In the 1760s, Great Britain confronted its 13 American colonies with a punishing tax policy that ushered in the crisis in Anglo-American relations. On April 19, 1775 Massachusetts minute men in defense of their local privileges challenged British regulars at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

The British responded by trying to intimidate Boston. In June, the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill showed Boston would not submit and support throughout the colony showed the rebellion did not center in Massachusetts alone. On June 15, the Continental Congress commissioned George Washington of Virginia to lead the American army.

Twelve days later, Congress ordered an invasion of Quebec but in the winter the invasion was repulsed. With canon hauled from Fort Ticonderoga, the Americans prepared a siege of Boston. The British under Sir William Howe withdrew to Halifax. Enjoying total naval supremacy, British strategy was to wage war along former European lines with discipline troops.

Howe landed and stopped an island with a powerful force of 32,000. He promptly defeated Washington’s army at Brooklyn Heights and occupied New York City. In October, Howe pursued Washington, beat him at the Battle of White Plains and set up winter garrisons in New Jersey.

But Washington demonstrated the vulnerability of Howe’s extended outpost when in a brilliance stroke he crossed the Delaware River on Christmas and took the Hessian garrison completely by surprise.

A few days later Washington scored a second victory at Princeton, American morale soared. In an effort to sever New England from the other warring colonies the British planned a major assault. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne led an army onto north eastern New York while troops on the very same pleasure invaded the Mohawk Valley. The campaigned called for forces on Saint Leger, Burgoyne and Howe who would move up to Hudson Valley to link near Albany.

But in the summer of 1777, Howe decided on a different plan. He would seize the American Capital at Philadelphia. Saint Leger was forced to quit the siege of Fort Stanwix following the retreat of his allies. Meanwhile Burgoyne pressed south. Heavy casualties forced his slow moving army back to Saratoga where 10,000 men under General Horatio Gates surrounded and outnumbered him.

In October, Burgoyne surrendered to the Americans. News of Saratoga caused a sensation in London and Paris. France which had been secretly bank rolling the American since the start of hostilities formally recognized the United States in February 17, 1778. After moving out of Chesapeake Bay, Howe trounced Washington in a string of engagements at Brandywine Creek and again a German town. Howe then took Philadelphia while a Continental Congress fled in panic to York.

But, despite a desperate winter of ice and mud and disease at Valley Forge, Washington held on until the arrival of reinforcements. After 1778, the center of the war shifted south as Britain moved to protect its lucrative islands in the West Indies from maritime competitors.

At the end of 1778, the British took Savannah then moved quickly into the interior and captured Augusta. In May 1780, they forced the surrender of the continental army at Charleston. The worst lost of American soldiers of the war and in August at Camden under Lord Charles Cornwallis they annihilated the hastily assembled American army under General Gates, the hero of Saratoga. While the British had no trouble taking the south’s major cities, they fail to establish control in the back country.

Colorful guerilla leaders such as Francis Marion the legendary swamp fox and General Nathanael Green frontier man sapped the strength of Cornwallis’ army and as Cornwallis carried his campaign to North Carolina the Americans won decisively at the Battle of Kings Mountain. Convinced that Virginia held the key to the south, Cornwallis moved north. His position at Yorktown however gave the furuncle alliance a strategic opportunity. A French fleet blocked Cornwallis’ access to the sea defeating the British at the Battle of the Capes.

While Washington’s allied forces rushed in to choke off and escape by land. With full military honors and the British bands playing the world turn upside down. Cornwallis surrendered his army on October 19, 1781.

The Peace of Paris ratified American independence in September 1783. American negotiators not only secured British recognition of the United States but a highly favorable territorial settlement too, the entire region from the Upper Legions to the Mississippi.