I’m watching the new series on PBS about the American Revolution, and last night’s episode was devoted in part to a British campaign that potentially could have severed the colonies in two: by water (the constant strong point of the British) drive north from New York City and south from Quebec until they met somewhere around Albany. Thereby creating a British-controlled moat that would have severed New England from the colonies further west and south. If Washington’s Continentals were west of this line, their ability to be reinforced by volunteers, supplies and weapons from New England would have been crippled. This would have been a tangible strategic accomplishment, beyond merely occupying this or that town and certainly more impactful than playing whack-a-mole with local militia and the phantomlike ability of Washington’s forces to always be somewhere else.
Was this realistically achievable? And if so, would it have been as impactful as it would seem at first glance?
IANA expert on revolutionary war militaries by any means.
At present day Montreal the St. Lawrence joins a network of rivers & lakes that lead to the south, albeit traveling upstream to do so. The mouth of the Hudson is obviously at modern New York City. There’s about a 20-30 mile gap between the two watersheds that’s near present day Glens Falls north of Saratoga Springs which is north of Albany. The total straight line distance from Montreal to NYC is about 300 miles, while the along water-course distance is more like 350.
Creating and maintaining a cordon of troops along a 350 mile front seems difficult for a 1770s military already operating at the end of a long logistics chain. Rather little of the length of those waterways was navigable in those days by vessels much larger than smallcraft.
I say it’s not logistically feasible. Yes, if by magic they could have installed and sustained that cordoning force, it would have greatly hampered the US rebel war effort. But they could not have, and would have lost a lot of men and materiel, or at least deployed them uselessly, had they tried to do so.
The British Army’s campaign in New York was aimed at dividing New England from the middle and southern colonies. Burgoyne led an invasion army of 7,200 to 8,000 men southward from Canada through the Champlain Valley. Hoping to meet British forces marching northward from New York City and eastward from Lake Ontario, Burgoyne’s goal was to take Albany, New York. The strategy began promisingly, but stalled due to logistical issues. British General William Howe never moved his forces north, and Brigadier General Barry St. Leger turned back his forces meant to arrive from the west, leaving Burgoyne surrounded by the Americans in upstate New York, 15 miles (24 km) short of his goal. Burgoyne fought two battles, which took place 18 days apart, on the same ground 9 miles (14 km) south of Saratoga, New York.
Are you asking if this would have been significant if they succeeded? If they could hold that corridor, certainly. A several hundred mile line in those days allowed for several hundred attack points that offered Americans opportunities from east and west. OTOH, the huge victory by General Gates helped persuade France to back the rebels and that was ultimately the difference-maker. Without France’s troops and ships the war probably would have petered out in disgrace.
But once you get past the turning point into alternate history, everything changes. Real history always has totally unpredictable and totally unexpected events. No reason to think only likely events would occur in this future.
According to the series, there was a not insubstantial amount of Loyalist (Tory) factions. It might have taken the main might of the British forces to establish such a cordon but once established, maybe the Loyalists could have held it, with occasional rescue by the British as needed?
ETA: and as the series pointed out, it was almost criminally negligent for Howe to not do his part to at least try to link up with Burgoyne. It can’t be said that the campaign was really given a proper chance.
Such as the fact that at any number of points, a single stray musket ball might have ended George Washington’s life, and who knows who could have taken up the mantle?
Taking a big step up and back: suppose the British Government had addressed the “no taxation without representation” grievance and made the colonies of the time ‘counties’ like other British counties with their own MPs in the House of Commons.
How might this have played out? Ultimately I guess it would have failed because of scale, but it’s interesting to speculate.
Wasn’t feasable, I suppose because George III was apparently mentally ill and irrational by that time and the monarchy still had a lot of power in those days.
I’ve got a slightly different take on it than @LSLGuy , but we both end up in the same place.
The Hudson is surprisingly navigable up to Albany - I’m not sure the Royal Navy could have sent a frigate up past West Point, for example, but they probably could have used some smaller sloops to keep the river patrolled. Along with a few fortified spots on the river itself (West Point again comes to mind) they probably could have maintained a river fleet sufficient to make it difficult for colonial troops or supplies to cross the river.
Keeping large American troop or logistic movements across the river to a minimum would have been a task similar to a blockade, which the British had experience with, but in more confined waters than normal - in particular, blue-water naval blockaders would normally stay well out of range of shore guns. The colonials could have adapted by positioning artillery on the banks to fire on ships, taking troops and supplies across the river on moonless nights, and the like. As with counterinsurgencies, maintaining the blockade for the British would have depended upon whether or not they had good intelligence of colonial actions in trying to break it.
If we assume that Gates’s army had been defeated in the process of this happening, it would have no doubt delayed French intervention, but had Gates been humbled (and Arnold become a hero?) it would have meant better performance by the Continental Army in the future.
