History UsefulNotes / TheAmericanRevolution

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King UsefulNotes/GeorgeIII of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, King [[UsefulNotes/CharlesIIIOfSpain Charles III]] of Spain, UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which mostly failed, as always), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]], the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "All the President's Heads" has the gang going back in time to 1776, where they [[ForWantOfANail accidentally muck up Paul Revere's ride]] and return to an America still under British rule.

Once the weather got warm in 1777, Howe wasted much of the spring and summer before putting his army into boats, sailing up Chesapeake Bay, and capturing the by-now-''American'' capital of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. However, he again failed to win a decisive victory against Washington's army, and the ostensible coup in capturing the capital proved to be meaningless--in the decentralized Revolutionary United States, most authority lay in the hands of the states, and Congress had such a small associated bureaucracy it could just pack up and leave, which it did (decamping first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then further inland to York, PA). Meanwhile, an expeditionary force from Canada was decisively defeated at Saratoga in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState northern New York]] and shortly thereafter surrendered to the Americans. The intensity of the fighting and the result persuaded Louis XVI of France that the rebels meant business and that this war would be a good opportunity to get revenge on Britain--even if it meant siding with people who they had once fought against and were opposed to everything they stood for (a strong monarchy, a large nobility, and powerful, vibrant Catholic Church). Seeing which way the tide seemed to be turning, and after much deliberation, the Spanish Empire also declared war on Britain, with King [[UsefulNotes/CharlesIIIOfSpain Charles III]] ordering his local governor UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez to give the rebels economic and military help, and the Dutch Republic--the second-biggest commercial power after Britain--started to bankroll the French and the American rebels too. The colonies were now the least of Britain's problems; they were now at war with three of the five major powers in Europe.\\\

Just when things seemed darkest for the Patriot cause, the Americans again rallied. In August 1780, a British convoy containing not only supplies and relief troops, but a diplomatic mission to make peace with Spain, was intercepted in the Atlantic by a Franco-Spanish fleet. A Patriot victory at Kings Mountain, North Carolina in October was followed by an even bigger victory at Cowpens, South Carolina in January 1781, where some of the best units of the Army in South Carolina were captured. The Commander in South Carolina, Lord Cornwallis, abandoned that state and marched into North Carolina in pursuit of the main American army led by Nathaniel Greene. Cornwallis defeated Greene at Guilford Court House but took too many losses in the process. He led his much-reduced force into Virginia and conducted a series of raids in the lightly defended Virginia countryside. Finally, Cornwallis was ordered by Henry Clinton, the Commander at New York--who feared an attack from Washington there--to march to the coast and establish a fortified position. Cornwallis chose the settlement of Yorktown, Virginia.\\\

** Most of the episodes dealing with the American Revolution debuted in 1975 or 1976, when the country was in full-blown Bicentennial Fever. Criticizing, even ''vaguely'' or by ''implication'', the Founding Fathers wouldn't have gone over well. So, for example, in "No More Kings" it's strongly implied that there had always been an understanding that the colonies would eventually become independent, and George III was just a fat, apoplectic, greedy tyrant who reneged on that promise. Similarly, "The Shot Heard 'Round The World" offers an abridged history of the war itself, and glorifies Washington and his army.

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King UsefulNotes/GeorgeIII of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, King [[UsefulNotes/CharlesIIIOfSpain Charles III]] of Spain, UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, as always), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]], the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

