War Engulfs New York
Beginning in the 1760s, New Yorkers often protested against the British Parliament’s decisions to tighten control over the thirteen colonies.  In time, the protests led to war.  In May 1775, less than a month after colonists first skirmished with the British at Lexington and Concord, two New York forts were captured by New England militia under Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen and Seth Warner: Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point at the southern end of Lake Champlain.  In the spring of 1776, General Washington’s forces bravely drove the British out of Boston before moving to New York City to begin building defenses. That fall, Washington’s Continental Army lost the costly Battle of Long Island but regrouped to check the forces of General William Howe, Commander of British troops in the Colonies, at Harlem Heights and White Plains. After capturing Forts Washington and Lee in November, the British controlled New York City and Long Island– and occupied them until the end of the war. In 1777 the British launched a three-pronged offensive to converge on Albany and isolate New England from the rest of the colonies. In the main attack, General Burgoyne moved south from Canada through the Champlain Valley. When they reached the Hudson, he sent troops to capture supplies. American militiamen repulsed these troops in the Battle of Bennington.  In the second prong of the offensive British Col. Barry St.Leger left Oswego following the Mohawk River toward Albany.  St.Leger’s soldiers and Native American allies were delayed besieging Fort Stanwix in Rome and engaging in a bloody battle with General Nicolas Herkimer’s militia at Oriskany. An American relief column under Benedict Arnold forced St. Leger to abandon his siege and return to Canada. Meanwhile, on the lower Hudson, Howe changed his course and sailed to Philadelphia, leaving Sir Henry Clinton to make the oray upriver. Clinton captured Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton after a bloody fight and cut through a chain the Americans had installed across the river. He then sent an expedition north to the new capital at Kingston where soldiers burned the town. However, Clinton’s effort was too late to help Burgoyne. On October 7th, three weeks after losing the opening Battle of Saratoga, American Major General Horatio Gates shocked the world by defeating Burgoyne at Bemis Heights in the second Battle of Saratoga. The victory convinced the French to join the American cause. It has been heralded as the turning point in the Revolutionary War and one of the 15 greatest battles in world history.  The British tried one last time, in 1779, to entice Washington into a major battle in the Hudson River Valley. Brigidere General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, however, captured their fortification at Stony Point in a midnight bayonet attack. Though the British still controlled New York’s harbor, the Americans controlled the critical Hudson transportation route.  After the French and American Victory at Yorktown in 1781, Washington led more than 7,000 reinvigorated soldiers to New Windsor in the Hudson Valley for the Continental Army’s last winter encampment. From his farmhouse headquarters in Newburgh, Washington issued his “cessation of hostilities” orders on April 19, 1783, but it was not until November 25 that the British evacuated New York City.

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British Loyalists
Of the 13 colonies, New York was the most divided with Loyalist strongholds in New York City, Long Island, Westchester County, and the Mohawk Valley.  Throughout the war thousands of New Yorkers maintained their loyalty to King George III. Bitter divisions along ethnic, religious and social lines developed after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Families were divided: sons turned against fathers, neighbors turned against neighbors.  In fact, over 23,000 Loyalists from New York–more than in any of the other former colonies–joined the British army. Responding to this, in 1778 the New York legislature created the Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies and adopted property confiscation acts. At the close of the war, loyalty to the Crown propelled 30,000 New Yorkers to flee to Nova Scotia with the departing British army.

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Foundations Of Liberty
Soon after New York declared independence in July 1776, the new governing body adopted the State’s first constitution in 1777 at Kingston. The constitution established a judiciary, bicameral legislature, and governor—a model for the U.S. Constitution. 

Many New Yorkers, such as Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and George Clinton, played important roles in shaping the political and philosophical development of the new republic. It was at the Poughkeepsie Courthouse on July 26, 1788 where these three patriots helped fulfill the promise of the American Revolution. They created a compromise that secured New York’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution and inspired the Bill of Rights.

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Tragedy, Treason and Triumph
Numerous acts of courage and treachery marked the Revolution in New York. Americans witnessed great patriotism when Nathan Hale declared, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” moments before the British hanged him as a spy in New York City. 

Likewise, Americans witnessed great betrayal at West Point following the arrest of a British officer Andre. He had conspired with General Benedict Arnold to surrender the plans of the fort to the British. Andre was tried and hanged as a spy at Tappan, but Arnold—America’s most infamous traitor—escaped and served in the British army.  Thousands of other Americans died from starvation, disease and violence aboard British prison ships in Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn. They paid the ultimate sacrifice in the triumph of the American Revolution.

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Frontier In Flames
While British troops were battling American soldiers and militiamen in the lower part of the state and along the Hudson, Loyalists and Iroquois were preying on New York’s frontier settlements. Of all the colonies, New York suffered the most attacks on its frontier.

On August 6, 1777 Chief Joseph Brant and a contingent of Iroquois and Loyalists ambushed Americans at Oriskany. Brant conducted a series of devastating raids in 1778, usually with Butler’s Rangers, on frontier settlements, including German Flats and Cherry Valley. The Sullivan-Clinton expedition retaliated in 1779, destroying Iroquois villages and crops, but failing to stop Native American and Loyalist raids for the next two years. Nonetheless, the Six Nations of the Iroquois would never recover from the devastation.

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Iroquois Confederacy
The Iroquois Confederacy—comprising the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations—inhabited the central and western parts of New York during the Revolutionary War.  The Oneidas and Tuscaroras sided with the Americans, but the others generally sided with the British.  Over the next 15 years treaties would leave the Iroquois with just a fraction of their once extensive landholdings.

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The Knox Cannon Trail
In the winter of 1775-76, Colonel Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller, organized and led the transport of 59 captured artillery pieces from Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga. By March 1776, four months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Knox had dragged the heavy guns on sleds from Lake Champlain to Washington’s army at Dorchester Heights outside Boston. This artillery was used to force the British army out of Boston.

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Washington-Rochambeau Trail
The Washington-Rochambeau Trail consists of land and water routes – from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia traveled by the heroic American and French armies in 1781. In Rockland and Westchester counties, the trail passes by General Rochambeau’s headquarters - the Odell House and Revolutionary era taverns, residences and campsites of both armies.

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African American Soldiers
At the start of the American Revolution, African Americans–mostly slaves –made up one-fifth of the population in New York State. In 1776, the Continental Army was authorized to enlist free blacks, and by 1778 it even had slaves. One period account estimated that blacks made up one quarter of the Continental Army in New York.

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