Week 5 · Chapter

Chapter 5 — The American Revolution

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~55–65 minutes · Objectives 1 and 4 · Read it first this week, before the lecture and the slide deck.

In plain language

This week is about how thirteen British colonies declared themselves a new country and won a war to keep that claim. Independence means a people governing themselves, free of another country's rule. You will read the Declaration of Independence, the statement of reasons Congress adopted in 1776, for what it promised and for whom it left out. You will follow the war from its turning point to its end, and ask what it meant for women, for enslaved and free Black Americans, and for Native nations. You will also date a peace treaty from its own words, even when an archive's page gives a different date.

Why you already care about this

Think about a club, a team, or a company that writes a mission statement. The words are big: everyone belongs, everyone is equal, everyone has a voice. Then you look at who actually gets a vote at the meeting. Sometimes the promise and the practice match. Often they do not, and the gap is where the arguments start.

The year 1776 holds two pieces of paper like that. In the spring, Abigail Adams wrote a private letter from Braintree, Massachusetts, to her husband, John Adams, who was in Congress. In the summer, the Continental Congress adopted a public declaration that said all men are created equal. One was written for one reader. The other was written for the world. Read side by side, they show both the promise of the Revolution and its limits.

You will not be asked to decide whether the Revolution was good or bad. You will be asked to read its documents carefully, date them correctly, and say plainly what each one shows and what it does not.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to: define independence and explain what the Declaration of Independence announced; source the Declaration and keep its date apart from its signing; close-read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances, including its charge against Native nations; tell the Declaration of 1776 from the Constitution of 1787; describe the war's turning points from Saratoga to Yorktown; weigh what the Revolution meant for women, enslaved and free Black Americans, and Native nations; date the Treaty of Paris of 1783 from its own text; and lay out the debate over a radical or conservative Revolution without picking a winner.

Hook to keep: a promise is not a description; ask who the promise covered.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 built the historian's tools: primary and secondary sources and the four moves of sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration. Week 2 compared the colonies and their founding documents. Week 3 showed how colonial law built hereditary racial slavery. Week 4 followed the imperial crisis from the Treaty of Paris of 1763 and the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 to the fighting at Lexington and Concord.
This week: independence, the Declaration of Independence, the war's strategy and turning points, the Revolution's limits and possibilities for women, enslaved and free Black Americans, and Native nations, and the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
How they connect: you use Week 1's four moves on three dated documents, Week 3's history of slavery to test the Declaration's promise, and Week 4's argument over consent to taxation to see why colonists finally broke away.
Where we're going next: Week 6, Confederation & Constitution, asks how the new states framed a government once the war was won.

Week 4 ended with fighting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. This week starts there. The War for Independence ran from 1775 to 1783, so the Declaration came more than a year after the shooting began. Keep one rule from earlier weeks close: contextualization explains a source; it never excuses what the source describes.

1. Define independence: breaking with Britain

Picture a family farm in 1776 with two grown sons. One son joins the local militia and talks about liberty. The other says the king is still the king, and rebellion will bring ruin. Their parents sit between them at the same table. This scenario is illustrative, but families split like that all over the colonies.

A Patriot was a colonist who supported the break with Great Britain and the war for independence. A Loyalist was a colonist who stayed loyal to the British king, sometimes against members of the same family or town. Many colonists tried to stay out of it as long as they could.

Independence is a people's claim to govern themselves, free of another country's rule. In 1776 the Second Continental Congress, the congress of delegates from the colonies that met from 1775 and managed the war, made that claim for thirteen colonies.

Worked example — the steps to independence, in order. Follow the record the National Archives keeps.

The vote: on 2 July 1776, Congress adopted a resolution moved by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring the colonies free and independent states.
The draft: Thomas Jefferson drafted a statement of reasons for a committee of five members of Congress.
The revision: Congress debated the draft and changed it.
The adoption: Congress adopted the finished Declaration of Independence, dated 4 July 1776.

In words: Congress first voted for independence and then adopted a document explaining why. The vote and the explanation were two steps, two days apart.

Misconception check. Students often think every colonist wanted independence, so the war was the whole country against Britain. That is tempting, because the story is usually told from the Patriot side. But Loyalists stayed with the king, many others waited to see who would win, and families divided. The cure is to ask, for any colonist in a source, which side that person took and why.

2. Read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances

Think of a letter of resignation from a job. The first lines explain the principle: no one should be treated this way. The rest is a list of what the boss did. Bosses rarely read the principle. Historians read both parts.