I come back to one question - would the shock of the British establishing this blockade have caused the colonies to sue for peace? I don’t think it would have, and I think the blockade would have become more porous and costly over time. I think only losing the Continental Army at a single stroke could have subdued American resistance so quickly, and barring that event the British simply didn’t have enough soldiers, treasure and time to commit to the fight to keep the colonies from gaining their independence.
Not just resistance, but enthusiasm by the French and the one third of Americans yet to pick a side. As long as Washington and his army merely existed as any kind of fighting force, the British were losing.
A general who loses their command in action against the enemy is worse off than one who fails to follow orders. I have no idea of the competence of Howe, but he certainly felt that that course of action was ill advised.
To me, the question of interest is what resources the British would’ve needed to at least initially capture the cordon, what it would’ve taken to hold it, and where the resources would’ve come from. It seems like they’d be giving up opportunities in other colonies.
The British could not have taken the Hudson as long as Americans held West Point. Which is precisely why Maj. Andre hired Benedict Arnold to hand over West Point to them. The same Benedict Arnold who had once saved the Hudson Valley at Saratoga now betrayed it. The plot got busted and the British never took the middle to upper Hudson. Never got past West Point. Wasn’t Cooper’s novel The Spy something to do with that campaign? I almost read it once.
The persecution and expulsion of Loyalists (or even those insufficiently supportive of the Patriots) is morally troubling; there are few doctrines more cruelly absolutist than “if you aren’t for us, you’re against us”. And yet it would have been simply intolerable to allow people aligned with an enemy government that was invading, conquering and occupying by military rule to remain. Civil wars are ugly, as the inhabitants of Tennessee and Missouri discovered in the 1860s.
The British could have easily defeated the American Revolution if they had pulled troops out of the Caribbean.
But doing so would have been absolutely idiotic. Unlike how we are portrayed in our history books, the “U.S.” back then was a tiny little shithole that wasn’t really worth much. Jamaica alone generated far more income for Britain than all thirteen U.S. colonies combined.
My mother was British (born in London). The U.S. revolution was such a non-issue that they didn’t even bother teaching it in British schools. The British were like “oh well, we lost another little colony. No biggie.” They had much more important things to worry about (France, Spain, the Netherlands…), and much more important colonies to worry about. Losing their Caribbean holdings to France or Spain was a much more significant worry.
The U.S. was roughly split 3 ways. About a third of Americans supported the revolution. About a third of Americans wanted to stay British (as things went on, a lot of these folks moved to Canada). And about a third really didn’t give two hoots one way or the other who was in charge, they just wanted to live out their lives in peace.
The British were rather surprised at how much of a fight the revolutionaries had in them. But even when that became clear, they never committed anywhere near enough resources to fighting the revolution. This lack of resources is what ultimately doomed the British.
A little bit of help from the French and the Prussians didn’t hurt the revolutionary side either. What also isn’t taught much in our history books is that George Washington got his backside kicked up and down the battlefields until he went into Valley Forge, where in between bouts of starving to death and dying from disease, his men got some proper training (thanks, Von Steuben!). Only then could Washington’s troops finally go toe to toe with the British.
Take away Von Steuben’s training and the French alliance after the battle of Saratoga and the war could have had a very different outcome.
I’ll use this little bit as a springboard to my own point …
It’s easy for folks today to vastly underestimate the sheer logistical challenges that would represent. I’m not suggesting ecg has done so. But many people do.
If the King wanted to move the garrisons on e.g. Jamaica to e.g. New York, that might be the work of 2 years, between saying the order in his court to it being communicated to Jamaica, enough ships obtained to make the move of all the troops and gear, and getting them all sailed up to NYC. Net of however many were lost at sea.
We’re all used to the Earth as a small crowded place with instant communications and commerce or governments with globe-spanning logistical powers of near infinite capacity. Then was not like that. Not at all.
I’m reminded of the contrast between the outcomes of the American Revolution and the American Civil War. In the latter, for four years the Confederates told themselves “Well we were hungry and barefoot during the Revolution too, but we stuck it out and we won! And we can do it again!” But not only did the Confederacy not have foreign ships, troops, weapons and money to back the cause, but the Union was in an immeasurably stronger logistical position than Britain had been. Railroads now meant that the entire economic, industrial and population capacity of a continent could be concentrated onto a war front; the Union had a good railroad system, the Confederacy far less so. The telegraph was an enormous help too. By contrast in the American Revolution the British logistical advantages vanished a day’s march from the nearest friendly port.
To expand on Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s treatise on naval power, more broadly advances in warfighting capacity have multiple times been closely linked to advances in travel, trade and communications. The American Civil War was one of these times.
I think Jamaica and other islands in the Caribbean, were vastly more profitable to King George. In the end of the war they did concentrate down there and the more southern of 13 colonies to try and save their coffers.
The American Revolution was probably THE most important event of that century. World wide. It affected most corners of the world. If it’s not taught as that in other countries the education system has broken down, there.
It showed others that Freedom is conceivable and obtainable.
