front company to purchase munitions for the Patriots, carried in neutral Dutch ships and imported through Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean.
Many Americans opposed a French alliance, fearing to "exchange one tyranny for another", but this changed after a series of military setbacks in early 1776. As France had nothing to gain from the colonies reconciling with Britain, Congress had three choices: making peace on British terms, continuing the struggle on their own, or proclaiming independence, guaranteed by France.
Although the Declaration of Independence had wide public support, over 20% of Congressmen voted against an alliance with France. Congress agreed to the treaty with reluctance and as the war moved in their favor increasingly lost interest in it.
Silas Deane was sent to Paris to begin negotiations with Vergennes, whose key objectives were replacing Britain as the United States' primary commercial and military partner while securing the French West Indies from American expansion. These islands were extremely valuable; in 1772, the value of sugar and coffee produced by Saint-Domingue on its own exceeded that of all American exports combined.
Talks progressed slowly until October 1777, when British defeat at Saratoga and their apparent willingness to negotiate peace convinced Vergennes only a permanent alliance could prevent the "disaster" of Anglo-American rapprochement. Assurances of formal French support allowed Congress to reject the Carlisle Peace Commission and insist on nothing short of complete independence.
On February 6, 1778, France and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce regulating trade between the two countries, followed by a defensive military alliance against Britain, the Treaty of Alliance. In return for French guarantees of American independence, Congress undertook to defend their interests in the West Indies, while both sides agreed not to make a separate peace; conflict over these provisions would lead to the 1798 to 1800 Quasi-War.
Charles III of Spain was invited to join on the same terms but refused, largely due to concerns over the impact of the Revolution on Spanish colonies in the Americas. Spain had complained on multiple occasions about encroachment by American settlers into Louisiana, a problem that could only get worse once the United States replaced Britain.
Although Spain ultimately made important contributions to American success, in the Treaty of Aranjuez, Charles agreed only to support France's war with Britain outside America, in return for help in recovering Gibraltar, Menorca and Spanish Florida.
The terms were confidential since several conflicted with American aims; for example, the French claimed exclusive control of the Newfoundland cod fisheries, a non-negotiable for colonies like Massachusetts.
One less well-known impact of this agreement was the abiding American distrust of 'foreign entanglements'; the US would not sign another treaty with France until their NATO agreement of 1949. This was because the US had agreed not to make peace without France, while Aranjuez committed France to keep fighting until Spain recovered Gibraltar, effectively making it a condition of US independence without the knowledge of Congress.
To encourage French participation in the struggle for independence, the US representative in Paris, Silas Deane promised promotion and command positions to any French officer who joined the Continental Army. Such as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, whom Congress via Dean appointed a major general, on July 31, 1777.
When the war started, Britain tried to borrow the Dutch-based Scots Brigade for service in America, but pro-Patriot sentiment led the States General to refuse. Although the Republic was no longer a major power, prior to 1774 they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, a conflict that proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.
The British government failed to take into account the strength of the American merchant marine and support from European countries, which allowed the colonies to import munitions and continue trading with relative impunity. While well aware of this, the North administration delayed placing the Royal Navy on a war footing for cost reasons; this prevented the institution of an effective blockade.
Traditional British policy was to employ European land-based allies to divert the opposition; in 1778, they were diplomatically isolated and faced war on multiple fronts.
Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight. He did not welcome war with France, but he held the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to believe in ultimate victory over France. Britain subsequently changed its focus into the Caribbean theater, and diverted major military resources away from America.
Stalemate in the North
Main articles below:
At the end of 1777, Howe resigned and was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778; with French entry into the war, he was ordered to consolidate his forces in New York. On June 18, the British departed Philadelphia with the reinvigorated Americans in pursuit; the Battle of Monmouth on June 28 was inconclusive but boosted Patriot morale.
That midnight, the newly installed Clinton continued his retreat to New York. A French naval force under Admiral Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing was sent to assist Washington; deciding New York was too formidable a target, in August they launched a combined attack on Newport, with General John Sullivan commanding land forces. The resulting Battle of Rhode Island was indecisive; badly damaged by a storm, the French withdrew to avoid risking their ships..
Further activity was limited to British raids on Chestnut Neck and Little Egg Harbor in October. In July 1779, the Americans captured British positions at Stony Point and Paulus Hook. Clinton unsuccessfully tried to tempt Washington into a decisive engagement by sending General William Tryon to raid Connecticut.
In July, a large American naval operation, the Penobscot Expedition, attempted to retake Maine but was defeated. Persistent Iroquois raids in New York and Pennsylvania led to the punitive Sullivan Expedition from July to September 1779. Involving more than 4,000 patriot soldiers, the scorched earth campaign destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and 160,000 bushels (4,000 mts) of maize, leaving the Iroquois destitute and destroying the Iroquois confederacy as an independent power on the American frontier. However, 5,000 Iroquois fled to Canada, where, supplied and supported by the British, they continued their raids.
During the winter of 1779–1780, the Continental Army suffered greater hardships than at Valley Forge. Morale was poor, public support fell away, the Continental dollar was virtually worthless, the army was plagued with supply problems, desertion was common, and mutinies occurred in the Pennsylvania Line and New Jersey Line regiments over the conditions.
In June 1780, Clinton sent 6,000 men under Wilhelm von Knyphausen to retake New Jersey, but they were halted by local militia at the Battle of Connecticut Farms; although the Americans withdrew, Knyphausen felt he was not strong enough to engage Washington's main force and retreated. A second attempt two weeks later ended in a British defeat at the Battle of Springfield, effectively ending their ambitions in New Jersey.
In July, Washington appointed Benedict Arnold commander of West Point; his attempt to betray the fort to the British failed due to incompetent planning, and the plot was revealed when his British contact John André was captured and executed. Arnold escaped to New York and switched sides, an action justified in a pamphlet addressed "To the Inhabitants of America"; the Patriots condemned his betrayal, while he found himself almost as unpopular with the British.
War in the South
Main article: Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War
The Southern Strategy was developed by Lord Germain, based on input from London-based Loyalists, including Joseph Galloway. They argued that it made no sense to fight the Patriots in the north where they were strongest, while the New England economy was reliant on trade with Britain.
On the other hand, duties on tobacco made the South far more profitable for Britain, while local support meant securing it required small numbers of regular troops. Victory would leave a truncated United States facing British possessions to the south, north, and west; with the Atlantic seaboard controlled by the Royal Navy, Congress would be forced to agree to terms. However, assumptions about the level of Loyalist support proved wildly optimistic.
Germain ordered Augustine Prévost, the British commander in East Florida, to advance into Georgia in December 1778. Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, an experienced officer, captured Savannah on December 29, 1778. He recruited a Loyalist militia of nearly 1,100, many of whom allegedly joined only after Campbell threatened to confiscate their property. Poor motivation and training made them unreliable troops, as demonstrated in their defeat by Patriot militia at the Battle of Kettle Creek on February 14, 1779, although this was offset by British victory at Brier Creek on March 3.
In June 1779, Prévost launched an abortive assault on Charleston, before retreating to Savannah, an operation notorious for widespread looting by British troops that enraged both Loyalists and Patriots. In October, a joint French and American operation under d'Estaing and General Benjamin Lincoln failed to recapture Savannah] Prévost was replaced by Lord Cornwallis, who assumed responsibility for Germain's strategy; he soon realized estimates of Loyalist support were considerably over-stated, and he needed far more regular forces.
Reinforced by Clinton, Cornwallis's troops captured Charleston in May 1780, inflicting the most serious Patriot defeat of the war; over 5,000 prisoners were taken and the Continental Army in the south effectively destroyed. On May 29, Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton's mainly Loyalist force routed a Continental Army force nearly three times its size under Colonel Abraham Buford at the Battle of Waxhaws. The battle is controversial for allegations of a massacre, which were later used as a recruiting tool by the Patriots.
Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to oversee the south; despite their success, the two men left barely on speaking terms. The Southern strategy depended on local support, but this was undermined by a series of coercive measures. Previously, captured Patriots were sent home after swearing not to take up arms against the king; they were now required to fight their former comrades, while the confiscation of Patriot-owned plantations led formerly neutral "grandees" to side with them.
Skirmishes at Williamson's Plantation, Cedar Springs, Rocky Mount, and Hanging Rock signaled widespread resistance to the new oaths throughout South Carolina.
In July 1780, Congress appointed Gates commander in the south; he was defeated at the Battle of Camden on August 16, leaving Cornwallis free to enter North Carolina. Despite battlefield success, the British could not control the countryside and Patriot attacks continued; before moving north, Cornwallis sent Loyalist militia under Major Patrick Ferguson to cover his left flank, leaving their forces too far apart to provide mutual support. I
In early October, Ferguson was defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain, dispersing organized Loyalist resistance in the region. Despite this, Cornwallis continued into North Carolina hoping for Loyalist support, while Washington replaced Gates with General Nathanael Greene in December 1780.
Greene divided his army, leading his main force southeast pursued by Cornwallis; a detachment was sent southwest under Daniel Morgan, who defeated Tarleton's British Legion at Cowpens on January 17, 1781, nearly eliminating it as a fighting force.
The Patriots now held the initiative in the south, with the exception of a raid on Richmond led by Benedict Arnold in January 1781. Greene led Cornwallis on a series of countermarches around North Carolina; by early March, the British were exhausted and short of supplies and Greene felt strong enough to fight the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15. Although victorious, Cornwallis suffered heavy casualties and retreated to Wilmington, North Carolina, seeking supplies and reinforcements.
The Patriots now controlled most of the Carolinas and Georgia outside the coastal areas; after a minor reversal at the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill, they recaptured Fort Watson and Fort Motte on April 15.
On June 6, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens captured Augusta, leaving the British in Georgia confined to Charleston and Savannah. The assumption Loyalists would do most of the fighting left the British short of troops and battlefield victories came at the cost of losses they could not replace. Despite halting Greene's advance at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on September 8, Cornwallis withdrew to Charleston with little to show for his campaign.
Western campaign:
Main article: Western theater of the American Revolutionary War
From the beginning of the war, Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, allowed the Americans to import supplies and munitions into New Orleans, then ship them to Pittsburgh. This provided an alternative transportation route for the Continental Army, bypassing the British blockade of the Atlantic Coast.
In February 1778, an expedition of militia to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River was halted by adverse weather.
Later in the year, a second campaign was undertaken to seize the Illinois Country from the British. Virginia militia, Canadien settlers, and Indian allies commanded by Colonel George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia on July 4 and then secured Vincennes, though Vincennes was recaptured by Quebec Governor Henry Hamilton.
The Spanish-aligned fur trader Francis Vigo, an American sympathizer, alerted Clark to the threat posed to his control of the west by Hamilton's position and in early 1779, the Virginians counter-attacked in the siege of Fort Vincennes and took Hamilton prisoner. Clark secured western British Quebec as the American Northwest Territory in the Treaty of Paris as the Revolutionary War came to an end.
When Spain joined France's war against Britain in the Anglo-French War in 1779, their treaty specifically excluded Spanish military action in North America. Later that year, however, Gálvez initiated offensive operations against British outposts. First, he cleared British garrisons in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fort Bute, and Natchez, Mississippi, and captured five forts. In doing so, Gálvez opened navigation on the Mississippi River north to the American settlement in Pittsburgh.
On May 25, 1780, British Colonel Henry Bird invaded Kentucky as part of a wider operation to clear American resistance from Quebec to the Gulf Coast. Their advance on New Orleans was repelled by Spanish Governor Gálvez's offensive on Mobile.
Simultaneous British attacks were repulsed on St. Louis by the Spanish Lieutenant Governor de Leyba, and on the Virginia County courthouse in Cahokia, Illinois, by Lieutenant Colonel Clark. The British initiative under Bird from Detroit was ended at the rumored approach of Clark.
The scale of violence in the Licking River Valley, was extreme "even for frontier standards." It led to English and German settlements, who joined Clark's militia when the British and their hired German soldiers withdrew to the Great Lakes. The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success in the Battle of Piqua but did not end Indian raids.
French soldier Augustin de La Balme led a Canadian militia in an attempt to capture Detroit, but they dispersed when Miami natives led by Little Turtle attacked the encamped settlers on November 5. The war in the west stalemated with the British garrison sitting in Detroit and the Virginians expanding westward settlements north of the Ohio River in the face of British-allied Indian resistance.
In 1781, Galvez and Pollock campaigned east along the Gulf Coast to secure West Florida, including British-held Mobile and Pensacola. The Spanish operations impaired the British supply of armaments to British Indian allies, which effectively suspended a military alliance to attack settlers between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains.
In 1782, large scale retaliations between settlers and Native Americans in the region included the Gnadenhutten massacre and the Crawford expedition. The 1782 Battle of Blue Licks was one of the last major engagements of the war. News of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States arrived late that year.
By this time, about 7% of Kentucky settlers had been killed in battles against Native Americans, contrasted with 1% of the population killed in the Thirteen Colonies. Lingering resentments led to continued fighting in the west after the war officially ended.
British defeat
Main article: Yorktown campaign
Picture below: A French Navy fleet engages the British in the Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5, 1781
Meanwhile, the Hessians were involved in numerous clashes with small bands of Patriots and were often aroused by false alarms at night in the weeks before the actual Battle of Trenton.
By Christmas they were tired, while a heavy snowstorm led their commander, Coloel Johann Rall, to assume no significant attack would occur.
At daybreak on the 26th, the American Patriots surprised and overwhelmed Rall and his troops, who lost over 20 killed including Rall, while 900 prisoners, German cannons and supplies were captured.
The Battle of Trenton restored the American army's morale, reinvigorated the Patriot cause, and dispelled their fear of what they regarded as Hessian "mercenaries". A British attempt to retake Trenton was repulsed at Assunpink Creek on January 2; during the night, Washington outmaneuvered Cornwallis, then defeated his rearguard in the Battle of Princeton the following day.
The two victories helped convince the French that the Americans were worthy military allies.
After his success at Princeton, Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, where he remained until May and received Congressional direction to inoculate all Patriot troops against smallpox. With the exception of a minor skirmishing between the two armies which continued until March, Howe made no attempt to attack the Americans.
British northern strategy fails
Further information:
The 1776 campaign demonstrated that regaining New England would be a prolonged affair, which led to a change in British strategy to isolating the north by taking control of the Hudson River, allowing them to focus on the south where Loyalist support was believed to be substantial.
In December 1776, Howe wrote to the Colonial Secretary Lord Germain, proposing a limited offensive against Philadelphia, while a second force moved down the Hudson from Canada. Burgoyne supplied several alternatives, all of which gave him responsibility for the offensive, with Howe remaining on the defensive.
The option selected required him to lead the main force south from Montreal down the Hudson Valley, while a detachment under Barry St. Leger moved east from Lake Ontario. The two would meet at Albany, leaving Howe to decide whether to join them. Reasonable in principle, this did not account for the logistical difficulties involved and Burgoyne erroneously assumed Howe would remain on the defensive; Germain's failure to make this clear meant he opted to attack Philadelphia instead.
With a mixed force of British regulars, professional German soldiers and Canadian militia Burgoyne set out on June 14, 1777, and captured Fort Ticonderoga on July 5.
As General Horatio Gates retreated, his troops blocked roads, destroyed bridges, dammed streams, and stripped the area of food. This slowed Burgoyne's progress and forced him to send out large foraging expeditions; one of more than 700 British troops were captured at the Battle of Bennington on August 16.
St Leger moved east and besieged Fort Stanwix; despite defeating an American relief force at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, St. Leger was abandoned by his Indian allies and withdrew to Quebec on August 22. Now isolated and outnumbered by Gates, Burgoyne continued onto Albany rather than retreating to Fort Ticonderoga, reaching Saratoga on September 13. He asked Clinton for support while constructing defenses around the town.
Morale among his troops rapidly declined, and an unsuccessful attempt to break past Gates at the Battle of Freeman Farms on September 19 resulted in 600 British casualties. When Clinton advised he could not reach them, Burgoyne's subordinates advised retreat; a reconnaissance in force on October 7 was repulsed by Gates at the Battle of Bemis Heights, forcing them back into Saratoga with heavy losses.
By October 11, all hope of British escape had vanished; persistent rain reduced the camp to a "squalid hell" and supplies were dangerously low. Burgoyne capitulated on October 17; around 6,222 soldiers, including German forces commanded by General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, surrendered their arms before being taken to Boston, where they were to be transported to England.
After securing additional supplies, Howe made another attempt on Philadelphia by landing his troops in Chesapeake Bay on August 24. He now compounded failure to support Burgoyne by missing repeated opportunities to destroy his opponent: despite defeating Washington at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, he then allowed him to withdraw in good order.
After dispersing an American detachment at Paoli on September 20, Cornwallis occupied Philadelphia on September 26, with the main force of 9,000 under Howe based just to the north at Germantown. Washington attacked them on October 4, but was repulsed.
To prevent Howe's forces in Philadelphia being resupplied by sea, the Patriots erected Fort Mifflin and nearby Fort Mercer on the east and west banks of the Delaware respectively, and placed obstacles in the river south of the city. This was supported by a small flotilla of Continental Navy ships on the Delaware, supplemented by the Pennsylvania State Navy, commanded by John Hazelwood.
An attempt by the Royal Navy to take the forts in the October 20 to 22 Battle of Red Bank failed; a second attack captured Fort Mifflin on November 16, while Fort Mercer was abandoned two days later when Cornwallis breached the walls. His supply lines secured, Howe tried to tempt Washington into giving battle, but after inconclusive skirmishing at the Battle of White Marsh from December 5 to 8, he withdrew to Philadelphia for the winter.
On December 19, the Americans followed suit and entered winter quarters at Valley Forge. As Washington's domestic opponents contrasted his lack of battlefield success with Gates' victory at Saratoga, foreign observers such as Frederick the Great were equally impressed with Washington's command at Germantown, which demonstrated resilience and determination.
Over the winter, poor conditions, supply problems and low morale resulted in 2,000 deaths, with another 3,000 unfit for duty due to lack of shoes.
However, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben took the opportunity to introduce Prussian Army drill and infantry tactics to "model companies" in each Continental Army regiment, who then instructed their home units. Despite Valley Forge being only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, an action some critics argue could have ended the war.
Foreign intervention
Main articles:
- France in the American Revolutionary War,
- Spain and the American Revolutionary War,
- and Carlisle Peace Commission
Like his predecessors, French foreign minister Vergennes considered the 1763 Peace a national humiliation and viewed the war as an opportunity to weaken Britain. He initially avoided open conflict, but allowed American ships to take on cargoes in French ports, a technical violation of neutrality. Vergennes persuaded Louis XVI to secretly fund a government front company to purchase munitions for the Patriots, carried in neutral Dutch ships and imported through Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean.
Many Americans opposed a French alliance, fearing to "exchange one tyranny for another", but this changed after a series of military setbacks in early 1776. As France had nothing to gain from the colonies reconciling with Britain, Congress had three choices: making peace on British terms, continuing the struggle on their own, or proclaiming independence, guaranteed by France.
