Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull (Architect of the Capitol)
The American War of Independence freed the 13 British colonies in North America from British rule and set the stage for the United States’ bold experiment in self-government. Fighting raged across the continent for eight years, leaving tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and permanently reshaping the political and social fabric of the Western Hemisphere.
From the start, victory seemed anything but inevitable. A small, loosely organized confederation of independent colonies, with a population of less than two and a half million and no standing army or strong central government, faced one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on earth—an empire with an experienced professional army, the world’s most formidable navy, and a government able to mobilize vast resources to suppress the rebellion.
Historian Christopher Hamner traces the war from its roots in the crises of the 1770s to the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord, through the surrender of British troops under Gen. Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris that followed. Drawing on primary sources, Hamner highlights critical moments of strategy, courage, and contingency, providing rich historical context for the colonists’ improbable victory.
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Opening Shots: The Boston Massacre, Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill
In the years following Britain’s hard-won victory in the Seven Years’ War, tensions between the colonies and the crown steadily escalated. Parliament’s increasingly punitive measures were intended to assert royal authority, but they only deepened colonial resistance. Hamner examines the first violent confrontations between colonists and the British Army: the 1770 exchange of insults, rocks, and bullets in Boston that became known as the Boston Massacre, the April 1775 clashes at Lexington and Concord—later immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “the shot heard ’round the world”—and the larger battle at Bunker Hill the following June. These encounters began to harden positions on both sides, setting the stage for a full-scale revolution.
Additional Sessions of the American Revolution: Part 1 Series
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