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The French had secretly sent weapons to the patriots because they were still upset about their defeat in the French and Indian War.
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British retreating from Boston moving the war to the middle states.
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Two brothers, General Willam Howe and Admiral Richard Howe joined forces on Staten Island and sailed into the New York harbor in the summer of 1776 with the largest British expeditionary force ever assembled.(Americans called these troops Hessians because many of them came from the German region Hesse).
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Defeat of American Colonies against the British at the Battle of New York on August 27, 1776. (they were outnumbered and untrained with poor equitment).
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British pushed Washington's army across the Delaware River into Pennsylavannia.
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Washington, on Christmas night 1776. during a fierce storm, he led 2400 men in small rowboats acrossed the iced Delaware River.
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By 8am, the Continental Army had gotten through iced covered Delaware river to Trenton, NJ, held by Hessians. Hessians had drunk too much rum the night before and were still sleeping it off. In a surprise attack, the Americans killed 30 of the enemy and took 918 captives, along with 6 Hessian cannons.
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Majority of Washington's men had either deserted or had been killed or captured. Fewer than 8000 men remained under Washington's command, and the terms of their enlistment were due on December 31, 1776.
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In the spring of 1777, General Howe began his campaign to seize the American capital at Philadelphia. He and his men sailed from New York to the head of Chesapeake Bay and landed near the capital in the late August. Washington's troops were unsuccessful at their attempt to block the redcoats at nearby Brandywine Creek. British troops were able to capture Philadelphia.
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Massed American troops finally surounded Burgoyne at Saratoga, where he surrendered his battered army to General Gates on October 17,1777. The surrender dramatically changed Britian's war stategy. From then on, British kept their troops along the coast, close to the big guns and supply bases of British fleet.
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British troops found homes where the underclothed and underfed patriots huddled in make shift huts in the freezing snow covered Pennsylvannia woods.
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French agreed to support Americans in war and signed an alliance, or treaty of cooperation with the Americans in February 1778.
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At Valley Forge, American troops began an amazing transfermation with the help of military leaders. The Continental Army was becoming an effective fighting force.
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After British defeat at Saratoga, in the summer of 1778, they began to shift their operations to the south. There the British hoped to rally Loyalist support, reclam their former colonies in te region and then slowly fight their way back north.
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At the end of 1778, a British expedition easily took Savannah, Georgia.
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Spring of 1779, a royal governor once again commanded georgia.
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Military leader Marquis de Lafayette, a 20-year old French arisocrat, offered his assistance. Lafayette joined Washington's staff and bore the misery of Valley Forge, lobbled for French reinforcements in France in 1779 and led to command in Virgina in the last years of the war.
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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 8500 men.
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In their greatest victory of the war, the British captured Charles Town, South Carolina in May 1780 and marched 5500 American soldiers of as prisoniers of the war.
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For most of 1780, Cornwillis succeded in conquering North and South Carolina. AS the red coats advanced, they were joined by thousnds of African Americans who had escaped from patriot slave owners to join British and win their freedom.
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Morgan and his men led the Britiah 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, anf forced the red coats to surrender.
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Greene had weakened the British, but he worried about the fight for the south. On April 3, 1780, he wrote a letter to Lafayette, asking for help.
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The congress appointed a rich Philadelphia merchant named Robert Morrs as superintendent. His assosiate was Haym Salomon, ( a jewish political refugee from Poland). They begged and borrowed on their personal credit to raise money to provide salaries for the Continental Army.
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Daniel Morgan's colonial forces defeated British reglment under coloniel Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. More than 300 British soldiers were killed or wounded, and 600 were taken as prisoniers in Newport, Rholde Island, after the British left the city to focus on the south.
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They raised funds from many sources including Philadelphia's Quakers and Jews. due to the efforts of Morris and Salomon, on September 8, 1781, the troops were finally paid in spiece or gold coins.
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On October 17, 1781, with his troops outnumbered by more than two to one and exausted from constant shelling, Cornwillis finally raised the white flag of surrender.
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Cononel William Fontaine of the virgina militia stood with the American and French armies lining a road near Vorktown, Virgina on the afternoon of October 19, 1781 to witness the formal British surrender.
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Peace talks began in Paris in 1782. Representatives of four nations - The United States, Great Britian, France and Spain- joined the negotiation with each nation looking out for its own interests.
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In September 1783, the delagates signed the Treaty of Paris which confirmed U.S. independence and set boundaries of new nation.