Although the Declaration of Independence had wide public support, over 20% of Congressmen voted against an alliance with France. Congress agreed to the treaty with reluctance and as the war moved in their favor increasingly lost interest in it.
Silas Deane was sent to Paris to begin negotiations with Vergennes, whose key objectives were replacing Britain as the United States' primary commercial and military partner while securing the French West Indies from American expansion. These islands were extremely valuable; in 1772, the value of sugar and coffee produced by Saint-Domingue on its own exceeded that of all American exports combined.
Talks progressed slowly until October 1777, when British defeat at Saratoga and their apparent willingness to negotiate peace convinced Vergennes only a permanent alliance could prevent the "disaster" of Anglo-American rapprochement. Assurances of formal French support allowed Congress to reject the Carlisle Peace Commission and insist on nothing short of complete independence.
On February 6, 1778, France and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce regulating trade between the two countries, followed by a defensive military alliance against Britain, the Treaty of Alliance. In return for French guarantees of American independence, Congress undertook to defend their interests in the West Indies, while both sides agreed not to make a separate peace; conflict over these provisions would lead to the 1798 to 1800 Quasi-War.
Charles III of Spain was invited to join on the same terms but refused, largely due to concerns over the impact of the Revolution on Spanish colonies in the Americas. Spain had complained on multiple occasions about encroachment by American settlers into Louisiana, a problem that could only get worse once the United States replaced Britain.
Although Spain ultimately made important contributions to American success, in the Treaty of Aranjuez, Charles agreed only to support France's war with Britain outside America, in return for help in recovering Gibraltar, Menorca and Spanish Florida.
The terms were confidential since several conflicted with American aims; for example, the French claimed exclusive control of the Newfoundland cod fisheries, a non-negotiable for colonies like Massachusetts.
One less well-known impact of this agreement was the abiding American distrust of 'foreign entanglements'; the US would not sign another treaty with France until their NATO agreement of 1949. This was because the US had agreed not to make peace without France, while Aranjuez committed France to keep fighting until Spain recovered Gibraltar, effectively making it a condition of US independence without the knowledge of Congress.
To encourage French participation in the struggle for independence, the US representative in Paris, Silas Deane promised promotion and command positions to any French officer who joined the Continental Army. Such as Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, whom Congress via Dean appointed a major general, on July 31, 1777.
When the war started, Britain tried to borrow the Dutch-based Scots Brigade for service in America, but pro-Patriot sentiment led the States General to refuse. Although the Republic was no longer a major power, prior to 1774 they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, a conflict that proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.
The British government failed to take into account the strength of the American merchant marine and support from European countries, which allowed the colonies to import munitions and continue trading with relative impunity. While well aware of this, the North administration delayed placing the Royal Navy on a war footing for cost reasons; this prevented the institution of an effective blockade.
Traditional British policy was to employ European land-based allies to divert the opposition; in 1778, they were diplomatically isolated and faced war on multiple fronts.
Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight. He did not welcome war with France, but he held the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to believe in ultimate victory over France. Britain subsequently changed its focus into the Caribbean theater, and diverted major military resources away from America.
Stalemate in the North
Main articles below:
- Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga
- Western theater of the American Revolutionary War
At the end of 1777, Howe resigned and was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778; with French entry into the war, he was ordered to consolidate his forces in New York. On June 18, the British departed Philadelphia with the reinvigorated Americans in pursuit; the Battle of Monmouth on June 28 was inconclusive but boosted Patriot morale.
That midnight, the newly installed Clinton continued his retreat to New York. A French naval force under Admiral Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing was sent to assist Washington; deciding New York was too formidable a target, in August they launched a combined attack on Newport, with General John Sullivan commanding land forces. The resulting Battle of Rhode Island was indecisive; badly damaged by a storm, the French withdrew to avoid risking their ships..
Further activity was limited to British raids on Chestnut Neck and Little Egg Harbor in October. In July 1779, the Americans captured British positions at Stony Point and Paulus Hook. Clinton unsuccessfully tried to tempt Washington into a decisive engagement by sending General William Tryon to raid Connecticut.
In July, a large American naval operation, the Penobscot Expedition, attempted to retake Maine but was defeated. Persistent Iroquois raids in New York and Pennsylvania led to the punitive Sullivan Expedition from July to September 1779. Involving more than 4,000 patriot soldiers, the scorched earth campaign destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and 160,000 bushels (4,000 mts) of maize, leaving the Iroquois destitute and destroying the Iroquois confederacy as an independent power on the American frontier. However, 5,000 Iroquois fled to Canada, where, supplied and supported by the British, they continued their raids.
During the winter of 1779–1780, the Continental Army suffered greater hardships than at Valley Forge. Morale was poor, public support fell away, the Continental dollar was virtually worthless, the army was plagued with supply problems, desertion was common, and mutinies occurred in the Pennsylvania Line and New Jersey Line regiments over the conditions.
In June 1780, Clinton sent 6,000 men under Wilhelm von Knyphausen to retake New Jersey, but they were halted by local militia at the Battle of Connecticut Farms; although the Americans withdrew, Knyphausen felt he was not strong enough to engage Washington's main force and retreated. A second attempt two weeks later ended in a British defeat at the Battle of Springfield, effectively ending their ambitions in New Jersey.
In July, Washington appointed Benedict Arnold commander of West Point; his attempt to betray the fort to the British failed due to incompetent planning, and the plot was revealed when his British contact John André was captured and executed. Arnold escaped to New York and switched sides, an action justified in a pamphlet addressed "To the Inhabitants of America"; the Patriots condemned his betrayal, while he found himself almost as unpopular with the British.
War in the South
Main article: Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War
The Southern Strategy was developed by Lord Germain, based on input from London-based Loyalists, including Joseph Galloway. They argued that it made no sense to fight the Patriots in the north where they were strongest, while the New England economy was reliant on trade with Britain.
On the other hand, duties on tobacco made the South far more profitable for Britain, while local support meant securing it required small numbers of regular troops. Victory would leave a truncated United States facing British possessions to the south, north, and west; with the Atlantic seaboard controlled by the Royal Navy, Congress would be forced to agree to terms. However, assumptions about the level of Loyalist support proved wildly optimistic.
Germain ordered Augustine Prévost, the British commander in East Florida, to advance into Georgia in December 1778. Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, an experienced officer, captured Savannah on December 29, 1778. He recruited a Loyalist militia of nearly 1,100, many of whom allegedly joined only after Campbell threatened to confiscate their property. Poor motivation and training made them unreliable troops, as demonstrated in their defeat by Patriot militia at the Battle of Kettle Creek on February 14, 1779, although this was offset by British victory at Brier Creek on March 3.
In June 1779, Prévost launched an abortive assault on Charleston, before retreating to Savannah, an operation notorious for widespread looting by British troops that enraged both Loyalists and Patriots. In October, a joint French and American operation under d'Estaing and General Benjamin Lincoln failed to recapture Savannah] Prévost was replaced by Lord Cornwallis, who assumed responsibility for Germain's strategy; he soon realized estimates of Loyalist support were considerably over-stated, and he needed far more regular forces.
Reinforced by Clinton, Cornwallis's troops captured Charleston in May 1780, inflicting the most serious Patriot defeat of the war; over 5,000 prisoners were taken and the Continental Army in the south effectively destroyed. On May 29, Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton's mainly Loyalist force routed a Continental Army force nearly three times its size under Colonel Abraham Buford at the Battle of Waxhaws. The battle is controversial for allegations of a massacre, which were later used as a recruiting tool by the Patriots.
Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to oversee the south; despite their success, the two men left barely on speaking terms. The Southern strategy depended on local support, but this was undermined by a series of coercive measures. Previously, captured Patriots were sent home after swearing not to take up arms against the king; they were now required to fight their former comrades, while the confiscation of Patriot-owned plantations led formerly neutral "grandees" to side with them.
Skirmishes at Williamson's Plantation, Cedar Springs, Rocky Mount, and Hanging Rock signaled widespread resistance to the new oaths throughout South Carolina.
In July 1780, Congress appointed Gates commander in the south; he was defeated at the Battle of Camden on August 16, leaving Cornwallis free to enter North Carolina. Despite battlefield success, the British could not control the countryside and Patriot attacks continued; before moving north, Cornwallis sent Loyalist militia under Major Patrick Ferguson to cover his left flank, leaving their forces too far apart to provide mutual support. I
In early October, Ferguson was defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain, dispersing organized Loyalist resistance in the region. Despite this, Cornwallis continued into North Carolina hoping for Loyalist support, while Washington replaced Gates with General Nathanael Greene in December 1780.
Greene divided his army, leading his main force southeast pursued by Cornwallis; a detachment was sent southwest under Daniel Morgan, who defeated Tarleton's British Legion at Cowpens on January 17, 1781, nearly eliminating it as a fighting force.
The Patriots now held the initiative in the south, with the exception of a raid on Richmond led by Benedict Arnold in January 1781. Greene led Cornwallis on a series of countermarches around North Carolina; by early March, the British were exhausted and short of supplies and Greene felt strong enough to fight the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15. Although victorious, Cornwallis suffered heavy casualties and retreated to Wilmington, North Carolina, seeking supplies and reinforcements.
The Patriots now controlled most of the Carolinas and Georgia outside the coastal areas; after a minor reversal at the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill, they recaptured Fort Watson and Fort Motte on April 15.
On June 6, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens captured Augusta, leaving the British in Georgia confined to Charleston and Savannah. The assumption Loyalists would do most of the fighting left the British short of troops and battlefield victories came at the cost of losses they could not replace. Despite halting Greene's advance at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on September 8, Cornwallis withdrew to Charleston with little to show for his campaign.
Western campaign:
Main article: Western theater of the American Revolutionary War
From the beginning of the war, Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana, allowed the Americans to import supplies and munitions into New Orleans, then ship them to Pittsburgh. This provided an alternative transportation route for the Continental Army, bypassing the British blockade of the Atlantic Coast.
In February 1778, an expedition of militia to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River was halted by adverse weather.
Later in the year, a second campaign was undertaken to seize the Illinois Country from the British. Virginia militia, Canadien settlers, and Indian allies commanded by Colonel George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia on July 4 and then secured Vincennes, though Vincennes was recaptured by Quebec Governor Henry Hamilton.
The Spanish-aligned fur trader Francis Vigo, an American sympathizer, alerted Clark to the threat posed to his control of the west by Hamilton's position and in early 1779, the Virginians counter-attacked in the siege of Fort Vincennes and took Hamilton prisoner. Clark secured western British Quebec as the American Northwest Territory in the Treaty of Paris as the Revolutionary War came to an end.
When Spain joined France's war against Britain in the Anglo-French War in 1779, their treaty specifically excluded Spanish military action in North America. Later that year, however, Gálvez initiated offensive operations against British outposts. First, he cleared British garrisons in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Fort Bute, and Natchez, Mississippi, and captured five forts. In doing so, Gálvez opened navigation on the Mississippi River north to the American settlement in Pittsburgh.
On May 25, 1780, British Colonel Henry Bird invaded Kentucky as part of a wider operation to clear American resistance from Quebec to the Gulf Coast. Their advance on New Orleans was repelled by Spanish Governor Gálvez's offensive on Mobile.
Simultaneous British attacks were repulsed on St. Louis by the Spanish Lieutenant Governor de Leyba, and on the Virginia County courthouse in Cahokia, Illinois, by Lieutenant Colonel Clark. The British initiative under Bird from Detroit was ended at the rumored approach of Clark.
The scale of violence in the Licking River Valley, was extreme "even for frontier standards." It led to English and German settlements, who joined Clark's militia when the British and their hired German soldiers withdrew to the Great Lakes. The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success in the Battle of Piqua but did not end Indian raids.
French soldier Augustin de La Balme led a Canadian militia in an attempt to capture Detroit, but they dispersed when Miami natives led by Little Turtle attacked the encamped settlers on November 5. The war in the west stalemated with the British garrison sitting in Detroit and the Virginians expanding westward settlements north of the Ohio River in the face of British-allied Indian resistance.
In 1781, Galvez and Pollock campaigned east along the Gulf Coast to secure West Florida, including British-held Mobile and Pensacola. The Spanish operations impaired the British supply of armaments to British Indian allies, which effectively suspended a military alliance to attack settlers between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains.
In 1782, large scale retaliations between settlers and Native Americans in the region included the Gnadenhutten massacre and the Crawford expedition. The 1782 Battle of Blue Licks was one of the last major engagements of the war. News of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States arrived late that year.
By this time, about 7% of Kentucky settlers had been killed in battles against Native Americans, contrasted with 1% of the population killed in the Thirteen Colonies. Lingering resentments led to continued fighting in the west after the war officially ended.
British defeat
Main article: Yorktown campaign
Picture below: A French Navy fleet engages the British in the Battle of the Chesapeake on September 5, 1781
Clinton spent most of 1781 based in New York City; he failed to construct a coherent operational strategy, partly due to his difficult relationship with Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot.
In Charleston, Cornwallis independently developed an aggressive plan for a campaign in Virginia, which he hoped would isolate Greene's army in the Carolinas and cause the collapse of Patriot resistance in the South. This strategy was approved by Lord Germain in London, but neither informed Clinton.
Washington and Rochambeau discussed their options: Washington wanted to attack the British in New York, and Rochambeau wanted to attack them in Virginia, where Cornwallis's forces were less established. Washington eventually gave way, and Lafayette took a combined Franco-American force into Virginia. Clinton misinterpreted his movements as preparations for an attack on New York and instructed Cornwallis to establish a fortified sea base, where the Royal Navy could evacuate British troops to help defend New York.
When Lafayette entered Virginia, Cornwallis complied with Clinton's orders and withdrew to Yorktown, where he constructed strong defenses and awaited evacuation. An agreement by the Spanish Navy to defend the French West Indies allowed Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse to relocate to the Atlantic seaboard, a move Arbuthnot did not anticipate. This provided Lafayette naval support, while the failure of previous combined operations at Newport and Savannah meant their coordination was planned more carefully.
Despite repeated urging from his subordinates, Cornwallis made no attempt to engage Lafayette before he could establish siege lines. Expecting to be withdrawn within a few days, he also abandoned the outer defenses, which were promptly occupied by the besiegers and hastened British defeat.
On August 31, a Royal Navy fleet under Thomas Graves left New York for Yorktown. After landing troops and munitions for the besiegers on August 30, de Grasse remained in Chesapeake Bay and intercepted him on September 5; although the Battle of the Chesapeake was indecisive in terms of losses, Graves was forced to retreat, leaving Cornwallis isolated.
An attempted breakout over the York River at Gloucester Point failed due to bad weather. Under heavy bombardment with dwindling supplies, on October 16 Cornwallis sent emissaries to General Washington to negotiate surrender; after twelve hours of negotiations, the terms of surrender were finalized the following day.
Responsibility for defeat was the subject of fierce public debate between Cornwallis, Clinton, and Germain. Clinton ultimately took most of the blame and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity.
Subsequent to Yorktown, American forces were assigned to supervise the armistice between Washington and Clinton made to facilitate British departure following the January 1782 law of Parliament forbidding any further British offensive action in North America. British-
American negotiations in Paris led to signed preliminary agreements in November 1782, which acknowledged US independence. The enacted Congressional war objective, a British withdrawal from North America and cession of these regions to the US, was completed in stages in East Coast cities.
In the US South, Generals Greene and Wayne observed the British removing their troops from Charleston on December 14, 1782. Loyalist provincial militias of whites and free Blacks and Loyalists with slaves were transported to Nova Scotia and the British West Indies. Native American allies of the British and some freed Blacks were left to escape unaided through the American lines.
On April 9, 1783, Washington issued orders that "all acts of hostility" were to cease immediately. That same day, by arrangement with Washington, Carleton issued a similar order to British troops.
As directed by a Congressional resolution of May 26, 1783, all non-commissioned officers and enlisted were furloughed "to their homes" until the "definitive treaty of peace", when they would be automatically discharged. The US armies were directly disbanded in the field as of Washington's General Orders on June 2, 1783.
Once the Treaty of Paris was signed with Britain on September 3, 1783, Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. The last British occupation of New York City ended on November 25, 1783, with the departure of Clinton's replacement, General Sir Guy Carleton.
Strategy and commanders:
To win their insurrection, Washington and the Continental Army needed to outlast the British will to fight. To restore British America, the British had to defeat the Continental Army quickly and compel the Second Continental Congress to retract its claim to self-governance.
Historian Terry M. Mays of The Citadel identifies three separate types of warfare during the Revolutionary War. The first was a colonial conflict in which objections to imperial trade regulation were as significant as taxation policy. The second was a civil war between American Patriots, American Loyalists, and those who preferred to remain neutral. Particularly in the south, many battles were fought between Patriots and Loyalists with no British involvement, leading to divisions that continued after independence was achieved.
The third element was a global war between France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, with America serving as one of several different war theaters. After entering the Revolutionary War in 1778, France provided the Americans money, weapons, soldiers, and naval assistance, while French troops fought under US command in North America.
While Spain did not formally join the war in America, they provided access to the Mississippi River and captured British possessions on the Gulf of Mexico that denied bases to the Royal Navy, retook Menorca and besieged Gibraltar in Europe.
Although the Dutch Republic was no longer a major power prior to 1774, they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits by shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, and the conflict proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.
American strategy
The Second Continental Congress stood to benefit if the Revolution evolved into a protracted war. Colonial state populations were largely prosperous and depended on local production for food and supplies rather than on imports from Britain.
The thirteen colonies were spread across most of North American Atlantic seaboard, stretching 1,000 miles. Most colonial farms were remote from the seaports, and control of four or five major ports did not give Britain control over American inland areas. Each state had established internal distribution systems.
Motivation was also a major asset: each colonial capital had its own newspapers and printers, and the Patriots enjoyed more popular support than the Loyalists. Britain hoped that the Loyalists would do much of the fighting, but found that the Loyalists did not engage as significantly as they had hoped.
Continental Army:
Main article: Continental Army
See also: Militia (United States) § American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and Minutemen
Pictured below: A 1776 portrait of Washington by Charles Willson Peale, now housed in the Brooklyn Museum
In Charleston, Cornwallis independently developed an aggressive plan for a campaign in Virginia, which he hoped would isolate Greene's army in the Carolinas and cause the collapse of Patriot resistance in the South. This strategy was approved by Lord Germain in London, but neither informed Clinton.
Washington and Rochambeau discussed their options: Washington wanted to attack the British in New York, and Rochambeau wanted to attack them in Virginia, where Cornwallis's forces were less established. Washington eventually gave way, and Lafayette took a combined Franco-American force into Virginia. Clinton misinterpreted his movements as preparations for an attack on New York and instructed Cornwallis to establish a fortified sea base, where the Royal Navy could evacuate British troops to help defend New York.
When Lafayette entered Virginia, Cornwallis complied with Clinton's orders and withdrew to Yorktown, where he constructed strong defenses and awaited evacuation. An agreement by the Spanish Navy to defend the French West Indies allowed Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse to relocate to the Atlantic seaboard, a move Arbuthnot did not anticipate. This provided Lafayette naval support, while the failure of previous combined operations at Newport and Savannah meant their coordination was planned more carefully.
