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The Revolutionary War: Animated Battle Map

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Black Soldiers of the Revolutionary War (audio described)

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American Revolutionary War - Timelines and Maps - Animated US History

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Causes of The American Revolution - Review Rap Song

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Virtual Tour Museum of the American Revolution

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Virtual Tour Museum of the American Revolution

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WGBH Timeline: Causes of the American Revolution

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The American Revolution was the war in which Great Britain’s 13 American colonies won their independence. The colonies became a new country, the United States. The revolution…

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1. The Stamp Act (March 1765)

To recoup some of the massive debt left over from the war with France, Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act, which for the first time taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.

"Up until then, each colony had its own government which decided which taxes they would have, and collected them," explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and author of numerous works on early American history, including Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution."They felt that they'd spent a lot of blood and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and so they should pay their share."

The colonists didn't see it that way. They resented not only having to buy goods from the British but pay tax on them as well. "The tax never got collected, because there were riots all over the place," Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it, but that only made things worse. "That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted," Randall says.

2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain. The Crown established a board of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials in the colonies, who were often in on the illicit trade.

Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were subject to taxation and began harassing the British customs commissioners. In an effort to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only deepened the ill feeling.

3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers apparently lost their cool and began firing into the crowd.

As the smoke cleared, three men-including an African American sailor named Crispus Attucks-were dead, and two others were mortally wounded. The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists, especially after Paul Revere distributed an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors.

4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations to sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

That didn't sit well with Americans. "They didn't want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, but it wasn't just about that," Randall explains. "The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any country they wanted."

The Sons of Liberty, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised as Mohawks, they boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of British tea by dumping it into the harbor. To make the point that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming any of the crew or damaging the ships themselves, and the next day even replaced a padlock that had been broken.

Nevertheless, the act of defiance "really ticked off the British government," Randall explains. "Many of the East India Company's shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid 1,000 pounds sterling-that would probably be about a million dollars now-for a share of the company, to get a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to force down the colonists' throats. So when these bottom-of-the-rung people in Boston destroyed their tea, that was a serious thing to them."

5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony's elected council with one appointed by the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.

Yet another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from being tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to another colony or back to Great Britain for trial.

But perhaps the most provocative provision was the Quartering Act, which allowed British military officials to demand accommodations for their troops in unoccupied houses and buildings in towns, rather than having to stay out in the countryside. While it didn't force the colonists to board troops in their own homes, they had to pay for the expense of housing and feeding the soldiers. The quartering of troops eventually became one of the grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence.

6. Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.

On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 American militiamen, and they began shooting at each other. Seven Americans died, but other militiamen managed to stop the British at Concord and continued to harass them on their retreat back to Boston.

The British lost 73 dead, with another 174 wounded and 26 missing in action. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America's war of independence.

7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

Though the Revolutionary War's hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the start, it was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn't necessarily align with the northern colonies, would be all in for a war of independence.

"The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn't trust the Yankees," he explains. "And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy."

But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and flee for their lives, northerners had to face up to "the fear that the British would do whatever they wanted to them," Randall says.

As historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced it as "exceeding in barbarity & cruelty every hostile act practiced among civilized nations."

Similarly, in Norfolk, the horror of the town's wooden buildings going up in flames after a seven-hour naval bombardment shocked the southerners, who also knew that the British were offering African Americans their freedom if they took up arms on the loyalist side. "Norfolk stirred up fears of a slave insurrection in the South," Randall says.

Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the two ports to make the argument that the colonists needed to band together for survival against a ruthless enemy and embrace the need for independence. This spirit ultimately would lead to their victory.

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7 Events That Enraged Colonists and Led to the American Revolution

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Colonists didn't just take up arms against the British out of the blue. A series of events escalated tensions that culminated in America's war for independence.

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WGBH Timeline: Causes of the American Revolution

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Women and the American Revolution | Interactive Lesson | PBS LearningMedia

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In this interactive lesson, students will examine the ways in which women contributed to the American Revolution. From leading economic boycotts, to fighting on the battlefield, to leading peace negotiations, women significantly contributed to both Revolutionary efforts and Loyalist causes in Revolu…

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The Boston Massacre Engraving Background Image

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Tap the name of a section in the Explore menu on the left to get started. Then tap the name of a layer at the bottom of your screen to find out more!

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Native Americans in the Revolutionary War image
Johann Ewald Diary, Volume II, Joseph P. Tustin Papers, Special Collections, Harvey A. Andruss Library, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Women in the Revolutionary War image
New-York Historical Society Library
Black people in the Revolutionary War image
Verger, Jean Baptiste Antoine De, Artist. Soldiers in Uniform. [Williamsburg, Virginia: publisher not identified, to 1784] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, 2021669876.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Native Americans in the Revolutionary War image Johann Ewald Diary, Volume II, Joseph P. Tustin Papers, Special Collections, Harvey A. Andruss Library, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Women in the Revolutionary War image New-York Historical Society Library Black people in the Revolutionary War image Verger, Jean Baptiste Antoine De, Artist.

