foreign welcome back everyone so we're going to finish up by looking at the American war of independence continue our discussion here about the battles and campaigns of the war just a review last time we we talked about the New York and New Jersey campaigns we also talked about the Saratoga campaign and then we finish by talking about the winter at Valley Forge in this video I want to pick up where we left off by talking about really the final phases of the war starting with the British southern strategy and we're going to talk about what the British were doing in some of the southern colonies between 1778 and 1781. we're then going to finish with the last major military campaign of the war it was known as the Virginia campaign or I like to refer to it as the Yorktown campaign and talk about the subsequent Battle of it or Siege of uh the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and then of course we're going to finish up with the Diplomatic agreement that ended the War uh it was known as the Treaty of Paris and it was signed in the year 1783 but we're going to start with the British southern strategy uh it was in late 1778 that the British implemented what they came to call their southern strategy of really just kind of taking the southern states or southern colonies from the Americans and forcing then the United States into a position where it was squeezed from the south and squeezed from the north and Canada now this southern strategy was seen by the British as something that would go relatively easy uh and produce some great benefits for uh the war effort and it was built upon some assumptions that in the southern colonies specifically in Carolinas Virginia and Georgia uh that there resided a large number of loyalists now the loyalists were people were calling us that did not support the American Revolution they were remaining loyal to England and it was assumed by England at the southern colonies were just flush with them um and so uh the idea was once the British could then gain control of these southern colonies they would have then a shrinking United States caught between Canada and the North and a British controlled South and so this southern strategy began in 1778 when the new commander-in-chief of North America Sir Henry Clinton he replaced Sir William Howe after house debacle uh in Prosecuting this War uh but in 1778 Sir Henry Clinton began implementing the um southern strategy by dispatching a force of over 3 000 Redcoats Hessian mercenaries as well as loyalist soldiers to take the port city of Savannah Georgia which they did on December 29 1778 and this began in a a really a a momentum push in the war for the British um because uh in May of 1780 Sir Henry Clinton dispatched the British army uh led by General Charles Cornwall is also known as Lord Carr and Wallace we saw him taking on George Washington earlier at the Battle of Princeton uh back in the winter of 76-77. um cornwallis's forces were able to land near Charlestown South Carolina and eventually captured the city on May 12 1780. and this was a fairly devastating blow to the American uh cause and and to American morale because the city was of great importance uh and not only strategic but also um symbolic right and the loss of Charlestown also accompanied the loss of over 5 000 Defenders who were defending the city and it was one of the greatest American losses of the entire War now after capturing Charlestown cornwallis's Army uh then marched uh north of Charlestown to take on any American resistance in the southern colonies uh and they met that southern or they met that American resistance uh on August 16 1780 at a place called Camden in South Carolina and a battle ensued there on the 16th known as the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Camden was a well it was it was it was a very stinging defeat for the Americans um uh they they lost this battle they lost a lot of soldiers not only killed but most but uh uh captured and the end result here after the Battle of Camden is that Cornwallis and the British uh they now had all of Georgia and pretty much all of South Carolina under control uh by by the end of 1780. however 1780 was really kind of the high water mark then for the British in the southern colonies uh their momentum simply ran out of steam and they ended up falling victim to a few developments a lot of them their own uh creating problems for them of their own making for example the Loyalists strength in the southern colonies was uh significantly weaker than the British were had estimated and so you did not see that a lot of loyalists rallied to the British cause also in the southern colonies the British were engaged in encouraging and arming Native Americans to attack um American settlements in the back country and that ended up causing a lot of Back Country settlers to join the American cause and so that was not a good development for the British in the South um but another problem they face in the southern colonies which caused their momentum to run out of steam by the end of 1780 was that um well the British soldiers and the Loyalists that were fighting for the Brutus they behaved in these southern colonies so harshly towards um you know potential loyalists so harshly towards everyone really in the South that they actually ended up driving a lot of loyalists to the American side so they were kind of victims of their own tactics and their own strategy here and by the end of 1780 while they had pretty much dominated and occupied all of Georgia and South Carolina uh their momentum ran out of steam and in late 1780 the