Once the weather got warm in 1777, Howe wasted much of the spring and summer before putting his army into boats, sailing up Chesapeake Bay, and capturing the by-now-''American'' capital of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. However, he again failed to win a decisive victory against Washington's army, and the ostensible coup in capturing the capital proved to be meaningless--in the decentralized Revolutionary United States, most authority lay in the hands of the states, and Congress had such a small associated bureaucracy it could just pack up and leave, which it did (decamping first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then further inland to York, PA). Meanwhile, an expeditionary force from Canada was decisively defeated at Saratoga in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState northern New York]] and shortly thereafter surrendered to the Americans. The intensity of the fighting and the result persuaded France that the rebels meant business and that this war would be a good opportunity to get revenge on Britain--even if it meant siding with people who they had once fought against and were opposed to everything they stood for (a strong monarchy, a large nobility, and powerful, vibrant Catholic Church). Seeing which way the tide seemed to be turning, the Spanish Empire also declared war on Britain, with King [[UsefulNotes/CharlesIIIOfSpain Charles III]] ordering his local governor UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez to give the rebels economic and military help, and the Dutch Republic--the second-biggest commercial power after Britain--started to bankroll the French and the American rebels too. The colonies were now the least of Britain's problems; they were now at war with three of the five major powers in Europe.\\\

Just when things seemed darkest for the Patriot cause, the Americans again rallied. A Patriot victory at Kings Mountain, North Carolina in October 1780 was followed by an even bigger victory at Cowpens, South Carolina in January 1781, where some of the best units of the Army in South Carolina were captured. The Commander in South Carolina, Lord Cornwallis, abandoned that state and marched into North Carolina in pursuit of the main American army led by Nathaniel Greene. Cornwallis defeated Greene at Guilford Court House but took too many losses in the process. He led his much-reduced force into Virginia and conducted a series of raids in the lightly defended Virginia countryside. Finally, Cornwallis was ordered by Henry Clinton, the Commander at New York--who feared an attack from Washington there--to march to the coast and establish a fortified position. Cornwallis chose the settlement of Yorktown, Virginia.\\\

Also often forgotten, fellow-victor Spain regained its colony of Florida, which it had to give to the British after the Seven Years' War. It remained in Spanish hands until 1819, when [[UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson some renegade American general]] went beyond orders in an attempt to capture Floridian Native Americans who raided American towns on the border. After all the mess, and busy with their own UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWarsOfIndependence (their empire would end up shattering in a myriad of countries in just a couple more years), Spain sold Florida to the United States the same year.\\\

** Most of the episodes dealing with the American Revolution debuted in 1975 or 1976, when the country was in full-blown Bicentennial Fever. Criticizing, even ''vaguely'' or by ''implication'', the Founding Fathers wouldn't have gone over well. So, for example, in "No More Kings" it's strongly implied that there had always been an understanding that the colonies would eventually become independent, and George III was just a fat, apoplectic, greedy tyrant who reneged on that promise.

* ''Literature/{{Tolivers Secret}} is set in 1776, shortly after the British forces' successful invasion of New Jersey in the Battle of Fort Lee, and follows a girl named Ellen Toliver on her mission to deliver a message with vital information for the revolutionaries on behalf of her injured grandfather, who helps Washington's army as a spy.

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King UsefulNotes/GeorgeIII of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]], the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

* Two graphic novels in the ComicBook/NathanHalesHazardousTales series (''One Dead Spy'' and ''Lafayette!'') discuss the revolution, and the narrator is Revolutionary spy Nathan Hale.

* Season 7 of ''{{Series/Outlander}}'' is set during the revolutionary war with Jamie and Claire sidings with the patriots. Justified as Claire is from the future so she knows the [[ForegoneConclusion exact outcome of the war.]]

The American Revolution is oddly underrepresented in American films, given its importance. Perhaps the "Special Relationship" makes the topic awkward--films such as ''Film/ThePatriot'' in 2000 stirred up major controversy for negative portrayals of the British, to put it lightly. That particular film's domestic box office barely earned more than its budget, but oddly enough did better overseas. Perhaps Americans themselves have a greater interest in more recent conflicts, like UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Maybe the idealization of the conflict has discouraged genuine creative engagement with it in any medium; until recently there were also few novels about the conflict, either.

* ''Film/ThePatriot'' (2000), aka ''Film/{{Braveheart}} in America''

* ''Series/Locke&Key2020'': The season 2 episodes "The Premiere" and "Irons in the Fire" have flashbacks set during this era; the year 1775 to be exact.

* Series/BeingHumanUS: Aidan was turned into a vampire by Bishop during this time period.

