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1After three years of fighting in the North, the British were no closer to victory. Although they had captured many important Northern coastal cities, they didn’t have enough troops to control the countryside. In 1778 the British decided to move the war to the South. They believed that most Southerners were Loyalists, who would support an invading British army. The British also expected Southern slaves to escape and join them because they had promised to grant the slaves freedom. Although thousands of African Americans did join the British, not all were set free. • In 1780, a British army led by General Henry Clinton landed in South Carolina. They trapped American forces in Charles Town, the largest Southern city. • The Battle of Charles Town ended when the city surrendered. The Americans lost almost their entire Southern army. It was the worst American defeat of the war. After that loss, Congress assigned General Horatio Gates—the victor at Saratoga—to form a new Southern army. Continental soldiers led by Baron de Kalb formed the army’s core. Gates added about 2,000 new and untrained militia. He then headed for Camden, South Carolina, to challenge the army led by the British general Lord Cornwallis. In August 1780, Gates’s army ran into British troops outside Camden. The Americans were in no condition to fight. They were out of supplies and half-starved. Even worse, Gates put the inexperienced militia along part of the frontline instead of behind the veterans (experienced soldiers). When the British attacked, the militia panicked and ran. Gates also fled, but de Kalb remained with his soldiers and received fatal wounds. This second defeat in the South ended Gates’s term as head of an army. American spirits fell to a new low. Although the Americans had been defeated at Camden, the British were having difficulty controlling the South. The countryside was hostile and filled with more rebel sympathizers than Loyalists. Rebel guerrillas repeatedly attacked British messengers. (Guerrillas are fighters in an irregular, independent armed force.) This made it difficult for British forces moving inland to keep in touch with their bases on the coast. British commanders in the South realized that the countryside was a dangerous place for the British army. After Gates’s defeat at Camden, Washington put Nathanael Greene in charge of the Southern army. In a formal, linear battle, the Americans won a spectacular victory at Cowpens. The victory proved that Americans had mastered the formal battle tactics of the British. The British still had the advantage in a full-scale battle due to their greater firepower. However, the Americans used their knowledge of the landscape to keep one step ahead of the advancing British. Greene’s strategy was to let the British wear themselves out. When the Americans did fight, they did their best to make sure the British suffered heavy losses. In fact, Cornwallis lost so many men at the Battle of Guilford Court House that he decided to retreat to Wilmington, on the coast. With his army exhausted, Cornwallis had to face a bitter truth: there were more active Patriots than Loyalists in the South. Britain’s southern strategy had failed. Cornwallis was frustrated by his setbacks in the Carolinas. He had come to believe that Southern rebels were relying on Virginia for their supplies. So, in 1781, without waiting for orders, he marched north into Virginia. In August Cornwallis set up his base at Yorktown, located on a peninsula in Chesapeake Bay. From there, his army could receive supplies by ship from New York. It was a fatal mistake. Cornwallis’s decision gave Washington a golden opportunity to trap the British on the peninsula. Washington first joined forces with the French. In August 1781, a large French fleet arrived from the West Indies and blocked Chesapeake Bay. The French fleet (group of ships) prevented the British ships from reaching Yorktown and delivering supplies—and prevented the British in Yorktown from escaping. Meanwhile, the Battle of Yorktown had begun. The British tried to protect themselves by encircling the town with numerous redoubts, or small forts. These forts were meant to keep the allies’ artillery at a distance from the town. But as the allies captured British redoubts, they brought their artillery closer to the town’s defenses. The American and French cannon bombarded Yorktown, turning its buildings to rubble. Cornwallis had no way out. On October 19, 1781, he surrendered his force of about 8,000. Although fighting continued in the South and on the frontier, Yorktown was the last major battle of the war. When the British prime minister, Lord North, heard the news, he gasped, “It is all over!” Indeed, he and other British leaders were soon forced to resign. Britain’s new leaders began to negotiate a peace treaty, which is discussed in the next section. By their persistence, the Americans won independence even though they faced many obstacles. As you have read, the American army lacked training and experience. In contrast, the British forces ranked among the best trained in the world. Yet the Americans had advantages that had not been obvious at first; only as the war progressed did American strengths become apparent. The British were defeated not only by the American army, but by civilians who kept the resistance alive. The British were not prepared for a popular uprising. In Europe, only armies fought the wars, and civilians either fled or hid before advancing forces. In America, however, the British discovered that large segments of the population were actively involved in a political cause. Even if the British had succeeded in defeating an American army, they likely would never have been able to conquer the American people. An estimated 25,700 Americans died in the war, and 1,400 remained missing. Over 8,200 Americans were wounded. Some were left with permanent disabilities. The British military suffered about 10,000 deaths. The states had borrowed money to finance the conflict. The war left the nation with a debt of about $27 million—a debt that would prove difficult to pay off. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay began formal peace negotiations with the British on September 27, 1782. The final Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War. The Americans won favorable terms in the peace treaty: The United States was independent. Its boundaries would be the Mississippi River on the west, Canada on the north, and Spanish Florida on the south. The United States would receive the right to fish off Canada’s Atlantic Coast, near Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Each side would repay debts it owed the other. The British would return any enslaved persons they had captured. Congress would recommend that the states return any property they had seized from Loyalists. Neither Britain nor the United States fully lived up to the treaty’s terms. Americans did not repay the prewar debts they owed British merchants or return Loyalist property. The British did not return runaway slaves. “Liberty” had been the rallying cry of the Revolution as Americans freed themselves from British rule. Now, the success of the Revolution challenged the existing world order. For the first time in the Americas, a colonial rebellion against an imperial power had succeeded. By destroying British authority, the Revolution offered political reformers a chance to prove that republicanism, the idea that a country can be governed by the people, and without a king, could work. At the same time, the war created a new nation—one that valued the ideal of liberty. As Americans built their new society, the ideal of liberty became one of the most important legacies of the Revolution. By 1777 nearly all the former colonies had adopted written constitutions. All the new state constitutions contained some individual rights and liberties. The states also realized early on that they needed a national government, if only to conduct the war. By 1777, the Continental Congress had drafted a plan: The Articles of Confederation (an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution) The Articles gave very limited powers to the national government— little more than waging war and signing treaties. During the Revolution, some people began to see a conflict between slavery and the ideal of liberty. In response, Vermont outlawed slavery, and Pennsylvania passed a law to free slaves gradually. Individual African Americans also fought to end slavery, sometimes suing for freedom in the courts. For example, Elizabeth Freeman sued for her freedom in a Massachusetts court and won. Her victory in 1781 and other similar cases ended slavery in that state. Freed African Americans formed their own institutions. For example, in Philadelphia Richard Allen helped start the Free African Society, a nondenominational group that encouraged people to help each other. (Nondenominational means not favoring any particular religion.) Richard Allen had earned the money to buy his freedom by working for the Revolutionary forces. As a preacher, Allen’s leadership was shaped by his belief that he had a special duty to teach and help people, of all backgrounds, who had suffered from discrimination. Allen also founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first African-American church in the United States. Despite the efforts to end slavery in the North, in the South slavery continued. However, many people, including Southern plantation owners, were troubled by the new nation’s dependence on slavery. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself, wrote of his fears for America if slavery were allowed to continue: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” For many Americans, central to the ideal of liberty was the idea that religion is a private matter and that people should have the right to choose and practice their personal religious beliefs. People such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson called for a “separation of church and state,” meaning that the state should not be involved in religious affairs. In 1777 Thomas Jefferson proposed his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In it, he claimed that people have a “natural right” to freedom of opinion, including religious opinion. • Jefferson opposed state laws that prohibited Jews or Catholics from holding public office. He also opposed the practice of using tax money to support churches, because, he wrote, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.” Jefferson’s statute was eventually adopted as law in Virginia. Later, it became the basis of the religious rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. • For almost two centuries each colony had been governed independently of its neighbors. The colonies had been quarrelsome and often uncooperative. However, as the war turned colonies into states, Americans saw how important it was for these states to work together as a nation. The great challenge that lay ahead was how to remain united as a nation of independent states, despite regional and religious differences.