1779

Off the coast of England, John Paul Jones fights a desperate battle with a British frigate. When the British demand his surrender, Jones responds, "I have not yet begun to fight!" Jones then captures the frigate before his own ship sinks. The French commissioned the //Serapis// to a privateer named Roche who planned to use the ship against the British in the Indian Ocean. However, in July 1781 the ship was lost off the coast of Madagascar when a sailor accidentally dropped a lantern into a tub of brandy. The crew fought the fire for two and one half hours, but the flames eventually burned through the spirit locker walls and reached a powder magazine. The resulting explosion blew the stern off the ship and the vessel sank. In November 1999 American nautical archeologists Richard Sweet and Michael Tuttle located the remains of the //Serapis// The **Battle of Newtown** (August 29, 1779), also known as the **Battle of Chemung**, was the only major battle of the Sullivan Expedition, an armed offensive led by General John Sullivan that was ordered by the Continental Congress to end the threat of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War. John Butler and Joseph Brant did not want to make a stand at Newtown, but proposed instead to harass the enemy on the march, but they were overruled by Sayenqueraghta and other Indian chiefs.

//__ The Time: The years prior to and during the American Revolution -- 1775-1781. __// //__ The Place: The frontier wilderness of the colonies of New York and Pennsylvania. __// //__ The Scene: Over the past 20-30 years, white settlers had been moving farther and farther north and west, in order to follow the dream of having their own piece of land upon which to build their farms and communities and to raise their families. But life on the frontier was very hard and was fraught with peril. Merely clearing the land and putting up log buildings, all done by hand, was an incredible and dangerous feat. Add to that the hard work of planting and harvesting crops and the possibility of an early death from disease, and the fact that any settlements succeeded at all is particularly amazing. __// //__Those who did succeed had yet another danger to contend with: the possibility of losing all they had done, plus their very lives to attacks by Indians. It happened many times. Under the leadership of Mohawk Chief Thayendanegea (also called Joseph Brant), along with Loyalist and Tory forces,__// //__settlements were burned to the ground; captives were taken and moved to far away Indian villages; people were killed and scalped. The Mohawk Valley, Schoharie Valley, Cherry Valley, Wyoming Valley, Minisink -- these places all experienced the wrath of the Indians, who wanted only to protect their land from intruders. It was a war within a war, a war for territory -- Indian against white settler.__// //__ The Expedition: General George Washington realized that something needed to be done to stop these attacks. In addition, he was well aware that the fertile lands occupied by some of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the New York Colony were the Breadbasket of the British Army. The Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca and Onondaga had allied to the British, whereas the Oneida and the Tuscarora allied with the Americans. Washington felt that if the British-allied Indians could be driven out of the colony and all their villages and crops destroyed, not only would the area be safer for white settlers, but a major British food supply would be stopped. In the spring of 1779, he ordered Generals John Sullivan, James Clinton, and Daniel Brodhead to commence a 3-pronged offensive. Because General Sullivan commanded the largest body of soldiers (around 3,000), the offensive became known as the Sullivan Expedition against the Iroquois Confederacy. __// //__The Battle of Newtown__////__: General Sullivan and his army left from Easton, Pennsylvania in the late__// //__summer of 1779, traveling along the Susquehanna River. General Clinton and his smaller army left from Albany, New York and traveled along the Mohawk River, crossing overland to Otsego Lake, then down the Susquehanna to meet with Sullivan's army near Tioga (present day Athens, PA). General Brodhead pushed north from Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), but never joined with the main army. As the two joined armies of around 5,000 men proceeded north, they came to the base of a mountain next to the Chemung River. There, on August 29, 1779, near an Indian village called New Town, Sullivan's scouts discovered the army was about to be the victim of an ambush. A one-half mile long breastworks had been constructed and was manned by Joseph Brant's warriors and Col. John Butler's Loyalist forces. Sullivan's armies were moved into position, cannons were readied and aimed at the breastworks, and the battle commenced -- The Battle of Newtown.__// //__ The Result: The mighty Continental Army held the ground at Newtown. The Native and Loyalist forces turned and fled. The Expedition itself has been called a "well-executed failure." The armies proceed northward into the Finger Lakes area, driving the Indian inhabitants before them, burning crops and villages. In doing this, the Expedition was considered to be a success. However, General Sullivan did not complete the rest of General Washington's orders, which were to proceed farther north to the shores of Lake Ontario and capture the British-held forts at Niagara and Oswego. Because he did not do so, the raids on the frontier settlements continued with even greater fervor. __// //__The Indians who were driven out of their territories and homes were forced to take refuge at Fort Niagara. Because there was no space to properly house them and not enough supplies to feed them, many died from the cold, disease, and starvation during that winter. Many of those who survived fled to Canada for refuge. The great League of Six Nations, the Iroquois Confederacy, was broken.__// //__After the Revolutionary War ended, many of the men who had participated in the Sullivan Expedition and who had passed through the beautiful frontier country of Pennsylvania and New York returned in peace. Here, they settled and built homes, barns, schools, and communities. Here, many of their descendants still live today -- thanks, in part, to The Battle of Newtown.__//
 * //__Battle of york town__//**