* Series/SleepyHollow has many scenes that take place during this era as Ichabod [[FishoutofTemporalWater is from that time period]].

* Season 7 of ''{{Series/Outlander}}'' is set during the revolutionary war With Jamie and Claire sidings with the patriots. Justified as Claire is from the future so she knows the [[ForegoneConclusion exact outcome of the war.]]

* Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore and his cat Boo from WesternAnimation/TheFunkyPhantom died during this time period when they hid inside the clock from the British. Unfortunately, they ended up getting trapped in the clock which resulted in their deaths.

* ''Ben and Me''

Second, the loss of its colonies was a huge blow to French Royal prestige; granted, Anglo-French relations hadn't been too great beforehand, what with the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheSpanishSuccession and the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheAustrianSuccession, but defeat on ''this'' scale made the House of Bourbon willing to pay a ''very'' steep price for revenge (just as soon as they weren't broke anymore).\\\

Once the weather got warm in 1777, Howe wasted much of the spring and summer before putting his army into boats, sailing up Chesapeake Bay, and capturing the by-now-''American'' capital of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. However, he again failed to win a decisive victory against Washington's army, and the ostensible coup in capturing the capital proved to be meaningless--in the decentralized Revolutionary United States, most authority lay in the hands of the states, and Congress had such a small associated bureaucracy it could just pack up and leave, which it did (decamping first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then further inland to York, PA). Meanwhile, an expeditionary force from Canada was decisively defeated at Saratoga in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState northern New York]] and shortly thereafter surrendered to the Americans. The intensity of the fighting and the result persuaded France that the rebels meant business and that this war would be a good opportunity to get revenge on Britain--even if it meant siding with people who they had once fought against and were opposed to everything they stood for (a strong monarchy, a large nobility, and powerful, vibrant Catholic Church). Seeing which way the tide seemed to be turning, the Spanish Empire also declared war on Britain, with King Charles III ordering his local governor UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez to give the rebels economic and military help, and the Dutch Republic--the second-biggest commercial power after Britain--started to bankroll the French and the American rebels too. The colonies were now the least of Britain's problems; they were now at war with three of the five major powers in Europe.\\\

** The ''Bone Rattler'' mysteries are set in the 1750s-1770s in British North America, eventually examining how the colonists launched and managed the rebellion

** ''Literature/TheBoneRattler'' mystery series span the 1750s to the 1770s

Tensions waxed and waned in the years after the Seven Years War as Westminster tried pushing the boundaries of collecting and enforcing new taxes in the colonies, asserting its supreme right to tax and legislate for the colonies in 1766. Reactions in each colony were different, but the New England colonies resented these attempts particularly fiercely. Much of this came from resentment at Westminster's refusal to officially acknowledge the Colonies' self-appointed legislatures, but a good deal of it came from good old-fashioned self interest, as smuggled goods were cheaper and career smugglers had no wish to be put out of business. As it was, many people resisted payment and the tax collectors were subject to enormous community pressure and occasionally even violence. Eventually a majority of (generally conservative and aristocratic) Lords and Members of Parliament came to see the issue less in terms of money and more in terms of their own authority. To them, it was no longer about the amount of money collected but rather their perceived right to collect the money at all. None of the controversial taxes were ever collected. As things stood, the colonies could theoretically have been appeased, or at least points of negotiation opened up, if Parliament had simply drawn up a few new electorates in North America, as they had done with Scotland and would in the not-too-distant-future do with Ireland: they'd have Westminster representation, but they would always be soundly out-voted by the majority of English Members of Parliament on issues concerning them. Of course, the logistics of representation of the colonies at Westminster in an era when it could take anywhere from 30 days to ''six months'' to get across the Atlantic--and there was no such thing as telecommunications--leave one to wonder if this was ever really a possible solution. As it happened, there were talks in England about Parliamentary representation for the colonists, at which point the colonies stopped entertaining the idea in favor of the notion that the colonies could never be properly represented in Parliament.\\\