The Declaration of Independence is built the same way. It is the week's Primary Source Workshop document, a declaration of the Continental Congress, dated 4 July 1776 in its heading, and you read it in the National Archives' transcript. A grievance is a formal complaint about a wrong, and most of the Declaration is a list of grievances against the king.

Its most famous line is this pinned fragment:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"

In the same sentence, paraphrased, the Declaration names unalienable rights, rights the document says every person holds by nature and cannot give up or have taken away, with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness among them. It then says governments get their power from the consent of the governed, the idea that a government's rightful power comes from the agreement of the people it rules. You met consent in Week 4, in the Stamp Act Congress's claim about taxes. Here the same idea grows into a reason to leave the empire.

Worked example — two moves on the famous line. Take sourcing first, then close reading.

Sourcing: the Continental Congress made it; it is a declaration; it is dated 4 July 1776; the National Archives keeps the transcript.
Close reading: "all men are created equal" is a claim about how things ought to be. Notice the verb in the fragment: Congress says it holds these truths. That is a statement of belief.
Corroboration: set it beside Week 3. In 1776, colonial law still held enslaved people in hereditary slavery in every one of the thirteen colonies.

In words: the line states an ideal that the law of 1776 did not meet.

Misconception check. Students often think "all men are created equal" described the law of 1776, as if every person then had equal rights. That is tempting, because the line is famous and sounds like a rule. But colonial law held enslaved people in slavery, and that spring Abigail Adams was asking that the new laws stop leaving unlimited power in the hands of husbands. The cure is to read the line as a promise, then ask who the law of the day actually protected.

Carry-line: the Declaration promised equality; the law of 1776 did not deliver it.

3. Close-read the charge against Native nations

Picture a newspaper report written by one side in a quarrel. It names the other side with an insult and blames it for everything. If you only had that report, you would know a lot about the writer and very little about the people it insults.

One of the Declaration's grievances works that way. It accuses the king of turning Native nations against colonists on the frontier, and it names them in this pinned fragment:

"the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions"

Worked example — reading the fragment for its author's view. Ask three questions of the words.

Whose words are these? The Continental Congress's, in a document meant to win support for its cause.
What do they claim? That Native nations made war without sparing anyone, and that the king set them on the colonists.
What do they leave out? Any Native nation's own name, reasons, or voice.

In words: the fragment shows how Congress chose to describe Native nations in 1776; it is not evidence of how those nations fought or why.

The fragment uses the language of its time about a group of people. This course quotes it only to read what the document says, and our own voice never adopts that language. Paraphrased, the same grievance also charges the king with stirring up risings inside the colonies. A careful reader asks whom the document counts among its enemies, and whom its promise of equality leaves out.

Misconception check. Students often think a founding document's description of a group is a neutral fact, because the document is so respected. That is tempting, because respect feels like accuracy. But a declaration is an argument, and this grievance is an insult aimed at Native nations to justify a cause. The cure is sourcing: name who wrote the words and what they wanted the words to do.

Honesty note: the Declaration is a primary source for what Congress argued. It is not a primary source for the experience or the views of the Native nations it names.

4. Date the Declaration and keep it apart from the Constitution

Think about a wedding. The couple marries on one day. The certificate is signed and filed weeks later. A photo album is printed months after that. Each event is real, and each has its own date. If someone asks when they married, only one date answers the question.

Documents work the same way. The Declaration's heading carries the date 4 July 1776, the day Congress adopted the text. The signing came later. Congress ordered the text engrossed, written out by hand in a large, formal script on parchment. Most delegates signed that parchment on 2 August 1776, the National Park Service reports, citing the journal of Congress.

The text's own date is the date a document gives itself in its own words. A historian uses it over an archive's heading, a signing, a printing, or an anniversary.

Worked example — two documents, two years. Keep the Declaration apart from the Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence: adopted in 1776; it announced independence and gave reasons; it set up no government.
The Constitution: signed in 1787; it is a frame of government, and Week 6 reads it.
Gap: 1787 − 1776 = 11 years.

In words: the Constitution came 11 years after the Declaration, and the two did different jobs. One said why the colonies were leaving. The other, much later, said how the new country would be governed.

Misconception check. Students often think the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the same document, or that the Declaration created the government. That is tempting, because both are famous founding papers kept at the National Archives. But the Declaration of 1776 announced independence, and the Constitution of 1787 framed a government. The cure is to attach each document to its year and its job.

