Even after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the strong response to Common Sense, it remained unclear whether most Americans favored independence. And would those Americans who did want independence be willing to fight for it?

The Decision for Independence

When the Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia in the spring of 1775, many moderate and conservative delegates clung to the hope of a settlement with Britain. Radicals who favored independence moved cautiously, hoping that time would create consensus. Even as Congress approved the creation of the Continental Army, it dispatched the "Olive Branch Petition" that declared continued loyalty to George III. The harsh British response to that overture withered the cause of compromise within the colonies, opening the way for Congress's adoption of the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776.

In the first part of the Declaration, Jefferson set forth a general justification of revolution. He invoked the "self-evident truths" of human equality and "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The second and longer section denied England any authority in the colonies and blamed George III for a "long train of abuses and usurpations."

Despite an increasing base of support, rebel leaders still recognized that a substantial minority of colonials remained loyal to the king and Parliament. Loyalty to Britain remained especially strong in those places where violent controversies over sectional grievances or land tenure had raged during the decades before 1776. The loyalists feared that the break from Britain would plunge America into anarchy or civil war.

The Fighting in the North

British troops under General William Howe prepared to wage a conventional war in America, with a strategy focused on capturing cities and luring the main American force into a decisive battle. As George Washington took command of the Continental Army outside of Boston, he faced daunting odds. The British army was a seasoned professional fighting force, while the Continentals lacked both numbers and military discipline.

In 1776 the British evacuated Boston, took New York City, and drove the Continentals into a retreat through New York and New Jersey. But as winter set in, Washington recovered some of his army's credibility at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Many civilians in that region, alienated by the British army's harsh treatment, switched their loyalties to the rebel cause. In the summer campaign of 1777, Howe's army took Philadelphia, but British forces under John Burgoyne suffered a disastrous defeat at Saratoga, New York.

The Turning Point

France had waited for an opportunity to gain revenge against Britain since its defeat in the Seven Years' War. Thus from the beginning of the American Revolution, the French were anxious to turn discontented colonials into willing allies against Great Britain. The victory at Saratoga marked a turning point in the fighting. In 1778, France openly allied with American rebels, and shortly thereafter, Spain joined France. What had begun as a colonial rebellion had now widened into a European war, forcing the British to disperse their army to fend off challenges all over the world.

Sir Henry Clinton, who replaced Howe as commander-in-chief, pulled back from Philadelphia to New York City. En route, he fought to a draw with Washington at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in June 1778. The Continentals had suffered grievously through the previous winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but the struggle left them spoiling for a fight and the training and discipline instilled by Baron von Steuben during that winter showed at Monmouth Courthouse. But thereafter, with Clinton's army holed up in New York City, Washington's inactive Continentals erupted into mutinies. Since the end of 1776, the Continental rank-and-file had come from the most property-less and desperate Americans. Congress, suspicious of standing armies, had neglected their needs for food, clothing, and shelter, a mistake further exploited by profiteering military contractors who delivered substandard goods to the troops.

In the West, American fighters undertook a series of daring attacks that had little impact on the outcome of the war. Yet in this region the international aspects of the war emerged more prominently, causing great upheaval as the British, Americans, French, and Spanish all vied for control and pressed the Indian nations to choose sides in the conflict. These choices destroyed the power of many of the most prominent Indian nations of the region, and another smallpox epidemic further decimated their populations.

The Struggle in the South

While the war in the North stalemated, the British pursued a southern strategy. They easily captured Savannah, Georgia, and, after a long siege, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. But the rebel militia dashed British hopes that southern resistance would quickly collapse. Although loyalists remained numerous in the Georgia and Carolina backcountry, they met determined resistance from rebel irregulars led by men such as Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter.

As a vicious, partisan war seared the backcountry, the Continentals, after a humiliating defeat at Camden, South Carolina, secured an important victory at Cowpens. Soon after, they forced exhausted British troops under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, to abandon their pursuit of the rebel army at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina.

Nathanael Greene, in command of the Continental Army in the South, proved an ingenious strategist. His support for the rebel partisans and his careful treatment of a civilian population disenchanted by Cornwallis's marauding army frustrated British efforts to take the Carolinas. The British, fearful of estranging whites, had also erred by refusing to seek greater support from one large group of southerners who might have fought with them to win liberty—African American slaves.

The World Turned Upside Down

Cornwallis made one final bid for victory at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. In this final battle, though, he found himself outflanked by Continentals under Washington, French troops under the comte de Rochambeau, and the French navy under the comte de Grasse. With the tide of war in Europe turning against them as well, the British decided to cut their losses in America and agreed to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Many Americans had, indeed, proven willing to fight. Along with Europeans, Indians, and African Americans, they had turned the world upside down, and they now faced the uncertainty of determining what came next in the new United States.