Matters came to a head with the "Boston Tea Party" of December 1773, in the wake of a lull following the so-called "Boston Massacre", which itself followed the stationing of troops in Boston from 1768, as well as the various Acts and colonial counter measures dating back to the Stamp Act of 1765. The Crown had attempted to undercut tea-smuggling by arranging for a surplus of good quality British East India Company[[labelnote:*]]Which, in true MegaCorp fashion, had close links to the government; while the company itself wasn't state-owned, many of its primary backers were also prominent men in Parliament or in service to the Crown[[/labelnote]] tea to be shipped to the colonies at low prices, resulting in legal taxed tea that would be better and cheaper than anything the smugglers could provide. Anti-tax protesters and smugglers alike opposed the move, and the locals refused to unload the East India Company's Tea cargoes for sale. Three company ships spent several weeks moored in Boston Harbor, holds full of tea, as the matter went back and forth between the authorities. Taking matters into their own hands, a group of local activists calling themselves "The Sons of Liberty" (after a line from a Parliamentary speech by Edmund Burke) dressed up as American Indians forced their way aboard and dumped the entire shipment of East India tea into the harbor. The East India Company was a bit peeved at the enormous expense of this act of defiance[[note]]It cost them the modern equivalent of around ''$4 million''.[[/note]], and company executives used their considerable sway with Parliament to persuade them to enact a series of punitive measures against the culprits (and 'culprits') called the Coercive Acts, which in turn greatly inflamed public opinion in both Boston and the colonies in general (who called them the "Intolerable Acts") and led to the first meeting of the Continental Congress, which would later become the colonies' revolutionary government.

What underpinned much of the popular support for the declaration was in large part due to Creator/ThomasPaine, a very smart young English radical whom Benjamin Franklin had brought over to Philadelphia in November 1774, wrote a best-selling pamphlet called ''Common Sense''. ''Common Sense'' attacked the whole concept of monarchy in clear, unambiguous terms, using the Bible to decisively prove that God did not in fact like Kings, whatever people might say about "giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Combined with railing against the corruption of parliament and the cabinet and the potential tyranny of all Kings in general, this provided a focus for a growing wave of anti-monarchist sentiment, decades of local tradition (along with their penchant for Locke and Hobbes) naturally led said anti-monarchists to favor a republican government. On July 2, 1776, the representatives of the Continental Congress voted in principle to divorce the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain. (However, the new nation wound up celebrating its Independence Day on July 4 because that was the day that the Declaration of Independence was approved and announced to the public, which makes a certain kind of sense in an "if-a-tree-falls-in-the-woods-and-nobody-hears-it" way: if a deliberative body votes that something will happen but doesn't tell anybody, did it really happen?[[note]]Also, let's not forget that in the usual course of the law, statutes are generally considered to be effective on the date they are ''published'', rather than the date final approval is given, absent language in the statute to the contrary.[[/note]])\\\

The American Revolution is oddly underrepresented in American films, given its importance. Perhaps the "Special Relationship" makes the topic awkward--films such as ''Film/ThePatriot'' in 2000 stirred up major controversy for negative portrayals of the British, to put it lightly. That particular film's domestic box office barely earned more than its budget, but oddly enough did better overseas. Perhaps Americans themselves have a greater interest in more recent conflicts, like UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Maybe the idealization of the conflict has discouraged genuine creative engagement with it in any medium; until recently there were also few novels about the conflict, either.

* There was an {{Elseworlds}} story about Franchise/{{Superman}} arriving on Earth earlier than expected and he was raised by British parents and he ended up fighting against the revolutionaries.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Lilith}}'' a quick mention of "North American Dominions" made in 1933 indicates that [[ButterflyOfDoom the alterations to the timeline made by the protagonist somehow caused it to fail]]. The exact event is seen at the start of "The Two Frontiers", where it's seen that [[spoiler:the remnants of the Joseon Dinasty, that had escaped to China after the shogun Toyotomi Hideyori led Japan to conquer Korea, had sent turtle ships to try and gain Britain's help in retaking Korea, and those turtle ships intercepted the Crossing of the Delaware, killing almost all troops and causing George Washington a head wound that drove him to dementia. Between his loss and the morale blow, the British managed to suppress the "Rebellion of the Thirteen Colonies". Then, as Lilith has reached this point in time, what she does during the course of that issue and the rest of the GrandFinale gets the last survivors of the rebel leadership to start causing a war between the British and the Japanese (who have their own colonies in North America), hinting that, in the final timeline, the rebellion may yet succeed]].