Despite repeated urging from his subordinates, Cornwallis made no attempt to engage Lafayette before he could establish siege lines. Expecting to be withdrawn within a few days, he also abandoned the outer defenses, which were promptly occupied by the besiegers and hastened British defeat.
On August 31, a Royal Navy fleet under Thomas Graves left New York for Yorktown. After landing troops and munitions for the besiegers on August 30, de Grasse remained in Chesapeake Bay and intercepted him on September 5; although the Battle of the Chesapeake was indecisive in terms of losses, Graves was forced to retreat, leaving Cornwallis isolated.
An attempted breakout over the York River at Gloucester Point failed due to bad weather. Under heavy bombardment with dwindling supplies, on October 16 Cornwallis sent emissaries to General Washington to negotiate surrender; after twelve hours of negotiations, the terms of surrender were finalized the following day.
Responsibility for defeat was the subject of fierce public debate between Cornwallis, Clinton, and Germain. Clinton ultimately took most of the blame and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity.
Subsequent to Yorktown, American forces were assigned to supervise the armistice between Washington and Clinton made to facilitate British departure following the January 1782 law of Parliament forbidding any further British offensive action in North America. British-
American negotiations in Paris led to signed preliminary agreements in November 1782, which acknowledged US independence. The enacted Congressional war objective, a British withdrawal from North America and cession of these regions to the US, was completed in stages in East Coast cities.
In the US South, Generals Greene and Wayne observed the British removing their troops from Charleston on December 14, 1782. Loyalist provincial militias of whites and free Blacks and Loyalists with slaves were transported to Nova Scotia and the British West Indies. Native American allies of the British and some freed Blacks were left to escape unaided through the American lines.
On April 9, 1783, Washington issued orders that "all acts of hostility" were to cease immediately. That same day, by arrangement with Washington, Carleton issued a similar order to British troops.
As directed by a Congressional resolution of May 26, 1783, all non-commissioned officers and enlisted were furloughed "to their homes" until the "definitive treaty of peace", when they would be automatically discharged. The US armies were directly disbanded in the field as of Washington's General Orders on June 2, 1783.
Once the Treaty of Paris was signed with Britain on September 3, 1783, Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. The last British occupation of New York City ended on November 25, 1783, with the departure of Clinton's replacement, General Sir Guy Carleton.
Strategy and commanders:
To win their insurrection, Washington and the Continental Army needed to outlast the British will to fight. To restore British America, the British had to defeat the Continental Army quickly and compel the Second Continental Congress to retract its claim to self-governance.
Historian Terry M. Mays of The Citadel identifies three separate types of warfare during the Revolutionary War. The first was a colonial conflict in which objections to imperial trade regulation were as significant as taxation policy. The second was a civil war between American Patriots, American Loyalists, and those who preferred to remain neutral. Particularly in the south, many battles were fought between Patriots and Loyalists with no British involvement, leading to divisions that continued after independence was achieved.
The third element was a global war between France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, with America serving as one of several different war theaters. After entering the Revolutionary War in 1778, France provided the Americans money, weapons, soldiers, and naval assistance, while French troops fought under US command in North America.
While Spain did not formally join the war in America, they provided access to the Mississippi River and captured British possessions on the Gulf of Mexico that denied bases to the Royal Navy, retook Menorca and besieged Gibraltar in Europe.
Although the Dutch Republic was no longer a major power prior to 1774, they still dominated the European carrying trade, and Dutch merchants made large profits by shipping French-supplied munitions to the Patriots. This ended when Britain declared war in December 1780, and the conflict proved disastrous to the Dutch economy.
American strategy
The Second Continental Congress stood to benefit if the Revolution evolved into a protracted war. Colonial state populations were largely prosperous and depended on local production for food and supplies rather than on imports from Britain.
The thirteen colonies were spread across most of North American Atlantic seaboard, stretching 1,000 miles. Most colonial farms were remote from the seaports, and control of four or five major ports did not give Britain control over American inland areas. Each state had established internal distribution systems.
Motivation was also a major asset: each colonial capital had its own newspapers and printers, and the Patriots enjoyed more popular support than the Loyalists. Britain hoped that the Loyalists would do much of the fighting, but found that the Loyalists did not engage as significantly as they had hoped.
Continental Army:
Main article: Continental Army
See also: Militia (United States) § American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and Minutemen
Pictured below: A 1776 portrait of Washington by Charles Willson Peale, now housed in the Brooklyn Museum
When the Revolutionary War began, the Second Continental Congress lacked a professional army or navy. However, each of the colonies had a long-established system of local militia, which were combat-tested in support of British regulars in the French and Indian War. The colonial state legislatures independently funded and controlled their local militias.
Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually did not have uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time and lacked the training and discipline of more experienced soldiers. Local county militias were reluctant to travel far from home and were unavailable for extended operations.
To compensate for this, the Continental Congress established a regular force known as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, which proved to be the origin of the modern United States Army, and appointed Washington as its commander-in-chief. However, it suffered significantly from the lack of an effective training program and from largely inexperienced officers.
Each state legislature appointed officers for both county and state militias and their regimental Continental line officers; although Washington was required to accept Congressional appointments, he was permitted to choose and command his own generals, such as Greene; his chief of artillery, Knox; and Alexander Hamilton, the chief of staff.
One of Washington's most successful general officer recruits was Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress and Washington used both his regulars and state militias throughout the war; when properly employed, the combination allowed them to overwhelm smaller British forces, as they did in battles at Concord, Boston, Bennington, and Saratoga.
Both sides used partisan warfare, but the state militias effectively suppressed Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area.
Washington designed the overall military strategy in cooperation with Congress, established the principle of civilian supremacy in military affairs, personally recruited his senior officer corps, and kept the states focused on a common goal. Washington initially employed the inexperienced officers and untrained troops in Fabian strategies rather than risk frontal assaults against Britain's professional forces. Over the course of the war, Washington lost more battles than he won, but he never surrendered his troops and maintained a fighting force in the face of British field armies.
By prevailing European standards, the armies in America were relatively small, limited by lack of supplies and logistics. The British were constrained by the logistical difficulty of transporting troops across the Atlantic and their dependence on local supplies.
Washington never directly commanded more than 17,000 men, and the combined Franco-American army in the decisive American victory at Yorktown was only about 19,000. At the beginning of 1776, Patriot forces consisted of 20,000 men, with two-thirds in the Continental Army and the other third in the state militias. About 250,000 American men served as regulars or as militia for the revolutionary cause during the war, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at any time.
On the whole, American officers never equaled their British opponents in tactics and maneuvers, and they lost most of the pitched battles. The great successes at Boston (1776), Saratoga (1777), and Yorktown (1781) were won by trapping the British far from base with a greater number of troops.] After 1778, Washington's army was transformed into a more disciplined and effective force, mostly as a product of Baron von Steuben's military training.
Immediately after the Continental Army emerged from Valley Forge in June 1778, it proved its ability to match the military capabilities of the British at the Battle of Monmouth, including a Black Rhode Island regiment fending off a British bayonet attack and then counter charging the British for the first time as part of Washington's army.
After the Battle of Monmouth, Washington came to realize that saving entire towns was not necessary, but preserving his army and keeping the revolutionary spirit alive was more important. Washington informed Henry Laurens, then president of the Second Continental Congress, "that the possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail them little."
Although the Continental Congress was responsible for the war effort and provided supplies to the troops, Washington took it upon himself to pressure Congress and the state legislatures to provide the essentials of war; there was never nearly enough. Congress evolved in its committee oversight and established the Board of War, which included members of the military.
Because the Board of War was also a committee ensnared with its own internal procedures, Congress also created the post of Secretary of War, appointing Major General Benjamin Lincoln to the position in February 1781. Washington worked closely with Lincoln to coordinate civilian and military authorities and took charge of training and supplying the army.
Continental Navy
Main articles: Continental Navy and Continental Marines
See also: Privateer § American_Revolutionary_War, and Whaleboat War
Further information: Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War
Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually did not have uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time and lacked the training and discipline of more experienced soldiers. Local county militias were reluctant to travel far from home and were unavailable for extended operations.
To compensate for this, the Continental Congress established a regular force known as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, which proved to be the origin of the modern United States Army, and appointed Washington as its commander-in-chief. However, it suffered significantly from the lack of an effective training program and from largely inexperienced officers.
Each state legislature appointed officers for both county and state militias and their regimental Continental line officers; although Washington was required to accept Congressional appointments, he was permitted to choose and command his own generals, such as Greene; his chief of artillery, Knox; and Alexander Hamilton, the chief of staff.
One of Washington's most successful general officer recruits was Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff who wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress and Washington used both his regulars and state militias throughout the war; when properly employed, the combination allowed them to overwhelm smaller British forces, as they did in battles at Concord, Boston, Bennington, and Saratoga.
Both sides used partisan warfare, but the state militias effectively suppressed Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area.
Washington designed the overall military strategy in cooperation with Congress, established the principle of civilian supremacy in military affairs, personally recruited his senior officer corps, and kept the states focused on a common goal. Washington initially employed the inexperienced officers and untrained troops in Fabian strategies rather than risk frontal assaults against Britain's professional forces. Over the course of the war, Washington lost more battles than he won, but he never surrendered his troops and maintained a fighting force in the face of British field armies.
By prevailing European standards, the armies in America were relatively small, limited by lack of supplies and logistics. The British were constrained by the logistical difficulty of transporting troops across the Atlantic and their dependence on local supplies.
Washington never directly commanded more than 17,000 men, and the combined Franco-American army in the decisive American victory at Yorktown was only about 19,000. At the beginning of 1776, Patriot forces consisted of 20,000 men, with two-thirds in the Continental Army and the other third in the state militias. About 250,000 American men served as regulars or as militia for the revolutionary cause during the war, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at any time.
On the whole, American officers never equaled their British opponents in tactics and maneuvers, and they lost most of the pitched battles. The great successes at Boston (1776), Saratoga (1777), and Yorktown (1781) were won by trapping the British far from base with a greater number of troops.] After 1778, Washington's army was transformed into a more disciplined and effective force, mostly as a product of Baron von Steuben's military training.
Immediately after the Continental Army emerged from Valley Forge in June 1778, it proved its ability to match the military capabilities of the British at the Battle of Monmouth, including a Black Rhode Island regiment fending off a British bayonet attack and then counter charging the British for the first time as part of Washington's army.
After the Battle of Monmouth, Washington came to realize that saving entire towns was not necessary, but preserving his army and keeping the revolutionary spirit alive was more important. Washington informed Henry Laurens, then president of the Second Continental Congress, "that the possession of our towns, while we have an army in the field, will avail them little."
Although the Continental Congress was responsible for the war effort and provided supplies to the troops, Washington took it upon himself to pressure Congress and the state legislatures to provide the essentials of war; there was never nearly enough. Congress evolved in its committee oversight and established the Board of War, which included members of the military.
Because the Board of War was also a committee ensnared with its own internal procedures, Congress also created the post of Secretary of War, appointing Major General Benjamin Lincoln to the position in February 1781. Washington worked closely with Lincoln to coordinate civilian and military authorities and took charge of training and supplying the army.
Continental Navy
Main articles: Continental Navy and Continental Marines
See also: Privateer § American_Revolutionary_War, and Whaleboat War
Further information: Naval battles of the American Revolutionary War
During the first summer of the war, Washington began outfitting schooners and other small seagoing vessels to prey on ships supplying the British in Boston.
The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, and appointed Esek Hopkins as its first commander; for most of the war, the Continental Navy included only a handful of small frigates and sloops, supported by privateers.
On November 10, 1775, Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Marines, which ultimately evolved into the United States Marine Corps.
John Paul Jones became the first American naval hero when he captured HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters.
The last such victory was by the frigate USS Alliance, commanded by Captain John Barry.
On March 10, 1783, the Alliance outgunned HMS Sybil in a 45-minute duel while escorting Spanish gold from Havana to the Congress in Philadelphia. After Yorktown, all US Navy ships were sold or given away; it was the first time in America's history that it had no fighting forces on the high seas.
Congress primarily commissioned privateers to reduce costs and to take advantage of the large proportion of colonial sailors found in the British Empire. In total, they included 1,700 ships that successfully captured 2,283 enemy ships to damage the British effort and to enrich themselves with the proceeds from the sale of cargo and the ship itself. About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war.
France
Main article: France in the American Revolution
Further information:
At the beginning of the war, the Americans had no major international allies, since most nation-states waited to see how the conflict unfolded. Over time, the Continental Army established its military credibility. Battles such as the Battle of Bennington, the Battles of Saratoga, and even defeats such as the Battle of Germantown, proved decisive in gaining the support of powerful European nations, including France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic; the Dutch moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies to overtly supporting them.
The decisive American victory at Saratoga convinced France, which was already a long-time rival of Britain, to offer the Americans the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The two nations also agreed to a defensive Treaty of Alliance to protect their trade and also guaranteed American independence from Britain.
To engage the United States as a French ally militarily, the treaty was conditioned on Britain initiating a war on France to stop it from trading with the US. Spain and the Dutch Republic were invited to join by both France and the United States in the treaty, but neither was responsive to the request.
On June 13, 1778, France declared war on Great Britain, and it invoked the French military alliance with the US, which ensured additional US private support for French possessions in the Caribbean. Washington worked closely with the soldiers and navy that France would send to America, primarily through Lafayette on his staff. French assistance made critical contributions required to defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.
British strategy
Further information: Seven Years' War
The British military had considerable experience fighting in North America. However, in previous conflicts they benefited from local logistics and support from the colonial militia. In the American Revolutionary War, reinforcements had to come from Europe, and maintaining large armies over such distances was extremely complex; ships could take three months to cross the Atlantic, and orders from London were often outdated by the time they arrived.
Prior to the conflict, the colonies were largely autonomous economic and political entities, with no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance. This meant that, unlike Europe where the fall of a capital city often ended wars, that in America continued even after the loss of major settlements such as Philadelphia, the seat of Congress, New York, and Charleston.
British power was reliant on the Royal Navy, whose dominance allowed them to resupply their own expeditionary forces while preventing access to enemy ports. However, the majority of the American population was agrarian, rather than urban; supported by the French navy and blockade runners based in the Dutch Caribbean, their economy was able to survive.
Lord North, Prime Minister since 1770, delegated control of the war in North America to Lord George Germain and the Earl of Sandwich, who was head of the Royal Navy from 1771 to 1782.
Defeat at Saratoga in 1777 made it clear the revolt would not be easily suppressed, especially after the Franco-American alliance of February 1778. With Spain also expected to join the conflict, the Royal Navy needed to prioritize either the war in America or in Europe; Germain advocated the former, Sandwich the latter.
North initially backed the Southern strategy attempting to exploit divisions between the mercantile north and slave-owning south, but after the defeat of Yorktown, he was forced to accept that this policy had failed. It was clear the war was lost, although the Royal Navy forced the French to relocate their fleet to the Caribbean in November 1781 and resumed a close blockade of American trade.
The resulting economic damage and rising inflation meant the US was now eager to end the war, while France was unable to provide further loans; Congress could no longer pay its soldiers. The geographical size of the colonies and limited manpower meant the British could not simultaneously conduct military operations and occupy territory without local support.
Debate persists over whether their defeat was inevitable; one British statesman described it as "like trying to conquer a map". While Ferling argues Patriot victory was nothing short of a miracle, Ellis suggests the odds always favored the Americans, especially after Howe squandered the chance of a decisive British success in 1776, an "opportunity that would never come again". The US military history speculates the additional commitment of 10,000 fresh troops in 1780 would have placed British victory "within the realm of possibility".
British Army
Main article: British Army during the American Revolutionary War
See also: Loyalist (American Revolution) § Military service
The expulsion of France from North America in 1763 led to a drastic reduction in British troop levels in the colonies; in 1775, there were only 8,500 regular soldiers among a civilian population of 2.8 million.
The bulk of military resources in the Americas were focused on defending sugar islands in the Caribbean; Jamaica alone generated more revenue than all thirteen American colonies combined. With the end of the Seven Years' War, the permanent army in Britain was also cut back, which resulted in administrative difficulties when the war began a decade later.
Over the course of the war, there were four separate British commanders-in-chief. The first was Thomas Gage, appointed in 1763, whose initial focus was establishing British rule in former French areas of Canada. Many in London blamed the revolt on his failure to take firm action earlier, and he was relieved after the heavy losses incurred at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
His replacement was Sir William Howe, a member of the Whig faction in Parliament who opposed the policy of coercion advocated by Lord North; Cornwallis, who later surrendered at Yorktown, was one of many senior officers who initially refused to serve in North America.
The 1775 campaign showed the British overestimated the capabilities of their own troops and underestimated the colonial militia, requiring a reassessment of tactics and strategy, and allowing the Patriots to take the initiative. Howe's responsibility is still debated; despite receiving large numbers of reinforcements, Bunker Hill seems to have permanently affected his self-confidence and lack of tactical flexibility meant he often failed to follow up opportunities. Many of his decisions were attributed to supply problems, such as his failure to pursue Washington's beaten army.
Having lost the confidence of his subordinates, he was recalled after Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga.
Following the failure of the Carlisle Commission, British policy changed from treating the Patriots as subjects who needed to be reconciled to enemies who had to be defeated. In 1778, Howe was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton. Regarded as an expert on tactics and strategy, But, like his predecessors Clinton was handicapped by chronic supply issues.
In addition, Clinton's strategy was compromised by conflict with political superiors in London and his colleagues in North America, especially Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot, replaced in early 1781 by Rodney.
He was neither notified nor consulted when Germain approved Cornwallis's invasion of the south in 1781 and delayed sending him reinforcements believing the bulk of Washington's army was still outside New York City. After the surrender at Yorktown, Clinton was relieved by Carleton, whose major task was to oversee the evacuation of Loyalists and British troops from Savannah, Charleston, and New York City.
German troops
Main article: Hessian (soldier)
During the 18th century, states commonly hired foreign soldiers, including Britain. When it became clear additional troops were needed to suppress the revolt in America, it was decided to employ professional German soldiers. There were several reasons for this, including public sympathy for the Patriot cause, a historical reluctance to expand the British army and the time needed to recruit and train new regiments. Many smaller states in the Holy Roman Empire had a long tradition of renting their armies to the highest bidder. The most important was Hesse-Kassel, known as "the Mercenary State".
The first supply agreements were signed by the North administration in late 1775; 30,000 Germans served in the American War. Often generically referred to as "Hessians", they included men from many other states, including Hanover and Brunswick.[ Sir Henry Clinton recommended recruiting Russian troops whom he rated very highly, having seen them in action against the Ottomans; however, negotiations with Catherine the Great made little progress.
Unlike previous wars their use led to intense political debate in Britain, France, and even Germany, where Frederick the Great refused to provide passage through his territories for troops hired for the American war. In March 1776, the agreements were challenged in Parliament by Whigs who objected to "coercion" in general, and the use of foreign soldiers to subdue "British subjects". The debates were covered in detail by American newspapers; in May 1776 they received copies of the treaties themselves, provided by British sympathizers and smuggled into North America from London.
