Guided Reading Lesson 1 the War for Independence Answer Key

March 06, 2022 Post a Comment

The Revolutionary War (1775-83), too known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Britain'due south 13 North American colonies and the colonial regime, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in Apr 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the post-obit summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. French republic entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a ceremonious state of war into an international conflict. Subsequently French help helped the Continental Regular army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally stop until 1783.

Causes of the Revolutionary War

For more than than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.

The French and Indian War, or Seven Years' War (1756-1763), brought new territories nether the power of the crown, only the expensive conflict lead to new and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise acquirement by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Deed of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights equally other British subjects.

Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened burn on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre. After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Political party, an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts) designed to reassert majestic authority in Massachusetts.

In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia, John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give vocalism to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far equally to need independence from Britain, only information technology denounced revenue enhancement without representation, besides as the maintenance of the British ground forces in the colonies without their consent. Information technology issued a annunciation of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, holding, assembly and trial past jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider farther action, only past that fourth dimension violence had already cleaved out.

On the dark of Apr eighteen, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the "shot heard round the world" that signified the showtime of the Revolutionary War.

Declaring Independence (1775-76)

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates–including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson–voted to form a Continental Regular army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution's first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed'south Loma in Boston. The appointment, known as the Battle of Bunker Colina, ended in British victory, only lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause.

Throughout that fall and winter, Washington's forces struggled to go along the British contained in Boston, only artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the rest of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the metropolis in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.

By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in total swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Proclamation of Independence, drafted by a five-human being committee including Franklin and John Adams simply written mainly by Jefferson. That aforementioned month, determined to shell the rebellion, the British authorities sent a big fleet, along with more 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe'south Redcoats routed the Continental Ground forces on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York Urban center past September. Pushed across the Delaware River, Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Bailiwick of jersey, on Christmas dark and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels' flagging hopes before making wintertime quarters at Morristown.

Saratoga: Revolutionary State of war Turning Point (1777-78)

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne'southward regular army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe's forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne'due south men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July past retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops south from New York to confront Washington's army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October earlier withdrawing to wintertime quarters almost Valley Forge.

Howe's move had left Burgoyne's army exposed most Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force nether General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman's Subcontract in the showtime Battle of Saratoga. Afterward suffering another defeat on Oct 7 at Bemis Heights (the 2nd Boxing of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would bear witness to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as information technology prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the state of war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare state of war on Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had get a world war.

Stalemate in the North, Battle in the South (1778-81)

During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington's troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian war machine officer Businesswoman Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette. On June 28, 1778, every bit British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe equally supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington's army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French armada commanded by the Comte d'Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, fix to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island, in late July failed, and for the most role the war settled into a stalemate phase in the Due north.

The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the revolt of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the starting time serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia past early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, burdensome Gates' American troops at Camden in mid-Baronial, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King'southward Mount in early Oct. Nathanael Light-green replaced Gates as the American commander in the S that December. Nether Green's command, Full general Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led past Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.

Revolutionary War Draws to a Close (1781-83)

By the fall of 1781, Greene's American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia's Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around fourteen,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his unabridged army on Oct 19. Claiming illness, the British full general sent his deputy, Charles O'Hara, to surrender; after O'Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted information technology.

Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown, contemporary observers did not come across that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful master army even so resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive activeness over the improve part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in tardily 1782 finally pointed to the terminate of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the U.s. in the Treaty of Paris. At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Kingdom of spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years.

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