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What really happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? – Veda, age 11, Crystal Lake, Illinois

What really happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? – Veda, age 11, Crystal Lake, Illinois

In the autumn of 1781, a tired Continental Army of American and French soldiers pushed the British army through the Carolinas to the coast of Virginia. For three weeks, the Continental Army trapped the British against the sea while the French navy fought the British navy.

Surrounded, the British surrendered on Oct. 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown, the last major military fight of the American Revolution. America had won the war.

No one had expected that a handful of colonies could defeat the mighty British Empire. Once news of the American victory reached London, peace talks began in 1782, with the Treaty of Paris finally signed in 1783.

In the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution, the economy was in shambles, 25,000 Americans had died, and chaos erupted as over 60,000 Loyalists who had stayed devoted to Great Britain and George III, including more than 15,000 formerly enslaved people who had joined the British army, left the United States.

The question then became: “What’s next?” Building a nation was very different from fighting a war. And it didn’t happen overnight.

Setting up a new country

During the Revolutionary War’s six years of fighting, individual states wrote their own constitutions, which set up how their governments would work. Early on, in 1777, the newly named United States embraced the Articles of Confederation........

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