The prospect of foreign German soldiers being used in the colonies bolstered support for independence, more so than taxation and other acts combined; the King was accused of declaring war on his own subjects, leading to the idea there were now two separate governments. By apparently showing Britain was determined to go to war, it made hopes of reconciliation seem naive and hopeless, while the employment of what was regarded as "foreign mercenaries" became one of the charges levelled against George III in the Declaration of Independence. The Hessian reputation within Germany for brutality also increased support for the Patriot cause among German American immigrants.
The presence of over 150,000 German Americans meant both sides felt the German soldiers might be persuaded to desert; one reason Clinton suggested employing Russians was that he felt they were less likely to defect.
When the first German troops arrived on Staten Island in August 1776, Congress approved the printing of handbills, promising land and citizenship to any willing to join the Patriot cause. The British launched a counter-campaign claiming deserters could be executed.
Desertion among the Germans occurred throughout the war, with the highest rate of desertion occurring between the surrender at Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris. German regiments were central to the British war effort; of the estimated 30,000 sent to America, some 13,000 became casualties.
Revolution as civil war
Loyalists:
Wealthy Loyalists convinced the British government that most of the colonists were sympathetic toward the Crown; consequently, British military planners relied on recruiting Loyalists, but had trouble recruiting sufficient numbers as the Patriots had widespread support. Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war.
Although Loyalists constituted about twenty percent of the colonial population,] they were concentrated in distinct communities. Many of them lived among large plantation owners in the Tidewater region and South Carolina.
When the British began probing the backcountry in 1777–1778, they were faced with a major problem: any significant level of organized Loyalist activity required a continued presence of British regulars. The available manpower that the British had in America was insufficient to protect Loyalist territory and counter American offensives. The Loyalist militias in the South were constantly defeated by neighboring Patriot militia. The Patriot victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain irreversibly impaired Loyalist militia capability in the South.
When the early war policy was administered by Howe, the Crown's need to maintain Loyalist support prevented it from using the traditional revolt suppression methods. The British cause suffered when their troops ransacked local homes during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779 that enraged both Patriots and Loyalists.
After Congress rejected the Carlisle Peace Commission in 1778 and Westminster turned to "hard war" during Clinton's command, neutral colonists in the Carolinas often allied with the Patriots. Conversely, Loyalists gained support when Patriots intimidated suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering.
A Loyalist militia unit—the British Legion—provided some of the best troops in British service. It was commanded by Tarleton and gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies for "brutality and needless slaughter".
Women
Main article: Women in the American Revolution
Women played various roles during the Revolutionary War; they often accompanied their
husbands when permitted. For example, throughout the war Martha Washington was known to visit and provide aid to her husband George at various American camps.
Women often accompanied armies as camp followers to sell goods and perform necessary tasks in hospitals and camps, and numbered in the thousands during the war.
Women also assumed military roles: some dressed as men to directly support combat, fight, or act as spies on both sides.
For example Anna Maria Lane joined her husband in the Army. The Virginia General Assembly later cited her bravery: she fought while dressed as a man and "performed extraordinary military services, and received a severe wound at the battle of Germantown ... with the courage of a soldier".
On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington is said to have ridden to alert militia forces to the British's approach; she has been called the "female Paul Revere". Whether the ride occurred is questioned. A few others disguised themselves as men:
African Americans
Main article: African Americans in the Revolutionary War
When war began, the population of the Thirteen Colonies included an estimated 500,000 slaves, predominantly used as labor on Southern plantations. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to any Patriot-owned slaves willing to bear arms. Although the announcement helped to fill a temporary manpower shortage, white Loyalist prejudice meant recruits were eventually redirected to non-combatant roles. The Loyalists' motive was to deprive Patriot planters of labor rather than to end slavery; Loyalist-owned slaves were returned.
The 1779 Philipsburg Proclamation issued by Clinton extended the offer of freedom to Patriot-owned slaves throughout the colonies. It persuaded entire families to escape to British lines, many of which were employed growing food for the army by removing the requirement for military service.
While Clinton organized the Black Pioneers, he also ensured fugitive slaves were returned to Loyalist owners with orders that they were not to be punished. As the war progressed, service as regular soldiers in British units became increasingly common; Black Loyalists formed two regiments of the Charleston garrison in 1783.
Estimates of the numbers who served the British during the war vary from 25,000 to 50,000, excluding those who escaped during wartime. Thomas Jefferson estimated that Virginia may have lost 30,000 slaves to escapes. In South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (about 30 percent of the enslaved population) either fled, migrated, or died, which significantly disrupted the plantation economies both during and after the war.
Black Patriots were barred from the Continental Army until Washington convinced Congress in January 1778 that there was no other way to replace losses from disease and desertion. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment formed in February included former slaves whose owners were compensated; however, only 140 of its 225 soldiers were Black and recruitment stopped in June 1788.
Ultimately, around 5,000 African Americans served in the Continental Army and Navy in a variety of roles, while another 4,000 were employed in Patriot militia units, aboard privateers, or as teamsters, servants, and spies. After the war, a small minority received land grants or Congressional pensions; many others were returned to their masters post-war despite earlier promises of freedom.
As a Patriot victory became increasingly likely, the treatment of Black Loyalists became a point of contention; after the surrender of Yorktown in 1781, Washington insisted all escapees be returned but Cornwallis refused. In 1782 and 1783, around 8,000 to 10,000 freed Blacks were evacuated by the British from Charleston, Savannah, and New York; some moved onto London, while 3,000 to 4,000 settled in Nova Scotia.
White Loyalists transported 15,000 enslaved Blacks to Jamaica and the Bahamas. The free Black Loyalists who migrated to the British West Indies included regular soldiers from Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and those from Charleston who helped garrison the Leeward Islands.
Native Americans
Main page: Category:Native American people in the American Revolution
Most Native Americans east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many tribes were divided over how to respond. A few tribes were friendly with the colonists, but most Natives opposed the union of the Colonies as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Natives fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes who deployed around 1,500 men.
Early in July 1776, Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the short-lived Washington District of North Carolina. Their defeat splintered both Cherokee settlements and people, and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, who perpetuated the Cherokee–American wars against American settlers for decades after hostilities with Britain ended.
Muscogee and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Muscogee destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Muscogee warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the siege of Savannah.
Many Native Americans were involved in the fight between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and along the British side of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Muscogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw fought in major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the siege of Pensacola.
The Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the American Revolutionary War. The Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga tribes sided with the British; members of the Mohawks fought on both sides; and many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the Americans.
To retaliate against raids on American settlement by Loyalists and their Indian allies, the Continental Army dispatched the Sullivan Expedition throughout New York to debilitate the Iroquois tribes that had sided with the British. Mohawk leaders Joseph Louis Cook and Joseph Brant sided with the Americans and the British respectively, which further exacerbated the split.
In the western theater, conflicts between settlers and Native Americans led to lingering distrust.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Great Britain ceded control of the disputed lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, but Native inhabitants were not a part of the peace negotiations. Tribes in the Northwest Territory joined as the Western Confederacy and allied with the British to resist American settlement, and their conflict continued after the Revolutionary War as the Northwest Indian War.
Peace negotiations
Further information: Treaty of Paris (1783)
The terms presented by the Carlisle Peace Commission in 1778 included acceptance of the principle of self-government. Parliament would recognize Congress as the governing body, suspend any objectionable legislation, surrender its right to local colonial taxation, and discuss including American representatives in the House of Commons.
In return, all property confiscated from Loyalists would be returned, British debts honored, and locally enforced martial law accepted. However, Congress demanded either immediate recognition of independence or the withdrawal of all British troops; they knew the commission were not authorized to accept these, bringing negotiations to a rapid end.
On February 27, 1782, a Whig motion to end the offensive war in America was carried by 19 votes. North resigned, obliging the king to invite Lord Rockingham to form a government; a consistent supporter of the Patriot cause, he made a commitment to US independence a condition of doing so. George III reluctantly accepted and the new government took office on March 27, 1782; however, Rockingham died unexpectedly on July 1, and was replaced by Lord Shelburne who acknowledged American independence.
When Lord Rockingham was elevated to Prime Minister, Congress consolidated its diplomatic consuls in Europe into a peace delegation at Paris. The dean of the delegation was Benjamin Franklin. He had become a celebrity in the French Court, but he was also influential in the courts of Prussia and Austria. Since the 1760s, Franklin had been an organizer of British American inter-colony cooperation, and then served as a colonial lobbyist to Parliament in London.
John Adams had been consul to the Dutch Republic and was a prominent early New England Patriot. John Jay of New York had been consul to Spain and was a past president of the Continental Congress. As consul to the Dutch Republic, Henry Laurens had secured a preliminary agreement for a trade agreement. Although active in the preliminaries, he was not a signer of the conclusive treaty.
The Whig negotiators included long-time friend of Franklin David Hartley, and Richard Oswald, who had negotiated Laurens' release from the Tower of London. The Preliminary Peace signed on November 30 met four key Congressional demands: independence, territory up to the Mississippi, navigation rights into the Gulf of Mexico, and fishing rights in Newfoundland.
British strategy was to strengthen the US sufficiently to prevent France from regaining a foothold in North America, and they had little interest in these proposals. However, divisions between their opponents allowed them to negotiate separately with each to improve their overall position, starting with the American delegation in September 1782.
The French and Spanish sought to improve their position by creating the US dependent on them for support against Britain, thus reversing the losses of 1763. Both parties tried to negotiate a settlement with Britain excluding the Americans; France proposed setting the western boundary of the US along the Appalachians, matching the British 1763 Proclamation Line. The Spanish suggested additional concessions in the vital Mississippi River Basin, but required the cession of Georgia in violation of the Franco-American alliance.
Facing difficulties with Spain over claims involving the Mississippi River, and from France who was still reluctant to agree to American independence until all her demands were met, John Jay told the British that he was willing to negotiate directly with them, cutting off France and Spain, and Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, in charge of the British negotiations, agreed.
Key agreements for the United States in obtaining peace included recognition of US independence; all of the territory east of the Mississippi River, north of Florida and south of Canada; and fishing rights in the Grand Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The United States and Great Britain were each given perpetual access to the Mississippi River.
An Anglo-American Preliminary Peace was formally entered into in November 1782, and Congress endorsed the settlement on April 15, 1783. It announced the achievement of peace with independence, and the conclusive treaty was signed on September 2, 1783, in Paris, effective the following day when Britain signed its treaty with France.
John Adams, who helped draft the treaty, claimed it represented "one of the most important political events that ever happened on the globe". Ratified respectively by Congress and Parliament, the final versions were exchanged in Paris the following spring. On November 25, the last British troops remaining in the US were evacuated from New York to Halifax
Aftermath
Main article: American Revolution
Territory:
The expanse of territory that was now the US included millions of sparsely settled acres south of the Great Lakes between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, much of which was part of Canada. The tentative colonial migration west became a flood during the war.
Britain's extended post-war policy for the US continued to try to establish an Indian barrier state below the Great Lakes as late as 1814 during the War of 1812. The formally acquired western American lands continued to be populated by Indigenous tribes that had mostly been British allies.
In practice the British refused to abandon the forts on territory they formally transferred. Instead, they provisioned military allies for continuing frontier raids and sponsored the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795). British sponsorship of local warfare on the US continued until the Anglo-American Jay Treaty, authored by Hamilton, went into effect on February 29, 1796.
Of the European powers with American colonies adjacent to the newly created US, Spain was most threatened by American independence, and it was correspondingly the most hostile to it. Its territory adjacent to the US was relatively undefended, so Spanish policy developed a combination of initiatives. Spanish soft power diplomatically challenged the British territorial cession west to the Mississippi River and the previous northern boundaries of Spanish Florida.
It imposed a high tariff on American goods, then blocked American settler access to the port of New Orleans. At the same time, the Spanish also sponsored war within the US by Indian proxies in its Southwest Territory ceded by France to Britain, then Britain to the Americans.
Casualties and losses:
Further information: Prisoners in the American Revolutionary War
The total loss of life throughout the conflict is largely unknown. As was typical in wars of the era, diseases such as smallpox claimed more lives than battle. Between 1775 and 1782, a smallpox epidemic throughout North America killed an estimated 130,000 Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington having his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions.
More than 25,000 Patriots died during active military service. Of these, approximately 6,800 were killed in battle, while at least 17,000 died from disease. The majority of the latter died while prisoners of war of the British, mostly in the prison ships in New York Harbor. The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000.
The French suffered 2,112 killed in combat in the United States.[404][ap] The Spanish lost 124 killed and 247 wounded in West Florida.
A British report in 1781 puts their total Armydeaths at 6,046 in North America (1775–1779). Approximately 7,774 Germans died in British service in addition to 4,888 deserters; among those labeled German deserters, however, it is estimated that 1,800 were killed in combat.
Legacy:
The American Revolution set an example to overthrow both monarchy and colonial governments. The United States has the world's oldest written constitution, which was used as a model in other countries, sometimes word-for-word. The Revolution inspired revolutions in France, Haiti, Latin America, and elsewhere.
Although the Revolution eliminated many forms of inequality, it did little to change the status of women, despite the role they played in winning independence. Most significantly, it failed to end slavery. While many were uneasy over the contradiction of demanding liberty for some, yet denying it to others, the dependence of southern states on slave labor made abolition too great a challenge.
Between 1774 and 1780, many of the states banned the importation of slaves, but the institution itself continued. In 1782, Virginia passed a law permitting manumission and over the next eight years more than 10,000 slaves were given their freedom. The number of abolitionist movements greatly increased, and by 1804 all the northern states had outlawed it. However, slavery continued to be a serious social and political issue and caused divisions that would ultimately end in civil war.
Historiography:
The body of historical writings on the American Revolution cite many motivations for the Patriot revolt American Patriots stressed the denial of their constitutional rights as Englishmen, especially "no taxation without representation." Contemporaries credit the American Enlightenment with laying the intellectual, moral, and ethical foundations for the American Revolution among the Founding Fathers, who were influenced by the classical liberalism of John Locke and other Enlightenment writers and philosophers.
Two Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on Revolutionary-era American thinking, but historians David Lundberg and Henry F. May contend that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read. Historians since the 1960s have emphasized that the Patriot constitutional argument was made possible by the emergence of an American nationalism that united the Thirteen Colonies.
In turn, that nationalism was rooted in a Republican value system that demanded consent of the governed and deeply opposed aristocratic control. In Britain, on the other hand, republicanism was largely a fringe ideology since it challenged the aristocratic control of the British monarchy and political system.
Political power was not controlled by an aristocracy or nobility in the 13 colonies; instead, the colonial political system was based on the winners of free elections, which were open at the time to the majority of white men. In analysis of the Revolution, historians in recent decades have often cited three motivations behind it:
Historians have examined how the rising American legal profession adopted British common law to incorporate republicanism by selective revision of legal customs and by introducing more choices for courts.
Revolutionary War commemoration stamps
After the first US postage stamp was issued in 1849, the US Postal Service frequently issued commemorative stamps celebrating people and events of the Revolutionary War. The first such stamp was the Liberty Bell issue of 1926.[427]
See also
Topics of the Revolution
Social history of the Revolution
Others in the American Revolution
Lists of Revolutionary military
Legacy and related
The Second Continental Congress established the Continental Navy on October 13, 1775, and appointed Esek Hopkins as its first commander; for most of the war, the Continental Navy included only a handful of small frigates and sloops, supported by privateers.
On November 10, 1775, Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Marines, which ultimately evolved into the United States Marine Corps.
John Paul Jones became the first American naval hero when he captured HMS Drake on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters.
The last such victory was by the frigate USS Alliance, commanded by Captain John Barry.
On March 10, 1783, the Alliance outgunned HMS Sybil in a 45-minute duel while escorting Spanish gold from Havana to the Congress in Philadelphia. After Yorktown, all US Navy ships were sold or given away; it was the first time in America's history that it had no fighting forces on the high seas.
Congress primarily commissioned privateers to reduce costs and to take advantage of the large proportion of colonial sailors found in the British Empire. In total, they included 1,700 ships that successfully captured 2,283 enemy ships to damage the British effort and to enrich themselves with the proceeds from the sale of cargo and the ship itself. About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war.
France
Main article: France in the American Revolution
Further information:
At the beginning of the war, the Americans had no major international allies, since most nation-states waited to see how the conflict unfolded. Over time, the Continental Army established its military credibility. Battles such as the Battle of Bennington, the Battles of Saratoga, and even defeats such as the Battle of Germantown, proved decisive in gaining the support of powerful European nations, including France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic; the Dutch moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies to overtly supporting them.
The decisive American victory at Saratoga convinced France, which was already a long-time rival of Britain, to offer the Americans the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The two nations also agreed to a defensive Treaty of Alliance to protect their trade and also guaranteed American independence from Britain.
To engage the United States as a French ally militarily, the treaty was conditioned on Britain initiating a war on France to stop it from trading with the US. Spain and the Dutch Republic were invited to join by both France and the United States in the treaty, but neither was responsive to the request.
On June 13, 1778, France declared war on Great Britain, and it invoked the French military alliance with the US, which ensured additional US private support for French possessions in the Caribbean. Washington worked closely with the soldiers and navy that France would send to America, primarily through Lafayette on his staff. French assistance made critical contributions required to defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.
British strategy
Further information: Seven Years' War
The British military had considerable experience fighting in North America. However, in previous conflicts they benefited from local logistics and support from the colonial militia. In the American Revolutionary War, reinforcements had to come from Europe, and maintaining large armies over such distances was extremely complex; ships could take three months to cross the Atlantic, and orders from London were often outdated by the time they arrived.
Prior to the conflict, the colonies were largely autonomous economic and political entities, with no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance. This meant that, unlike Europe where the fall of a capital city often ended wars, that in America continued even after the loss of major settlements such as Philadelphia, the seat of Congress, New York, and Charleston.
British power was reliant on the Royal Navy, whose dominance allowed them to resupply their own expeditionary forces while preventing access to enemy ports. However, the majority of the American population was agrarian, rather than urban; supported by the French navy and blockade runners based in the Dutch Caribbean, their economy was able to survive.
Lord North, Prime Minister since 1770, delegated control of the war in North America to Lord George Germain and the Earl of Sandwich, who was head of the Royal Navy from 1771 to 1782.
Defeat at Saratoga in 1777 made it clear the revolt would not be easily suppressed, especially after the Franco-American alliance of February 1778. With Spain also expected to join the conflict, the Royal Navy needed to prioritize either the war in America or in Europe; Germain advocated the former, Sandwich the latter.
North initially backed the Southern strategy attempting to exploit divisions between the mercantile north and slave-owning south, but after the defeat of Yorktown, he was forced to accept that this policy had failed. It was clear the war was lost, although the Royal Navy forced the French to relocate their fleet to the Caribbean in November 1781 and resumed a close blockade of American trade.
The resulting economic damage and rising inflation meant the US was now eager to end the war, while France was unable to provide further loans; Congress could no longer pay its soldiers. The geographical size of the colonies and limited manpower meant the British could not simultaneously conduct military operations and occupy territory without local support.