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Hear that marching playing patriotic music? Smell those hot dogs cooking on the grill? See those fireworks exploding in the night sky? Then it must be Independence Day!

Also called the Fourth of July, Independence Day marks the historic date in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. The written declaration stated that the American colonies were tired of being ruled by Great Britain. They wanted to become their own country.

A GROWING ANGER

Before the declaration, America was part of the Kingdom of Great Britain (now called the United Kingdom). In the 1600s, people came from Great Britain to settle in what is now North America. Between 1607 and 1732, the British founded 13 colonies: Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

As these colonies grew, the people who lived there thought the British government treated them unfairly. For instance, they had to pay taxes on items such as tea and allow British soldiers to stay in their homes. The colonists had to follow these laws but couldn't do anything to change them. The colonists rebelled. As a result, the Revolutionary War between the colonists and Great Britain began in 1775.

Fighting wasn't enough though. The colonists decided they needed to declare their independence in writing to explain their reasons and gain support from other countries like France. On July 4, 1776, a small group of representatives from the colonies-called the Continental Congress-adopted the Declaration of Independence.

DECLARING INDEPENDENCE

Written by a committee led by Thomas Jefferson, the document was signed by people from all 13 colonies. But the British government didn't accept it. So the colonists continued to fight for independence until they finally defeated Great Britain in 1783.

The Declaration of Independence, now housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., is recognized around the world as an important message of self-governance and human rights. The second sentence says it all: that all people are created equally and have rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Fun fact: Jefferson, who would become the third U.S. president, wrote that sentence!)

Today the United States and Great Britain are friends. Most Americans still celebrate Independence Day, often with parades and fireworks. Historians think this is thanks to a letter written by John Adams, who helped write the declaration and would also go on to be the second U.S. president. In his letter to his wife, Abigail, Adams predicted that the colonists' independence would be celebrated by future generations as an annual festival with parades and bonfires. It's no wonder that this holiday has turned out to be such a blast!

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Get the scoop on why we celebrate the Fourth of July!

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7 Black Heroes of the American Revolution

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7 Black Heroes of the American Revolution

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During the American Revolution, thousands of Black Americans jumped into the war, on both sides of the conflict. But unlike their white counterparts, they weren't just fighting for independence-or to maintain British control. In a time when the vast majority of African Americans lived in bondage-their forced labor fueling the economy of the fledgling nation-most took up arms hoping to be freed from the literal shackles of chattel slavery. In fact, when enslaved people had choice in the matter, according to historian Edward Ayres of the American Revolution Museum in Yorktown, Virginia, they signed on with whichever side seemed most likely to grant them personal freedom.

For some slaves-turned-soldiers, the Revolution's promise of liberty became a reality. But despite the patriots' lofty rhetoric about liberty and justice for all, America's war for independence didn't herald widespread emancipation for enslaved people of color. America's northern states didn't pass laws to abolish slavery until 1804-and even then, some areas phased it out slowly. Southern states would cling to the brutal practice for more than a half-century longer.

Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 8,000 African-descended people participated in the Revolution on the Patriot side, and that upward of 20,000 served the crown. Many fought with extraordinary bravery and skill, their exploits lost to our collective memory. Below are the stories of several exceptional African American figures-a martyr, a poet and a double agent among them-whose crucial contributions to the conflict have been remembered to history.

Crispus Attucks, Martyr

Crispus Attucks, whom many historians credit as the first man to die for the rebellion, became a symbol of Black American patriotism and sacrifice. In 1770, as tension mounted between British and colonial sailors in Massachusetts ports, distrust and competition among them grew. These pressures came to a head on March 5th, when an angry confrontation turned into a slaughter known as the Boston Massacre.

Witnesses say that Attucks, a middle-aged runaway enslaved man of African and native American descent, who worked as a sailor and a rope maker, played an active role in the initial scuffle. Of the five colonists killed, he was said to be the first to fall-making him the first martyr to the American cause. He was taken down by two musket balls to the chest.

Salem Poor, Patriot Soldier

Salem Poor began life as a Massachusetts slave and ended it as an American hero. Born into bondage in the late 1740s, he purchased his own freedom two decades later for 27 pounds, the equivalent of a few thousand dollars today. Soon after, Poor joined the fight for independence.

Enlisting multiple times, he is believed to have fought in the battles of Saratoga and Monmouth. He's most famous, however, for his heroism at the Battle of Bunker Hill -where his contributions so impressed fellow soldiers, that after the war ended, 14 of them formally recognized his excellent battle skills with a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts. In it, they called him out as a "brave and gallant soldier," saying he "behaved like an experienced officer." Poor is credited in that battle with killing British Lieutenant Colonel James Abercrombie, along with several other enemy soldiers.

Colonel Tye, Loyalist Guerrilla

Colonel Tye earned a reputation as the most formidable guerilla leader in the Revolutionary War. During his years fighting for the British, Patriots feared his raids, while their slaves welcomed his help in their liberation.

