The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the United States of America.
The American colonials proclaimed "no taxation without representation" starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. They rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them because they had no representatives in that governing body. Protests steadily escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's rights of self-government. The other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts, and a group of American Patriot leaders set up their own government in late 1774 at the Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance of Britain; other colonists retained their allegiance to the Crown and were known as Loyalists or Tories.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when King George's redcoats attempted to destroy Colonial military supplies at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The conflict then developed into war, during which the Patriots (and later their French allies) fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Each of the thirteen colonies formed a Provincial Congress which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism, and recruited a Continental Army led by General George Washington. The Continental Congress declared King George a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 2, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal.
The Continental Army forced the redcoats out of Boston in March 1776, but that summer the British captured New York City and its strategic harbor, which they held for the duration of the war. The Royal Navy blockaded ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but they failed to destroy Washington's forces. The Patriots attempted to invade Canada during the winter of 1775–76 without success, but they captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. France entered the war as an ally of the United States with a large army and navy. The war then moved to the Southern states, where Charles Cornwallis captured an army at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. Finally, a combined American and French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively ending the war. The Treaty of Paris was signed September 3, 1783, formally ending the conflict and confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada, and Spain taking Florida.
Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of the United States Constitution, establishing a relatively strong federal national government which included an executive, a national judiciary, and a bicameral Congress representing states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives.[1][2] The Revolution also resulted in the migration of around 60,000 Loyalists to other British territories, especially British North America (Canada).
American Revolution
1765–1783
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