Debate persists over whether their defeat was inevitable; one British statesman described it as "like trying to conquer a map". While Ferling argues Patriot victory was nothing short of a miracle, Ellis suggests the odds always favored the Americans, especially after Howe squandered the chance of a decisive British success in 1776, an "opportunity that would never come again". The US military history speculates the additional commitment of 10,000 fresh troops in 1780 would have placed British victory "within the realm of possibility".
British Army
Main article: British Army during the American Revolutionary War
See also: Loyalist (American Revolution) § Military service
The expulsion of France from North America in 1763 led to a drastic reduction in British troop levels in the colonies; in 1775, there were only 8,500 regular soldiers among a civilian population of 2.8 million.
The bulk of military resources in the Americas were focused on defending sugar islands in the Caribbean; Jamaica alone generated more revenue than all thirteen American colonies combined. With the end of the Seven Years' War, the permanent army in Britain was also cut back, which resulted in administrative difficulties when the war began a decade later.
Over the course of the war, there were four separate British commanders-in-chief. The first was Thomas Gage, appointed in 1763, whose initial focus was establishing British rule in former French areas of Canada. Many in London blamed the revolt on his failure to take firm action earlier, and he was relieved after the heavy losses incurred at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
His replacement was Sir William Howe, a member of the Whig faction in Parliament who opposed the policy of coercion advocated by Lord North; Cornwallis, who later surrendered at Yorktown, was one of many senior officers who initially refused to serve in North America.
The 1775 campaign showed the British overestimated the capabilities of their own troops and underestimated the colonial militia, requiring a reassessment of tactics and strategy, and allowing the Patriots to take the initiative. Howe's responsibility is still debated; despite receiving large numbers of reinforcements, Bunker Hill seems to have permanently affected his self-confidence and lack of tactical flexibility meant he often failed to follow up opportunities. Many of his decisions were attributed to supply problems, such as his failure to pursue Washington's beaten army.
Having lost the confidence of his subordinates, he was recalled after Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga.
Following the failure of the Carlisle Commission, British policy changed from treating the Patriots as subjects who needed to be reconciled to enemies who had to be defeated. In 1778, Howe was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton. Regarded as an expert on tactics and strategy, But, like his predecessors Clinton was handicapped by chronic supply issues.
In addition, Clinton's strategy was compromised by conflict with political superiors in London and his colleagues in North America, especially Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot, replaced in early 1781 by Rodney.
He was neither notified nor consulted when Germain approved Cornwallis's invasion of the south in 1781 and delayed sending him reinforcements believing the bulk of Washington's army was still outside New York City. After the surrender at Yorktown, Clinton was relieved by Carleton, whose major task was to oversee the evacuation of Loyalists and British troops from Savannah, Charleston, and New York City.
German troops
Main article: Hessian (soldier)
During the 18th century, states commonly hired foreign soldiers, including Britain. When it became clear additional troops were needed to suppress the revolt in America, it was decided to employ professional German soldiers. There were several reasons for this, including public sympathy for the Patriot cause, a historical reluctance to expand the British army and the time needed to recruit and train new regiments. Many smaller states in the Holy Roman Empire had a long tradition of renting their armies to the highest bidder. The most important was Hesse-Kassel, known as "the Mercenary State".
The first supply agreements were signed by the North administration in late 1775; 30,000 Germans served in the American War. Often generically referred to as "Hessians", they included men from many other states, including Hanover and Brunswick.[ Sir Henry Clinton recommended recruiting Russian troops whom he rated very highly, having seen them in action against the Ottomans; however, negotiations with Catherine the Great made little progress.
Unlike previous wars their use led to intense political debate in Britain, France, and even Germany, where Frederick the Great refused to provide passage through his territories for troops hired for the American war. In March 1776, the agreements were challenged in Parliament by Whigs who objected to "coercion" in general, and the use of foreign soldiers to subdue "British subjects". The debates were covered in detail by American newspapers; in May 1776 they received copies of the treaties themselves, provided by British sympathizers and smuggled into North America from London.
The prospect of foreign German soldiers being used in the colonies bolstered support for independence, more so than taxation and other acts combined; the King was accused of declaring war on his own subjects, leading to the idea there were now two separate governments. By apparently showing Britain was determined to go to war, it made hopes of reconciliation seem naive and hopeless, while the employment of what was regarded as "foreign mercenaries" became one of the charges levelled against George III in the Declaration of Independence. The Hessian reputation within Germany for brutality also increased support for the Patriot cause among German American immigrants.
The presence of over 150,000 German Americans meant both sides felt the German soldiers might be persuaded to desert; one reason Clinton suggested employing Russians was that he felt they were less likely to defect.
When the first German troops arrived on Staten Island in August 1776, Congress approved the printing of handbills, promising land and citizenship to any willing to join the Patriot cause. The British launched a counter-campaign claiming deserters could be executed.
Desertion among the Germans occurred throughout the war, with the highest rate of desertion occurring between the surrender at Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris. German regiments were central to the British war effort; of the estimated 30,000 sent to America, some 13,000 became casualties.
Revolution as civil war
Loyalists:
- Main article: Loyalist (American Revolution)
- See also: American Legion (Great Britain) and Prince of Wales' American Regiment
Wealthy Loyalists convinced the British government that most of the colonists were sympathetic toward the Crown; consequently, British military planners relied on recruiting Loyalists, but had trouble recruiting sufficient numbers as the Patriots had widespread support. Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war.
Although Loyalists constituted about twenty percent of the colonial population,] they were concentrated in distinct communities. Many of them lived among large plantation owners in the Tidewater region and South Carolina.
When the British began probing the backcountry in 1777–1778, they were faced with a major problem: any significant level of organized Loyalist activity required a continued presence of British regulars. The available manpower that the British had in America was insufficient to protect Loyalist territory and counter American offensives. The Loyalist militias in the South were constantly defeated by neighboring Patriot militia. The Patriot victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain irreversibly impaired Loyalist militia capability in the South.
When the early war policy was administered by Howe, the Crown's need to maintain Loyalist support prevented it from using the traditional revolt suppression methods. The British cause suffered when their troops ransacked local homes during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779 that enraged both Patriots and Loyalists.
After Congress rejected the Carlisle Peace Commission in 1778 and Westminster turned to "hard war" during Clinton's command, neutral colonists in the Carolinas often allied with the Patriots. Conversely, Loyalists gained support when Patriots intimidated suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering.
A Loyalist militia unit—the British Legion—provided some of the best troops in British service. It was commanded by Tarleton and gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies for "brutality and needless slaughter".
Women
Main article: Women in the American Revolution
Women played various roles during the Revolutionary War; they often accompanied their
husbands when permitted. For example, throughout the war Martha Washington was known to visit and provide aid to her husband George at various American camps.
Women often accompanied armies as camp followers to sell goods and perform necessary tasks in hospitals and camps, and numbered in the thousands during the war.
Women also assumed military roles: some dressed as men to directly support combat, fight, or act as spies on both sides.
For example Anna Maria Lane joined her husband in the Army. The Virginia General Assembly later cited her bravery: she fought while dressed as a man and "performed extraordinary military services, and received a severe wound at the battle of Germantown ... with the courage of a soldier".
On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington is said to have ridden to alert militia forces to the British's approach; she has been called the "female Paul Revere". Whether the ride occurred is questioned. A few others disguised themselves as men:
- Deborah Sampson fought until her gender was discovered and she was discharged as a result;
- Sally St. Clair was killed in action.
African Americans
Main article: African Americans in the Revolutionary War
When war began, the population of the Thirteen Colonies included an estimated 500,000 slaves, predominantly used as labor on Southern plantations. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to any Patriot-owned slaves willing to bear arms. Although the announcement helped to fill a temporary manpower shortage, white Loyalist prejudice meant recruits were eventually redirected to non-combatant roles. The Loyalists' motive was to deprive Patriot planters of labor rather than to end slavery; Loyalist-owned slaves were returned.
The 1779 Philipsburg Proclamation issued by Clinton extended the offer of freedom to Patriot-owned slaves throughout the colonies. It persuaded entire families to escape to British lines, many of which were employed growing food for the army by removing the requirement for military service.
While Clinton organized the Black Pioneers, he also ensured fugitive slaves were returned to Loyalist owners with orders that they were not to be punished. As the war progressed, service as regular soldiers in British units became increasingly common; Black Loyalists formed two regiments of the Charleston garrison in 1783.
Estimates of the numbers who served the British during the war vary from 25,000 to 50,000, excluding those who escaped during wartime. Thomas Jefferson estimated that Virginia may have lost 30,000 slaves to escapes. In South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (about 30 percent of the enslaved population) either fled, migrated, or died, which significantly disrupted the plantation economies both during and after the war.
Black Patriots were barred from the Continental Army until Washington convinced Congress in January 1778 that there was no other way to replace losses from disease and desertion. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment formed in February included former slaves whose owners were compensated; however, only 140 of its 225 soldiers were Black and recruitment stopped in June 1788.
Ultimately, around 5,000 African Americans served in the Continental Army and Navy in a variety of roles, while another 4,000 were employed in Patriot militia units, aboard privateers, or as teamsters, servants, and spies. After the war, a small minority received land grants or Congressional pensions; many others were returned to their masters post-war despite earlier promises of freedom.
As a Patriot victory became increasingly likely, the treatment of Black Loyalists became a point of contention; after the surrender of Yorktown in 1781, Washington insisted all escapees be returned but Cornwallis refused. In 1782 and 1783, around 8,000 to 10,000 freed Blacks were evacuated by the British from Charleston, Savannah, and New York; some moved onto London, while 3,000 to 4,000 settled in Nova Scotia.
White Loyalists transported 15,000 enslaved Blacks to Jamaica and the Bahamas. The free Black Loyalists who migrated to the British West Indies included regular soldiers from Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and those from Charleston who helped garrison the Leeward Islands.
Native Americans
Main page: Category:Native American people in the American Revolution
Most Native Americans east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many tribes were divided over how to respond. A few tribes were friendly with the colonists, but most Natives opposed the union of the Colonies as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Natives fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes who deployed around 1,500 men.
Early in July 1776, Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the short-lived Washington District of North Carolina. Their defeat splintered both Cherokee settlements and people, and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, who perpetuated the Cherokee–American wars against American settlers for decades after hostilities with Britain ended.
Muscogee and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Muscogee destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Muscogee warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the siege of Savannah.
Many Native Americans were involved in the fight between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and along the British side of the Mississippi River. Thousands of Muscogee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw fought in major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the siege of Pensacola.
The Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the American Revolutionary War. The Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga tribes sided with the British; members of the Mohawks fought on both sides; and many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the Americans.
To retaliate against raids on American settlement by Loyalists and their Indian allies, the Continental Army dispatched the Sullivan Expedition throughout New York to debilitate the Iroquois tribes that had sided with the British. Mohawk leaders Joseph Louis Cook and Joseph Brant sided with the Americans and the British respectively, which further exacerbated the split.
In the western theater, conflicts between settlers and Native Americans led to lingering distrust.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Great Britain ceded control of the disputed lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, but Native inhabitants were not a part of the peace negotiations. Tribes in the Northwest Territory joined as the Western Confederacy and allied with the British to resist American settlement, and their conflict continued after the Revolutionary War as the Northwest Indian War.
Peace negotiations
Further information: Treaty of Paris (1783)
The terms presented by the Carlisle Peace Commission in 1778 included acceptance of the principle of self-government. Parliament would recognize Congress as the governing body, suspend any objectionable legislation, surrender its right to local colonial taxation, and discuss including American representatives in the House of Commons.
In return, all property confiscated from Loyalists would be returned, British debts honored, and locally enforced martial law accepted. However, Congress demanded either immediate recognition of independence or the withdrawal of all British troops; they knew the commission were not authorized to accept these, bringing negotiations to a rapid end.
On February 27, 1782, a Whig motion to end the offensive war in America was carried by 19 votes. North resigned, obliging the king to invite Lord Rockingham to form a government; a consistent supporter of the Patriot cause, he made a commitment to US independence a condition of doing so. George III reluctantly accepted and the new government took office on March 27, 1782; however, Rockingham died unexpectedly on July 1, and was replaced by Lord Shelburne who acknowledged American independence.
When Lord Rockingham was elevated to Prime Minister, Congress consolidated its diplomatic consuls in Europe into a peace delegation at Paris. The dean of the delegation was Benjamin Franklin. He had become a celebrity in the French Court, but he was also influential in the courts of Prussia and Austria. Since the 1760s, Franklin had been an organizer of British American inter-colony cooperation, and then served as a colonial lobbyist to Parliament in London.
John Adams had been consul to the Dutch Republic and was a prominent early New England Patriot. John Jay of New York had been consul to Spain and was a past president of the Continental Congress. As consul to the Dutch Republic, Henry Laurens had secured a preliminary agreement for a trade agreement. Although active in the preliminaries, he was not a signer of the conclusive treaty.
The Whig negotiators included long-time friend of Franklin David Hartley, and Richard Oswald, who had negotiated Laurens' release from the Tower of London. The Preliminary Peace signed on November 30 met four key Congressional demands: independence, territory up to the Mississippi, navigation rights into the Gulf of Mexico, and fishing rights in Newfoundland.
British strategy was to strengthen the US sufficiently to prevent France from regaining a foothold in North America, and they had little interest in these proposals. However, divisions between their opponents allowed them to negotiate separately with each to improve their overall position, starting with the American delegation in September 1782.
The French and Spanish sought to improve their position by creating the US dependent on them for support against Britain, thus reversing the losses of 1763. Both parties tried to negotiate a settlement with Britain excluding the Americans; France proposed setting the western boundary of the US along the Appalachians, matching the British 1763 Proclamation Line. The Spanish suggested additional concessions in the vital Mississippi River Basin, but required the cession of Georgia in violation of the Franco-American alliance.
Facing difficulties with Spain over claims involving the Mississippi River, and from France who was still reluctant to agree to American independence until all her demands were met, John Jay told the British that he was willing to negotiate directly with them, cutting off France and Spain, and Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, in charge of the British negotiations, agreed.
Key agreements for the United States in obtaining peace included recognition of US independence; all of the territory east of the Mississippi River, north of Florida and south of Canada; and fishing rights in the Grand Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The United States and Great Britain were each given perpetual access to the Mississippi River.
An Anglo-American Preliminary Peace was formally entered into in November 1782, and Congress endorsed the settlement on April 15, 1783. It announced the achievement of peace with independence, and the conclusive treaty was signed on September 2, 1783, in Paris, effective the following day when Britain signed its treaty with France.
John Adams, who helped draft the treaty, claimed it represented "one of the most important political events that ever happened on the globe". Ratified respectively by Congress and Parliament, the final versions were exchanged in Paris the following spring. On November 25, the last British troops remaining in the US were evacuated from New York to Halifax
Aftermath
Main article: American Revolution
Territory:
The expanse of territory that was now the US included millions of sparsely settled acres south of the Great Lakes between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, much of which was part of Canada. The tentative colonial migration west became a flood during the war.
Britain's extended post-war policy for the US continued to try to establish an Indian barrier state below the Great Lakes as late as 1814 during the War of 1812. The formally acquired western American lands continued to be populated by Indigenous tribes that had mostly been British allies.
In practice the British refused to abandon the forts on territory they formally transferred. Instead, they provisioned military allies for continuing frontier raids and sponsored the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795). British sponsorship of local warfare on the US continued until the Anglo-American Jay Treaty, authored by Hamilton, went into effect on February 29, 1796.
Of the European powers with American colonies adjacent to the newly created US, Spain was most threatened by American independence, and it was correspondingly the most hostile to it. Its territory adjacent to the US was relatively undefended, so Spanish policy developed a combination of initiatives. Spanish soft power diplomatically challenged the British territorial cession west to the Mississippi River and the previous northern boundaries of Spanish Florida.
It imposed a high tariff on American goods, then blocked American settler access to the port of New Orleans. At the same time, the Spanish also sponsored war within the US by Indian proxies in its Southwest Territory ceded by France to Britain, then Britain to the Americans.
Casualties and losses:
Further information: Prisoners in the American Revolutionary War
The total loss of life throughout the conflict is largely unknown. As was typical in wars of the era, diseases such as smallpox claimed more lives than battle. Between 1775 and 1782, a smallpox epidemic throughout North America killed an estimated 130,000 Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington having his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions.
More than 25,000 Patriots died during active military service. Of these, approximately 6,800 were killed in battle, while at least 17,000 died from disease. The majority of the latter died while prisoners of war of the British, mostly in the prison ships in New York Harbor. The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000.
The French suffered 2,112 killed in combat in the United States.[404][ap] The Spanish lost 124 killed and 247 wounded in West Florida.
A British report in 1781 puts their total Armydeaths at 6,046 in North America (1775–1779). Approximately 7,774 Germans died in British service in addition to 4,888 deserters; among those labeled German deserters, however, it is estimated that 1,800 were killed in combat.
Legacy:
The American Revolution set an example to overthrow both monarchy and colonial governments. The United States has the world's oldest written constitution, which was used as a model in other countries, sometimes word-for-word. The Revolution inspired revolutions in France, Haiti, Latin America, and elsewhere.
Although the Revolution eliminated many forms of inequality, it did little to change the status of women, despite the role they played in winning independence. Most significantly, it failed to end slavery. While many were uneasy over the contradiction of demanding liberty for some, yet denying it to others, the dependence of southern states on slave labor made abolition too great a challenge.
Between 1774 and 1780, many of the states banned the importation of slaves, but the institution itself continued. In 1782, Virginia passed a law permitting manumission and over the next eight years more than 10,000 slaves were given their freedom. The number of abolitionist movements greatly increased, and by 1804 all the northern states had outlawed it. However, slavery continued to be a serious social and political issue and caused divisions that would ultimately end in civil war.
Historiography:
The body of historical writings on the American Revolution cite many motivations for the Patriot revolt American Patriots stressed the denial of their constitutional rights as Englishmen, especially "no taxation without representation." Contemporaries credit the American Enlightenment with laying the intellectual, moral, and ethical foundations for the American Revolution among the Founding Fathers, who were influenced by the classical liberalism of John Locke and other Enlightenment writers and philosophers.
Two Treatises of Government has long been cited as a major influence on Revolutionary-era American thinking, but historians David Lundberg and Henry F. May contend that Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding was far more widely read. Historians since the 1960s have emphasized that the Patriot constitutional argument was made possible by the emergence of an American nationalism that united the Thirteen Colonies.
In turn, that nationalism was rooted in a Republican value system that demanded consent of the governed and deeply opposed aristocratic control. In Britain, on the other hand, republicanism was largely a fringe ideology since it challenged the aristocratic control of the British monarchy and political system.
Political power was not controlled by an aristocracy or nobility in the 13 colonies; instead, the colonial political system was based on the winners of free elections, which were open at the time to the majority of white men. In analysis of the Revolution, historians in recent decades have often cited three motivations behind it:
- The Atlantic history view places the American story in a broader context, including subsequent revolutions in France and Haiti. It tends to reintegrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire.
- The "new social history" approach looks at community social structure to find cleavages that were magnified into colonial cleavages.