General Howe, who had defeated the Americans but missed chances to surround and destroy them in Brooklyn and Manhattan, now decided that the weather in December 1776 was too cold for further campaigning and the Army went into winter quarters. Unfortunately for him, the difficulties in feeding and housing his troops conspired with the need to hold a great deal of captured territory to force Howe into disbursing his troops into smaller garrisons that were vulnerable to being cut off and defeated in detail.[[note]]This was not an idle concern. 18th century armies tended to denude the local countryside of everything edible by man or beast so armies had to keep moving to avoid starvation. Settling down for the winter required dispersing the troops widely enough to prevent starvation.[[/note]] Washington seized this opportunity and crossed back into New Jersey on Christmas night to capture the Hessian garrison at Trenton on Dec. 26. This victory, and another victory at Princeton a week later, greatly boosted American morale and eventually led the British to abandon New Jersey.\\\

Once the weather got warm in 1777, Howe wasted much of the spring and summer before putting his army into boats, sailing up Chesapeake Bay, and capturing the by-now-''American'' capital of UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}. However, he again failed to win a decisive victory against Washington's army, and the ostensible coup in capturing the capital proved to be meaningless--in the decentralized Revolutionary United States, most authority lay in the hands of the states, and Congress had such a small associated bureaucracy it could just pack up and leave, which it did (decamping first to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then further inland to York, PA). Meanwhile, an expeditionary force from Canada was decisively defeated at Saratoga in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState northern New York]] and shortly thereafter surrendered to the Americans. The intensity of the fighting and the result persuaded France that the rebels meant business and that this war would be a good opportunity to get revenge on Britain--even if it meant siding with people who they had once fought against and were opposed to everything they stood for (a strong monarchy, a large nobility, and powerful, vibrant Catholic Church). Seeing which way the tide seemed to be turning, the Spanish Empire also declared war on Britain, with King Charles III ordering his local governor UsefulNotes/BernardoDeGalvez to give the rebels economical and military help, and the Dutch Republic--the second-biggest commercial power after Britain--started to bankroll the French and the American rebels too. The colonies were now the least of Britain's problems; they were now at war with three of the five major powers in Europe.\\\

The transformation of a reluctant civil war into a world war with the foremost foreign powers of the day threatened Britain's holdings in the Caribbean and India. Britain itself was threatened, with the (Catholic) Irish making rumbles about siding with Britain's (Catholic) enemies again. All this led to a change in strategy. Having failed to achieve decisive victory in the northern colonies, in 1778 the Army shifted its efforts to the South, where there were more Loyalists (colonists still loyal to the Crown) and revolutionary fervor was weaker. The Southern strategy led to a series of successes. Savannah was captured and royal government was restored in Georgia. A Patriot army was captured at Charleston, South Carolina, another Patriot army was annihilated at Camden, and most of South Carolina returned to the Crown. Meanwhile, bitter over General Gates, his senior, stealing his credit, and politicians frustrating his military plans, General Benedict Arnold, hero of the failed Canadian expeditionary force and the great victory at Saratoga, defected back to the Crown in 1780. He conspired with the Army to hand over the Patriot fort at West Point, New York; the plot was discovered before he could act, however. Arnold defected without being caught and American morale suffered another body blow.\\\

