The confrontation at Fort Necessity in the summer of 1754 was the prelude to the war fought by England and France for control of the North American continent. The struggle was known in North America as the French and Indian War and spread around the world as the Seven Years' War. It ended in 1763 with the removal of French power from North America and India. The action at Fort Necessity was also the first major event in the military career of George Washington. It was the only time he ever surrendered to an enemy.
After appeals from colonial governors, the British decided to take matters more seriously and sent Major General Braddock to North America with two regiments of infantry. Braddock, a career soldier, had risen through the ranks. After 45 years of military service he became commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America. The British plan for 1755 was to simultaneously attack many French forts in North America. Braddock would lead the expedition against Fort Duquesne personally. That spring, he disembarked his army at Alexandria, Virginia. After adding colonial troops and a few Indians to his force, Braddock had about 2,400 men. George Washington joined the campaign as a volunteer aide to the General.
The final Colonial War (1689-1763) was the French and Indian War, which is the name given to the American theater of a massive conflict involving Austria, England, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Sweden called the Seven Years War. The conflict was played out in Europe, India, and North America. In Europe, Sweden , Austria, and France were allied to crush the rising power of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. The English and the French battled for colonial domination in North America, the Caribbean, and in India. The English did ultimately come to dominate the colonial outposts, but at a cost so staggering that the resulting debt nearly destroyed the English government. It was that debt that caused the escalation of tensions leading to the Revolutionary War. Parliament was desperate to obtain two objectives; first, to tax the colonies to recover monies expended on the battle over North America, and second to restore the profitability of the East India Company in an effort to recover monies spent on the battle over India.
By the end of the war, the French lost all but a few North American Colonies
Pontiac's War, Pontiac's Conspiracy, or Pontiac's Rebellion was a war that was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country who were dissatisfied with British postwar policies in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Warriors from numerous tribes joined the uprising in an effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of the region. The war is named after the Ottawa leader Pontiac, the most prominent of many native leaders in the conflict.
The settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians brought inevitable tension and conflict between settlers and indigenous peoples. British military officials attempted to halt settlement, but eager settlers and land speculators ignored their directives. With the military unwilling to forcibly remove settlers from the lands, Anglo-American colonists continued to migrate west and lay claim these lands.
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TYPICAL NEW ENGLAND TOWN -1 Town meeting house -1 Church -1 Common School -1 Militia
England’s longest-ruling monarch before Queen Victoria, King George III (1738-1820) ascended the British throne in 1760. During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England’s successful resistance to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering intermittent bouts of acute mental illness, he spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness.
On February 6th, 1765 George Grenville rose in Parliament to offer the fifty-five resolutions of his Stamp Bill. A motion was offered to first read petitions from the Virginia colony and others was denied. The bill was passed on February 17, approved by the Lords on March 8th, and two weeks later ordered in effect by the King. The Stamp Act was Parliament's first serious attempt to assert governmental authority over the colonies. Great Britain was faced with a massive national debt following the Seven Years War. That debt had grown from £72,289,673 in 1755 to £129,586,789 in 1764*. English citizens in Britain were taxed at a rate that created a serious threat of revolt.
The Sons of Liberty was an organization of American colonists that was created in the Thirteen American Colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government.
The colonists, who had convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the impending enactment, greeted the arrival of the stamps with outrage and violence. Most Americans called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest, and an appeal by Benjamin Franklin before the British House of Commons, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. However, the same day, Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts, asserting that the British government had free and total legislative power over the colonies.
Townshend Act Placed import duties on lead, glass, paint, tea, and paper Put restrictions on Colonial Governments * Caused more unrest that lead to the Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a street fight between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Three (3) patriots were killed on the spot and eight (8) were wounded, two of them dying later. John Adam and Josiah Quincy II defended them in court and won. Later two British were found guilty of manslaughter.
From 1763 to 1775 he served as commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, overseeing the British response to the 1763 Pontiac's Rebellion. In 1774 he was also appointed the military governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, with instructions to implement the Intolerable Acts, punishing Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. His attempts to seize military stores of Patriot militias in April 1775 sparked the Battles of Lexington and Concord, beginning the American War of Independence. After the victory in the June Battle of Bunker Hill he was replaced by General William Howe in October 1775, and returned to Britain.
The Tea Act of 1772 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its principal objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. A related objective was to undercut the price of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation.
The demonstrators, some disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea.
The Coercive Acts were a series of four acts established by the British government. The aim of the legislation was to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Bostonians for their Tea Party, in which members of the revolutionary-minded Sons of Liberty boarded three British tea ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of tea—nearly $1 million worth in today’s money—into the water to protest the Tea Act. Passed in response to the Americans’ disobedience, the Coercive Acts included: The Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid. The Massachusetts Government Act, which restricted Massachusetts; democratic town meetings and turned the governor’s council into an appointed body. The Administration of Justice Act, which made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in Massachusetts. The Quartering Act, which required colonists to house and quarter British troops on demand, including in their private homes as a last resort.
Thomas Gage planned to prevent and cripple the attempts of the American colonists by secretly seeking out and removing military supplies from storehouses in the colonies, especially in Boston due to the fresh occurrence of the Boston Tea Party.
The first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates.
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On that day, about 250 British regulars, by the order of General Thomas Gage in Boston and under the command of Colonel Alexander Leslie, marched to Salem on a gunpowder raid, intent on collecting munitions that could potentially fall into the hands of those conspiring against British authority in North America. Leslie’s mission failed, however, foiled by a resistant townspeople and the tactical employment of a drawbridge.
The Congress pledged to support Massachusetts in the event of a British attack. That pledge led to the involvement of all of the colonies when the Shot Heard ‘Round the World was fired at Lexington in 1775. It was the start of the Revolution.
Some 2,200 British forces under the command of Major General William Howe (1729-1814) and Brigadier General Robert Pigot (1720-96) landed on the Charlestown Peninsula then marched to Breed’s Hill. As the British advanced in columns against the Americans, Prescott, in an effort to conserve the Americans’ limited supply of ammunition, reportedly told his men, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” When the Redcoats were within several dozen yards, the Americans let loose with a lethal barrage of musket fire, throwing the British into retreat.
The tree grew to be such a vibrant symbol of the cause of independence that in 1775, just before the outbreak of the revolution, British soldiers cut it down. “Armed with axes,” the Essex Gazette reported, “the British soldiers made a furious attack upon it. After a long spell of laughing and grinning, sweating, swearing, and foaming with malice diabolical, they cut down a tree because it bore the name of Liberty.”
Sent in 1775 to reinforce Gen. Thomas Gage in the Siege of Boston, he led the left wing in three costly but finally successful assaults in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Assuming supreme command the following year, Howe transferred his forces southward and captured the strategic port city of New York, severely defeating the Americans at the Battle of Long Island. A competent tactician, he preferred maneuver to battle, partly to conserve scarce British manpower, but also in the hopes of demonstrating British military superiority so convincingly that the Americans would accept negotiation and reconciliation with Britain.
He designed an invasion scheme and was appointed to command a force moving south from Canada to split away New England and end the rebellion. Burgoyne advanced from Canada but his slow movement allowed the Americans to concentrate their forces. Instead of coming to his aid according to the overall plan, the British Army in New York City moved south to capture Philadelphia. Surrounded, Burgoyne fought two small battles near Saratoga to break out. Trapped by superior American forces, with no relief in sight, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army of 6,200 men on October 17, 1777. His surrender, says historian Edmund Morgan, "was a great turning point of the war, because it won for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory".[1] He and his officers returned to England; the enlisted men became prisoners of war. Burgoyne came under sharp criticism when he returned to London, and never held another active command.
"THIS DAY PUBLISHED, and to be SOLD at the STORE of Mr. JAMES LOCKWOOD, near the College, in New-Haven, Four different views of the BATTLES of LEXINGTON, CONCORD, etc. on the 19th of April 1775" "Connecticut Journal" December 13, 1775
On July 4, 1776, the thirteen colonies claimed their independence from England, an event which eventually led to the formation of the United States. Each year on July 4th, also known as Independence Day, Americans celebrate this historic event. What happened to them after the historical event? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships resulting from the Revolutionary War.
Charles Cornwallis led several successful early campaigns during the American Revolution, securing British victories at New York, Brandywine and Camden. In 1781, as second in command to Gen. Henry Clinton, he moved his forces to Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Yorktown. This American victory and Cornwallis’ surrender of his troops to George Washington was the final major conflict of the American Revolution.
General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders. The British had asked for the traditional Honors of War (marching out with dignity, flags waving, muskets shouldered, and playing an enemy American tune as a tribute to the victors), but remembering that the British, on taking Charleston earlier in the war, had refused the Americans (under Benjamin Lincoln) the same privilege, Washington firmly denied their request.. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.”
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