V

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 1775-1783

Books for Study and Reading

References.—­Fiske’s War of Independence; Higginson’s Larger
History, 249-293; McMaster’s With the Fathers.

Home Readings.—­Scudder’s Washington; Holmes’s Grandmother’s Story of Bunker Hill; Cooper’s Lionel Lincoln (Bunker Hill); Cooper’s Spy (campaigns around New York); Cooper’s Pilot (the war on the sea); Drake’s Burgoyne’s Invasion; Coffin’s Boys of ’76; Abbot’s Blue Jackets of ’76; Abbot’s Paul Jones, Lossing’s Two Spies.

CHAPTER 14

BUNKER HILL TO TRENTON

[Sidenote:  Advantages of the British.]

133.  Advantages of the British.—­At first sight it seems as if the Americans were very foolish to fight the British.  There were five or six times as many people in the British Isles as there were in the continental colonies.  The British government had a great standing army.  The Americans had no regular army.  The British government had a great navy.  The Americans had no navy.  The British government had quantities of powder, guns, and clothing, while the Americans had scarcely any military stores of any kind.  Indeed, there were so few guns in the colonies that one British officer thought if the few colonial gunsmiths could be bribed to go away, the Americans would have no guns to fight with after a few months of warfare.

[Illustration:  GRAND UNION FLAG.  Hoisted at Cambridge, January, 1776.  The British Union and thirteen stripes,]

[Sidenote:  Advantages of the Americans.]

134.  Advantages of the Americans.—­All these things were clearly against the Americans.  But they had some advantages on their side.  In the first place, America was a long way off from Europe.  It was very difficult and very costly to send armies to America, and very difficult and very costly to feed the soldiers when they were fighting in America.  In the second place, the Americans usually fought on the defensive and the country over which the armies fought was made for defense.  In New England hill succeeded hill.  In the Middle states river succeeded river.  In the South wilderness succeeded wilderness.  In the third place, the Americans had many great soldiers.  Washington, Greene, Arnold, Morgan, and Wayne were better soldiers than any in the British army.

[Sidenote:  The Loyalists.]

135.  Disunion among the Americans.—­We are apt to think of the colonists as united in the contest with the British.  In reality the well-to-do, the well-born, and the well-educated colonists were as a rule opposed to independence.  The opponents of the Revolution were strongest in the Carolinas, and were weakest in New England.

[Illustration:  THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.]