//__**The British Strategy The initial British goal was to contain revolutionary sentiment to Massachusetts. But the British redcoats suffered horrendous casualties at the Battle of Bunker Hill outside of Boston in July 1775, where 47 percent of the British redcoats were killed or wounded. In January, 1776, cannons that the patriots had captured at Fort Ticonderoga, a British post at the southern end of Lake Champlain in New York, reached Boston. The cannons enabled the patriots to fortify the high grounds south of the city. Recognizing that they could no longer hold the city, the British evacuated Boston and sailed to Canada. The new British strategy was to capture New York, where many Loyalists lived, and use it as a base to conquer the middle colonies. In 1776, the British launched the largest sea and land offensive before the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942, and nearly trapped Washington's army in Brooklyn. Washington's forces retreated through New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Washington had only 6,000 troops whose terms of enlistment were set to expire in January 1777. But on Christmas Eve, 2,400 of his soldiers crossed the icy Delaware River and attacked British outposts in New Jersey. At Trenton, where German mercenaries were groggy from their Christmas celebration, Washington's troops captured 1,000 Hessians. Then they defeated British forces at Princeton, leading the British to redeploy their troops close to New York City, leaving the region's Loyalists at the mercy of the** **patriots. In 1777, the British launched another offensive, designed to split New England off from the rest of the colonies. While one British army marched south from Montreal, another was to march northward from New York City. The northern army was defeated at the battle of Saratoga, 30 miles north of Albany, N.Y., and 5,000 British soldiers** **surrendered**__//**.** //__**The Battle of Saratoga was a crucial military turning point. The American victory over General Burgoyne's** **army convinced the French to publicly support the patriot cause. The French loaned money to the revolutionary government and provided crucial military support. French control of the seas was instrumental in securing an American victory in the Revolution. The other British army, instead of marching northward, decided to seize Philadelphia, and crush Washington's army, which was defending the patriot's capital. Some 15,000 British soldiers sailed into Chesapeake Bay and marched northward. Even though the British defeated a Continental army at Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania, and then seized Philadelphia, this proved to be an empty victory. 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. No longer could Britain concentrate its forces in the mainland colonies; it also had to disperse its troops protect its possessions in the West Indies and the island of Gibraltar. In a final bid to defeat the colonists, Britain launched an invasion of the South. British forces sailed south from New York City in November 1780 and quickly reconquered Georgia. Their next goal was to retake South Carolina. In May 1780, the British defeated outnumbered American forces at Charleston, S.C. The British then moved to secure all of South Carolina and push into North Carolina. The year 1780 represented one of the lowest points in the patriot cause. In July, Continental army officers, angry about overdue wages and inadequate supplies, threatened to resign. In September, American General Benedict Arnold, the hero of the battle of Saratoga, attempted to exchange the American military base at West Point for a commission in the British army. His scheme failed, but Arnold became a commander of British forces conducting raids in Virginia. In August, British redcoats overwhelmed an American force near Camden, S.C. By the end of the year, the Continental army had fewer than 6000 troops. But the tide of war was about to change. As British forces moved northward toward North Carolina,**__// **//__they encountered strong resistance from frontier fighters using guerrilla tactics. In October 1780, one wing of Lord Cornwallis's royal army was defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain in northern South Carolina. Then, in January 1781, 960 of 1,100 British soldiers were killed, captured or wounded at Hannah's Cowpens in western South Carolina. After suffering 506 casualties in Guilford Courthouse in central North Carolina in March 1781, Cornwall's army retreated into Virginia. Lord Cornwallis received orders to take up defensive positions in Virginia. He decided to deploy his troops at Yorktown, near Chesapeake Bay. Suddenly, Washington had an opportunity to defeat the British army. A French fleet sailing northward from the West Indies succeeded in sealing off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Meanwhile, a combined force of 7,800 French troops and 9,000 Americans marched southward from New York and surrounded Lord Cornwallis's army of 8,500 at Yorktown. On October 17, 1781,__//** a British drummer marched toward the French and American lines carrying a white flag of surrender.