During the American Revolutionary War/Of Independence, was there anywhere in the colonies that the British simply couldn’t occupy- any “redoubts” that could completely repel an attempted British occupation? Or could the British always establish at least local and temporary dominion over any given target, just not the whole of the colonies simultaneously? Were the signers of the Declaration of Independence wanted fugitives who had to keep their bags packed?
I don’t know of any place that the British couldn’t have captured if they’d put their mind to it. They captured New York, Charleston, Savannah, among other major cities. The Continental Congress bugged out of Philadelphia in Sept. 1777 when it learned that the British had won the Battle of Brandywine and were on the way. The British occupied the city over the winter and Congress didn’t return until the redcoats had moved on in June 1778.
Several of the signers of the Declaration of Independence paid the price for signing the document. Here’s a book about them: http://www.amazon.com/Signing-Their-Lives-Denise-Kiernan/dp/1594743304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329075053&sr=8-1. Haven’t read it myself, but I’ve heard good things.
At the start of the war, the British were a highly trained army with plenty of troops. The revolutionary army on the other hand was largely untrained and undisciplined. When Washington’s army went up against the British, the British would kick Washington’s troops backsides all up and down the battlefield. Because Washington’s men didn’t know how to fight using tactics and weapons of the time, they would do things like hide behind trees and shoot, kinda like you would expect modern soldiers to do. The British would form long lines, which you would think would be stupid by modern standards, but with flintlock muskets, you fire off a volley, then charge in a big long line with your bayonets in front of you. Washington’s troops would then be scattered and somewhat disorganized, and small individual pockets of men had no defense against a long, unbroken line of guys with long pointy things in their hands. By the time the battle broke down into bayonet fighting (as all battles did back then) Washington’s troops would simply break, scatter, and run.
So at that stage of the war, the British really could go anywhere and do whatever they wanted. There wasn’t an army strong enough to tell them otherwise anywhere in the colonies.
When Washington went into Valley Forge, one of the things he did (besides nearly starve to death) was get his troops properly trained in military discipline and proper bayonet fighting (with some notable foreign help). After Washington came out of Valley Forge, his troops could finally go toe to toe with the British, which considering that the British were one of the most powerful and well trained armies in the world at the time, that was no small feat.
Even though Washington now finally had a “real” army to fight with, the British probably still could have taken just about any single place that they wanted, if they were willing to dedicate enough forces to do so. It is important to note though that while the entire colonies were at war with the British, the entire British empire had a lot more going on than just the American colonies. The British withheld troops in the southern colonies and held onto places like east Florida just so they could protect their interests in the Caribbean, for example. The British also weren’t just fighting Americans. The French and other allies had all gotten involved, and the British had to take care to prevent the war from escalating into a much wider conflict. They didn’t want to send troops to France, for example, just because the French were aiding the Americans.
In the end, the British were just spread a bit too thin, and there was too much foreign interference from France and the other allies.
After the British defeat at Yorktown, support in Britain for the war dropped rather significantly, and the war effectively came to an end. It wasn’t that the British weren’t capable of sending more troops from around the world to the colonies, they just no longer saw it as being worth the effort, and didn’t want to lose other interests just to regain control of the colonies. The lack of support at home led to the British signing the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the war.
engineer_comp_geek has it pretty much spot-on. I’d add that an interesting element (interesting to me, anyway), is that the Continental Army’s tactics changed out of necessity, but the strategy did not. The CA remained highly mobile by living off the fat of the land, with limited logistical support in comparison to the Brits. Even as the battlefield tactics became more traditional in terms of massing fire and using artillery as it became available, the battle-map strategy remained a harassment effort.
If you look at the battle chronology, you can imagine how irritating it must be for the British to bounce around from place to place while being harassed (“Bees! They’re everywhere! Your firearms are useless against them!” - sorry, I had to). Essentially, the war covered the entire eastern seaboard of the current US. That’s a lot of territory to cover, and a lot of area to occupy.
In the same vein, it’s estimated (rather conveniently, IMHO) that 1/3 of the population were Tories, 1/3 Rebels, and 1/3 didn’t give a rat’s ass. Loyalists are generally less likely to actively engage in a civil war (which is really what the Revolution was) b/c they expect that their superior government troops can kick the hell out of a few ragtag rebels. Rebels, on the other hand, are far more likely to engage in harassment and disruption of supplies, etc. So while the British were fighting off the attack on Ft. Ticonderoga (or trying to get it back), the Rebs in Savannah were causing trouble of their own.
So finally, the British just said - “ya’ know what? F it. Let the bastards go and destroy themselves, and we’ll come back in 30 years and burn their Capitol.”
This is something of an oversimplification. The Minutemen certainly fought that way when the British were retreating from the Lexington and Concord raid, but once Washington took command of the army besieging Boston, he did his best to train his men to fight in the traditional European style, which was the most effective method of the time. He tried to fight that way on Long Island and Manhattan and lost, but a few months later he defeated the Hessians at Trenton and the British at Princeton that way. You’re right that von Steuben was very helpful to him later in training the troops at Valley Forge. By the time of Cowpens and Yorktown, the Continental regulars were just about as good as the average British regulars.
I’d say their only real limitations were logistical. They couldn’t march anywhere that their logistics tail couldn’t support or that they couldn’t live off the land…so a lot of the backwoods areas were pretty much off limits to the main British force since their supply lines were vulnerable and it was easy for the locals to cut their lines of communication and to concentrate and withdraw quicker than the Brits could react (which is what actually happened when the Brits tried to march troops into those areas).
-XT
Hence Washington’s nickname at the time, the American Fabius, after Fabius the Delayer.
Indeed, in fact (like other European colonial powers) the British valued their Caribbean colonies far higher than those in North America. One island (IIRC from reading 1493 it was Bermuda? Bahamas?) produced more value (in the form of sugar) than all the NA mainland colonies combined. In 1674 the Dutch, for instance, were happy to give up Manhattan and their other holdings inNew Netherland (essentially the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut) for Tobago, Saba, St Eustatius and Tortola.
ISTR that after the French and Indian War, France gave up all of New France (now Canada) for a single Caribbean island… Martinique, mebbe? At the time, it seemed more valuable.
Come on, pretty mama…
I think you may be thinking of Barbados, which was the sugar plantation colony. Though it’s relative value was not as big in in the 1770s as a century earlier, when it probably was the highest valued British colony in the New World.
Pretty sure they retained St. Pierre et Miquelon after that war (although Britain later seized it twice).
I’m certain the name of the island either begins with an A, B, or C - that oughta narrow it down! 