Continental Congress decided to exploit this fact and so what they did is they dispatched to the southern uh colonies um a new general to help or a new general to take command of the Continental Army in the southern colonies and his name was Nathaniel Greene uh he was nicknamed The Fighting Quaker because he was from Rhode Island he was a former blacksmith um who was just blessed with just unflagging persistence uh he was very bold he was very daring and he was well suited to a drawn-out war now when he arrived in the southern colonies he actually arrived in North Carolina and he began organizing what uh soldiers he could militiamen professionals he started enlisting uh Rifleman and you know anybody he could find trying to build an army and what he ended up doing here in the southern colonies in late 1780 is he he is going to adopt the very same types of strategies that George Washington adopted in the north these kind of Hit and Run strategies these these drawing out the war making this a war of attrition frustrating the British making them for you know forcing them to make mistakes and then really hitting them uh and once Nathaniel Green arrived in the southern colonies you know momentum really did shift against the British and in favor of the Americans for example in one of Green's first military engagements in the South uh in early 1781 at the place known as the Battle of Cowpens um a portion of Green's Army was able to defeat a portion of cornwallis's army here um and it left a very very s sharp uh sting in in the in in the mind of uh uh Lord Cornwallis to the point that Cornwallis became very frustrated by what had happened at the Cowpens and so he um haphazardly tried to pursue Green's Army to destroy it and this played right into Nathanael Greene's hands and so after the Battle of Cowpens green actually you can see on this map Retreats it back into North Carolina uh and draws cornwallis's Army uh towards him now corners of Wallace's Army is still reeling of course from its defeated Cowpens uh and so uh uh they were not really prepared to to fight a large pitched battle against the Continental Army uh under the commander of Nathaniel Green but that's what green forced them to do and what unfolded on March 15 1781 was known as the Battle of gulliford courthouse now interesting enough this battle actually was a defeat for the Americans um and what I mean by that is that you know they lost this battle because they were forced to retreat they they were forced to give ground but this battle the Green's Army was able to inflict really heavy casualties on cornwallis's Army who ended up having to leave behind his wounded uh and leave behind his dying and March very quickly and haphazardly away from the battle um to Wilmington North Carolina where you can see him uh doing this on the map there and the reason he needed to do this is he needed to get away from the Continental Army so that his army could resupply reinforce and really you know lick their wounds they've been thrashed at the Battle of Cowpens and while they won the Battle of gulliverford's Courthouse uh they and they were uh had heavy heavy casualties inflicted upon them uh and from Wilmington Cornwallis now had a little bit of time to think about what he wanted to do next um and what Cornwallis determined needed to happen was that you know it was clear now that they had lost control of the southern colonies and he intended to retake them uh he and he intended to reconquer the southern colonies like they had done earlier in 1780 but he resolved that the really the only way to do this was that he recognized that the colony of Virginia was really the reinforcement uh from Virginia was where reinforcements were coming to Green's Army it's where resupplies were coming into Green's Army and so if the British were going to reconquer the southern colonies if they were going to pacify the southern colonies Virginia itself would need to be under British control and uh so Lord Cornwallis was going to then determine to invade this The Colony or as the Americans call it the state of Virginia in order to deprive green uh and the Americans in the south of this valuable uh base of reinforcement and valuable base of resupply and cornwallis's intentions then to invade Virginia was going to set up the final military campaign of the war it was known as the Virginia campaign but I like to refer to it as the Yorktown campaign and so that's what we're going to turn our attention to now the Virginia campaign or the Yorktown campaign is we're calling it began in September of 1781. and it was the result of cornwallis's understanding that before the Carolinas in Georgia could be subdued um Virginia needed to be eliminated as a source of American reinforcement and American resupply and so Cornwallis began his March North from Wilmington Wilmington North Carolina in September of 1781 with an army of over 7 000 men now as the American Army began to move into position to counter him Cornwallis ended up picking the town of Yorktown which was a small Port between the York and the James rivers on the Chesapeake Bay as his base of operations now he wasn't worried really about an American attack because General Washington's main force was still very far away from where he was at Yorktown and seemed to be focused primarily on the British occupation of New York City not only that but the British Navy still controlled the American Waters including the Chesapeake Bay however things were beginning to change though for example in July of 1780 the French had finally managed to land soldiers in the United States to help