George Washington’s greatest accomplishment was holding his army together during a long and hard fought struggle for American Independence. From 1775 to 1782, the Americans faced the powerful British Empire. Led by General Washington they liberated themselves from Great Britain’s control of colonial America. Before the war, the British planned on breaking the colonies in half by getting between the northern and southern Colonies. They wanted to blockade the ports and prevent the flow of goods and supplies from American allies. The British attempted to execute a divide and conquer strategy, while the Americans had decided to conduct a war of attrition because the British had a long supply line. The Americans planned on employing guerilla warfare tactics because when fighting any insurgent war the Americans knew that they did not have to win a major battle, just wear down the British Army and make an alliance with one of Britain’s enemies, such as the French. Eventually, a combined force of American and French soldiers defeated the British under General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown on 19 October 1781. Analysis of the conflicts’ major battles demonstrates the strategy, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures conducted during the American Revolutionary War.
THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD
Subsequent to receiving significant intelligence by the legendary Paul Revere, American militiamen fought roughly 800 British soldiers on 19 April 1775. The battle began at Concord. Over 70 British soldiers were slain and more than 200 fighting men were injured. The Americans lost 49 soldiers and 39 militiamen sustained injuries. This conflict marked the commencement of the Revolutionary War. While the Lexington and Concord battles were not colonial victories, they were certainly not British triumphs either becausecontinual Patriot gunfire harassed the British Army resulting in the deaths and wounding of more British soldiers. The pattern would prove typical of the war. British forces, trained to fight European-style open-field battles, would often win such engagements, only to be cut up piecemeal by colonial guerrilla groups firing from concealed ambush.
AMERICANS CAPTURE FT TICONDEROGA
Following the Lexington and Concord battles, colonial militia forces from all over New England converged on Boston and laid siege to the city. On 11 May 1775, American forces under Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured the British fort of Ticonderoga. The fort was captured without firing a shot. The capture was the first offensive military maneuver by the colonists, and the cannons captured there were invaluable.The fort’s location was considered critical by many Colonists. It was positioned to cut the Colonies in half, as well as to serve, as a rear staging area against American forces around Boston.
BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL
On 17 June 1775, the Americans fought British on Breed’s Hill, which is next to Bunker Hill, just outside Boston. About 1,400 Americans held the hill. About 2,500 British troops attacked them in a frontal assault rather than by surrounding them. British General Gage began firing on Breed’s Hill with a naval bombardment during the early morning hours. Then he launched an amphibious assault with many men under General Howe. Twice, the superior British force attempted to take the hill, and twice they were repelled. A third assault, with fixed bayonets, succeeded only after the American colonials had run out of ammunition. Misnamed for Bunker Hill, the battle was a tactical defeat for the colonists, but it was a tremendous psychological victory for them. About 1,000, or 40 percent, of British troops were killed or wounded, while the Americans forces suffered about 400 killed or wounded. The carnage shocked British commander William Howe and he later became overly cautious and conservative in future battles.
AMERICANS ATTACK CANADA
During the revolution against Britain, American Patriots attempted to persuade the Quebec French citizens to join them in their cause against the British. American military strategists knew that as long as the British conducted the war from far away in London, the great distance would give the Patriot cause a notable advantage. However, if the British should begin to utilize nearby Canada as the staging area for combat operations on the colonies, that advantage would disappear. Regrettably, the French Canadians were unwilling to initiate any action themselves. But, fortified by successes in defending against the British in New England and the South, the Americans decided to take the offensive.
An army under General Richard Montgomery marched from upper New York and captured Montreal on 10 November 1775. Meanwhile, troops commanded by Colonel Benedict Arnold advanced through the wilderness of Maine to unite with Montgomery’s units in an attack on the walled city of Quebec. The invaders were beaten back, and Montgomery was killed on 30 December. American forces maintained a blockade of the Canadian capital through May 1776, but the offensive in Canada had petered out, and Americans would stay out of the region for the rest of the war. The losses left Canada firmly in British hands and gave Great Britain a good base from which to launch attacks on New York and New England.
