Essential Question:
How was the Continental army able to win the war for independence from Great Britain?
Required Reading (Introduction)
When the American war for independence from Great Britain began in 1775, 15-year-old Joseph Martin was too young to join the Continental army. But when recruiters returned to his Connecticut village a year later, he was ready to go.
The recruiters were looking for volunteers to go to New York, where the British were rumored to have 15,000 troops. “I did not care if there had been fifteen times fifteen thousand,” Martin said later. “I never spent a thought about numbers. The Americans were invincible, in my opinion.”
Just two days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Martin traded his plow for a musket, an early type of rifle. A week later, he arrived in New York City, where he hoped to “snuff [sniff] a little gunpowder.” As he recalled, “I was now, what I had long wished to be, a soldier; I had obtained my heart’s desire; it was now my business to prove myself equal to my profession.
If Martin had known what lay ahead, he might not have been so pleased about his new profession. The army in New York was ill trained, ill equipped, and just plain ill. “Almost the whole regiment are sick,” reported a Massachusetts officer of his unit.
The British army, in contrast, was well trained, well equipped, and well supported by the British navy. Rather than the 15,000 troops Martin had heard of, the British had assembled a force of 25,000 men in New York. More than 400 British ships floated in the harbor. This was the biggest army and the largest fleet the British had ever sent overseas.
In the face of such overwhelming force, the Americans should have been easily defeated. But they were not. In this chapter, you will read how soldiers like Joseph Martin stood up to mighty Great Britain in a successful revolution that created a new nation.
The recruiters were looking for volunteers to go to New York, where the British were rumored to have 15,000 troops. “I did not care if there had been fifteen times fifteen thousand,” Martin said later. “I never spent a thought about numbers. The Americans were invincible, in my opinion.”
Just two days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Martin traded his plow for a musket, an early type of rifle. A week later, he arrived in New York City, where he hoped to “snuff [sniff] a little gunpowder.” As he recalled, “I was now, what I had long wished to be, a soldier; I had obtained my heart’s desire; it was now my business to prove myself equal to my profession.
If Martin had known what lay ahead, he might not have been so pleased about his new profession. The army in New York was ill trained, ill equipped, and just plain ill. “Almost the whole regiment are sick,” reported a Massachusetts officer of his unit.
The British army, in contrast, was well trained, well equipped, and well supported by the British navy. Rather than the 15,000 troops Martin had heard of, the British had assembled a force of 25,000 men in New York. More than 400 British ships floated in the harbor. This was the biggest army and the largest fleet the British had ever sent overseas.
In the face of such overwhelming force, the Americans should have been easily defeated. But they were not. In this chapter, you will read how soldiers like Joseph Martin stood up to mighty Great Britain in a successful revolution that created a new nation.
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