2.31 America: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 13/20)

One might add a 5th factor in the American victory - the difficulty of the British in supplying an army of 90,000 soldiers an ocean away from their homeland, as after 1775 the Americans had pretty well prevented British troops from access to local supplies.

Under the circumstances the British navy did a good job, but in January 1779 the Red Coat army in New York had only 4 days rations left when a relieving fleet arrived. (Ref. 279 )

The final battle of the war occurred in 1781 at Yorktown. General Cornwallis was already under siege with Washington's troops on land; then the French navy bottled him in

After the war, there was still not a nation but a group of independent countries. Within four years the Union was close to bankruptcy and strong leaders were not in sight. About 1/3 of the people in this new "nation" were Tories, who had remained loyal to England during the war. Pennsylvania and South Carolina were generous and compassionate with these people, but other colonies reacted much differently and great numbers of Tories were exiled to Canada, the West Indies or back to England. Immediately after the termination of fighting various states started to draw up declarations of rights and constitutions. The Virginia Declaration of Rights was one of the great liberty documents of all time.

Articles of Confederation had been drawn up as early as November, 1777 by a Congress designed to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. There was a considerable revival of commerce between 1782 and 1789 and some literary activity, as evidenced by the publication of Webster's Dictionary by Noah Webster. But all was not completely peaceful - in Massachusetts a revolt of poor farmers against the courts, who were prosecuting debtors was called "Shay's Rebellion". The situation was alleviated when some new legislators were elected.

Besides having European nations treating it with contempt, the new nation was scarcely able to contain the Indian tribes and to pay the interest on the Revolutionary War debt. It was on the brink of collapse when Congress appealed to the people for a new constitution. (Ref. 217 ) Finally delegates did meet in the so-called Constitutional Convention in 1787. The problem was not to give the states anything, but to take some existing powers from them. (Ref. 39 ) Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry