The War of Independence (1776-1781)
12.7.1 The First Armed Clash: The “Battle” at Lexington (April 19,1775)
After spending all night awake, 77 militia commanded by Captain Parker formed on the green, awaiting the arrival of the English soldiers.
The British troops arrived in Lexington by 5 o’clock. In an initial skirmish, the British killed eight militiamen and drove the rest to Concord, where they were joined by allies who had been watching the maneuvers of the English army from the nearby hills. Entering Concord, the British found no weapons, and proceeded to set fire to the village, which incensed the minute men, who descended from the hills to fight the British troops. The battle lasted several hours and ended with the defeat of the “redcoats”, who retreated to Boston, hounded all the way back by groups of militia. The British lost 250 men in what went down in history as the first battle of the War of Independence (Fischer 1995, 227).12.7.2 The Second Continental Congress
and the Declaration of Independence
The armed conflict at Lexington triggered the final split between London and the colonies. George III resolved to subjugate the settlers by force of arms, while the rebels, in a Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, assumed sovereign authority (Ellis 2013, 101-102). This same Congress ordered the formation of an army, whose command was entrusted to George Washington, as we know a Virginia landowner who had military experience as a veteran of the French-Indian War (Maier 1991, 244). In early 1776, the Virginia colonists joined the uprising.
The rebels’ situation was extremely precarious. In the first place, most of the colonists were still reluctant to break with the British Crown. Secondly, the leaders of the insurrection were aware that they could not triumph against the English without foreign aid. Thus, they intended to appeal to France and Spain, the two powers which had been humiliated in the Peace of Paris of 1763.
Considering it essential to formalize their break with Britain, on July 4, 1776, the members of the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, a document drafted by Thomas Jefferson (Armitage 2007, 157-164).12.7.3 The Course of the Conflict
12.7.3.1 The Phase of British Victories (1776-1777)
During the initial months of the war, the British were victorious, in part thanks to the well-trained German mercenaries they employed. The colonial army, meanwhile, lacked professional soldiers and was in disarray.[627] The 13 colonies were very jealous of their own authorities, and considerably reluctant to recognize the authority of a central government, even during wartime. To make matters worse, among the colonists there were a number of “Loyalists”—essentially large landowners and merchants—who still did not wish to break with Britain. The rebel troops lacked weapons and shrank from fighting far from their homes. Thus, once they served the stints to which they had committed, they would abandon the front.[628] Finally, the rebels had few good officers and no great general to lead them. Washington himself has been called a mediocre military tactician—though his tenacity, dedication and determination went a long way to making up for his technical shortcomings (Ellis 2013, 25-28).[629]
12.7.3.2 Saratoga
It is, therefore, understandable that the British enjoyed the initial military advantage, quickly able to occupy New York and Philadelphia. They were, however, fighting in a country they did not know, devoid of roads and, at times, even paths (which made provisioning difficult) and blanketed with immense forests which made it easy to ambush the enemy. In fact, this is precisely what happened at Saratoga, on October 17, 1777, where the colonists were able to tend a trap for English General John Burgoyne, who was coming from Canada with reinforcements. Despite their superior numbers and arms, the English were forced to surrender and the rebels scored their first victory of the war (Ferling 2007, 239241).
More important than the military value of victory itself, Saratoga would prove a turning point because it convinced the governments of France and Spain that the colonists were, in fact, capable of defeating the British (Dull 1985, 50-56). Louis XVI and Charles III would soon declare war against George III (Graebner et al. 2011, 41-61 and 63-84).Foreign intervention would dramatically turn the tide in the war. The French government, in line with a proposal by Foreign Minister Vergennes (Hoffman and Albert 1981), began providing the rebels with equipment and weapons. After signing a 1778 treaty of alliance with Benjamin Franklin, the rebels’ representative in Paris, the French sent General Lafayette to fight with them.[630]
In 1779, Spain joined the alliance in the hope of recovering the two Floridas, Gibraltar and Menorca.[631] The war dragged on for 5 more years. The decisive battle would come in the south, where a French army led by General Rochambeau helped the colonists, led by Colonel Alexander Hamilton, to corner a British army at Yorktown (in southeastern Virginia). The siege continued until the British General Charles Cornwallis was finally forced to surrender on October 17, 1781 (Ferling 2007,523-539). Despite the decisive defeat, the British took 2 years to sign the peace.
12.7.4 The Peace of Versailles and the Recognition of a New
Nation: The United States of America
In the peace signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783, the 13 colonies officially broke with the British Empire and became a newly independent nation: the United States of America.[632]
In terms of its territory, the new nation stretched west to the Mississippi River on a line beginning at the western tip of Lake Superior and continued down to the south, to what was then part of the Spanish Empire. This wide strip of land is currently made up of the eight states of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. To the south, the United States bordered on Spanish possessions. Since 1765, much of these formed part of the vast Louisiana territory ceded by France, to which Spain added the two Floridas in 1783, ceded to it by England. Thus, the King of Spain theoretically, held the entire southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and two thirds of the territory making up the modern-day United Sates—though most of this land had not actually been settled by the Spanish.[633]
12.8