There was no way for women to avoid the conflict or the disruptions and devastations it caused.

Americans celebrated their victory, but it came at great cost.

Life was not easy on the home front either

In October, Washington marched his troops from New York to Virginia in an effort to trap the British southern army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis

and the war came to an official end on September 3, 1783.44

Washington realized after New York that the largely untrained Continental Army could not win head-on battles with the professional British army. So he developed his own logic of warfare that involved smaller, more frequent skirmishes and avoided major engagements that would risk his entire army. As long as he kept the army intact, the war would continue, no matter how many cities the British captured.

The treaty effectively turned a colonial rebellion into a global war as fighting between the British and French soon broke out in Europe and India.42

A Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on February 6, 1778.

, Howe abandoned the plan without telling Burgoyne and instead sailed to Philadelphia to capture the new nation’s capital. The Continental Army defeated Burgoyne’s men at Saratoga, New York.

he launched a successful surprise attack on the Hessian camp at Trenton on Christmas Day by ferrying the few thousand men he had left across the Delaware River under the cover of night. The victory won the Continental Army much-needed supplies and a morale boost following the disaster at New York.40

German mercenaries known as Hessians

the British believed that the mere threat of war and a few minor incursions to seize supplies would be enough to cow the colonial rebellion. Those minor incursions, however, turned into a full-out military conflict.

In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, Virginia's royal governor, issued an emancipation proclamation, freeing any slaves or indentured servants willing to serve in the royal army. At least 800 slaves joined Lord Dunmore's forces. But the threat of slave emancipation led many southern slaveholders to support the patriot cause.

By 1779 and 1780, Washington's army had to confiscate supplies in order to feed and clothe itself.

The Revolution would have failed miserably without the participation of thousands of ordinary farmers, artisans, and laborers who put themselves into the line of fire.

The intervention of France, Spain, and the Netherlands in the conflict made a crucial difference in the Revolution's outcome.

the British found it difficult to protect Loyalists from the fury of patriots, who sometimes tarred and feathered and even murdered those who remained loyal to the Crown.

George Washington, in contrast, never had more than 20,000 troops under his command at any one time.

On October 17, 1781, a British drummer marched toward the French and American lines carrying a white flag of surrender.

The character of the war was totally transformed as France (in 1778), Spain (in 1779), and the Netherlands (in 1780) entered the war on the American side.

The Battle of Saratoga was a crucial military turning point.

groggy

But the French navy isolated a British army under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, and forced a British surrender.

But on Christmas Eve, Washington's troops crossed the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey, and defeated the British forces at Trenton and Princeton, and restored a sense of optimism.

the toll would be two-and-a-half million dead.