A second trap sits inside this section. Students often think the Declaration was signed on the date in its heading by everyone at once. The record says most delegates signed the engrossed parchment weeks later, and some signed later still. The date you give for the document is the date of its text.

5. Follow the war: strategy, alliances, and turning points

Picture a long game between a big, rich team and a small team playing at home. The big team can win many games. It cannot win the season if the home team refuses to quit and finds a strong partner. That is a rough picture of the War for Independence, and it is only a picture.

In standard historical usage, British strategy aimed to capture the colonies' cities and force a surrender. The Continental Army had to survive, keep fighting, and wear Britain down. Three turning points mark the war, and this course teaches their years in words:

The Battle of Saratoga, the American victory in New York in 1777 that forced a British army to surrender, helped persuade France to join the war.
The French alliance, the treaty of alliance of 1778, brought French money, soldiers, and ships to the American side.
Yorktown, the town in Virginia where a British army surrendered in 1781 to American and French forces, ended major fighting.

Notice the chain of causation in those three lines. A victory changed a foreign king's mind, and his help made the final victory possible. That is a claim historians make from many kinds of evidence, not from one document.

Misconception check. Students often think the Americans won the war alone. That is tempting, because the story is told as one country's fight. But the French alliance of 1778 brought money, soldiers, and a fleet, and French forces were at Yorktown. The cure is to name the alliance whenever you name the victory.

Caveat: these three years are part of the story you should know, but this course keys only the years in its two chronologies. The war's three turning points are taught in words.

Pause and choose one: (a) In two sentences, explain why a victory on a battlefield in New York could change a decision made in France. (b) In two sentences, describe what the illustrative farm family from Section 1 might have argued about after news of the French alliance reached them.

6. Weigh who the Revolution included

Imagine a town meeting called to discuss the rights of the people. Who is in the room? Who is standing outside the door? Who was never told the meeting was happening? Asking that question of the Revolution is how historians weigh its limits and its possibilities.

Women

Abigail Adams wrote to John Adams from Braintree in a letter dated 31 March 1776. It is a private letter, written to one person rather than for the public. It shows its writer's own views and argument, but not what a wider group believed. You read it on Founders Online. Its pinned fragment is:

"I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors."

Paraphrased, the letter supposes that Congress will need a new code of laws, asks that husbands not be given unlimited power, and warns that women will not hold themselves bound by laws in which they have no voice or representation. Notice the echo of Week 4: no law without representation. The spelling "favourable" is the letter's own, kept exactly.

Worked example — sourcing the letter. Take the sourcing questions in order.

Who: Abigail Adams, writing to her husband, a member of Congress.
When and where: Braintree, 31 March 1776, more than three months before the Declaration.
What kind: a private letter, kept by Founders Online.
What it can show: one woman's private argument for women's protection under the new laws.
What it cannot show: a public movement, or what most women believed.

Misconception check. Students often think this letter shows that women in 1776 organized for their rights. That is tempting, because the fragment is bold and famous. But it is a private letter to one reader. The cure is to name the document type before you name what it proves.

Enslaved and free Black Americans

For enslaved people, the war offered a dangerous choice. In November 1775, Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to people enslaved by Patriots who would join the British forces, an offer called Dunmore's Proclamation. Thousands of enslaved people sought freedom with the British. Picture an illustrative role: an enslaved person in a coastal county who hears of the promise. Escape means danger, and the promise is only as good as a British victory.

Black Americans made choices on the American side too. Free and enslaved Black men served in the Continental Army, mostly in mixed units, the National Park Service reports. Their service tested the Declaration's promise from inside the army that fought for it.

Native nations

Most Native nations sided with Britain, judging that an independent United States would press harder on their lands. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is the confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations, also called the Six Nations or the Iroquois, and the war split it. The Oneida and Tuscarora gave major support to the Americans, and the other nations mostly supported Britain, the National Park Service reports. The Oneida Nation and the other Haudenosaunee nations live in their homelands and beyond today.

Misconception check. Students often think enslaved people, free Black Americans, and Native nations were bystanders who waited for the war to decide their future. That is tempting, because many retellings center the founders. But enslaved people escaped to British lines, Black soldiers served in the Continental Army, and Native nations chose sides for their own reasons. The cure is to ask what choice each group faced, and what each choice risked.