SIEGE OF BOSTON
After the Battle of Bunker Hill the British remained in Boston, surrounded by an increasing number of Continental soldiers. Many of the British troops were bottled up in Boston where Washington’s forces laid siege. The British were unable to liberate themselves from their entrenchments. Then, when Washington displayed and positioned his artillery on Dorchester Heights, British commanders gave the order to evacuate by sea in March 1776, reestablishing their headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
BATTLE OF NEW YORK
British Gen. Howe attacked New York City with the largest single force the British would ever field in the Revolution (32,000 troops, 400 transports, 73 warships). Washington and his entire army of about 20,000 men moved to the area around New York City, hoping to hem in and defeat the British Army. The situation in New York appeared hopeless to Washington. During the war, Washington wanted to conduct a military strategic withdrawal where he would pull his American forces back in a manner that would cost the British attacker while leaving his own forces intact to fight another day. While this was precisely what Washington wanted to do immediately in the case of New York, the Congress, fearing that losing a major city would discourage Americans throughout the colonies, ordered him to defend the position. Washington met with defeat on Long Island on 27 August 1776 partly because many of the American troops were raw recruits, who panicked and ran in a series of battles in the area against a more disciplined British Army.
If Washington and the Continental Congress had considered the probabilities more seriously, they probably would have raised the white flag of surrender. However, Washington never surrendered. Rather, he made a series of magnificent rearguard action maneuvers against Howe on Manhattan Island, which cost the British time, money, and energy. The combat operations took Howe from August to November to clear Washington’s forces from New York City and its surroundings. Then, instead of moving inland through the Hudson, Howe pushed Washington across New Jersey. Howe had hoped to corner and fight the Continental Army conventionally, but he was mistaken. The Americans escaped across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania on 7 December 1776.
BATTLE OF TRENTON
The revolution transformed Washington’s men into a determined and disciplined army, even in the depths of the war’s first vicious winter. Washington, as General Howe saw the situation, was defeated and crushed. Howe believed that Washington would not strike back immediately under severe weather conditions. Howe was a competent European general. In Europe, the proper times during the year for fighting were spring, summer, and fall. In Europe, armies never fought battles during the winter season. However, Washington understood that America was not Europe. Collecting his scattered regulars and militiamen, General Washington reorganized his army and led it back across the Delaware River, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
On 26 December 1776, Washington’s Army crossed the Delaware and surprised the British at Trenton. The main attack was made by 2,400 troops under Washington on the Hessian Garrison. Washington’s troops achieved total surprise and defeated the British forces. The surprise attack resulted in Washington capturing over 900 Hessian troops and 1,200 weapons without losing a single American soldier. Washington’s victory was his first significant victory during the war, and the success helped to restore American morale. Later, Washington then went on to an even bigger victory at Princeton on 3 January 1777. The triumphs were a sharp slap in General Howe’s face. Fortified by these miraculous victories, Congress rejected the peace terms the Howe brothers, in their capacity as peace commissioners, proposed. The fight for independence would continue.
BRITISH SURRENDER AT SARATOGA
In 1777, British General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne planned on leading a British Army into New York and New England from Canada, while the British forces already in New York City would sail down to capture Philadelphia. His battle plans resulted in a strategic and tactical disaster for the British because Burgoyne had no concept of a march through enemy-infested wilderness and took along officers’ wives and children. Continually harassed by American troops and running low on food and supplies, Burgoyne’s army lost two battles near
Saratoga. On 17 October 1777, the British Army of nearly 6,000 men surrendered. News of the American victory eventually convinced France to enter the war on the American side.
FRENCH MILITARY SUPPORT
As early as 1776, Louis XVI’s foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, persuaded his king to aid, albeit secretly, the American cause. Prudently, Vergennes withheld overt military aid until he was confident of the Americans’ prospects for victory. He did not want to risk a losing war with Britain. With the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, rumors that Britain was going to offer America major territorial concessions to bring peace, and the extraordinary diplomatic skills of Benjamin Franklin finally convinced French leaders openly join the American camp. An alliance was formally concluded on 6 February 1778, whereby France granted diplomatic recognition to the “United States of America.” Shortly after the treaty of alliance was signed, Spain, a French ally, also declared war on Britain.