- The ideological approach that centers on republicanism in the United States. Republicanism dictated there would be no royalty, aristocracy or national church but allowed for continuation of the British common law, which American lawyers and jurists understood and approved and used in their everyday practice.
Historians have examined how the rising American legal profession adopted British common law to incorporate republicanism by selective revision of legal customs and by introducing more choices for courts.
Revolutionary War commemoration stamps
After the first US postage stamp was issued in 1849, the US Postal Service frequently issued commemorative stamps celebrating people and events of the Revolutionary War. The first such stamp was the Liberty Bell issue of 1926.[427]
See also
- Timeline of the American Revolution
- 1776 in the United States: events, births, deaths, and other years
- "The American Revolutionary War" at United States Military Academy. Archived April 15, 2023, at the Wayback Machine.
- Library of Congress Guide to the American Revolution
- Bibliographies of the War of American Independence compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History (archived)
Topics of the Revolution
- Committee of safety (American Revolution)
- Diplomacy in the American Revolutionary War
- Financial costs of the American Revolutionary War
- Flags of the American Revolution
- Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War
Social history of the Revolution
- Black Patriot
- Christianity in the United States#American Revolution
- The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution
- History of Poles in the United States#American Revolution
- List of clergy in the American Revolution
- List of Patriots (American Revolution)
- Quakers in the American Revolution
- Scotch-Irish Americans#American Revolution
Others in the American Revolution
Lists of Revolutionary military
- List of American Revolutionary War battles
- List of British Forces in the American Revolutionary War
- List of Continental Forces in the American Revolutionary War
- List of infantry weapons in the American Revolution
- List of United States militia units in the American Revolutionary War
Legacy and related
- American Revolution Statuary
- Bibliography of the American Revolutionary War
- Commemoration of the American Revolution
- Founders Online
- Independence Day (United States)
- The Last Men of the Revolution
- List of plays and films about the American Revolution
- List of wars of independence
- Museum of the American Revolution
- Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution
The American Civil War (1861-1865) Pictured below: Civil War Duration: April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865 (4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks)
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve African American slavery, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North.
Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets within its borders.
The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over a third of the US population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains—though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country.
To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led to Lincoln's giving him command of all Union armies in 1864.
Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah.
The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day.
By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.
Origins
Main article: Origins of the American Civil War
Further information below:
The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery. Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents.
After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.
Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades.
The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.
Background factors in the run-up to the Civil War were:
As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."
Lincoln's election
Main article: 1860 United States presidential election
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction. His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.
Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded the South time to prepare for war. Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The US government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which the Confederacy claimed were located in their territory.
According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the American Revolution and Revolutionary War and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic.
Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, where its government was selected based on the people's vote, given ongoing internal attempts to destroy or separate from such a system.
Outbreak of the war
Secession crisis
Main article: Ordinance of Secession
Lincoln's election provoked South Carolina's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede.
On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration. It argued for states' rights for slave owners but complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
Among the ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union.
However, at least four—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas—provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming the movement to abolish slavery and its influence over the North. Southern states believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause made slaveholding a constitutional right.
These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861. They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing president James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4.
Buchanan said the Dred Scott decision was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added, however, that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". A quarter of the US army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general, David E. Twiggs, who joined the Confederacy.
As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included:
The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced an income tax to help finance the war.
In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south.
The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it. Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down the Union.
A February peace conference met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to the Compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the Corwin Amendment, an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient.
The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4.
On March 4, Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his first inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a binding contract, and that secession was "legally void".
He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized.
"The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union." Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be US policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution.
His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.
The Davis government of the new Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such. Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize.
Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis was Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination. Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful.
In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of government, the "prime minister" behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.
Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the seceded states: Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets within its borders.
The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over a third of the US population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains—though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country.
To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led to Lincoln's giving him command of all Union armies in 1864.
Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah.
The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day.
By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.
Origins
Main article: Origins of the American Civil War
Further information below:
- Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War,
- Slave states and free states,
- Slavery in the United States,
- and Abolitionism in the United States
The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery. Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents.
After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.
Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades.
The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.
Background factors in the run-up to the Civil War were:
- partisan politics,
- abolitionism,
- nullification versus secession,
- Southern and Northern nationalism,
- expansionism,
- economics,
- and modernization in the antebellum period.
As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."
Lincoln's election
Main article: 1860 United States presidential election
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction. His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.
Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded the South time to prepare for war. Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The US government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which the Confederacy claimed were located in their territory.
According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the American Revolution and Revolutionary War and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic.
Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, where its government was selected based on the people's vote, given ongoing internal attempts to destroy or separate from such a system.
Outbreak of the war
Secession crisis
Main article: Ordinance of Secession
Lincoln's election provoked South Carolina's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede.
On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration. It argued for states' rights for slave owners but complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
Among the ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union.
However, at least four—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas—provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming the movement to abolish slavery and its influence over the North. Southern states believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause made slaveholding a constitutional right.
These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861. They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing president James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4.
Buchanan said the Dred Scott decision was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added, however, that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". A quarter of the US army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general, David E. Twiggs, who joined the Confederacy.
As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included:
- the Morrill Tariff,
- land grant colleges,
- a Homestead Act,
- a transcontinental railroad,
- the National Bank Act,
- authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862,
- the end of slavery in the District of Columbia,
- and a ban on slavery in the territories.
The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced an income tax to help finance the war.
In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south.
The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it. Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down the Union.
A February peace conference met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to the Compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the Corwin Amendment, an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient.
The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4.
On March 4, Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his first inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a binding contract, and that secession was "legally void".
He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized.
"The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union." Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be US policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution.
His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.
The Davis government of the new Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such. Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize.
Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis was Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination. Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful.
In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of government, the "prime minister" behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.
Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the seceded states: Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
Battle of Fort Sumter
Main article: Battle of Fort Sumter
See also: Proclamation 80
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing president Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major Robert Anderson. Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to the stalwart island Fort Sumter.
Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war then, but an informal truce held. On March 5, Lincoln was informed the fort was low on supplies.
Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration. Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out. But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort. Richard N. Current wrote:
In short, it appears that Lincoln, when he decided to send the Sumter expedition, considered hostilities to be probable. It also appears, however, that he believed an unopposed and peaceable provisioning to be at least barely possible.... He thought hostilities would be the likely result, and he was determined that, if they should be, they must clearly be initiated by the Confederates. "To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side if a first shot was fired, ... is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired."
James McPherson describes this win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's presidency"; the Union would win if it could resupply and hold the fort, and the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying starving men. An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in Davis ordering General P. G. T. Beauregard to take the fort before supplies reached it.
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the North. On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 militiamen for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly.
On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for three years. Shortly after this, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.
Attitude of the border states
Main article: Border states (American Civil War)
Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky were slave states whose people had divided loyalties to Northern and Southern businesses and family members. Some men enlisted in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army. West Virginia separated from Virginia and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, though half its counties were secessionist.
Maryland's territory surrounded Washington, D.C., and could cut it off from the North. It had anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Union, but rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent their use for war.
Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units. Lincoln took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by seizing prominent figures, including arresting one-third of the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened.
All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, not speaking for the Court, that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte Merryman).
In September 1861, federal troops imprisoned a Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard, after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring Taney's ruling. Howard wrote a book about his prison experiences, which was published early in 1863. It "stressed the crowded conditions and spartan hardships of prison life ... [and] likened the conditions in Fort Lafayette to those on 'a slave-ship, on the middle passage".
In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted to remain in the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of Missouri (see Missouri secession). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled southern Missouri through the Confederate government of Missouri but was driven out after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri.
Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During an invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky counties organized the secession Russellville Convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent was over half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862.
After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state in October 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving). Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state, and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war. Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginians provided about 20,000 soldiers to each side in the war. A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of loyalty to the Union; they were held without trial.
War
See also:
The Civil War was marked by intense and frequent battles. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, along with many smaller actions, often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. Historian John Keegan described it as "one of the most ferocious wars ever fought", where in many cases the only target was the enemy's soldiers.
Mobilization
See also: Economic history of the American Civil War
As the Confederate states organized, the US Army numbered 16,000, while Northern governors began mobilizing their militias. The Confederate Congress authorized up to 100,000 troops in February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for another 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and the US Congress responded in kind.
In the first year of the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, relying on young men who came of age each year was not enough. Both sides enacted draft laws (conscription) to encourage or force volunteering, though relatively few were drafted.
The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for men aged 18–35, with exemptions for overseers, government officials, and clergymen.
The US Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within states that could not meet their quota with volunteers.
European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 in Ireland. About 50,000 Canadians served, around 2,500 of whom were black.
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited to meet state quotas. States and local communities offered higher cash bonuses for white volunteers.
Congress tightened the draft law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home.
There was much evasion and resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The New York City draft riots in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine, not realizing it made them liable for the draft. Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who were conscripted.
In the North and South, draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war. At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, about 10 percent of the total. Southern desertion was high because many soldiers were more concerned about the fate of their local area than the Southern cause.
In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to collect the generous bonus, deserted, then re-enlisted under a different name for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.
From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies grew into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. Some European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and Russian armies, and without the Atlantic, could have threatened any of them with defeat.
Southern Unionists
Main article: Southern Unionist
Unionism was strong in certain areas within the Confederacy. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although they came from all classes, most Southern Unionists differed socially, culturally, and economically from their region's dominant prewar, slave-owning planter class.
Prisoners
Main article: American Civil War prison camps
At the beginning of the Civil War, a parole system operated, under which captives agreed not to fight until exchanged. They were held in camps run by their army, paid, but not allowed to perform any military duties.
The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that, approximately 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons, accounting for 10 percent of the conflict's fatalities.
Women
See also:
Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides, disguised as men.
Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel. Women served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for treating the wounded during the war.
One woman, Jennie Hodgers, fought for the Union under the name Albert D. J. Cashier. After she returned to civilian life, she continued to live as a man until she died in 1915 at the age of 71.
Union
During the war, women in the North advocated for social reforms and created ladies' aid societies, also called soldiers' aid societies, which provided supplies to soldiers on the battlefield and cared for sick and wounded soldiers. Women in the North also held military rallies, village parades, and charity bazaars.
Women like Susan B. Anthony saw that supporting the war effort was a way to pave the future for women's suffrage movements. In her appeal to Northern women's loyalty, Anthony challenged the inconsistencies of the nation's founding ideal and its actual practices concerning equality among women.
Northern women during the Civil War also made great strides in the workforce, as they helped contribute to the war effort by stepping into roles that were traditionally held by men.
While women rarely worked in factories before the war, many filled men's places as they felt they could erase some of the boundaries that separated them from male preserves of power. Women were important in the workforce as they prepared and packed provisions, sewed uniforms and havelocks, and knitted socks and mittens. By entering these new environments, women made significant progress in the fight for women's equality in the workforce.
Northern women were also essential in the wartime support, as they were active participants in the war narrative. While women were not allowed to fight on the battlefield in the Civil War, they exhibited a patriotism that gave them the strength to maintain courage for themselves as well as their households.
While their men were off at war, Northern women created a landscape that emphasized love, sacrifice, and the nurturing of men's courage. This is demonstrated in feminized war literature that encouraged, expressed, and valorized men's patriotism. Women's unwavering encouragement and affection towards fighting men became a cornerstone of the war effort as it helped sustain the spirits of the men on the frontlines.
Confederate
Confederate women during the Civil War focused on preserving the central economic institution of the Old South: the plantation. With so many men away at war, women were left with the land and the slaves. While some women hired male overseers to assist them in directing and maintaining newly female-headed plantations, other women decided to stay at the plantations and run the plantations themselves.
Southern women became focused on keeping the economic structure of the South as they dealt with increasingly rebellious slaves.
The South relied on enslaved labor because it was an agrarian economy. A good number of enslaved men labored for the Confederate army during the war, which meant that enslaved women and children were increasingly at the center of the work force on the plantations.
White Southern women struggled to maintain morale on the home front as they dealt with problems without men. Although Southern women were devoted to the Confederacy, many requested that their sons and husbands be discharged from the military to help them at home.
Many women like Eliza Adams wrote to the Confederate government to appeal for exemption for her sons' military service as she sent five sons and other sons-in-laws to fight for the Confederacy. Southern women were torn between their patriotic ideals and their daily realities of life on the home front.
Union Navy
Main article: Union Navy
The Union Navy in 1861 was relatively small but, by 1865, expanded rapidly to 6,000 officers, 45,000 sailors, and 671 vessels totaling 510,396 tons. Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, control the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.
The main riverine war was fought in the West, where major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The US Navy eventually controlled the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and supported coastal army operations.
The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution, leading to naval innovations, including the ironclad warship. The Confederacy, recognizing the need to counter the Union's naval superiority, built or converted over 130 vessels, including 26 ironclads. Despite these efforts, Confederate ships were largely unsuccessful against Union ironclads. The Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards in Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built or modified steamboats.
The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS Hunley, which proved unsuccessful, and with the ironclad CSS Virginia, rebuilt from the sunken Union ship Merrimack.
On March 8, 1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage on the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day, the first Union ironclad, USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it in the Chesapeake Bay. The resulting three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, proving ironclads were effective warships.
The Confederacy scuttled the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor. The Confederacy's efforts to obtain warships from Great Britain failed, as Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation at war with a stronger enemy and feared souring relations with the US.
Union blockade
Main article: Union blockade
By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with minimal bloodshed, calling for a blockade of the Confederacy to suffocate the South into surrender. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan but opted for a more active war strategy.
In April 1861, Lincoln announced a blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance, ending regular traffic. The South blundered by embargoing cotton exports before the blockade was fully effective; by the time they reversed this decision, it was too late. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton.
The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service
Blockade runners
Main article: Blockade runners of the American Civil War
The Confederates began the war short on military supplies, which the agrarian South could not produce. Northern arms manufacturers were restricted by an embargo, ending existing and future contracts with the South. The Confederacy turned to foreign sources, connecting with financiers and companies like S. Isaac, Campbell & Company and the London Armoury Company in Britain, becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms.
To transport arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and supplies from Britain, through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in exchange for high-priced cotton. Many were lightweight and designed for speed, only carrying small amounts of cotton back to England.] When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen, mostly British, were released.
Economic impact
The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war due to multiple factors, the most notable being severe food shortages, failing railroads, loss of control over key rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate forces.
Historians agree the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy; however, Wise argues blockade runners provided enough of a lifeline to allow Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, to continue fighting for additional months, as a result of supplies that included 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that Confederate economy could no longer supply.
The Confederate cotton crop became nearly useless, which cut off the Confederacy's primary income source. Critical imports were scarce, and coastal trade also largely ended. The blockade's success was not measured by the few ships, which slipped through, but by the thousands that never tried. European merchant ships could not obtain insurance for their ships and transport, and were too slow to evade the blockade, leading them to cease docking in Confederate ports.
To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted British-built ships into commerce raiders, which targeted United States Merchant Marine ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Confederacy smuggled 600,000 arms, enabling it to continue fighting for two more years. As insurance rates soared, American-flagged ships largely ceased traveling in international waters, though some were reflagged with European flags, which allowed them to continue operating.
After the conclusion of the Civil War, the US government demanded Britain reimburse it for the damage caused by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in British ports. Britain paid the US$15 million in 1871, which covered costs associated with commerce raiding but nothing more.
Diplomacy
Main article: Diplomacy of the American Civil War
Further information below:
Although the Confederacy hoped Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, so they sought to bring them in as mediators. The Union worked to block this and threatened war against any country that recognized the Confederacy.
In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war, but this failed. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's postwar recovery.
Cotton diplomacy proved a failure, because Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports critically important. It also helped turn European opinion against the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton", as US grain increased from a quarter to almost half of British imports. Meanwhile, the war created jobs for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons.
Lincoln's administration initially struggled to appeal to European public opinion. At first, diplomats explained that the US was not committed to ending slavery and emphasized legal arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession.
Confederate representatives, however, focused on their struggle for liberty, commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy.
The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."
However, a European public with liberal sensibilities remained, which the US sought to appeal to by building connections with the international press. By 1861, Union diplomats like Carl Schurz realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral asset in swaying European public opinion.
Seward was concerned an overly radical case for reunification would distress European merchants with cotton interests; even so, he supported a widespread campaign of public diplomacy.
US minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved adept and convinced Britain not to challenge the Union blockade. The Confederacy purchased warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain, with the most famous being the CSS Alabama, which caused considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes.
However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful.
War loomed in late 1861 between the US and Britain over the Trent Affair, which began when US Navy personnel boarded the British ship Trent and seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington smoothed this over after Lincoln released the two men.
Prince Albert left his deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions to Lord Lyons during the Trent Affair. His request was honored, and, as a result, the British response to the US was toned down, helping avert war.
In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though such an offer would have risked war with the US. British prime minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding what his decision would be.
The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam caused the British to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation increased the political liability of supporting the Confederacy.
Realizing that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in 1861 and installed the Habsburg Austrian archduke Maximilian I as emperor.
Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico deterred it from war with the Union.
Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers and ensured they remained neutral.
Russia supported the Union, largely because it believed the US counterbalanced its geopolitical rival, the UK. In 1863, the Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San Francisco, respectively.
Eastern theater
Main article: Eastern theater of the American Civil War
The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian Mountains, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina
Background
Army of the Potomac
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26, 1861, and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes:
Army of Northern Virginia
The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern Virginia. The Army originated as the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, which was organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in Northern Virginia.
On July 20 and 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. The Army of the Potomac was renamed Army of Northern Virginia on March 14. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it on April 12, 1862.
When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command.
In his four-volume biography of Lee published in 1934 and 1935, historian Douglas S. Freeman wrote that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.
However, Freeman wrote that Lee corresponded with Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston, his predecessor in army command, before that date and referred to Johnston's command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia as of October 22, 1861, and the name Army of Northern Virginia was seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name.
Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but the organization of units as of March 14 was clearly the same organization that Lee received on June 1, and is generally referred to as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.
On July 4 at Harper's Ferry, Colonel Thomas J. Jackson assigned Jeb Stuart command of all cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah, and Jackson eventually commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.
Battles:
Pictured below: A portrait depicting the Battle of Antietam, which resulted in over 22,000 casualties, the Civil War's deadliest one-day battle
Battle of Fort Sumter
Main article: Battle of Fort Sumter
See also: Proclamation 80
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing president Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major Robert Anderson. Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to the stalwart island Fort Sumter.
Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war then, but an informal truce held. On March 5, Lincoln was informed the fort was low on supplies.
Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration. Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out. But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort. Richard N. Current wrote:
In short, it appears that Lincoln, when he decided to send the Sumter expedition, considered hostilities to be probable. It also appears, however, that he believed an unopposed and peaceable provisioning to be at least barely possible.... He thought hostilities would be the likely result, and he was determined that, if they should be, they must clearly be initiated by the Confederates. "To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side if a first shot was fired, ... is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired."
James McPherson describes this win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's presidency"; the Union would win if it could resupply and hold the fort, and the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying starving men. An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in Davis ordering General P. G. T. Beauregard to take the fort before supplies reached it.
