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The Americans were railled by another astonishing victory against 1,200 British stationed at Princeton. Encouraged by these victories, Washington marched his army into winter camp near Morristown, in northern New Jersey.
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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.
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General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe, joined forces on Staten Island and sailed into the New York Harbor.
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The battle for New York ended in late this August with an American Retreat following heavy losses. Michael Graham, a Contintenal Army volunteer, decribed the chaotic withdrawl.
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By late fall, around this time, The British has pushed Washington's army across the Deleware River into Pennsylvania. A majority of Washington's men had either been deserted, killed, or captured.
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Washington resolved to risk everything. Even with a strong storm, he led 2,400 men in small rowboats across the ice-choked Deleware River .The men had marched nine miles through the snow to Trenton, New Jersey held by a garrison of Hesslians.
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Fewer than 8,000 men remained under Washington's command, and the terms of their enlistment were due to end. Washington needed a way to keep his men from leaving and just going home.
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In the Spring, General Howe began his campaign to seize the American capital at Philidelphia.
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General Howe's troops sailed from New York to the head of Chesapeake Bay, and landed near the Capital. The Continental Congress fled the city while Washington's troops unsuccessfuly tryed to block the redcoats at nearby Brandywine Creek. The British captured Philly.
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Massed American troops finally surrounded Burgoyne at Saratoga, where he surrendered his battered army to General Gates.
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Ablbigense Waldo worked as a surgeon at Vallery Forge outside Philly.
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The French recognized American independence and signed an alliance with the Americans.
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In the midst of the frozen winter at Vallery Forge, American troops began an amazing transformation. The continental army was becoming an effective fighting force.
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In the summer, the British began to shift their operations to the South. There, the British hoped to rally Loyalist support, reclaim their former colonies in the region, and then slowly fight their way back north.
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A British expedition easily took Savannah and George.
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Marquis de Layfayette joind Washington's staff and bore the misery of Vallery Forge, lobbied for the French reinforcements in France and led a command in Virginia in the last years of the war.
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A royal governor once again commanded Georgia.
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General Henry Clinton, who has replaced Howe in New York, along with the ambitious General, Charles Cornwallis sailed south with 8,500 men.
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A French army of 6,000 had landed in Newport, Rhode Island, after the British left the city to focus on the South.
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In their greatest victory of the war, the British captured Charles Town, South Carolina and marched 5,500 American soldiers off as prisioners of war.
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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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Washington ordered Nathaniel Greene, his ablest general, to march south and harass Cornwallis as he retreated. Cornwallis in turn sent Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his troops to pursue Morgan's soldiers.
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When forces met at Cowpens, the British expected the outnumbered Americans to flee; but the Continental amry 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.
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Greene has weakened the British, but he worried about the fight for the South. He wrote a letter to Lafayette, asking for help.
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The Congress appointed a rich Philidelphia merchant name Robert Morris as a superintendent of finance.
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Morris, a superintendent in Finance and his associate, Haym Salomon, raised fund s to provide salaries for the Continental Army, which was finally paid in specie, or gold coin.
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When Lafayette's 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,to witness the formal British surrender.
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A truimphant Washington, the French generals, and their troops assembled to accept the British surrender.
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The delegated signed the Treaty Of Paris, which confirmed U.S independence and set the boundaries of the new nation.