Pause and choose one: (a) In two sentences, explain why the same war could look like a war for freedom to a Patriot and a war against freedom to an enslaved person who fled to the British. (b) In two sentences, explain why a Haudenosaunee nation might judge that siding with Britain was the better hope for keeping its land.

7. Date the Treaty of Paris of 1783 from its text

Think of a concert ticket whose printed date says one thing while the venue's website says another. Which one do you trust? You trust the ticket, because it is the thing itself. Then you tell your friends about the mix-up.

The Treaty of Paris of 1783 is the treaty between Great Britain and the United States that ended the War for Independence and recognized American independence. You read it on the Avalon Project's page. Its last line is the pinned fragment:

"Done at Paris, this third day of September in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three."

The National Archives dates the treaty 3 September 1783, matching its text. The Avalon Project's page heading reads 30 September 1783. Avalon's heading is the date the Avalon Project prints at the top of its page, and here it disagrees with the treaty's own words.

Worked example — dating the treaty. Follow the rule step by step.

Read the text's own date: the third day of September, 1783.
Read the archive's heading: 30 September 1783.
Compare: they disagree on the day.
Decide: the text wins, so the treaty is dated 3 September 1783.
Name the disagreement: Avalon's heading reads the thirtieth.
Place it: 1783 − 1776 = 7 years after the Declaration, and 1783 − 1763 = 20 years after the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War.

In words: you date the treaty from its own last line and say plainly that one archive's heading gives another day.

Now close-read what the treaty leaves out. Its text names no Native nation, though it moved the boundary of the new country across Native homelands. Paraphrased, its seventh article lists enslaved people among the property British forces must not carry away when they leave. The peace that recognized American independence treated some people as property and left others unnamed.

Misconception check. Students often think the date at the top of an archive's page is the document's date. That is tempting, because the heading looks official. But a heading is the archive's label, and labels can be wrong. The cure is to find the date in the document's own words, then name any disagreement.

Two treaties of Paris in one course can blur together. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the Seven Years' War; the Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the War for Independence. Twenty years separate them.

8. Weigh the debate and order the years

Picture two people leaving the same movie. One says it changed everything. The other says it was the same old story with new costumes. Both saw the same film. They disagree about what mattered most.

Historians still debate whether the American Revolution was radical or conservative. The radical or conservative Revolution debate asks whether the Revolution overturned the old social and political order or mainly defended rights and property that colonists already claimed.

The strongest radical case: the Revolution threw off a king, made the consent of the governed the source of power, and gave later reformers words they would use against slavery and for women's rights. The strongest conservative case: it kept slavery and property in place, left most women and Native nations outside its promises, and many of its leaders saw it as a defense of rights they already claimed as British subjects.

This course keys no verdict. You weigh the evidence and decide which case the documents support better, or where each is right.

Worked example — ordering the week's years. Put the five years in order and measure the gaps.

Order, earliest to latest: 1763 (the Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years' War), 1765 (the Stamp Act Congress declarations), 1776 (the Declaration of Independence, and the year of Abigail Adams's letter), 1783 (the Treaty of Paris ends the War of Independence), and 1787 (the Constitution signed).
Gaps: 1765 − 1763 = 2 years; 1776 − 1765 = 11 years; 1783 − 1776 = 7 years; 1787 − 1783 = 4 years.
Span: the latest year minus the earliest is 1787 − 1763 = 24 years.
Check: the four gaps add back to the span, 2 + 11 + 7 + 4 = 24 years.

In words: the whole road from the end of one war to a new frame of government took 24 years. The reading in one plain sentence: the Declaration of Independence shows that the Continental Congress claimed in 1776 that all men are created equal and that the king had lost the right to rule; it is evidence of what Congress argued and promised, not of who actually held those rights.

Misconception check. Students often think a debate among historians means one side must be wrong and the course will reveal which. That is tempting, because quizzes have keyed answers. But this question turns on what you count as change, and both cases rest on real evidence. The cure is to state each side's strongest evidence before you give your own view.