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the North. On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 militiamen for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly.
On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for three years. Shortly after this, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.
Attitude of the border states
Main article: Border states (American Civil War)
Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky were slave states whose people had divided loyalties to Northern and Southern businesses and family members. Some men enlisted in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army. West Virginia separated from Virginia and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, though half its counties were secessionist.
Maryland's territory surrounded Washington, D.C., and could cut it off from the North. It had anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Union, but rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent their use for war.
Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units. Lincoln took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by seizing prominent figures, including arresting one-third of the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened.
All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, not speaking for the Court, that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte Merryman).
In September 1861, federal troops imprisoned a Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard, after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring Taney's ruling. Howard wrote a book about his prison experiences, which was published early in 1863. It "stressed the crowded conditions and spartan hardships of prison life ... [and] likened the conditions in Fort Lafayette to those on 'a slave-ship, on the middle passage".
In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted to remain in the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of Missouri (see Missouri secession). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled southern Missouri through the Confederate government of Missouri but was driven out after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri.
Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During an invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky counties organized the secession Russellville Convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent was over half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862.
After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state in October 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving). Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state, and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war. Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginians provided about 20,000 soldiers to each side in the war. A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of loyalty to the Union; they were held without trial.
War
See also:
The Civil War was marked by intense and frequent battles. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, along with many smaller actions, often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. Historian John Keegan described it as "one of the most ferocious wars ever fought", where in many cases the only target was the enemy's soldiers.
Mobilization
See also: Economic history of the American Civil War
As the Confederate states organized, the US Army numbered 16,000, while Northern governors began mobilizing their militias. The Confederate Congress authorized up to 100,000 troops in February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for another 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and the US Congress responded in kind.
In the first year of the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, relying on young men who came of age each year was not enough. Both sides enacted draft laws (conscription) to encourage or force volunteering, though relatively few were drafted.
The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for men aged 18–35, with exemptions for overseers, government officials, and clergymen.
The US Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within states that could not meet their quota with volunteers.
European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 in Ireland. About 50,000 Canadians served, around 2,500 of whom were black.
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited to meet state quotas. States and local communities offered higher cash bonuses for white volunteers.
Congress tightened the draft law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home.
There was much evasion and resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The New York City draft riots in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine, not realizing it made them liable for the draft. Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who were conscripted.
In the North and South, draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war. At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, about 10 percent of the total. Southern desertion was high because many soldiers were more concerned about the fate of their local area than the Southern cause.
In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to collect the generous bonus, deserted, then re-enlisted under a different name for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.
From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies grew into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. Some European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and Russian armies, and without the Atlantic, could have threatened any of them with defeat.
Southern Unionists
Main article: Southern Unionist
Unionism was strong in certain areas within the Confederacy. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although they came from all classes, most Southern Unionists differed socially, culturally, and economically from their region's dominant prewar, slave-owning planter class.
Prisoners
Main article: American Civil War prison camps
At the beginning of the Civil War, a parole system operated, under which captives agreed not to fight until exchanged. They were held in camps run by their army, paid, but not allowed to perform any military duties.
The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that, approximately 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons, accounting for 10 percent of the conflict's fatalities.
Women
See also:
Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides, disguised as men.
Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel. Women served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for treating the wounded during the war.
One woman, Jennie Hodgers, fought for the Union under the name Albert D. J. Cashier. After she returned to civilian life, she continued to live as a man until she died in 1915 at the age of 71.
Union
During the war, women in the North advocated for social reforms and created ladies' aid societies, also called soldiers' aid societies, which provided supplies to soldiers on the battlefield and cared for sick and wounded soldiers. Women in the North also held military rallies, village parades, and charity bazaars.
Women like Susan B. Anthony saw that supporting the war effort was a way to pave the future for women's suffrage movements. In her appeal to Northern women's loyalty, Anthony challenged the inconsistencies of the nation's founding ideal and its actual practices concerning equality among women.
Northern women during the Civil War also made great strides in the workforce, as they helped contribute to the war effort by stepping into roles that were traditionally held by men.
While women rarely worked in factories before the war, many filled men's places as they felt they could erase some of the boundaries that separated them from male preserves of power. Women were important in the workforce as they prepared and packed provisions, sewed uniforms and havelocks, and knitted socks and mittens. By entering these new environments, women made significant progress in the fight for women's equality in the workforce.
Northern women were also essential in the wartime support, as they were active participants in the war narrative. While women were not allowed to fight on the battlefield in the Civil War, they exhibited a patriotism that gave them the strength to maintain courage for themselves as well as their households.
While their men were off at war, Northern women created a landscape that emphasized love, sacrifice, and the nurturing of men's courage. This is demonstrated in feminized war literature that encouraged, expressed, and valorized men's patriotism. Women's unwavering encouragement and affection towards fighting men became a cornerstone of the war effort as it helped sustain the spirits of the men on the frontlines.
Confederate
Confederate women during the Civil War focused on preserving the central economic institution of the Old South: the plantation. With so many men away at war, women were left with the land and the slaves. While some women hired male overseers to assist them in directing and maintaining newly female-headed plantations, other women decided to stay at the plantations and run the plantations themselves.
Southern women became focused on keeping the economic structure of the South as they dealt with increasingly rebellious slaves.
The South relied on enslaved labor because it was an agrarian economy. A good number of enslaved men labored for the Confederate army during the war, which meant that enslaved women and children were increasingly at the center of the work force on the plantations.
White Southern women struggled to maintain morale on the home front as they dealt with problems without men. Although Southern women were devoted to the Confederacy, many requested that their sons and husbands be discharged from the military to help them at home.
Many women like Eliza Adams wrote to the Confederate government to appeal for exemption for her sons' military service as she sent five sons and other sons-in-laws to fight for the Confederacy. Southern women were torn between their patriotic ideals and their daily realities of life on the home front.
Union Navy
Main article: Union Navy
The Union Navy in 1861 was relatively small but, by 1865, expanded rapidly to 6,000 officers, 45,000 sailors, and 671 vessels totaling 510,396 tons. Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, control the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.
The main riverine war was fought in the West, where major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The US Navy eventually controlled the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and supported coastal army operations.
The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution, leading to naval innovations, including the ironclad warship. The Confederacy, recognizing the need to counter the Union's naval superiority, built or converted over 130 vessels, including 26 ironclads. Despite these efforts, Confederate ships were largely unsuccessful against Union ironclads. The Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards in Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built or modified steamboats.
The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS Hunley, which proved unsuccessful, and with the ironclad CSS Virginia, rebuilt from the sunken Union ship Merrimack.
On March 8, 1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage on the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day, the first Union ironclad, USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it in the Chesapeake Bay. The resulting three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, proving ironclads were effective warships.
The Confederacy scuttled the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor. The Confederacy's efforts to obtain warships from Great Britain failed, as Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation at war with a stronger enemy and feared souring relations with the US.
Union blockade
Main article: Union blockade
By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with minimal bloodshed, calling for a blockade of the Confederacy to suffocate the South into surrender. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan but opted for a more active war strategy.
In April 1861, Lincoln announced a blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance, ending regular traffic. The South blundered by embargoing cotton exports before the blockade was fully effective; by the time they reversed this decision, it was too late. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton.
The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service
Blockade runners
Main article: Blockade runners of the American Civil War
The Confederates began the war short on military supplies, which the agrarian South could not produce. Northern arms manufacturers were restricted by an embargo, ending existing and future contracts with the South. The Confederacy turned to foreign sources, connecting with financiers and companies like S. Isaac, Campbell & Company and the London Armoury Company in Britain, becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms.
To transport arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and supplies from Britain, through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in exchange for high-priced cotton. Many were lightweight and designed for speed, only carrying small amounts of cotton back to England.] When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen, mostly British, were released.
Economic impact
The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war due to multiple factors, the most notable being severe food shortages, failing railroads, loss of control over key rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate forces.
Historians agree the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy; however, Wise argues blockade runners provided enough of a lifeline to allow Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, to continue fighting for additional months, as a result of supplies that included 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that Confederate economy could no longer supply.
The Confederate cotton crop became nearly useless, which cut off the Confederacy's primary income source. Critical imports were scarce, and coastal trade also largely ended. The blockade's success was not measured by the few ships, which slipped through, but by the thousands that never tried. European merchant ships could not obtain insurance for their ships and transport, and were too slow to evade the blockade, leading them to cease docking in Confederate ports.
To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted British-built ships into commerce raiders, which targeted United States Merchant Marine ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Confederacy smuggled 600,000 arms, enabling it to continue fighting for two more years. As insurance rates soared, American-flagged ships largely ceased traveling in international waters, though some were reflagged with European flags, which allowed them to continue operating.
After the conclusion of the Civil War, the US government demanded Britain reimburse it for the damage caused by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in British ports. Britain paid the US$15 million in 1871, which covered costs associated with commerce raiding but nothing more.
Diplomacy
Main article: Diplomacy of the American Civil War
Further information below:
Although the Confederacy hoped Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, so they sought to bring them in as mediators. The Union worked to block this and threatened war against any country that recognized the Confederacy.
In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war, but this failed. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's postwar recovery.
Cotton diplomacy proved a failure, because Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports critically important. It also helped turn European opinion against the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton", as US grain increased from a quarter to almost half of British imports. Meanwhile, the war created jobs for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons.
Lincoln's administration initially struggled to appeal to European public opinion. At first, diplomats explained that the US was not committed to ending slavery and emphasized legal arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession.
Confederate representatives, however, focused on their struggle for liberty, commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy.
The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."
However, a European public with liberal sensibilities remained, which the US sought to appeal to by building connections with the international press. By 1861, Union diplomats like Carl Schurz realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral asset in swaying European public opinion.
Seward was concerned an overly radical case for reunification would distress European merchants with cotton interests; even so, he supported a widespread campaign of public diplomacy.
US minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved adept and convinced Britain not to challenge the Union blockade. The Confederacy purchased warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain, with the most famous being the CSS Alabama, which caused considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes.
However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful.
War loomed in late 1861 between the US and Britain over the Trent Affair, which began when US Navy personnel boarded the British ship Trent and seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington smoothed this over after Lincoln released the two men.
Prince Albert left his deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions to Lord Lyons during the Trent Affair. His request was honored, and, as a result, the British response to the US was toned down, helping avert war.
In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though such an offer would have risked war with the US. British prime minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding what his decision would be.
The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam caused the British to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation increased the political liability of supporting the Confederacy.
Realizing that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in 1861 and installed the Habsburg Austrian archduke Maximilian I as emperor.
Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico deterred it from war with the Union.
Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers and ensured they remained neutral.
Russia supported the Union, largely because it believed the US counterbalanced its geopolitical rival, the UK. In 1863, the Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San Francisco, respectively.
Eastern theater
Main article: Eastern theater of the American Civil War
The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian Mountains, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina
Background
Army of the Potomac
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26, 1861, and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes:
- McClellan would lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond.
- Ohio forces would advance through Kentucky into Tennessee.
- The Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi River.
- The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.
Army of Northern Virginia
The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern Virginia. The Army originated as the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, which was organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in Northern Virginia.
On July 20 and 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. The Army of the Potomac was renamed Army of Northern Virginia on March 14. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it on April 12, 1862.
When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command.
In his four-volume biography of Lee published in 1934 and 1935, historian Douglas S. Freeman wrote that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.
However, Freeman wrote that Lee corresponded with Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston, his predecessor in army command, before that date and referred to Johnston's command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia as of October 22, 1861, and the name Army of Northern Virginia was seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name.
Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but the organization of units as of March 14 was clearly the same organization that Lee received on June 1, and is generally referred to as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.
On July 4 at Harper's Ferry, Colonel Thomas J. Jackson assigned Jeb Stuart command of all cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah, and Jackson eventually commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.
Battles:
Pictured below: A portrait depicting the Battle of Antietam, which resulted in over 22,000 casualties, the Civil War's deadliest one-day battle
Called the "Philippi Races" because of its brevity, Philippi, VA (now Philippi, WV) was the scene of the first organized land action of the American Civil War, on June 3, 1861.
In July 1861, in the first in a series of prominent battles in the war, Union Army troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell attacked Confederate forces, which were under the command of Beauregard near the national capital in Washington.
The Confederacy successfully repelled the attack in the First Battle of Bull Run. In the beginning of the battle, the Union appeared to hold the upper hand. The Union Army routed Confederate forces, then holding defensive positions, but Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad, and the battle's course quickly changed.
A brigade of Virginians, commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, then a relatively unknown brigadier general from Virginia Military Institute, stood its ground, leading to Jackson earning the nickname "Stonewall".
Lincoln urged the Union Army to commence offensive operations against Confederate forces, which led General George B. McClellan, in the spring of 1862, to attack Virginia by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River southeast of Richmond.
McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula campaign.
Also in the spring of 1862, in Shenandoah Valley, Jackson led his Valley Campaign, during which he employed rapid and unpredictable movements on interior lines. Jackson's 17,000 troops marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days, during which they won minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies, comprising 52,000 men, including those of Nathaniel P. Banks and John C. Frémont, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond.
The swiftness of Jackson's troops earned them the nickname foot cavalry. Johnston halted McClellan's advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, but he was wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee assumed his position of command.
Lee and his senior subordinates, James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles, forcing McClellan's retreat.
During the Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, Confederate forces registered another important military victory. McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which enabled Lee's Confederate forces to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.
Emboldened by Second Bull Run, Confederate forces launched their first invasion of the North in the Maryland Campaign during which Lee led 45,000 Army of Northern Virginia troops across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan, and McClellan and Lee clashed in the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, which proved the bloodiest single day in both the Civil War and US military history.
Lee's army retreated to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it, leading the Battle of Antietam to be widely viewed as a Union victory since it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued as an executive order on January 1, 1863.
McClellan failed to respond in any measurable way to Lee's attempt to invade the North at Antietam led to his replacement by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside led Union Army troops in the Battle of Fredericksburg where they were defeated on December 13, 1862. Over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during futile attempts by Union troops to launch frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.
Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite having more than twice as many troops as Lee, Hooker's Chancellorsville Campaign proved ineffective, and he was soundly defeated in the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought between April 30 and May 6, 1863. Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army paid off. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was shot in his left arm and right hand by friendly fire, leading to the amputation of his arm, and he died of pneumonia. Lee famously said: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."
The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—occurred on May 3 as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville. That same day, John Sedgwick advanced across the Rappahannock River, defeated the small Confederate force at Mary's Heights in the Second Battle of Fredericksburg, and then moved westward, but Confederate forces succeeded in delaying Union forces in the Battle of Salem Church.
Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. In the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the war's bloodiest and one of its most strategically significant, Meade defeated Lee in a three-day battle between July 1 and 3, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg caused over 50,000 Union and Confederate casualties, but also proved the war's turning point, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor.
Pickett's Charge, launched July 3, on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, is considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy, representing the collapse of any credible prospect that the Confederacy could prevail in the war. At Gettysburg, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia suffered 28,000 casualties versus Meade's 23,000, and Lee was repelled in a failed attempt to invade and occupy Union territory.
Western theater
Main article: Western theater of the American Civil War
The Western theater refers to military operations between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, including Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and parts of Louisiana.
Background
Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee
Main articles: Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee
The primary Union forces in this theater were the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, Tennessee River and Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.
The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.
Battles:
The primary Union forces in this theater were the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, Tennessee River and Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.
The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.
Battles
The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union to victories in battles at Fort Henry (February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862), earning him the nickname of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. With these victories, the Union gained control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Nathan Bedford Forrest rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the Cumberland River. Nashville and central Tennessee fell to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.[citation needed]
Confederate general Leonidas Polk subsequently invaded Columbus, Kentucky, which ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned it against the Confederacy. Grant used river transport and Andrew Hull Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla, threatening the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the West" in Columbus, Kentucky. Although rebuffed at Belmont, Grant cut off Columbus. Confederate forces, lacking their gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of west Kentucky and opened Tennessee in March 1862.
At the Battle of Shiloh, in Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862, Confederate forces launched a surprise attack on Union forces, pushing them back to the Tennessee River as night fell. Over that night, however, the Navy landed reinforcements, and Grant counterattacked. Grant and the Union ultimately won a decisive victory in the first battle with a high number of casualties in what proved to be the first in a series of such battles.
Confederate forces lost Albert Sidney Johnston, considered their finest general, before Lee emerged to assume command.
One of the early Union objectives was to capture the Mississippi River, which would permit it to cut the Confederacy in half. The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee after it took Island No. 10, New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee.
In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans. "The key to the river was New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center." US naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South, which allowed Union forces to move up the Mississippi.
Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, allowing it to serve as a key base for further Union advances south along the Mississippi. On the Mississippi River, the Union took every fortress city with the exception of Vicksburg, Mississippi. But Confederate control of Vicksburg was sufficient in preventing the Union from controlling the entire river.
Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the Confederate Heartland Offensive included initial successes, including Kirby Smith's triumph in the Battle of Richmond and the capture of the Kentucky capital of Frankfort, Kentucky, on September 3, 1862. The campaign ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville, and Bragg was forced to end his attempt to invade and control Kentucky. Lacking logistical support and infantry recruits, Bragg was instead forced to retreat, and ended up being narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans in the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee in what proved to be the culmination of the Stones River Campaign.
US naval forces assisted Grant in the long, complex Vicksburg Campaign, which resulted in Confederate forces surrendering in the Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River in one of the war's turning points. The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga.
Aster Rosecrans' successful Tullahoma Campaign, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's Corps, defeated Rosecrans, despite the defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Bragg was then besieged in the Chattanooga campaign.
Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans, where he led the defeat of Bragg in the Third Battle of Chattanooga, eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his Knoxville Campaign and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.
Trans-Mississippi theater
Main article: Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War
Background
The Trans-Mississippi theater refers to military operations west of the Mississippi, encompassing most of Missouri, Arkansas, most of Louisiana, and the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Trans-Mississippi District was formed by the Confederate States Army to better coordinate Ben McCulloch's command of troops in Arkansas and Louisiana, Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard, as well as the portion of Earl Van Dorn's command that included the Indian Territory and excluded the Army of the West. The Union's command was the Trans-Mississippi Division, or the Military Division of West Mississippi.[180]
Battles
The first major battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the Battle of Wilson's Creek (August 1861). The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.
Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.
Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking military installations and civilian settlements. The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be driven out of Missouri, until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged.
By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide antiwar movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote to win re-election.
Small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. The Battle of Glorieta Pass was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign. The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas.
In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy but fewer for the Union.The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender.
After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Jefferson Davis informed General Kirby Smith in Texas that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling. The Union, in turn, did not directly engage him.[189] The Union's 1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana, failed and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.
Lower seaboard theater
Main article: Lower seaboard theater of the American Civil War
Background
The lower seaboard theater refers to military and naval operations that occurred near the coastal areas of the Southeast as well as the southern part of the Mississippi. Union naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan.
Battles
Pictured below: New Orleans captured
In July 1861, in the first in a series of prominent battles in the war, Union Army troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell attacked Confederate forces, which were under the command of Beauregard near the national capital in Washington.
