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Greene led Cornwallis on a series of countermarches around North Carolina; by early March, the British were exhausted and short of supplies and Greene felt strong enough to fight the Battle of Guilford Court House on March 15. Although victorious, Cornwallis suffered heavy casualties and retreated to Wilmington, North Carolina seeking supplies and reinforcements. Reinforced by Clinton, Cornwallis' troops captured Charleston in May 1780, inflicting the most serious Patriot defeat of the war; over 5,000 prisoners were taken and the Continental Army in the south effectively destroyed.
Over the course of the 18th century, the elected lower houses in the colonial legislatures gradually wrested power from their Royal Governors. Dominated by smaller landowners and merchants, these Assemblies now established ad hoc provincial legislatures, variously called Congresses, Conventions, and Conferences, effectively replacing Royal control. With the exception of Georgia, twelve colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to agree on a unified response to the crisis. Many of the delegates feared that an all-out boycott would result in war and sent a Petition to the King calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts. Tensions escalated following the destruction of a customs vessel in the June 1772 Gaspee Affair, then came to a head in 1773.
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Instead, Vergennes persuaded Louis XVI to secretly fund a government front company to purchase munitions for the Patriots, carried in neutral Dutch ships and imported through Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean. Over the winter, poor conditions, supply problems and low morale resulted in 2,000 deaths, with another 3,000 unfit for duty due to lack of shoes. Despite Valley Forge being only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, an action some critics argue could have ended the war. After securing additional supplies, Howe made another attempt on Philadelphia by landing his troops in Chesapeake Bay on August 24. He now compounded failure to support Burgoyne by missing repeated opportunities to destroy his opponent, defeating Washington at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, then allowing him to withdraw in good order.
The third element was a global war between France, Spain, the Dutch Republic and Britain, with America as one of a number of different theaters. After entering the war in 1778, France provided the Americans money, weapons, soldiers, and naval assistance, while French troops fought under US command in North America. On August 31, a British fleet under Thomas Graves left New York for Yorktown. An attempted breakout over the York River at Gloucester Point failed due to bad weather.
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St Leger moved east and besieged Fort Stanwix; despite defeating an American relief force at the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, he was abandoned by his Indian allies and withdrew to Quebec on August 22. Now isolated and outnumbered by Gates, Burgoyne continued onto Albany rather than retreating to Fort Ticonderoga, reaching Saratoga on September 13. He asked Clinton for support while constructing defenses around the town. The Battle of Trenton restored the American army's morale, reinvigorated the Patriot cause, and dispelled their fear of the what they regarded as Hessian "mercenaries". A British attempt to retake Trenton was repulsed at Assunpink Creek on January 2; during the night, Washington outmaneuvered Cornwallis, then defeated his rearguard in the Battle of Princeton the following day.
News of the treaty between Great Britain and the United States arrived late that year. By this time, about 7% of Kentucky settlers had been killed in battles against Native Americans, contrasting with 1% of the population killed in the 13 colonies. Lingering resentments led to continued fighting in the west after the war officially ended. After regrouping at Halifax, Nova Scotia, William Howe was determined to take the fight to the Americans. He sailed for New York in June 1776 and began landing troops on Staten Island near the entrance to New York Harbor on July 2.
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The scale of violence in the Licking River Valley, was extreme "even for frontier standards." It led to men of English and German settlements to join Clark's militia when the British and their hired German soldiers withdrew to the Great Lakes. The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success in the Battle of Piqua but did not end Indian raids. In February 1778, an expedition of militia to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River was halted by adverse weather.
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The British hired over 30,000 professional soldiers from various German states who served in North America from 1775 to 1782. Commentators and historians often refer to them as mercenaries or auxiliaries, terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. Augustin de La Balme independently marched on Detroit under a French flag with British Canadien militia recruited from western Quebec at the county seat of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. The "new social history" approach looks at community social structure to find cleavages that were magnified into colonial cleavages. The Atlantic history view places the American story in a broader context, including subsequent revolutions in France and Haiti. It tends to reintegrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire.
A second defeat at Trois-Rivières on June 8 ended operations in Quebec. In May, 4,500 British reinforcements arrived under Generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Sir Henry Clinton. On June 17, they seized the Charlestown Peninsula at the Battle of Bunker Hill, a frontal assault in which they suffered over 1,000 casualties.
British sponsorship of local warfare on the United States continued until the Anglo-American Jay Treaty went into effect. At the same time, the Spanish also sponsored war within the US by Indian proxies in its Southwest Territory ceded by France to Britain, then Britain to the Americans. When the early war policy was administered by General William Howe, the Crown's need to maintain Loyalist support prevented it from using the traditional revolt suppression methods. The British cause suffered when their troops ransacked local homes during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779 that enraged both Patriots and Loyalists. Conversely, Loyalists gained support when Patriots intimidated suspected Tories by destroying property or tarring and feathering. The expulsion of France from North America in 1763 led to a drastic reduction in British troop levels in the colonies; in 1775, there were only 8,500 regular soldiers among a civilian population of 2.8 million.
With the war in the north stalemated, in 1779 the British initiated their southern strategy, which aimed to mobilise Loyalist support in the region and reoccupy Patriot-controlled territory north to Chesapeake Bay. Of the European powers with American colonies adjacent to the newly created United States, Spain was most threatened by American independence, and it was correspondingly the most hostile to it. Its territory adjacent to the US was relatively undefended, so Spanish policy developed a combination of initiatives. Spanish soft power diplomatically challenged the British territorial cession west to the Mississippi and the previous northern boundaries of Spanish Florida. It imposed a high tariff on American goods, then blocked American settler access to the port of New Orleans. Spanish hard power extended war alliances and arms to Southwestern Natives to resist American settlement.
General Charles Cornwallis pursued Washington, but Howe ordered him to halt, leaving Washington unmolested. In Virginia, an attempt by Governor Lord Dunmore to seize militia stores on April 20, 1775, led to an increase in tension, although conflict was avoided for the time being. This changed after the publication of Dunmore's Proclamation on November 7, 1775, promising freedom to any slaves who fled their Patriot masters and agreed to fight for the Crown.
Under heavy bombardment with dwindling supplies, Cornwallis felt his situation was hopeless and on October 16 sent emissaries to Washington to negotiate surrender; after twelve hours of negotiations, these were finalized the next day. Responsibility for defeat was the subject of fierce public debate between Cornwallis, Clinton and Germain. Despite criticism from his junior officers, Cornwallis retained the confidence of his peers and later held a series of senior government positions; Clinton ultimately took most of the blame and spent the rest of his life in obscurity. When Lafayette entered Virginia, Cornwallis complied with Clinton's orders and withdrew to Yorktown, where he constructed strong defenses and awaited evacuation. An agreement by the Spanish navy to defend the French West Indies allowed Admiral de Grasse to relocate to the Atlantic seaboard, a move Arbuthnot did not anticipate. This provided Lafayette naval support, while the failure of previous combined operations at Newport and Savannah meant their co-ordination was planned more carefully.