Key terms

Patriot — a colonist who supported the break with Great Britain and the war for independence. (first used: 1. Define independence: breaking with Britain)
Loyalist — a colonist who stayed loyal to the British king during the War for Independence, sometimes against members of the same family or town. (first used: 1. Define independence: breaking with Britain)
Independence — a people's claim to govern themselves, free of another country's rule. (first used: 1. Define independence: breaking with Britain)
Second Continental Congress — the congress of delegates from the colonies that met from 1775, managed the war, voted for independence, and adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. (first used: 1. Define independence: breaking with Britain)
Declaration of Independence — the declaration adopted by the Continental Congress and dated 4 July 1776 in its heading, which announced independence, stated that all men are created equal, and listed grievances against the king. (first used: 2. Read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances)
Grievance — a formal complaint about a wrong. (first used: 2. Read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances)
Unalienable rights — rights the Declaration says every person holds by nature and cannot give up or have taken away. (first used: 2. Read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances)
Consent of the governed — the idea that a government's rightful power comes from the agreement of the people it rules. (first used: 2. Read the Declaration's ideas and its grievances)
Engrossed — written out by hand in a large, formal script on parchment, as the signed copy of the Declaration was. (first used: 4. Date the Declaration and keep it apart from the Constitution)
The text's own date — the date a document gives itself in its own words, which a historian uses over an archive's heading. (first used: 4. Date the Declaration and keep it apart from the Constitution)
Battle of Saratoga — the American victory in New York in 1777 that forced a British army to surrender and helped persuade France to join the war. (first used: 5. Follow the war: strategy, alliances, and turning points)
French alliance — the treaty of alliance of 1778 in which France joined the United States against Great Britain. (first used: 5. Follow the war: strategy, alliances, and turning points)
Yorktown — the town in Virginia where a British army surrendered in 1781 to American and French forces, ending major fighting. (first used: 5. Follow the war: strategy, alliances, and turning points)
Private letter — a letter written to one person rather than for the public, which shows its writer's views but not what a wider group believed. (first used: 6. Weigh who the Revolution included)
Dunmore's Proclamation — the offer made in November 1775 by Virginia's royal governor of freedom to people enslaved by Patriots who would join the British forces. (first used: 6. Weigh who the Revolution included)
Haudenosaunee Confederacy — the confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations, also called the Six Nations or the Iroquois. (first used: 6. Weigh who the Revolution included)
Treaty of Paris of 1783 — the treaty between Great Britain and the United States, dated in its own text the third day of September 1783, that ended the War for Independence. (first used: 7. Date the Treaty of Paris of 1783 from its text)
Radical or conservative Revolution — the debate over whether the Revolution overturned the old order or mainly defended rights and property colonists already claimed. (first used: 8. Weigh the debate and order the years)

Summary

Independence is a people's claim to govern themselves; Congress voted for it and then adopted the Declaration in 1776.
The Declaration's line on equality stated an ideal, not the law of 1776.
The Declaration's charge against Native nations shows Congress's view, not the nations' own.
A document is dated from its text; the Declaration was signed weeks after its date.
The Declaration (1776) announced independence; the Constitution (1787) framed a government.
Saratoga helped bring the French alliance, and Yorktown ended major fighting.
Abigail Adams's letter is one woman's private argument, not a public movement.
Enslaved people, free Black Americans, and Native nations made their own choices in the war.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 is dated by its text, 3 September 1783, not by Avalon's heading.
Whether the Revolution was radical or conservative is a debate with no keyed verdict.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative town's records hold a charter dated 1712, a petition dated 1739, and a meeting record dated 1754. Find the span from the first to the last, and the gap between each pair in order.
An illustrative store ledger is labelled on a library's catalog page as "1790", but its first page reads "Begun this tenth day of May, 1788." Which year do you give for the ledger, and what else do you write down?
A classmate says, "The Declaration of Independence set up the United States government in 1776." Correct the claim in two sentences.
An illustrative diary kept by a soldier's sister says she hopes the war will bring her family new land. Name one thing the diary can show and one thing it cannot show.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The span is 1754 − 1712 = 42 years. The gaps are 1739 − 1712 = 27 years and 1754 − 1739 = 15 years. Check: 27 + 15 = 42, so the gaps add back to the span.
You give 1788, because the ledger's own first page dates it. You also write down that the catalog page labels it 1790, so a reader knows the two disagree. The text wins over the label, and you name the disagreement.
The Declaration of Independence announced independence in 1776 and explained why; it set up no government. The Constitution, signed in 1787, framed the government, so the two documents are 11 years apart and did different jobs.
The diary can show what one woman hoped for her own family. It cannot show what most families in her town wanted, because a private diary speaks for its writer, the same way a private letter does.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week Confederation & Constitution turns from the Declaration's promise to the rules of a new government, the frame of government the states had to build.

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