Just when things seemed darkest for the Patriot cause, the Americans again rallied. A Patriot victory at Kings Mountain, North Carolina in October 1780 was followed by an even bigger victory at Cowpens, South Carolina in January 1781, where some of the best units of the Army in South Carolina were captured. The Commander in South Carolina, Lord Cornwallis, abandoned that state and marched into North Carolina in pursuit of the main American army led by Nathaniel Greene. Cornwallis defeated Greene at Guilford Court House, but took too many losses in the process. He led his much-reduced force into Virginia and conducted a series of raids in the lightly defended Virginia countryside. Finally Cornwallis was ordered by Henry Clinton, the Commander at New York--who feared an attack from Washington there--to march to the coast and establish a fortified position. Cornwallis chose the settlement of Yorktown, Virginia.\\\

On the north side of the Virginia Peninsula, facing Chesapeake Bay, Yorktown was easy to defend, and assuming the Royal Navy could maintain control of the bay, easy to supply by sea. (Why do you think George [=McClellan=] and other Union generals [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar fourscore and some years later]] would keep trying to base themselves in the same general area?) Unfortunately for Cornwallis, a French fleet seized control of Chesapeake Bay and beat back all attempts to displace them. This cut Yorktown off from relief by sea. Meanwhile the Franco-American army had left New York and was marching south. It arrived at the end of September and surrounded Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. Now completely cut off by sea and land, Cornwallis surrendered on Oct. 17, 1781, after enemy bombardment rendered Yorktown untenable.\\\

This decisive defeat marked the collapse of Parliament's will to prosecute the war, and the end of major combat operations in North America. After further fighting between the French, Spanish, and British at sea, at Gibraltar, and elsewhere around the world (which mostly went Britain's way, with George Rodney mauling a French fleet at the Saintes in April 1782 and a massive Franco-Spanish assault on the besieged fortress of Gibraltar that September failing disastrously - the latter battle being in fact the largest battle of the entire war by number of troops engaged), the Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the war and established the United States of America as an independent nation. A twentieth of the population of the former colonies, some hundred thousand people, emigrated to remain under the patronage of George III. Most loyalists emigrated to Canada, a milestone in the history of that nation which effectively secured it for the Empire by reducing the potentially rebellious French majority to a minority.\\\

The British also had great support among the African slaves in America. The same week that Patrick Henry uttered the famous phrase "Give me liberty or give me death," his slave Ralph Henry fled to the British for his freedom. That irony wasn't lost on people like Creator/SamuelJohnson, who mockingly asked, "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?" Most of the support was due to the Earl of Dunmore, the last governor of Virginia, who, critically outnumbered by the rebels, in 1779 offered freedom to any slave who joined the British. Not to be outdone by the Americans on the hypocrisy front, the slaves of loyalists were ''not'' freed. Over the course of the war, about 100,000 slaves escaped to the British (or tried to) and about 20,000 of them fought against the Americans as part of the all-black "Ethiopian Regiment" (which was mostly relegated to performing backbreaking logistic and support functions), which first saw action at the Battle of Kemp's Landing, where a black soldier managed to capture his former master. In fact, this was what galvanized the Southern states to seriously support the rebellion: the fear of a British-sponsored total slave uprising. At the end of the war, the remaining black loyalists were resettled in the Canadas or Nova Scotia (many of those later moved to Sierra Leone to found the first freedmen colony). It should be noted that there were also plenty of blacks (both slaves and freedmen) who also supported the Patriots,[[note]]Take a close look at the crewmen in that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware[[/note]] and that several colonial militias had black members, most notably the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which similarly to the Dunmore proclamation was formed at least partially by slaves who had been promised their freedom. It has been estimated that about 1/5 of the Continental Army was of African descent. It should also be noted that a significant portion of slaves who had been promised their freedom on both sides of the war were not granted it, or were re-enslaved later[[note]]Also worth noting is that, during the drafting of the Constitution of the United States, John Adams (among others) pointed out that slave-holding was contrary to the freedom espoused by the fledgling nation, with Adams rather famously pointing out that if the Continental Congress did not resolve the issue (by emancipating the slaves), then it would become a terrible issue for future generations to deal with 100 years later. [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar He was right on everything but the year]][[/note]]. Furthermore, the ideals of the Revolution played a huge part in the abolition of slavery in the North; Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, as well as the still-independent Vermont Republic, all abolished the practice during or just after the war, though it was a gradual process rather than the full immediate emancipation that would happen the following century.

