After
the Spanish conquered central and South America
during the age of discovery, other nations decided to follow, with the British
and French conquering land in the north. The British had 13 colonies on the
east coast by 1750 C. including Virginia, Boston and New
York. Although these settlers came from Britain,
for the most part they still considered themselves Americans. At the same time the
British did not want to give the Americans too much freedom as they used the
country as a cheap supplier for raw materials.
The
British army (also known as the Redcoats) was based in the 13 colonies to help
protect against Indian and French attacks. The cost to keep the British army in
America
came at a price and King George III
had to bring in taxes which the American people were not happy with. Taxes for
example were placed on a variety of goods including newspapers and legal
documents under the Stamp act, and tea and paint tax were under the Townsend
act. Many other colonies were upset with the fact that the Americans had nobody
fighting their corner in the British parliament and refused to pay the taxes. This
became known as ‘no taxation without representation’.
During a demonstration against taxes in 1770
five American protesters were shot dead in what was a peaceful demonstration.
This became known as the Boston
massacre. Then in 1773 in Boston
harbor, a group of Americans dressed as Indians got onto British ships and dumped
over 300 crates of tea into the harbor. This was the Boston tea party. This angered the British and
resulted in the closing of the harbor and the passing of more taxes. The
colonies reacted by creating first Continental Congress (or parliament) in 1774.
During this Congress they talked about rebelling against the British.
The first shots of the war ‘that were heard around the world’
were fired at Lexington
and Concorde in April of 1775. The Redcoats got word that the Americans had
arms. Paul Revere a lookout; saw the Redcoats coming and rode to warn the
Americans. This is when the first shots of the war were fired.
After this a second Continental Congress was called and
George Washington was appointed Commander in Chief. Many battles followed such
as the Battle of Bunker Hill which technically the English won but at a cost of
every three English men killed for each American killed. This gave the rebels a
much needed boost of confidence.
In 1776 on the 4th of July the
Americans were determined to win and issued The Declaration of Independence.
Defeat came when Philadelphia
fell to Britain
in September of 1777. Then they took another blow in the winter of 1778 when
they roughed it out in Valley Forge. Washington tried to rally
his troops. In 1778 the French joined the war, an invaluable aid towards
freedom from the Americans point of view.
The rebels had decided that in order to
drive the British out and win the war they had to get control of the sea and
stop the British from sending over reinforcements and supplies such as food,
arms, troops etc. This was done with a lot of help from the French as they sent over twenty-eight
warships on 21st August 1781, Washington
at the same time began moving his army south. As they marched south, Admiral de
Grasse’s fleet arrived at the Chesapeake Bay.
De Grasse defeated Admiral Thomas fleet in the “Battle
of the Capes,” and won control of the bay, this secured its entrance and stranded Cornwallis from
supply by sea. The defeat in Chesapeake Bay
was the only major naval defeat suffered by the Royal Navy of Britain in two
hundred years.
On September 28, 1781, Washington and Rochambeau, along with La Fayette’s troops and 3,000 of de Grasse’s men, arrived at Yorktown.
With them was the 2nd Canadian Regiment lead by Brigadier General Moses Hazen. There were nearly 20,000 men gathered
together at the camp created by Cornwallis. With the arrival of these troops,
the stranded British forces in Yorktown were
outnumbered by two-to-one and they were then hit with heavy fire as work began
on a siege line. Offshore, the French fleet successfully blocked help from
Cornwallis while Washington
made life terrible for the British troops with three weeks of shelling. The
Allies placed up to 375 guns, mortars and siege weaponry along their lines to
bombard Yorktown. They fired 1,700 shells and
bombs per day. The British had 240 pieces of artillery, mainly light guns and
mortars. The British had hardly any equipment and no horses to drag their guns
into position, so they were of little use.
Cornwallis, realsing the extent of his
problem, managed to send a message to Clinton in
New York. Clinton promised that a
relief group carrying 5,000 men would leave by the 5th of October. Meanwhile on
October 11, the allies started a second siege only 400 yards away from the
British forces. Three days later, the French and Americans captured two major
British forts, the French taking fort 9 and the Americans taking fort 10,
completing the second siege line and got into close fighting with the British battalion.
While the allies defeated his position
Cornwallis found out that the relief force from New York was going to be late. On October
16, a British attack hoping to silence a French battery, failed. The allied guns, were now firing straight into the British defensive
lines. That night, Cornwallis attempted to pass part of his force across the
river to Tarleton's position, but was hit by a storm. Had the weather not been
so bad, Cornwallis could have got his entire force across the river, broken
through the smaller Allied siege works and marched hard north. However,
Cornwallis, whose army was running low on food and ammunition and still
awaiting help from Clinton,
offered to surrender on October 17. On 19 October, the papers were signed and he officially
surrendered. About 7,000 British troops became prisoners of the American
forces. Five days after the surrender, Clinton's
relief arrived.
The morning following the battle a formal
surrender ceremony took place, but Cornwallis was not present at this surrender
ceremony as he was suffering from malaria. According to legend, the British
forces marched to the fife tune of “the world turned upside down” though no
real evidence of this exists.
Cornwallis’ deputy, General O’Hara, at first attempted to surrender to the
French General Rochambeau, but Rochambeau’s “aide-de-camp”, Mathieu
Dumas refused to
accept his surrender and is alleged to have said, “Vous vous trompez, le
général en chef de notre armée est à la droite.” (“You are mistaken,
the commander-in-chief of our army is to the right.”) and
then took him to Washington.
O’Hara then attempted to surrender to Washington, who refused because it was
not Cornwallis himself. O’Hara ceremonially offered his sword to Lincoln, who
finally accepted. All other British troops were required to surrender and walk
on their firearms.
The British prisoners amounted to
approximately one nineteenth of British regulars present in the United States.
It was not clear at the time that Yorktown was the final major battle of the
war, since the British still occupied key ports such as New York City and Charlestown, South
Carolina. Fighting
continued after the Yorktown surrender, and Washington believed the war might drag on
for another year.
The news of Cornwallis's surrender,
reaching Britain
in mid-November, set off events in Parliament which led to the resignation of
the British Prime Minister, Lord North in 20 March 1782, and the fall of a
ministry which lasted for twelve years. His successors decided that it was no
longer in Britain’s
best interest to continue the war, and negotiations were started. The British
signed the Treaty of Paris in September 1783 recognizing the United States and promising to remove all British
troops from the country.