Tye, originally known as Titus during his early years in slavery in New Jersey, escaped a particularly brutal master in 1775 and joined the British army after the Crown offered freedom to any enslaved person who enlisted. While Tye stood out as a soldier from the start, the British didn't station him at pitched battles. They saw more value in using his knowledge of the coveted New Jersey territory, which sat between British-occupied New York and the Patriot's center of government in Philadelphia. The Redcoats needed to take this middle land-and believed Tye could help.

The British were right. Tye excelled at raid warfare there. His familiarity with the area gave him an advantage in attacks on Patriots' lands. And his daring, skillful execution kept his Black Brigade soldiers largely unscathed as they plundered homes, took supplies, freed slaves and sometimes even assassinated Patriot slaveholders renowned for their cruelty. The British recognized Tye's impact on their success and, out of respect for all his contributions, bestowed on him the honorific title of Colonel. He remains an important symbol of fearless resistance.

The First Rhode Island Regiment, Integrated Revolutionary Force

The First Rhode Island Regiment, the first Continental Army unit largely comprised of Black New Englanders, showcased African Americans' skill as soldiers and commitment to their brethren on the battlefield. In the late 1770s, dwindling manpower forced George Washington to reconsider his original decision to ban Black people from the Continental Army. So in 1778, a Rhode Island legislature declared that both free and enslaved Black people could serve. To attract the latter, the Patriots promised freedom at the end of service.

Though relatively small-only about 130 men-the First Rhode Island Regiment had an outsized impact. Commanding General John Sullivan praised its soldiers for their success against attacks in the Battle of Newport, saying they displayed "desperate valor in repelling three furious Hessian (German) infantry assaults." When the Rhode Islanders journeyed to Virginia, where several thousand other soldiers were assembling, they stood out, according to aFrench military officer there, as "most neatly dressed, the best under arms and the most precise in all their maneuvers."

And one early historian, William Cooper, lauded their fierce loyalty. When their commander Colonel Christopher Greene was cut down during a surprise early-morning attack in May 1781, he wrote, "the sabers of the enemy only reached him through the bodies of his faithful guard of blacks, who hovered over him to protect him, and every one of whom was killed."

Phyllis Wheatley, Patriot Poet

Phillis Wheatley was a revolutionary intellectual who waged a war for freedom with her words. Captured as a child in West Africa, then taken to North America and enslaved, Wheatley had an unusual experience in bondage: Her owners educated her and supported her literary pursuits. In 1773, at around age 20, Wheatley became the first African American and third woman to publish a book of poetry in the young nation. Shortly after, her owners freed her.

Influential colonists read Wheatley's poems and lauded her talent. Her work, which reflected her close knowledge of the ancient classics as well as Biblical theology, carried strong messages against slavery and became a rallying cry for Abolitionists: "Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin'd and join th' angelic train." She also advocated for independence, artfully expressing support for George Washington's Revolutionary War in her poem, "To His Excellency, General Washington." Washington, who himself had been forced to end his formal education at age 11, appreciated Wheatley's support and extolled her talent. The commander even invited her to meet, explaining he would "be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses."

Peter Salem, Colonial Hero

Peter Salem is best known for his crucial contributions at the outset of the Revolution. Born into slavery in Massachusetts in the mid-18th century, Salem joined the Patriots in the earliest battles of the war, participating as a "minute man" at Lexington and Concord. His owners supported this decision and freed him so that he could remain enlisted.

Salem earned his place in history for his role in one the most important Revolutionary War fights, the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill. Although the British defeated the Continental Army in this encounter, it wasn't a total loss for the Patriots: Their killing of many Redcoats encouraged them to keep up the fight. Many historians credit Salem with killing a key officer of the crown, Major John Pitcairn, just as he was scaling the top of the American redoubt and demanding that the Patriots surrender. Salem's role is believed to have been memorialized in John Trumbull's painting The battle of Bunker's Hill.

James Armistead Lafayette, the Double Agent

During the Revolution, James Armistead's life changed drastically-from an enslaved person in Virginia to a double agent passing intel, and misinformation, between the two warring sides. When Armistead joined the Patriots' efforts, they assigned him to infiltrate the enemy. So he pretended to be a runaway slave wanting to serve the crown, and was welcomed by the British with open arms. At first they assigned him menial support tasks, but he soon became a more strategic resource due to his vast knowledge of the local terrain. Armistead's role got more interesting when the British directed him to spy on the Patriots. Since his loyalty remained with the colonists, he claimed to be bringing the British intel about the Continental Army, but he was actually pushing incorrect information to foil their plans. In the meantime, he was learning details of the British battle plans, which he brought back to his commander, General Marquis de Lafayette.

This served the Americans well. Because of Armistead's efforts, they got the insight they needed to successfully execute the decisive Siege of Yorktown, which effectively ended the war. Years later, after a testimonial from the French general helped secure Armistead's freedom, the former slave changed his surname to Lafayette.

HISTORY Vault: The American Revolution

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7 Black Heroes of the American Revolution | HISTORY

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They include a spy, a poet, a guerrilla fighter-and foot soldiers who fought on both sides of the war.

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The Declaration of Independence Transcript

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The Declaration of Independence Transcript