The American Revolution is oddly underrepresented in American films, given its importance. Perhaps the "Special Relationship" makes the topic awkward--films such as ''Film/ThePatriot'' in 2000 stirred up major controversy for negative portrayals of the British, to put it lightly. That particular film's domestic box office barely earned more than its budget, but oddly enough did better overseas. Perhaps Americans themselves have a greater interest in more recent conflicts, like UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

** It's also notable for subverting and averting the usual portrayal of the Revolution as a glorious patriotic war, instead showing it as the painful breaking of England and America's once loving relationship
* What happens when one combines mystic powers, a traitorous Ben Franklin and a failed revolution? ''Anime/CodeGeass''. (That the Holy Britannian Empire was actually the successor to the British Empire was not immediately obvious to viewers at first, because in this timeline Napoleon succeeded in conquering the British Isles.)

* ''The Spirit of '76'' (1917), which ran afoul of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI censorship. You see, the British were the bad guys, and in 1917, that could only be a dastardly Hun plot to drive the Allies apart. The film's producer, who was inconveniently of German descent, was sentenced to ''ten years in prison'', later commuted to three. No known prints of the film survive today.
* ''Film/TheYoungMrPitt'' (1942) begins with a prologue in which UsefulNotes/WilliamPittTheElder argues against Britain's war with the American colonies. The movie then skips forward to UsefulNotes/WilliamPittTheYounger, the film's subject, taking charge of Britain just after its been humiliated in the American war. Most of the rest of the film is about Pitt's leadership during the early part of UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars.

* The ''Literature/HorribleHistories'' book ''The USA'' features a rare British (or, more precisely, cynical European) perspective on the war, clearing up the ways it and its main players were [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified subsequently idealised]].
* Creator/JamesFenimoreCooper's novels ''The Spy'', ''The Pilot'' and ''Lionel Lincoln''. ''The Spy'', written in 1821, concerns the actions of a spy ringleader for the American rebels. The plot twist at the end reveals [[spoiler:the spymaster to be [[TruthInTelevision George Washington]], which at the time wasn't a well-known fact to most Americans]].

Despite the strong sense of patriotism and loyalty to the Crown that most colonists possessed, many colonists were unhappy with the government. King George III was in many senses the glue that held the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland together. It was to him that every subject pledged their tacit allegiance as one nation under God, regardless of who might actually govern them in day-to-day affairs. But King George was not his government; they were a separate entity, capable of being judged on their own merits. The American British had a somewhat distorted perception of the country's longer-term political issues due to their geographical remoteness and the GossipEvolution that came with it. In this way, the American British came to perceive the national parliament at Westminster as being hopelessly corrupt and inefficient. And since the colonists had no parliamentary representation of their own (for a whole host of reasons, not the least being royal prerogatives, though primarily because they would have posed a threat to the status quo) there were no American parliamentarians to gainsay this impression.\\\

Complicating things was that much of the American colonial populace was composed of descendants of the so-called religious "dissenters": Puritans, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and dozens of other small denominations who'd come to America to escape the iron hand that the Church of England had upon public life and where they were often prohibited from owning land or practicing professions.[[note]]To say nothing of the Germans who showed up in the country because their prince was a Catholic and didn't like Protestants--or was a Protestant and thought they were the wrong kind of Protestant--and the Dutch Reformed who had been there longer in the first place. The kicker with these was that the English Dissenters often found that they had more in common religiously with these Germans and Dutchmen than with the Anglicans in charge back home; the Dutch in particular were generally Calvinist Presbyterians, agreeing with the Dissenters completely on theological matters and being only a little different ecclesiastically.[[/note]] Most common in northeastern colonies known as New England, these groups (collectively known as "Congregationalists") had spent nearly two centuries of mostly benign neglect developing their local political institutions. And as the name suggests, these institutions naturally grew out of the direct democracy inherent in the congregational nature of their worship, although Church of England-dominated Virginia possessed the oldest of the colonial legislatures. The upshot of this was that many colonists felt reluctant to follow the laws and policies set down by the Cabinet, despite being fairly co-operative with their own home-grown charter-based (often unacknowledged by the crown, and thus not strictly legal) local assemblies. This belief in superiority of local representation was to prove to be the true sticking point. While the colonists had no parliamentary representation of their own--despite accounting for perhaps a fifth of the population of the British Empire by this point in time, they also had no ''desire'' for it had it been offered.\\\

