American Revolution Videos
•A brief history of the American Revolution (with drawings)

•Khan Academy lecture on early US History (only until the 8:22 time in the video)

The American Revolution

The Stamp Act

            The Stamp Act was passed in early 1765 and was created to help cover the cost of maintaining British troops in the colonies. It affected printed materials ranging from university degrees to wills, newspapers and playing cards. After being met with protests, boycotts and cries of taxation without representation in the colonies, Great Britain repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. However, as the act was repealed, Parliament also issued the Declaratory Act, which said Britain "had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever."

The Boston Massacre

            The five victims of the March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre were:

- Crispus Attucks, of African American and Native American descent

- Samuel Gray, a rope-maker

- James Caldwell, a 17-year-old sailor

- Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old wounded in the shooting who died the next day

- Patrick Carr, a leather worker who died two weeks later

Future President of the United States John Adams defended the British soldiers involved in the attack in court. Six of the eight soldiers were acquitted, while the other two were convicted of manslaughter and branded on their thumbs as punishment.

Boston Tea Party

            In 1773, colonists protested against Britain's decision to grant the East India Company a monopoly on the tax-free transport of tea, according to history.state.gov. In the midst of a stalemate between the ships carrying the tea and a British admiral who had been ordered to see that the tea was unloaded, some 50 men marched down to the wharf and threw 340 tea chests into the harbor.  The British government responded with the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts, part of which closed the port of Boston to everything but British ships until the East India Company was compensated for the loss of the tea. The action led to the gathering of the First Continental Congress, which sent a petition to England asking that the Intolerable Acts be repealed.

Patrick Henry

            During the second Virginia Convention in March 1775, delegate Patrick Henry took to the floor to argue that despite American efforts to reach peaceful agreements with Great Britain, "there is no longer any room for hope."

            "They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary," Henry said. "Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power....

            "Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

The Shot Heard 'Round the World

            On April 19, 1775, British forces were sent to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock and to seize military stores being kept in Concord, Massachusetts. Minutemen and colonists, warned by Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, gathered on the Lexington Green to meet the British. A fight broke out between the 700 British troops and the 77 colonists, and it remains unclear to this day who fired what is considered the first shot of the American Revolution.

            The poem "Concord Hymn," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is inscribed on a monument in Concord and contains the most famous phrase associated with that day:  "Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world."

The Battle of Bunker Hill

            During the night of June 16, 1775, and into the morning of June 17, more than 1,000 colonists marched to Breed's Hill — bypassing Bunker Hill — and began establishing breastworks overlooking the British in Boston. The British, needing to remove the colonists from the hill, began assembling troops.

            As the British marched up Breed's Hill, one of the colonial commanders ordered his men not to fire "until you see the whites of their eyes," according to American folklore.

            The Americans abandoned their position when they ran out of ammunition, making the battle a British victory. However, 1,054 British soldiers were killed or wounded, compared to 400 Americans. "The success is too dearly bought," Britain's General William Howe wrote afterward.

The Declaration of Independence

            The Declaration of Independence was drafted between June 11 and June 28, 1776, and was presented to Congress on July 1, according to archives.gov. After a few days of revisions, the document was officially adopted on July 4.

            On July 5, copies were dispatched by members of Congress to assemblies, conventions and committees of safety, as well as to the commanders of American troops.

            The document was signed by the delegates at various times over the next five months.

Written by Thomas Jefferson

           As Congress was moving into a three-week recess in June, the delegates appointed a committee of five to draft a statement presenting the colonies' case for independence. The committee was made up of John Adams, Mass.; Roger Sherman, Conn.; Benjamin Franklin, Penn.; Robert Livingston, N.Y. and Thomas Jefferson, Va.

            According to Jefferson, the committee "unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught (draft). I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections . . . I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress."

            Jefferson was 33 years old at the time. He later became the third president of the United States.

