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The American Revolution
Introduction
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The actions of the First Continental Congress moved the British to use force to reassert control over the colonies; in April 1775 British troops and colonial irregulars in engaged in the first battles of what would turn out to be the American Revolution. The Second Continental Congress, meeting in May 1776 and somewhat more radical than its predecessor, organized colonial forces into a Continental Army with George Washington at its lead, made one last appeal to George III, and pleaded their case in the "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms." Most colonists, for various reasons, were still chary of severing ties to Britain, but the feelings of many changed when the British elected to use Hessian mercenaries to fight the war and upon reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which argued for complete independence. By July the Second Continental Congress had drafted the Declaration of Independence describing the theory behind the American revolt and enumerating American grievances against George III. In the war, although Britain had superior resources of manpower, materials, and industrial capacity as well as the advantages of a strong centralized government, the most powerful navy in the world, and an experienced and well-trained army, its war effort was poorly directed and only halfheartedly supported at home. Despite fighting on familiar terrain, the Americans' inexperience showed in early defeats, which did not end disastrously only because the British inexplicably did not pursue them. But as the war progressed and fighting moved south (where the British thought that they would find more Loyalist support), Washington pulled his army together and with considerable help from the French finally wrested an English surrender at Yorktown. The Peace of Paris ending the war was generous for the United States, but the new nation nevertheless faced the task of forming a national government and other institutions, complicated by the sovereignty enjoyed by the states under the Articles of Confederation. The states also had to create governments and formulate constitutions, most of which, in their structures and distributions of power, would reflect the concerns colonists developed while under British rule. Socially, the war accelerated the growth of a national spirit, as it linked the colonies in a common cause and then in a nation and also gave the Americans heroes, most notably George Washington. National spirit was also enhanced by the Great Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, which opened the Ohio Valley to settlers, and a national culture began to emerge in textbooks, religion, and in the arts.
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