The Crown's Surrender

From 1775 to 1783, the colonists of the Americas strived to gain political independence from England. In determining the extent to which the English crown gave up on her colonial holdings, one must analyze the political, diplomatic, and military reasons for the United States' victory. Politically, the colonies were more unified than at any point in the history of the Americas, which allowed for a more forceful opposition to English rule. Diplomatically, the colonies secured French support early in the war, and later the support of the Spanish, which was instrumental to victory. Militaristically, the colonies utilized guerilla warfare strategies as well as the effective military force of the minutemen and French navy and infantry forces, and had George Washington as a rallying point and leader of the Colonial Army, who roused enough sustained military force and patriotism to tire the Royal Army into surrender. Fundamentally, the Colonial Army was not victorious over the Royal Army so much as the English were too spent by the Seven Years War to properly sustain an army and navy over 5000 kilometers away while also maintaining domestic tranquility, and thus, the English Crown simply left the colonies to their own devices.

Politically, the colonies were more unified than at any point in the history of the Americas, which allowed for a more forceful opposition to English rule. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress met to manage the colonial war effort, symbolizing the most unified point of colonial existence. The Congress acted as de facto national government, and for all purposes, was the centralized federal power that existed even after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781. Out of the Second Continental Congress, which was hosted in Philadelphia in July of 1775, came the Olive Branch Petition, which was an attempt by John Dickinson to reconcile with the British. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Olive Branch Petition (which was later heavily revised by Dickinson, as he found Jefferson's language too strong). When the petition was rejected immediately and without much consideration by the King in August and Parliament declared the colonies in open rebellion, Adams used the King's rejection of the delegates' petition as a propaganda technique to sway fence-sitting colonists as to the necessity of a revolution, which, along with treatises and pamphlets circulating in the metropolises of the time, such as Thomas Paine's Common Sense, further strengthened the political unity of the American Colonies and promoted deist ideas which raised rebellious thoughts. Paine, in fact, wrote, "Nowhere in the universe does a smaller heavenly body control a larger." in reference to the relationship between the English Crown and the Americas. On 6 July 1775, the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms was drafted, which politically, was a declaration of the "unconstitutional" efforts of Parliament after the Seven Years War and signified the work of Jefferson and Dickinson to unite the colonial efforts towards independence. The Continental Congress was the head of the American war front politically, and the men behind the congress: Jefferson, Adams, and Dickinson, specifically, were the unifying forces of the colonies and used efficient language and marketing propaganda to bring the flowering nation into a new age of unity. Therefore, the American Colonies became more united after the 1775 convention of the Second Continental Congress than at any point in history, and actions on the part of the English only served to further unite the colonial effort and refocus the Continental Congress on maintaining a unified opinion of the need for war.

Diplomatically, the colonies secured French support early in the war, and later, the support of the Spanish, which was instrumental to victory. Perhaps the two men most responsible for the American victory were Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. After Franklin petitioned the French courts for aid in winter of 1776, French citizens were enthusiastic, many motivated by the idea of glory in battle or the tension following the Seven Years War and the granted rivalry between England and France. The French Crown, however, did not openly engage in the war at such a time, but instead began covertly assisting the Americans as a new opponent to the British Empire. Fortunately for the Americans, Franklin eventually convinced King Louis to enter the war openly in 1778, after the Battle of Saratoga ignited the enthusiasm of the French population and the Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson, made clear to the French the colonies' commitment to severing English