The American Revolution

What you’ll learn

• The Revolution grew from a decade of stacked causes: war debt, taxes without representation, soldiers in colonial cities, and Enlightenment ideas about rights
• Colonists fought first with boycotts, committees, and pamphlets; the shooting started at Lexington and Concord in April 1775
• Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence turned a tax dispute into a fight for a republic based on the consent of the governed
• Saratoga (1777) brought France into the war, and French money, troops, and ships made the victory at Yorktown (1781) possible
• George Washington rarely won battles but kept the army together, and the winter at Valley Forge turned it into a disciplined force
• The Revolution was also a civil war: about a fifth of white colonists were Loyalists, and Black Americans, women, and Native nations took part on every side