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Still bitter from their defeat by the British in the French and Indian War, the French had secretly sent weapons to the Patriots since early 1776.
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The British had previously retreated from Bostan In March 1776, moving the theater of war to the Middle States.
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Two brothers, General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe, joined forces on Staten Island and sailed into New York Harbor in the summer of 1776 with the largest British expeditionary force ever assembled- 32,000 soldiers, including thousands of German mercenaries.
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Washington rallied 23,000 men to New York's defense, but he was vastly outnumbered. Most of his troops were untrained recruits with poor equipment. The battle for New York ended in late August with an American retreat following heavy losses.
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Washington resolved to risk everything on one bold stroke set for Christmas night, 1776. In the face of a fiece storm, he led 2,400 men in small rowboats across the ice-chocked Delaware River.
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By 8 o'clock the next morning, the men had marched nine miles through sleet and snow to the objective- Trenton New Jersey. In a surprise attack, the americans killed 30 of the enemies and took 918 captives and six Hessian cannons.
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By late fall, the British had pushed Washington's army across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. The vast majority of Washington's men had either deserted or had been killed or captured. Fewer than 8,000 men remained under Washington's command, and the terms of enlistment were due to an end on December 31st.
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The Americans were rallied by another astonishing victory eight days later against 1,200 British stationed at Princeton.
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In the spring of 1777, General Howe began his campaign to seize the American capital at Philadelphia.
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General Howe's troops sailed from New York to the head of the Chesapeake Bay, and landed near the capital in late August. The Continental Congress fled the city while Washington's troops unsuccessfully tried to block the redcoats at nearby Brandywine Creek. The British captured Philadelphia.
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Massed American troops finally surrounded Burgoyne at Saratoga, where he surrendered his battered army to General Gates on October 17,1777.
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Valley Forge served as the site of the Continental Army's camp during the winter of 1777-1778.
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The French recognized American Independence and signed an alliance, or treaty of cooperation, with the Americans in Febuary 1778. According to the terms, France agreed not to make peace with Britain unless Britain also recognized American Independence.
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In Febuary 1778, the American troops began an amazing transformation. Friedrich von Steuben, a prussian captain and talented drillmaster, volunteered his services to General Washington and went to work "to make regular soldiers out of the country bumpkins". He taught the colonial soldiers to stand at attention, execute field maneuvers, fire and reload quickly and wield bayonets.
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After their devastating defeat at Saratoga, the British changed their military strategy; in the summer of 1778 they began to shift their operations to the south. There, the British hoped to rally Loyalist support, reclaim their former colonies in the region, and than slowing fight their way back north.
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At the end of 1778, A Biritsh expedition easily took Savannah, Georgia.
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Lafayette joined Washington's staff and bore the misery of Valley Forge, lobbled for the French reinforcements in France in 1779, and led a command in Virginia in the last years of the war.
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By the spring of 1779, a royal govenor once again commanded Georgia.
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In 1780, General Henry Clinton, who had replaced Howe in New York, along with the ambitious general, Charles Cornwallis sailed south with 8,500 men.
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For most of 1780, Cornwallis succeeded. As the redcoats advanced, they were joined by thousands of African Americans who had escaped from Patriot slave owners to join the British and win their freedom.
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In 1780, a French army of 6,000 had landed in Newport, Rhode Island, after the British left the city to focus on the South. The French had stationed one fleet there and were operating another in the West Indies. When news of Cornwallis's plans reached him, Marquis de Lafayette suggested that the American and French armies join forces with the two French fleets and attack the British forces at Yorktown.
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In their greatest victory of the war, the British captured Charles Town, South Carolina, in May 1780 and marched 5,500 American Soldiers off as prisoners of war. Clinton than left for New York, leaving Cornwallis to command the British forces in the South and to conquer South and North Carolina.
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In August, Cornwallis's army smashed American forces at Camden, South Carolina, and within three months the British had established forts across the state. However, when Cornwallis and his forces advanced into North Carolina, Patriot bands attacked them and cut British communication lines. The continuous harassment forced the redcoats to retreat to South Carolina.
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In 1781, the Congress appointed a rich Philadelphia merchant named Robert Morris as superintendent of Finance. His associate was Haym Salomon, a Jewish political refugee from Poland. Morris and Salomon begged and borrowed on their personal credit to raise money to provide salaries for the Continental Army.
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General Daniel Morgan and his men led the British on a grueling chase through rough countryside. When the forces met in January 1781 at Cowpens, South Carolina, the British expected the outnumbered Americans to flee; but the Continental Army fought back, and forced the redcoats to surrender.
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Angered by the defeat at Cowpens, Cornwallis attacked Greene two months later at Guilford Court House, North Carolina. Cornwallis won the battle, but the victory cost him nearly a fourth of his troops- 93 were killed, over 400 were wounded and 26 were missing.
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Greene had weakened the British, but he worried about the fight for the South. On April 3, 1781, he wrote a letter to Lafayette, asking for help.
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Due to the efforts of Morris and Salomon, on September 8, 1781, the troops were finally paid in specie, or gold coin.
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Following Lafayette's plan, about 17,000 French and American troops surrounded the British on the Yorktown peninsula and bombarded them day and night. The siege of Yorktown lasted about 3 weeks. On October 17,1781, with his troops outnumbered by more than two to one and exhausted from constant shelling, Cornwallis finally raised the white flag of surrender.
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Colonel William Fontaine of the Virginia militia stood with the American and French armies lining a road near Yorktown, Virginia, on the afternoon of October 19,1781, to witness the formal British surrender.
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On October 19th, a truimphant Washington, the French generals, and their troops assembled to accept the British surrender.
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In September 1783, the delegates signed the Treaty of Paris, which comfirmed U.S independence and set the boundaries of the new nation. The United States now stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and from Canada to the Florida border.
