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Revolutionary War

Revolutionary War,
name applied to the War of Independence (1775–83) fought by the British colonies in the present U.S. against the mother country. Underlying causes were social, economic, political, religious, and geographic, but signs of the coming struggle were first marked by such difficulties between governors and assemblies as that involving Andros. Colonists were particularly stirred by the imperialist policies exhibited in the Navigation Acts which attempted to compel importation and exportation exclusively with England, the Molasses Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend acts. Opposition to these measures appeared in many published works, ranging from the constitutional objections of John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) to the inflammatory writings of Samuel Adams. It included also the more literary propaganda of Benjamin Franklin and Francis Hopkinson, such as, respectively, Edict by the King of Prussia (1773)...

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