NATIVE AMERICAN PARTICIPATION
The American Revolution had two elements. Along the eastern seaboard, it was a confrontation where one army fought against another army. However, farther inland, the fighting reflected the French and Indian War. While both sides employed Native American allies, the British recruited more Native Americans to conduct terrorism operations on outlying Colonial American settlements. When the Revolutionary War began, the royal lieutenant governor of Detroit, Henry Hamilton, played a key role in stirring up Native American passions to wage ferocious warfare on Patriot settlers. In the lower South, the British found effective Native American allies in the Cherokee, who, despite suffering early defeats at the hands of the Colonial American militia in 1776, continued to raid the frontier.
BONHOMME VERSUS SERAPIS
On 23 September 1779, an American navy warship named the Bonhomme Richard took on the British warship Serapis near the coast of England. The American captain, John Paul Jones, saw two of his major guns explode during the first discharge. Unconcerned, he pulled alongside the Serapis and the two warships pounded each other for more than two hours. During naval battle, when asked if he would surrender, Jones replied, “I have not yet begun to fight!” Finally, faced with the arrival of another American warship, the Serapis surrendered. Jones’s own warship was badly damaged before he abandoned the vessel. Jones transferred his flag to the British warship. The victory was the greatest single naval victory during the war and shook British confidence in its naval prowess.
BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE
For most of the war, the campaigns in South consisted of British troops usually defeated American troops regularly. In December 1780, Congress finally placed a competent general in charge of the American forces in the South while Washington fought in the North. The commander was quick thinking 38-year-old Nathanael Greene, who was probably the only American general to consistently out-strategize his opposition. Following a few victories at the battles of Cowpens and Eutaw Springs, Greene confronted British Gen. Charles Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. The British Army achieved bloody and bitter victories during battles of the war, but they suffered 30 percent casualties, while Greene’s losses were light. Cornwallis was forced to withdraw his forces out of the Carolinas and back to Virginia, moving his troops to Yorktown.
TRIUMPH AT YORKTOWN
Washington had been striving for months to organize his army with the French Army and warships that were ready to support the American troops. Furthermore, Congress had failed to supply him with the necessary reinforcements and provisions. Finally, in mid-1781, the situation began to improve for Washington because of French logistic and military support. The French Army and its warships along with the American Army converged on Yorktown and surrounded the British Army under Cornwallis. Meanwhile, additional British forces were unable to come to Cornwallis’s rescue because the British mishandled their fleets. On 19 October 1781, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army of 8,000 soldiers.
ANALYSIS: GEN. GORGE WASHINGTON AND THE REVOLUTION
During the war, the Americans had early successes, winning an early battle in New York and holding their own at a big battle outside Boston, primarily because the British were slow to recognize they were involved in a real fight. However, when the Americans launched an invasion of Canada, the war began going badly for American forces. Soon after the Colonial Americans were defeated by Canadian forces, Washington was beaten in New York and escaped total disaster due to great luck or likely divine intervention. Nevertheless, Washington learned a valuable lesson: He would never win the war by fighting the British in a series of open-field, European-style major conventional battles. The Continental Army had employ guerilla warfare tactics and it had become more of a moving target. “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again,” noted Gen. Nathanael Greene.
George Washington’s greatest accomplishments were to hold his armies together during a long and hard fought struggle for American Independence. His plan exploited British strategic and tactical blunders effectively and it made each British v
RELATED SOURCES: African American History; Melba J, Duncan; 2003.American History; Alan Axelrod, Ph.D.; 2000.Native American History; Walter C. Fleming; 2003.The American Presidency; Alan Axelrod, Ph.D.; 2009.The American Revolution; Alan Axelrod, Ph. D.; 2000.U.S. History; Steve Wiegand; 2000.