American Revolution

The **American Revolution** was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1783. In the American Revolutionary War, which lasted from 1775 to 1783, the colonies secured their independence from the British Crown and established the United States as the first sovereign nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of constitutionalism and liberal democracy.

American colonists objected to being taxed by the Parliament of Great Britain, a body in which they had no direct representation. Prior to the 1760s, Britain's American colonies enjoyed a relatively high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. During the 1760s, however, the British Parliament passed a number of acts that were intended to bring the American colonies under more direct rule from the British metropole and increasingly intertwine the colonial economies with those of Britain. The passage of the Stamp Act 1765 imposed internal taxes on official documents, newspapers, and most things printed in the colonies, which led to colonial protest and the meeting of representatives from several colonies at the Stamp Act Congress. Tensions relaxed briefly with Britain's repeal of the Stamp Act, but flared again with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767.

The British government deployed troops to Boston in 1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. While the British government repealed most of the Townshend duties in 1770, it retained its tax on tea in order to symbolically assert Parliament's right to tax the colonies. The burning of the *Gaspee* in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of the Tea Act in 1773, and the resulting Boston Tea Party in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 vastly escalated tensions. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws, which effectively rescinded Massachusetts' governing autonomy. The colonies responded by rallying behind Massachusetts. In late 1774, twelve of the thirteen colonies sent delegates to Philadelphia, where they formed the First Continental Congress and began coordinating their resistance to Britain. Opponents of Britain were known as "Patriots" or "Whigs", while colonists who retained their allegiance to the Crown were known as "Loyalists" or "Tories." In early 1775, the state of Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion, and the order was sent out for "patriots" to be disarmed. Paul Revere was a member of the Sons of Liberty and had developed a plan to alert militiamen across the Charles River of the movement of British troops. On April 18, 1775 two men, Capt. John Pulling Jr. and Robert Newman, hung two lanterns from the steeple of the Old North Church to signal to patriots in Charlestown that British troops were appraoching "by sea" across the Charles River, rather than "by land." This signal set off a system of riders across the county, alerting that British troops were on the move.

On April 19, 1775, open warfare erupted, launching the American Revolutionary War, when British troops were sent to capture a cache of military supplies and were confronted by local Patriot militia at Lexington and Concord. Patriot militia, aided by the newly-formed Continental Army, then put British forces in Boston under siege, forcing them to withdraw by sea. Each colony formed a Provincial Congress, which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism, and contributed to the Continental Army, which was led by George Washington following his June 14, 1775 appointment as commander-in-chief by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The Patriots unsuccessfully attempted to invade northeastern Quebec in an attempt to rally sympathetic colonists there during the winter of 1775–1776, but were far more successful in the southwestern parts of the colony.

Gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress declared King George III a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen. On July 2, 1776, the Congress passed the Lee Resolution, which declared that the colonies considered themselves "free and independent states". Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, which was principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, a member of the Committee of Five charged with the document's development. The Declaration of Independence embodied the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism, rejected monarchy and aristocracy, and famously proclaimed that "all men are created equal", though it was not until later centuries that constitutional amendments and federal laws incrementally granted equal rights to African Americans, Native Americans, poor white men, women, and LGBT+ people.

In the summer of 1776, in a major setback for American patriots, the British captured New York City and its strategic harbor. In September 1777, in anticipation of a coordinated attack by the British Army on the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia, the Continental Congress chose to depart Philadelphia temporarily for Baltimore, where they continued deliberations at Henry Fite House, and protected the Liberty Bell, moving it to Zion United Church of Christ in Allentown, where it was successfully hidden under the church's floorboards for nine months until the British departure from Philadelphia.

In October 1777, the Continental Army experienced a significant victory, capturing British troops at the Battle of Saratoga. Following the victory in the Saratoga campaign, France then entered the war as an ally of the cause of American independence, expanding the Revolutionary War into a global conflict. The British Royal Navy blockaded ports and held New York City for the duration of the war, and other cities for brief periods, but failed in their effort to destroy Washington's forces. Britain's priorities shifted southward, attempting to hold the Southern states with the anticipated aid of Loyalists that never materialized. British general Charles Cornwallis captured Continental Army troops at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. A combined American and French force captured Cornwallis' army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively securing an American victory and bringing the war to an end. The Treaty of Paris was signed on 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, including southern Canada, with the British retaining control of northern Canada, and French ally Spain taking back Florida.

Among the significant results of the American victory were American independence and the end of British mercantilism in America, opening up worldwide trade for the United States—including resumption with Britain. Around 60,000 Loyalists migrated to other British territories, particularly to Canada, but the great majority remained in the United States. The Americans wrote the United States Constitution in 1787 and adopted it in 1789, replacing the weak wartime Confederation and establishing a comparatively strong national government structured as a federal republic, which included an elected executive, a national judiciary, and an elected bicameral Congress representing states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives. It is the world's first federal democratic republic founded on the consent of the governed. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was ratified as the first ten amendments, guaranteeing a number of fundamental rights used as justification for the revolution.