Lesson 5

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War, Victory and Independence
Through 1775- 1776, the Americans thought without agreeing about what the
fight was about. Many wanted independence, while others wanted to reconcile
with the king, but not with the Parliament. The British hired 30.000 German
mercenaries to help put down the Americans and that convinced some Americans
that there could be no reconciliation. Congress appointed a committee to draft a
Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson a congressman from Virginia took
on the job of writing the first draft. Congress voted for independence on July 2
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1776, and signed the formal declaration two days later.
The Declaration of Independence was primarily a list of grievances against the
king, but the opening paragraphs amounted to a republican manifesto. The
preamble declared that all men are created equal and that they posses natural
right that include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps, most
important, the declaration insisted that governments derive their powers only by
consent of the government itself. Protest against British colonial rule had been
transformed into a Republican revolution. In 1776 the prospects for Americans
victory were small. The British army was large, well trained and experienced. The
Americans on the other hand had only undisciplined soldiers. But they had the
powerful advantages which in the end were decisive: they fought on their own
territory and in order to win they did not have to defeat the British but only to
convince them that the colonists could not be defeated. The British fought in a
huge and hostile territory. They could occupy the cities and control the land on
which their army stood, but they could not subdue the American colonists. Two
decisive battles were fought at Saratoga and Yorktown. The Americans defeated
the British who surrendered an army of about 5.800.
More important, the American victory at Saratoga, convinced France that an
alliance with the Americans would be a good thing. The French provided naval
support for the Americans. In the battle of Yorktown, the climax of the war and
the vastness of America again defeated the British. In 1781, Lord Charles
Cornwallis led an army through Virginia almost without opposition, but was
besieged by George Washingtons army and held in check by the French navy.
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Unable to escape, Cornwallis surrendered an entire British army. His defeat
effectively ended the war. In the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the British recognized
the independence of the United States and relinquished its territory from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi.
Colonial elites benefited the most from the American independence. They
continued to rule at home without outside interference. Below them, property
holding whitemen who became full citizens of the American republic enjoyed the
life and liberty for which they have fought. But the Americans, for whom the
legacy of revolution proved disastrous, were the native Americans and African
American slaves. Early in the war, any slave who joined the British army was
promised freedom. However, this was not the case in the end. Thus, American
independence was a disaster for the slaves, but at the same time it set in motion
a chain of events that would destroy American slavery.




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The New State
a. The constitution
In May 1776, even before declaring national independence, the Second
Continental Congress told the states to draw up constitutions to replace their
colonial regimes. Without exception, the states rejected the unwritten
constitution of Britain, a jumble of precedents, common laws, and statutes that
Americans thought had led to arbitrary rule. The new American states produced
written constitution that carefully specified the powers and limits of government.
These first state constitutions, although all republican and all demonstrating
distrust of government power, particularly of the executive, varied a great deal. In
these revolutionary constitutions drawn up hurriedly in the midst of war, the
Americans were grouping towards written constitutions with clearly specified
grouping. These constitutions featured limits for legislators, executives and the
courts with a clear separation of power. They also guaranteed the citizens certain