I need help with a question on my history assignment!?

Question

O.k I have a question...what were some contributing factors that helped america win the American Revoloution???????

Answer 1

George Washington's motivation, and his willingness to stay with his troops during the cold, harsh, plague-ridden winter months. Also, the assistance of France at just the right time.
Not to mention the experience Americans got from the American-Indian war. Back in the day, military men just marched in rows and fired at each other. The last left standing won. Americans learned from the Indians that it's much more beneficial to hide behind trees, and be stealthy when firing at the enemy.

Answer 2

Actually it had to do with several things. One, british soldiers were ill equipped and trained to deal with the environment of the North American continent. Second, american soldiers did NOT fight "traditionally" at all. Traditionally speaking, in europe wars were fought with marching lines of soldiers directly confronting eachother. In the Americas we fought with guerilla tactics and used camouflage and animal traps as well. Almost every family had at least one rifle because hunting was absolutely necessary to survive. All family members, including women, knew how to use the weapon and to care for it. Also, the americans had learned how to treat certain sicknesses and how to prevent infection from the natives. The british, not having encountered the sickenesses of the americas did not know how to treat them, nor did they know how to use the environmental resources (plants, etc.) of the area to treat wounds.

I hope this helps you!

Answer 3

Guerilla warfare. Serious. The British were very formal and ridgid. They would attack in formation and shot in line order. We hid behind trees and hills and stone fences. We would attack from all sides and catch them by surprise and off guard. Being that we knew the terrain so well, it gave us the "home court" advantage.

Answer 4

You chaps were fighting for your homes, our chaps were fighting because it was their job and for a king they'd probably never seen. Ie you cared and we didn't much.

Your chaps were near their homes and supplies, our chaps were thousands of miles of miles from home and a long way from Canada.

Your leaders were reasonably sane - our King was mad as a hatter.

and as the previous poster said - you had a very rich and pissed off France on your side.

Answer 5

France.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Our guys were fighting for their own land, they were familiar with the territory, they fought a guerrilla style war that the British were not familiar with, need more?

Answer 8

I think you need to read your textbook the answers are there. Think about it.......

Answer 9

War's Outbreak

Before Congress met again the situation had changed. On the morning of Apr. 19, 1775, shots had been exchanged by colonials and British soldiers, men had been killed, and a revolution had begun (see Lexington and Concord, battles of). On the very day (May 10, 1775) that the Second Continental Congress met, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, together with a force under Benedict Arnold, took Fort Ticonderoga from the British, and two days later Seth Warner captured Crown Point. Boston was under British siege, and before that siege was climaxed by the costly British victory usually called the battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) the Congress had chosen (June 15, 1775) George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental armed forces.

Indecision and Declaration

The war was on in earnest. Some delegates had come to the Congress already committed to declaring the colonies independent of Great Britain, but even many stalwart upholders of the colonial cause were not ready to take such a step. The lines were being more clearly drawn between the pro-British Loyalists and colonial revolutionists. The time was one of indecision, and the division of the people was symbolized by the split between Benjamin Franklin and his Loyalist son, William Franklin.

Loyalists were numerous and included small farmers as well as large landowners, royal officeholders, and members of the professions; they were to be found in varying strength in every colony. A large part of the population was more or less neutral, swaying to this side or that or else remaining inert in the struggle, which was to some extent a civil war. So it was to remain to the end.

Civil government and administration had fallen apart and had to be patched together locally. In some places the result was bloody strife, as in the partisan raids in the Carolinas and Georgia and the Mohawk valley massacre in New York. Elsewhere hostility did not produce open struggles.

In Jan., 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense, which urged the colonial cause. Its influence was tremendous, and it was read everywhere with enthusiastic acclaim. Militarily, however, the cause did not prosper greatly. Delegations to the Canadians had been unsuccessful, and the Quebec campaign (1775—76) ended in disaster. The British gave up Boston in Mar., 1776, but the prospects were still not good for the ill-trained, poorly armed volunteer soldiers of the Continental army when the Congress decided finally to declare the independence of the Thirteen Colonies.