the Americans in their war against the British now the French that landed in 1780 were commanded by the comp de roshambo the comp is a French term for count so this is a French nobleman and a very good General um there's also a famous game named after him uh he landed in in July of 1780 with over six thousand soldiers uh a way up in the north near near Newport Rhode Island but he'd pretty much been bottled up there by the British Navy who as I mentioned earlier still kind of controlled the waters off of the United States and so long as the British Navy maintained the supremacy along the coast The Americans really weren't going to really have a chance to win the war but as fate would have it uh with the arrival of the French in May of 1780 all of the elements were now in place for a combined French American action uh against the British and so as cornwallis's Army was moving North into Virginia General Washington attempted to persuade Rochambeau and his 6 000 soldiers to join him in an attack on the British who still occupied New York City however before Washington could put all of that uh plan into operation um before they could strike New York City uh he and rosham Beau received word that a french navy had finally arrived in the Caribbean under the command and of The Conch DeGrasse uh again count this is another French nobleman and a general and he was in command now of a Navy which was currently in the Caribbean and on its way headed towards the Chesapeake Bay uh a fleet of French warships as well as over 3 000 additional soldiers and so what happened here is when Washington heard about this um uh Washington changed his plans uh and he immediately began moving his army South from uh um from New York roshambo moves down from Newport uh and now you have a French and an American Army marching along the coast of the United States headed down towards Yorktown because if they can get down to Yorktown and trap Cornwallis on land they're hoping that the French navy coming in from the Caribbean will be able to seal off the Chesapeake Bay and this will trap that British Army at Yorktown so that's the plan and it really just came down to could the French navy get to the Chesapeake Bay before any British reinforcements uh over from their Navy probably coming from New York City the race was on uh and this map shows you that you have a reinforcement of resupply Convoy heading south for the British from New York City headed to Yorktown and it really was just a matter of who could get to the Chesapeake Bay first uh would really determine maybe even the outcome of this war um and on August 30th uh the French uh General DeGrasse his 24 warships ended up winning the race to Yorktown um and he just sat there outside of the Chesapeake Bay waiting for the British Convoy to arrive which they finally did on September 6th and on September 6 the battle of the Chesapeake which was a naval engagement took place right at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and the British fleet was not prepared for this the Brutus fleet was outnumbered and so the British fleet was forced to abandon this resupply and reinforcement effort for cornwallis's surrounded Army and it left him them no access to any fresh food or any fresh supplies and that did not bode well then for Cornwallis um and this then set up the land engagement for the Battle of Yorktown as the American Army under George Washington arrives combines with smaller American forces that were already in the area you have Rochambeau and his uh 6 000 uh French soldiers as well as the grass is 3 000 French soldiers all of them combining and they begin to establish defensive fortifications around cornwallis's Army at Yorktown they outnumber him they outgun him there's no hope of resupply for Cornwallis there's no hope of reinforcement for Cornwallis this ends up being a very very bad position for Cornwallis and really for the British uh in this war because if they lose this engagement this is not going to bode well back home in England and from September late September until mid-october this began what was known as the Battle of Yorktown or sometimes referred to as the siege of Yorktown essentially the American and the French troops just closed off cornwallis's Escape Route they trapped him at Yorktown and they start bombarding him on a daily basis sending some 3 600 shells raining down on uh from raining down uh uh on Cornwallis and the British inside Yorktown and so the British you know they held out for some very grim and hard-fought weeks I can imagine um but on October 17th which was ironically the anniversary of the American victory at Saratoga Cornwallis was uh forced to surrender um and two days later after formally surrendered the seven thousand British soldiers that occupied Yorktown under his command marched out of the uh fortifications and they laid down their weapons and uh the band that accompanied them was playing a song called the world turned upside down because for the British this was the world turned upside down now the defeated Yorktown is a very very important moment in the war it is oftentimes described as the decisive moment of the war the decisive military engagement of the war and the reason for that is that you have to put it in the context of what's been going on this War Began even before independence right the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. we're now in the year 1781. this war has gone on for over six years the British they occupy all the major sport cities all the major commercial centers of the United States uh they've won almost every single