5 things you didn’t know about the American Revolution: An American will tell you the United States became independent on 4 July, 1776, but it did not. That was the date of the Declaration in Philadelphia, but legal independence only arrived when the British government conceded it under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, in which the United States of America was recognized by all parties as an independent sovereign nation. — seven years later in 1783. The Thirteen Colonies did not make up the entirety of the British holdings on the Eastern American coastline. There were at least seven other colonies; Newfoundland, Rupert’s Land [the area around the Hudson Bay], Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, East Florida, West Florida, and the Province of Quebec that did not rebel during the American Revolutionary War. Nathan Hale was hanged not only for spying, but also for trying to burn New York. On September 20, 1776, American soldiers [some of them members of Hale’s regiment] filtered into British–held New York and stashed resin–soaked logs in numerous buildings. A spark turned the incendiary devices into roaring infernos. The Continental Army was trying to deprive the British army of winter quarters. Hale was caught the following day, after the fire destroyed more than a fourth of the city. He admitted he was a spy and was hanged without a trial because the British considered him one of the incendiaries. Benedict Arnold was allegedly the greatest general in the Continental Army. He was considered a brave and caring commander and a war hero. “Without Benedict Arnold in the first three years of the war”, says the historian George Neumann, “we would probably have lost the Revolution”. In 1775, the future traitor led the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in New York and came within a whisker of conquering Canada. In 1776, he built a fleet and fought a bigger British fleet to a standstill on Lake Champlain. At Saratoga in 1777, his brilliant battlefield leadership forced the British army to surrender. The victory persuaded the French to join the war on the American side. Ironically, Major General Arnold ultimately defected to the British Army in 1780, partly because he disapproved of the French alliance. By 1779, there were more Americans fighting with the British than with Washington. There were no less than 21 regiments [estimated to total 6,500 to 8,000 men] of loyalists in the British army. Washington reported a field army of 3,468; about a third of Americans opposed the Revolution.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:50:16 +0000
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