The Declaration of Independence is conventionally dated July 4, 1776. Drawn up by Thomas Jefferson (with slight emendations), it was to be one of the great historical documents of all time. It did not, however, have any immediate positive effect.

The British under Gen. William Howe and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, came to New York harbor. After vain attempts to negotiate a peace, the British forces struck. Washington lost Brooklyn Heights (see Long Island, battle of), retreated northward, was defeated at Harlem Heights in Manhattan and at White Plains, and took part of his dwindling army into New Jersey. Thomas Paine in a new pamphlet, The Crisis, exhorted the revolutionists to courage in desperate days, and Washington showed his increasing military skill and helped to restore colonial spirits in the winter of 1776—77 by crossing the ice-ridden Delaware and winning small victories over forces made up mostly of Hessian mercenaries at Trenton (Dec. 26) and Princeton (Jan. 3).

Saratoga and Valley Forge

In 1777 the British attempted to wipe out the flickering revolt by a concerted plan to split the colonies with converging expeditions concentrated upon the Hudson valley. Gen. William Howe, instead of taking part in it, moved into Pennsylvania, defeated Washington in the battle of Brandywine (Sept. 11), took Philadelphia, and beat off (Oct. 4) Washington's attack on Germantown. Meanwhile the British columns under Gen. John Burgoyne and Gen. Barry St. Leger had failed (see Saratoga campaign), and Burgoyne on Oct. 17, 1777, ended the battle of Saratoga by surrender to Gen. Horatio Gates. The victory is commonly regarded as the decisive battle of the war, but its good effects again were not immediate.

The Continental army still had to endure the hardships of the cruel winter at Valley Forge, when only loyalty to Washington and the cause of liberty held the half-frozen, half-starved men together. Among them were three of the foreign idealists who had come to aid the colonials in their struggle–Johann Kalb, Baron von Steuben, and the marquis de Lafayette. At Valley Forge, Steuben trained the still-raw troops, who came away a disciplined fighting force giving a good account of themselves in 1778. Sir Henry Clinton, who had succeeded Howe in command, decided to abandon Philadelphia for New York, and Washington's attack upon the British in the battle of Monmouth (see Monmouth, battle of) was cheated of success mainly by the equivocal actions of Gen. Charles Lee.

Foreign Assistance

The warfare in the Middle Atlantic region settled almost to stagnation, but foreign aid was finally arriving. Agents of the new nation–notably Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, Silas Deane, and later John Adams–were striving to get help, and in 1777 Pierre de Beaumarchais had succeeded in getting arms and supplies sent to the colonials in time to help win the battle of Saratoga. That victory made it easier for France to enter upon an alliance with the United States, for which Franklin and the comte de Vergennes (the French foreign minister) signed (1778) a treaty. Spain entered the war against Great Britain in 1779, but Spanish help did little for the United States, while French soldiers and sailors and especially French supplies and money were of crucial importance.

Vincennes to Yorktown

The warfare had meanwhile shifted from the quiescent North to other theaters. George Rogers Clark by his daring exploits (1778—79) in the West, climaxed by the second capture of Vincennes, established the revolutionists' prestige on the frontier. Gen. John Sullivan led an expedition (1779) against the British and Native Americans in upper New York.

The chief fighting, however, was now in the South. The British had taken Savannah in 1778. In 1780, Sir Henry Clinton attacked and took Charleston (which had resisted attacks in 1776 and 1779) and sent Gen. Charles Cornwallis off on the Carolina campaign. Cornwallis swept forward to beat Horatio Gates soundly at Camden (Aug., 1780), and only guerrilla bands under Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens, and Thomas Sumter continued to oppose the British S of Virginia.

Another low point had been reached in American fortunes. Bitter complaints of the inefficiency of the Congress, political conniving, lack of funds and food, and the strains of long-continued war had engendered widespread apathy and disaffection, and the British tried to take advantage of the division among the people. In 1780 occurred the most celebrated of the disaffections, the treason of Benedict Arnold. Lack of pay and shortages of clothing and food drove some Continental regiments into a mutiny of protest in Jan., 1781.