Signers of the Declaration of Independence

            The Declaration of Independence was intended to lay out colonial grievances with Great Britain, and began:

            "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

            The story behind John Hancock's large signature on the Declaration of Independence is embedded in American history and led to his name being adopted as a common term for large, bold writing or a signature.

            Different versions of the story have Hancock exclaiming — in various ways — that his signature was large enough for King George to read without trouble. In reality, according to Snopes.com, Hancock's signature was simply larger than the others because he was president of the Continental Congress and first to sign the document.

            Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776.

            "It's worth remembering that signing one's name to the Declaration of Independence was no small thing," Mike Krumboltz wrote at Yahoo in 2011. "Those who signed the document were sure to be hanged for treason should they be caught."

Benjamin Franklin

            Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706, and became one of the most well-known and celebrated Americans both at home and abroad before, during and after the American Revolution.

           Franklin helped negotiate the alliance with France during the war, was appointed Minister to France, helped negotiate the treaty of peace with Great Britain, negotiated treaties with Prussia and other European countries, was elected president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promotion the Abolition of Slavery and served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention which produced the United States Constitution in 1787.

            At the July 4, 1776 vote on the Declaration of Independence, Franklin was reported to have said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

 

Thomas Paine

            Thomas Paine was born in England and moved to American after meeting Benjamin Franklin. After Lexington and Concord, Paine published the pamphlet titled "Common Sense," which argued for American independence from England.

            "Anyone sitting on the fence who encountered 'Common Sense' was probably no longer sitting on the fence," author Jack Fruchtman Jr. told the Chicago Tribune in 2011. It was a pamphlet that became a bestseller and changed the world.

            While George Washington's forces were languishing during the winter of 1776, Paine began releasing a series of pamphlets known as "The American Crisis." Washington, whose army was on the verge of disintegrating, had the first pamphlet read aloud to his men, who rallied to win the Battle of Trenton soon after.

The Battle of Trenton

            The Battle of Trenton came in the wake of disastrous losses at Long Island, White Plains and Fort Washington and a series of retreats across the northern states.

            At this point, Washington wrote to his brother, saying, "I think the game is pretty near up."

            In a bold military move, Washington decided to attack the Hessian troops in Trenton, N.J. on Christmas day. Washington and his men began to cross the Delaware River around 11 p.m. on Christmas, and despite being impeded by weather and ice on the river, reached Trenton around 8 a.m. on December 26. During the battle, 22 Germans were killed and more than 900 were captured. No American lives were lost during the battle, although between two and five colonial soldiers died of exposure or illness.

            James Monroe, fifth president of the United States, and William Washington, a distant relative of General Washington, were wounded during the fight.

            Trenton, combined with a victory soon after at Princeton, provided Washington's demoralized army with a new lease on life.

Worst Defeat of the Revolutionary War

            Americans suffered their worst defeat of the Revolutionary War on May 12, 1780, when Major General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered to British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton at Charleston, S.C., according to history.com. The surrender followed a more than month-long siege of the city.

            According to theamericanrevolution.org, around 5,400 American troops were up against more than 13,500 British troops, and the defeat left no Continental Army in the South.

The Surrender of the British

            In 1781, the seventh year of the American Revolution, Britain's Charles Cornwallis brought his forces to Yorktown in Virginia. General George Washington's forces, French forces under the command of Comte de Rochambeau and a French fleet under the command of Admiral De Grasse put the city under siege, cutting off the possibility of a British retreat or reinforcements.

            The siege began on October 9, 1781, and Cornwallis asked for the terms of surrender on the 17th. The official surrender ceremony took place two days later. According to legend, the British musicians played a tune called, "The World Turn'd Upside Down" at the surrender.

             The American victory at Yorktown effectively brought an end to the Revolutionary War.

The Treaty of Paris (1783)

            Preliminary articles of peace were signed on November 20, 1782, and the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the war, was signed on September 3, 1783. The Continental Congress ratified the treaty on January 14, 1784.

            Two crucial provisions of the treaty with Britain were British recognition of U.S. independence and the delineation of boundaries that would allow for western expansion in America.