History of The American Revolution: The War Drags On

By Peter Cameron
August 2026

While the victory by the patriots at Saratoga affirmed that they could beat the British, further south things were not going well. The two sides traded blows in southern New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania with the British prevailing. On September 26,1777, the British captured Philadelphia. The year wound down and Washington and his army began the infamous winter in Valley Forge.

1778 began with France and the Patriots formally becoming allies. In the area surrounding Philadelphia both sides traded blows usually resulting in a draw. On June 18, 1778, the British abandoned Philadelphia. The British began a new strategy by moving the battle to the southern colonies. On December 29, they captured Savannah, Georgia.

1779 was the year of two battle fronts. The first was in the New York City area where General Washington sought to keep the British bottled up. The British staged hit and run raids in Connecticut while the Patriots captured areas close to the city. The second front opened by the British was in the southern colonies. After capturing several port cities, the British began to move northward from South Carolina. This combat was the British regular army versus the local militias, with the British usually winning.

1780 saw the British continuing their southern campaign. General Washington perceived correctly that the British southern thrust was an attempt to divide the colonies. He dispatched General Nathanael Greene as southern army commander to organize patriot resistance in the south. 

1781 saw a change in the momentum of the war. Although the patriots more than held their own, the British pushed into North Carolina. General Greene began to see patriot advantages in the British strategy. The British supply lines were getting stretched thin. Greene concentrated on a hit and run strategy to hurt British troop numbers and cut supply lines. This guerrilla warfare suited the southern patriot militia force well and became extremely successful. On March 15, in a battle at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, the British won the day but lost 25% of their army. Meanwhile, to the south of the main British force, the Patriots were retaking territory and cutting off supply lines to the British main troop body. On July 6, in the Battle of Green Spring, Virginia, the British fought off patriot troops but were forced to move north and to the east. Unknown to British General Cornwallis this was Greene’s battle plan. He had succeeded in pushing Cornwallis and his British force into a small Virginia town, located on an isolated peninsula, named Yorktown.

Meanwhile, the French Navy sailed against the British Fleet, sent from New York to evacuate Cornwallis, now pinned again on a peninsula, his back against the Atlantic. The French, in the Battle of the Capes at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, handily defeated the British fleet, sending the damaged fleet back to New York for repairs. This cut off all possible assistance from New York for Cornwallis.

General Washington and the French Count de Lafayette, leaving a skeleton force to monitor the British in New York City, began marching the rest of their armies south toward Yorktown. They arrived on September 26 and began digging battlements. By September 28, Cornwallis was besieged, with Washington, Greene, and Lafayette’s combined forces on the landward side, the French Navy offshore.

One other monumental event took place in 1781. The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on March 2, 1781. This was a governing plan for the combined thirteen colonies. These articles were written to thwart the possibility of a powerful centralized government from being established, Unfortunately, it resulted in establishing thirteen independent countries rather than a cohesive republic. OO

Next Month “The Revolution Concludes”