military engagement outside of a handful of of American victories but significant ones as we've talked about um and the war has lasted six years a lot of money has been spent and a lot of people are dead and when word of what happened at Yorktown arrived back in England it just broke the will of the British people to continue this war effort um we look at the Battle of Yorktown uh and with hindsight what we see with Yorktown is that this is the battle that convinced the British they couldn't win this war this is the battle that convinced the British to quit this war and so with hindsight we can look back then at the Battle of Yorktown and say right there on the shores of the of the James River um uh in Virginia the United States won its independence on the battlefield because it convinced the British people that victory in this conflict wasn't possible and if you can't win a conflict it's best just to quit that conflict now major military operations in North America will draw to a close the British still have over 20 000 soldiers in the United States they still control New York City Charlestown Savannah things like that they still have warships that are blockading uh the American Coast yet any lingering Hope by the British that military Victory could be achieved that all evaporated uh that all vanished uh at Yorktown and in London the Prime Minister whose name was Lord North he exclaimed when hearing about your Yorktown he exclaimed quote Oh God it is all over all right so let's conclude our discussion about the American war of independence by looking at the Diplomatic agreement that brought an official into the conflict and this this diplomatic agreement was negotiated in Paris France and so it Bears the name the Treaty of Paris but I want you to remember it as the Treaty of Paris 1783 because there are lots of treaties of Paris throughout world history uh in fact there are three treaties of Paris that are significant to American history uh so I think it's important to remember which one did what and now the Treaty of Paris then of 1783 this would be the treaty that ends the war and I want to just talk a little bit about how this treaty was negotiated who negotiated it on our behalfs and what were some of the major agreements within it in December of 1781 King George III well he decided against sending any more soldiers over to the United States and actually early in 1782 the British contacted Benjamin Franklin uh who was in Paris at the time as the United States minister to that country they contacted Franklin in Paris to ask if the Americans would possibly be willing to sign a peace treaty without involving the French now remember our discussion about the French Alliance meant that U.S and France had to agree upon any treaty so Franklin replied that the United States had no intention of deserting its quote Noble French Ally to sign a treaty with a quote unjust and cruel enemy Franklin's really sticking it to the British here and on February 27 1782 Parliament voted to begin negotiations to end the war and on March 20th the Prime Minister Lord North resigned and in part the British leaders chose peace in America so that they could concentrate on their continuing global war with France and Spain but at the same time France let Franklin know that it was willing to let the United States negotiate its own treaty with Great Britain so we caught a break here now upon learning about the British decision to negotiate and learning at the French were would allow us out of that terms of our alliance with them the Second Continental Congress ended up naming a group of prominent Americans to go over to Paris to discuss terms with the British now the team of diplomats that we put together included of course Benjamin Franklin but it also included a gentleman by the name of John Jay who was the minister the U.S minister to Spain at the time but the delegation also included a very cranky John Adams who seemed to be you know he was the U.S minister at the time to the Netherlands so he was over there and was able to go and be a part of the Diplomatic team if possible he was seen as an odd Choice by many including uh his later Friend Thomas Jefferson who famously said quote he hates Benjamin Franklin he hates John Jay he hates the French he hates the English and so in the end as you can imagine Franklin and especially John Jay and well they did most of the work the negotiations for the treaty they dragged on for months uh and it wasn't until September 3rd of 1783 that both sides came to an agreement to sign a treaty to end the conflict this is a very interesting painting uh by Benjamin West because it was originally going to depict the entire negotiation of the treaty but the only people that ended up being painted were the American delegates now there were some others there as well Henry Lawrence is in the picture as well but the the three that I just talked about are there the painting was never finished because the uh uh British diplomats they never wanted to see it to sit down and and pose for the painting so it was never finished you know again the British are a little upset about what's transpired here uh but as I said the negotiations dragged on for a while but eventually both sides agreed to the treaty and it became known then as the Treaty of Paris uh it was signed on September 3rd 1783 and I just want to spend a few moments talking about some of the major provisions of it um the provisions were surprisingly favorable to the United States for example Great Britain officially recognized the independence of its former 13 colonies and agreed