I.  Governing the War

• The Second Continental Congress
• convened in Philadelphia in May 76
• agreed to finance the war effort--printing $2 million paper money (discuss problems with this)
• appointed Washington as general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army (same time as battle of Breed's Hill)
• Emphasize this is not a national government
• Attempt at compromise--July 5 and 6
• Olive branch petition--professed continued loyalty to Geo III, begged him for reconciliation
• Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms--explained why colonists thought they were merely defending their rights rather than submit to slavery
• George III still outraged, army was to treat colonists as "open and avowed enemies"

• When the war began, people were pushed to chose sides
• British and other European groups
• Rebels- 2/5's of population
• Loyalists- 1/5 of population (government officials, non-English ethnic minorities and backcountry people--established patriot elite were their longstanding enemies)
• Neutral- 2/5's of population (at least at the beginning of the war)
• African Americans
• unsure of who to fight for
• many saw alliance with Britain promising
• Lord Dunmore's proclamation
• raised concerns of slave uprising
• few joined Dunmore
• most who did later regretted it (talk about life in British camps)
• Native Americans
• split over which side to support, but leaned toward British because westward expansion of white settlers
• When they joined the British, many were used to raid settlements along the frontier
• Frontier raids brought brutal retaliation
• Ideological fight
• Pamphlets and essays
• as before the war, played major role in
• Thomas Paine and Common Sense
• Paine an English Quaker who had come to Philadelphia shortly before the war
• published Common Sense anonymously in Jan. 76
• within 3 months, 100,000 copies of Paine's pamphlet in circulation
• pamphlet blamed George III for the malevolence toward the colonies -- Americans should go with their own interests and declare independence
• Terror and civil war
• War in the Carolinas and Georgia
• Destruction of other side the goal

• British strategy
• Control cities
• Defeat enemy armies and win clear cut military victory
• Treated the Revolution as another European war
• British needed to win the "hearts and minds" of the colonists and get them to return to the fold
• Declaring independence
• Fighting in the North
• Long Island and Manhattan (June-July 1776)
• Trenton (Dec 76) and Princeton (Jan 77)
• "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne's Saratoga campaign
• Surviving the winter of 77-78 at Valley Forge
• French Intervention, British peace initiatives
• Civil War in the South
• British triumphs
• Savannah
• Charleston
• Camden
• Tide turns
• King's Mountain (Oct 1780)
• Cowpens (Jan 81)
• The Chase
• Guilford Courthose (Mar 1781)
• Cornwallis goes to Virginia, Greene to South Carolina
• Cornwallis and Arnold team up (7,000 men)
• Raid in Virginia--almost get Gov. Jefferson and Virginia legislature
• Coming of large body of American troops causes Corny to fall back to Yorktown
• Greene goes after British and Loyalist garrisons in South Carolina and Georgia
• loses every battle, but British always retreat
• "We get beat, rise up, and fight again"
• British forces fall back to Charleston and Savannah
• Yorktown (Cornwallis surrenders Oct 7 1781)