Complicating things was that much of the American colonial populace was composed of descendants of the so-called religious "dissenters": Puritans, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and dozens of other small denominations who'd come to America to escape the iron hand that the Church of England had upon public life and where they were often prohibited from owning land or practicing professions.[[note]]To say nothing of the Germans who showed up in the country because their prince was a Catholic and didn't like Protestants--or was a Protestant and thought they were the wrong kind of Protestant--and the Dutch Reformed who had been there longer in the first place. The kicker with these was that the English Dissenters often found that they had more in common religiously with these Germans and Dutchmen than with the Anglicans in charge back home; the Dutch in particular were generally Calvinist Presbyterians, agreeing with the Dissenters completely on theological matters and being only a little different ecclesiastically.[[/note]] Most common in northeastern colonies known as New England, these groups (collectively known as "Congregationalists") had spent nearly two centuries of mostly benign neglect developing their local political institutions. And as the name suggests, these institutions naturally grew out of the direct democracy inherent in the congregational nature of their worship, although Church of England-dominated Virginia possessed the oldest of the colonial legislatures. The upshot of this was that many colonists felt reluctant to follow the laws and policies set down by the Cabinet, despite being fairly co-operative with their own home-grown charter-based (often unacknowledged by the crown, and thus not strictly legal) local assemblies. This belief in superiority of local representation was to prove to be the true sticking point. It effectively meant that while the colonists had no parliamentary representation of their own--despite accounting for perhaps a fifth of the population of the British Empire by this point in time, they had no Members of Parliament representing them. By comparison, Scotland, a less populous region, had dozens.\\\

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King UsefulNotes/George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]], the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.

Once upon a time, in 1765, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire dominated North America, having won Canada from {{UsefulNotes/France}} in the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar. However, a series of shifting and thus unresolved issues of authority and administration[[note]] foremost among them the maturation and sidelining of the colonies' sort-of unofficial and more-or-less unrecognized legislatures [[/note]] met with misunderstandings, misjudgments and tragedies which led to most of the colonies of British America forming a [[TheAlliance loose association]], seceding from TheEmpire, and later declaring themselves the United States of America. In the beginning, maybe a third of the colonists felt this was justified; roughly a fifth never did, and a twentieth left the new country to remain the Crown's loyal subjects in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Canada}} Great White North]], a land which has ever since prided itself upon being even more loyal to [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily His/Her Majesty]] than Britain herself. This was the American Revolution, the era of King George III of The United Kingdom, General Charles Cornwallis, King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI of France, General Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeLaFayette, The Franco-Spanish Armada (which failed, obviously), UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, Creator/BenjaminFranklin, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, UsefulNotes/BenedictArnold, the Boston Massacre[[note]]With a death toll of 5, it might be a stretch to call it a "massacre", and it was directly attributable to unruly civilians thinking it'd be fun to keep pegging snowballs and chunks of ice at armed soldiers after being asked to stop because that's actually quite dangerous, dontchaknow. While opinions ran hot at the time it's worth noting that all but two soldiers were acquitted at trial (they got off with branding through pleading "[[OffOnATechnicality benefit of clergy]]") and their (defense) lawyer was none other than the prominent local figure of UsefulNotes/JohnAdams.[[/note]], the crossing of the Delaware, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (which was actually a group effort). This war naturally serves as the foundation for America's national myth--a narrative meant to inspire citizens and affirm national values. The reality of the war is a far more complex, divisive, and ''human'' tale.