The Confederacy successfully repelled the attack in the First Battle of Bull Run. In the beginning of the battle, the Union appeared to hold the upper hand. The Union Army routed Confederate forces, then holding defensive positions, but Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad, and the battle's course quickly changed.
A brigade of Virginians, commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, then a relatively unknown brigadier general from Virginia Military Institute, stood its ground, leading to Jackson earning the nickname "Stonewall".
Lincoln urged the Union Army to commence offensive operations against Confederate forces, which led General George B. McClellan, in the spring of 1862, to attack Virginia by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River southeast of Richmond.
McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula campaign.
Also in the spring of 1862, in Shenandoah Valley, Jackson led his Valley Campaign, during which he employed rapid and unpredictable movements on interior lines. Jackson's 17,000 troops marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days, during which they won minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies, comprising 52,000 men, including those of Nathaniel P. Banks and John C. Frémont, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond.
The swiftness of Jackson's troops earned them the nickname foot cavalry. Johnston halted McClellan's advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, but he was wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee assumed his position of command.
Lee and his senior subordinates, James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles, forcing McClellan's retreat.
During the Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, Confederate forces registered another important military victory. McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which enabled Lee's Confederate forces to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.
Emboldened by Second Bull Run, Confederate forces launched their first invasion of the North in the Maryland Campaign during which Lee led 45,000 Army of Northern Virginia troops across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan, and McClellan and Lee clashed in the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, which proved the bloodiest single day in both the Civil War and US military history.
Lee's army retreated to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it, leading the Battle of Antietam to be widely viewed as a Union victory since it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued as an executive order on January 1, 1863.
McClellan failed to respond in any measurable way to Lee's attempt to invade the North at Antietam led to his replacement by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside led Union Army troops in the Battle of Fredericksburg where they were defeated on December 13, 1862. Over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during futile attempts by Union troops to launch frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.
Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite having more than twice as many troops as Lee, Hooker's Chancellorsville Campaign proved ineffective, and he was soundly defeated in the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought between April 30 and May 6, 1863. Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army paid off. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was shot in his left arm and right hand by friendly fire, leading to the amputation of his arm, and he died of pneumonia. Lee famously said: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."
The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—occurred on May 3 as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville. That same day, John Sedgwick advanced across the Rappahannock River, defeated the small Confederate force at Mary's Heights in the Second Battle of Fredericksburg, and then moved westward, but Confederate forces succeeded in delaying Union forces in the Battle of Salem Church.
Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. In the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the war's bloodiest and one of its most strategically significant, Meade defeated Lee in a three-day battle between July 1 and 3, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg caused over 50,000 Union and Confederate casualties, but also proved the war's turning point, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor.
Pickett's Charge, launched July 3, on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, is considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy, representing the collapse of any credible prospect that the Confederacy could prevail in the war. At Gettysburg, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia suffered 28,000 casualties versus Meade's 23,000, and Lee was repelled in a failed attempt to invade and occupy Union territory.
Western theater
Main article: Western theater of the American Civil War
The Western theater refers to military operations between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, including Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and parts of Louisiana.
Background
Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee
Main articles: Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee
The primary Union forces in this theater were the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, Tennessee River and Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.
The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.
Battles:
The primary Union forces in this theater were the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, Tennessee River and Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.
The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.
Battles
The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union to victories in battles at Fort Henry (February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862), earning him the nickname of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. With these victories, the Union gained control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Nathan Bedford Forrest rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the Cumberland River. Nashville and central Tennessee fell to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.[citation needed]
Confederate general Leonidas Polk subsequently invaded Columbus, Kentucky, which ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned it against the Confederacy. Grant used river transport and Andrew Hull Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla, threatening the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the West" in Columbus, Kentucky. Although rebuffed at Belmont, Grant cut off Columbus. Confederate forces, lacking their gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of west Kentucky and opened Tennessee in March 1862.
At the Battle of Shiloh, in Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862, Confederate forces launched a surprise attack on Union forces, pushing them back to the Tennessee River as night fell. Over that night, however, the Navy landed reinforcements, and Grant counterattacked. Grant and the Union ultimately won a decisive victory in the first battle with a high number of casualties in what proved to be the first in a series of such battles.
Confederate forces lost Albert Sidney Johnston, considered their finest general, before Lee emerged to assume command.
One of the early Union objectives was to capture the Mississippi River, which would permit it to cut the Confederacy in half. The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee after it took Island No. 10, New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee.
In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans. "The key to the river was New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center." US naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South, which allowed Union forces to move up the Mississippi.
Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, allowing it to serve as a key base for further Union advances south along the Mississippi. On the Mississippi River, the Union took every fortress city with the exception of Vicksburg, Mississippi. But Confederate control of Vicksburg was sufficient in preventing the Union from controlling the entire river.
Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the Confederate Heartland Offensive included initial successes, including Kirby Smith's triumph in the Battle of Richmond and the capture of the Kentucky capital of Frankfort, Kentucky, on September 3, 1862. The campaign ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville, and Bragg was forced to end his attempt to invade and control Kentucky. Lacking logistical support and infantry recruits, Bragg was instead forced to retreat, and ended up being narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans in the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee in what proved to be the culmination of the Stones River Campaign.
US naval forces assisted Grant in the long, complex Vicksburg Campaign, which resulted in Confederate forces surrendering in the Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River in one of the war's turning points. The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga.
Aster Rosecrans' successful Tullahoma Campaign, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's Corps, defeated Rosecrans, despite the defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Bragg was then besieged in the Chattanooga campaign.
Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans, where he led the defeat of Bragg in the Third Battle of Chattanooga, eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his Knoxville Campaign and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.
Trans-Mississippi theater
Main article: Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War
Background
The Trans-Mississippi theater refers to military operations west of the Mississippi, encompassing most of Missouri, Arkansas, most of Louisiana, and the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Trans-Mississippi District was formed by the Confederate States Army to better coordinate Ben McCulloch's command of troops in Arkansas and Louisiana, Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard, as well as the portion of Earl Van Dorn's command that included the Indian Territory and excluded the Army of the West. The Union's command was the Trans-Mississippi Division, or the Military Division of West Mississippi.[180]
Battles
The first major battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the Battle of Wilson's Creek (August 1861). The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.
Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.
Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking military installations and civilian settlements. The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be driven out of Missouri, until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged.
By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide antiwar movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote to win re-election.
Small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. The Battle of Glorieta Pass was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign. The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas.
In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy but fewer for the Union.The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender.
After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Jefferson Davis informed General Kirby Smith in Texas that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling. The Union, in turn, did not directly engage him.[189] The Union's 1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana, failed and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.
Lower seaboard theater
Main article: Lower seaboard theater of the American Civil War
Background
The lower seaboard theater refers to military and naval operations that occurred near the coastal areas of the Southeast as well as the southern part of the Mississippi. Union naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan.
Battles
Pictured below: New Orleans captured
One of the earliest battles was fought in November 1861 at Port Royal Sound, south of Charleston. Much of the war along the South Carolina coast concentrated on capturing Charleston.
In attempting to capture Charleston, the Union military tried two approaches: by land over James or Morris Islands or through the harbor. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each attack. A famous land attack was the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, in which the 54th Massachusetts Infantry took part. The Union suffered a serious defeat, losing 1,515 soldiers while the Confederates lost only 174.
However, the 54th was hailed for its valor, which encouraged the general acceptance of the recruitment of African American soldiers into the Union Army, which reinforced the Union's numerical advantage.
Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast was an early target for the Union navy. Following the capture of Port Royal, an expedition was organized with engineer troops under the command of Captain Quincy Adams Gillmore, forcing a Confederate surrender. The Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it.
In April 1862, a Union naval task force commanded by Commander David Dixon Porter attacked Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which guarded the river approach to New Orleans from the south. While part of the fleet bombarded the forts, other vessels forced a break in the obstructions in the river and enabled the rest of the fleet to steam upriver to the city. A Union army force commanded by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler landed near the forts and forced their surrender. Butler's controversal command of New Orleans earned him the nickname "Beast".
The following year, the Union Army of the Gulf commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks laid siege to Port Hudson for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in US military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the Bayou Teche Campaign but surrendered after Vicksburg. These surrenders gave the Union control over the Mississippi.
Several skirmishes but no major battles were fought in Florida. The biggest was the Battle of Olustee in early 1864
Pacific coast theater
Main article: Pacific coast theater of the American Civil War
The Pacific coast theater refers to military operations on the Pacific Ocean and in the states and territories west of the Continental Divide.
Conquest of Virginia
At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war
This was total war not in killing civilians, but in injuring the Confederacy's capacity to produce and transport the supplies needed to continue the war. Sherman, at Grant's direction, seized provisions and destroyed homes, farms, and railroads, which Grant said "would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end."
Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Generals Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel was to attack the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the Atlantic Ocean, Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture Mobile, Alabama.
Grant's Overland Campaign
Grant's army set out on the Overland Campaign intending to draw Lee into a defense of Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army. The Union army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles, notably at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. These resulted in heavy losses on both sides and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly. At the Battle of Yellow Tavern, the Confederates lost Jeb Stuart.
An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Each battle resulted in setbacks for the Union that mirrored those they had suffered under prior generals, though unlike them, Grant chose to fight on rather than retreat. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. While Lee was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to cross the James River and began the protracted Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.
Sheridan's Valley Campaign
To deny the Confederacy continued use of the Shenandoah Valley as a base from which to launch invasions of Maryland and the Washington area, and to threaten Lee's supply lines for his forces, Grant launched the Valley campaigns in the spring of 1864.
Initial efforts led by Gen. Sigel were repelled at the Battle of New Market by Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge. The Battle of New Market was the Confederacy's last major victory, and included a charge by teenage VMI cadets. After relieving Sigel, and following mixed performances by his successor, Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail against the army of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early.
After a cautious start, Sheridan defeated Early in a series of battles in September and October 1864, including a decisive defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded through that winter to destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.
Sherman's March to the Sea
Main article: Sherman's March to the Sea
Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln.
Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign. Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched, with no destination set, laying waste to about 20 percent of the farms in Georgia on his March to the Sea. He reached the Atlantic at Savannah, Georgia, in December 1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles along the march. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina, to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army.
The Waterloo of the Confederacy
Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. One last Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the decisive Battle of Five Forks on April 1. The Union now controlled the entire perimeter surrounding Richmond–Petersburg, completely cutting it off from the Confederacy. Realizing the capital was now lost, Lee's army and the Confederate government were forced to evacuate. The Confederate capital fell on April 2–3, to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west after a defeat at Sayler's Creek on April 6.
End of the war
Main article: Conclusion of the American Civil War
Lee did not intend to surrender, but planned to regroup at Appomattox Station, where supplies were to be waiting, and then continue the war. Grant chased Lee and got in front of him, so that when Lee's army reached the village of Appomattox Court House, they were surrounded.
After an initial battle, Lee decided the fight was hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, during a conference at the McLean House.
In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and horse, Traveller. His men were paroled, and a chain of Confederate surrenders began.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was unharmed, because his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his nerve, so Johnson was immediately sworn in as president.
Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered, as news of Lee's surrender reached them On April 26, the same day Sergeant Boston Corbett killed Booth at a tobacco barn, Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 troops of the Army of Tennessee to Sherman at Bennett Place, near present-day Durham, North Carolina.
It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana east of the Mississippi, under the command of Lt. General Richard Taylor, surrendered. Confederate president Davis was captured in retreat at Irwinville, Georgia on May 10.
The final land battle was fought on May 13, 1865, at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas. On May 26, 1865, Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, acting for Edmund Smith, signed a military convention surrendering Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department.
This date is often cited by contemporaries and historians as the effective end date of the war On June 2, with most of his troops having already gone home, a reluctant Kirby Smith had little choice but to sign the official surrender document. On June 23, Cherokee leader and Brig. General Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.
On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in Texas and freeing the last slaves of the Confederacy. The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as Juneteenth.
The naval part of the war ended more slowly. On April 11, two days after Lee's surrender, when Lincoln proclaimed that foreign nations had no further "claim or pretense" to deny equality of maritime rights and hospitalities to US warships and, in effect, that rights extended to Confederate ships to use neutral ports as safe havens from US warships should end
Having no response to Lincoln's proclamation, President Johnson issued a similar proclamation dated May 10, more directly stating that the war was almost at an end and insurgent cruisers still at sea, and prepared to attack US ships, should not have rights to do so through use of safe foreign ports or waters.
Britain finally responded on June 6, by transmitting a letter from Foreign Secretary John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, to the Lords of the Admiralty withdrawing rights to Confederate warships to enter British ports and waters. US Secretary of State Seward welcomed the withdrawal of concessions to the Confederates.
Finally, on October 18, Russell advised the Admiralty that the time specified in his June message had elapsed and "all measures of a restrictive nature on vessels of war of the United States in British ports, harbors, and waters, are now to be considered as at an end" Nonetheless, the final Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England where James Iredell Waddell, the captain of CSS Shenandoah, surrendered the cruiser to British authorities on November 6.
Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Johnson issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America".
In attempting to capture Charleston, the Union military tried two approaches: by land over James or Morris Islands or through the harbor. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each attack. A famous land attack was the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, in which the 54th Massachusetts Infantry took part. The Union suffered a serious defeat, losing 1,515 soldiers while the Confederates lost only 174.
However, the 54th was hailed for its valor, which encouraged the general acceptance of the recruitment of African American soldiers into the Union Army, which reinforced the Union's numerical advantage.
Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast was an early target for the Union navy. Following the capture of Port Royal, an expedition was organized with engineer troops under the command of Captain Quincy Adams Gillmore, forcing a Confederate surrender. The Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it.
In April 1862, a Union naval task force commanded by Commander David Dixon Porter attacked Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which guarded the river approach to New Orleans from the south. While part of the fleet bombarded the forts, other vessels forced a break in the obstructions in the river and enabled the rest of the fleet to steam upriver to the city. A Union army force commanded by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler landed near the forts and forced their surrender. Butler's controversal command of New Orleans earned him the nickname "Beast".
The following year, the Union Army of the Gulf commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks laid siege to Port Hudson for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in US military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the Bayou Teche Campaign but surrendered after Vicksburg. These surrenders gave the Union control over the Mississippi.
Several skirmishes but no major battles were fought in Florida. The biggest was the Battle of Olustee in early 1864
Pacific coast theater
Main article: Pacific coast theater of the American Civil War
The Pacific coast theater refers to military operations on the Pacific Ocean and in the states and territories west of the Continental Divide.
Conquest of Virginia
At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war
This was total war not in killing civilians, but in injuring the Confederacy's capacity to produce and transport the supplies needed to continue the war. Sherman, at Grant's direction, seized provisions and destroyed homes, farms, and railroads, which Grant said "would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end."
Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Generals Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel was to attack the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the Atlantic Ocean, Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture Mobile, Alabama.
Grant's Overland Campaign
Grant's army set out on the Overland Campaign intending to draw Lee into a defense of Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army. The Union army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles, notably at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. These resulted in heavy losses on both sides and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly. At the Battle of Yellow Tavern, the Confederates lost Jeb Stuart.
An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Each battle resulted in setbacks for the Union that mirrored those they had suffered under prior generals, though unlike them, Grant chose to fight on rather than retreat. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. While Lee was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to cross the James River and began the protracted Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.
Sheridan's Valley Campaign
To deny the Confederacy continued use of the Shenandoah Valley as a base from which to launch invasions of Maryland and the Washington area, and to threaten Lee's supply lines for his forces, Grant launched the Valley campaigns in the spring of 1864.
Initial efforts led by Gen. Sigel were repelled at the Battle of New Market by Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge. The Battle of New Market was the Confederacy's last major victory, and included a charge by teenage VMI cadets. After relieving Sigel, and following mixed performances by his successor, Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail against the army of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early.
After a cautious start, Sheridan defeated Early in a series of battles in September and October 1864, including a decisive defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded through that winter to destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.
Sherman's March to the Sea
Main article: Sherman's March to the Sea
Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln.
Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign. Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched, with no destination set, laying waste to about 20 percent of the farms in Georgia on his March to the Sea. He reached the Atlantic at Savannah, Georgia, in December 1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles along the march. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina, to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army.
The Waterloo of the Confederacy
Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. One last Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the decisive Battle of Five Forks on April 1. The Union now controlled the entire perimeter surrounding Richmond–Petersburg, completely cutting it off from the Confederacy. Realizing the capital was now lost, Lee's army and the Confederate government were forced to evacuate. The Confederate capital fell on April 2–3, to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west after a defeat at Sayler's Creek on April 6.
End of the war
Main article: Conclusion of the American Civil War
Lee did not intend to surrender, but planned to regroup at Appomattox Station, where supplies were to be waiting, and then continue the war. Grant chased Lee and got in front of him, so that when Lee's army reached the village of Appomattox Court House, they were surrounded.
After an initial battle, Lee decided the fight was hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, during a conference at the McLean House.
In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and horse, Traveller. His men were paroled, and a chain of Confederate surrenders began.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was unharmed, because his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his nerve, so Johnson was immediately sworn in as president.
Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered, as news of Lee's surrender reached them On April 26, the same day Sergeant Boston Corbett killed Booth at a tobacco barn, Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 troops of the Army of Tennessee to Sherman at Bennett Place, near present-day Durham, North Carolina.
It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana east of the Mississippi, under the command of Lt. General Richard Taylor, surrendered. Confederate president Davis was captured in retreat at Irwinville, Georgia on May 10.
The final land battle was fought on May 13, 1865, at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas. On May 26, 1865, Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, acting for Edmund Smith, signed a military convention surrendering Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department.
This date is often cited by contemporaries and historians as the effective end date of the war On June 2, with most of his troops having already gone home, a reluctant Kirby Smith had little choice but to sign the official surrender document. On June 23, Cherokee leader and Brig. General Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.
On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in Texas and freeing the last slaves of the Confederacy. The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as Juneteenth.
The naval part of the war ended more slowly. On April 11, two days after Lee's surrender, when Lincoln proclaimed that foreign nations had no further "claim or pretense" to deny equality of maritime rights and hospitalities to US warships and, in effect, that rights extended to Confederate ships to use neutral ports as safe havens from US warships should end
Having no response to Lincoln's proclamation, President Johnson issued a similar proclamation dated May 10, more directly stating that the war was almost at an end and insurgent cruisers still at sea, and prepared to attack US ships, should not have rights to do so through use of safe foreign ports or waters.
Britain finally responded on June 6, by transmitting a letter from Foreign Secretary John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, to the Lords of the Admiralty withdrawing rights to Confederate warships to enter British ports and waters. US Secretary of State Seward welcomed the withdrawal of concessions to the Confederates.
Finally, on October 18, Russell advised the Admiralty that the time specified in his June message had elapsed and "all measures of a restrictive nature on vessels of war of the United States in British ports, harbors, and waters, are now to be considered as at an end" Nonetheless, the final Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England where James Iredell Waddell, the captain of CSS Shenandoah, surrendered the cruiser to British authorities on November 6.
Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Johnson issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America".