that the Mississippi River was now the United States western boundary uh now that was surprisingly favorable to us we weren't counting on that but it was going to have the result of doubling the territory of the United States with just the signing of this treaty so the treaty actually then changes the map of North America once again just like it did after the French and Indian War and uh to the West our boundary of our new nation was going to be the Mississippi River now the boundaries to the north and to the South uh were left of Fairly vague in this treaty uh there were some unclear references to what the United States Northern boundary would be and even what our southern boundary would be and this would end up being a source of dispute between uh not only Spain but also the British as well over the coming years um some other interesting provisions of the treaty included debts um any debt that Americans owed to British merchants uh in this treaty was validated now that's an interesting term because usually a side that wins a war typically has any debt kind of wiped out you can expect that debt not to be paid back but our diplomats in this treaty negotiated that we would pay uh any debt that we still owed British merchants um so that was kind of an interesting uh aspect of it the students will oftentimes ask in my classes why did we agree to that well we agreed to that because we were getting such great favorable terms already it's like you don't want the whole thing to fall apart because uh you still owe some money to people because you know you can just stiff them in the end uh which you know in a way is what we ended up doing some other major provisions of the treaty which would uh cause disputes later on was the British agreed to leave U.S soil immediately uh this meant they they were going to uh evacuate all of the big cities like New York Charlestown Savannah but also that they would leave any Outpost any military uh forts or outposts they had constructed in the far Northwestern and Far Western reaches of what is now the United States now I'm mentioning this provision of the treaty because we're going to see that it is specifically up in the Northwest portion of the new United States the British were not going to abandon these forts in fact they were going to hang out there for a while and it would cause some problems later on which we'll discuss in module uh three but the major terms of the treaty was that the United States was going to have its independence recognized we were going to have uh uh the boundaries of our new nation uh at least to the West solidified maybe they're a little unclear as to where how far we go north and how far we go south um and so you can say then that the treaty was imperfect in many ways um and it was but yeah it it reflects how the Americans were really really humbled uh the British Empire if you look at it uh in a certain way you know one of the reasons we're being granted such favorable terms is that you know the British knew that they had been beaten and beaten like a drum um I guess a few quotations here for you a great revolution has happened acknowledge the British philosopher Edmund Burke it was also a British Pro uh prominent British politician a revolution made not by chopping or changing of power in any one of the existing States but by the appearance of a new state of a new species and a new part of the globe and in winning the war of independence you know the Americans had now acquired a a really a sense of their own power if you think about it and and their own awareness of the limitations of British power and and more importantly I think the Americans you know they had earned their legitimate right to decide their own future uh in The Crucible of War here they had suffered they had bled they had uh uh and and they had persevered and in the end that they they had earned the right to chart their own course in the world and so whatever the failings of the Revolution and whatever the hypocrisies of the Revolution hypocrisy's meaning were fighting for life liberty in the pursuit of happiness yet people were still going to own slaves uh and so whatever the failings of the Revolution whatever the hypocrisies of the Revolution one has to agree that it it does sever America's connection with Monarch monarchical rule uh and it provided a catalyst for the United States to create uh a thriving uh and Lasting representative democracy which we remain so today a little bit of a story to finish out our our military operations here in in late November of 1783 uh the remaining British troops in New York City which they they had occupied since 1776 well finally in November of 1783 the the last remaining British troops left that left that City and they went home and on December 23rd George Washington requested to appear before the second continental congress which had convened Indianapolis Maryland and The Story Goes that when he uh walked into the room of all of those great leaders of the Revolution and leaders of the war of independence that with trembling hands and apparently with a rasping voice he asked the members to accept his retirement and I and I have a quote here from him in which he says quote having now finished the work assigned to me I retire from the great theater of action and I take my leave of all Employments of public life this will conclude our discussion about the American war of independence but we're going to finish with one last short discussion about the significance of the American Revolution and what it means for the social political and economic development of the country