The dark, however, was already lifting. A crowd of frontiersmen with their rifles defeated a British force at Kings Mt. in Oct., 1780, and Nathanael Greene, who had replaced Gates as commander in the Carolina campaign, and his able assistant, Daniel Morgan, together with Thaddeus Kosciusko and others, ultimately forced Cornwallis into Virginia. The stage was set for the Yorktown campaign.

Now the French aid counted greatly, for Lafayette with colonial troops held the British in check, and it was a Franco-American force that Washington and the comte de Rochambeau led from New York S to Virginia. The French fleet under Admiral de Grasse played the decisive part.

Previously naval forces had been of little consequence in the Revolution. State navies and a somewhat irregular national navy had been of less importance than Revolutionary privateers. Esek Hopkins had led a raid in the Bahamas in 1776, John Barry won a name as a gallant commander, and John Paul Jones was one of the most celebrated commanders in all U.S. naval history, but their exploits were isolated incidents.

It was the French fleet–ironically, the same one defeated by the British under Admiral Rodney the next year in the West Indies–that bottled up Cornwallis at Yorktown. Outnumbered and surrounded, the British commander surrendered (Oct. 19, 1781), and the fighting was over. The rebels had won the American Revolution.

Aftermath

The Treaty of Paris (see Paris, Treaty of) formally recognized the new nation in 1783, although many questions were left unsettled. The United States was floundering through a postwar depression and seeking not too successfully to meet its administrative problems under the Articles of Confederation (see Confederation, Articles of).

The leaders in the new country were those prominent either in the council halls or on the fields of the Revolution, and the first three Presidents after the Constitution of the United States was adopted were Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. Some of the more radical Revolutionary leaders were disappointed in the turn toward conservatism when the Revolution was over, but liberty and democracy had been fixed as the highest ideals of the United States.

The American Revolution had a great influence on liberal thought throughout Europe. The struggles and successes of the youthful democracy were much in the minds of those who brought about the French Revolution, and most assuredly later helped to inspire revolutionists in Spain's American colonies.


Bibliography

The stirring events of the country's birth have been often represented in U.S. literature. It has given dramatic material to playwrights from William Dunlap to Maxwell Anderson, to novelists from James Fenimore Cooper and William G. Simms to S. Weir Mitchell, Paul Leicester Ford, Kenneth Roberts, and Howard Fast. Older histories, still read for their literary value, are those of George Bancroft, John Fiske, and G. O. Trevelyan.

Countless excellent studies have been made of particular aspects and incidents; some examples are H. E. Wildes, Valley Forge (1938); R. B. Morris, ed., The Era of the American Revolution (1939); C. Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (1941); L. Montross, Rag, Tag and Bobtail: The Story of the Continental Army (1952); C. Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets: The Propaganda War of the American Revolution (1961); A. Heimert, Religion and the American Mind (1966).

For works of more general interest, see C. H. McIlwain, The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation (1923, repr. 1973); J. F. Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926, new ed. 1961); J. C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (1943, new ed. 1959); C. R. Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution (1954); L. H. Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution ( "New American Nation" series, 1954); E. S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763—89 (1956); H. S. Commager and R. B. Morris, ed., Spirit of 'Seventy-Six (1958); S. F. Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (rev. ed. 1957); H. Peckham, The War for Independence (1958); R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959); B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967); R. Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered (1967); J. P. Greene, ed. The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution (1968); M. Jensen, The Founding of a Nation (1968); J. R. Alden, A History of the American Revolution (1969); G. S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776—1787 (1969); D. Higginbotham, The War of American Independence (1971); R. Morris, ed., The American Revolution, 1763—1783 (1971); P. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution (1972); S. G. Kurtz and J. H. Hutson, Essay on the American Revolution (1973); T. Draper, A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (1995); J. J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000); J. Rhodehamel, ed., The American Revolution: Writing from the War of Independence (2001); D. McCullough, 1776 (2005); S. Weintraub, Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire, 1775—1783 (2005).