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A History | The American Revolution: First Phase | The British Problem
The British Problem
Whatever the American weaknesses, the British Government faced no easy task when it undertook to subdue the
revolt by military force. Even though England possessed the central administration, stable financial system,
and well-organized Army and Navy that the Americans so sorely lacked, the whole establishment was ill-prepared
in 1775 for the struggle in America. A large burden of debt incurred in the wars of the preceding century had
forced crippling economies on both Army and Navy. British administrative and supply systems, though far
superior to anything the Americans could improvise, were also characterized by division and confusion of
authority, and there was much corruption in high places.
To suppress the revolt, Britain had first to raise the necessary forces, then transport and sustain them over
3,ooo miles of ocean, and finally use them effectively to regain control of a vast and sparsely populated
territory. Recruiting men for an eighteenth century army was most difficult. The British Government had
no power to compel service except in the militia in defense of the homeland, and service in the British Army
overseas was immensely unpopular. To meet Sir William Howe's request for 50,000 men to conduct the campaign
in 1776, the ministry resorted to hiring mercenaries from the small German states, particularly Hesse-Cassell (
hence Hessians). These German states were to contribute almost 30,000 men to the British service during the
warcomplete organizations with their own officers up to the rank of major general and schooled in the system
of Frederick the Great. Howe did not get his 50,000 men but by midsummer 1776 his force had passed 30,000
British and Hessians, and additional reinforcements were sent to Canada during the year. Maintaining a force
of this size proved to be virtually impossible. The attrition rate in America from battle losses, sickness,
disease, and desertion was tremendously high. English jails and poorhouses were drained of able-bodied men,
bounties were paid, patriotic appeals were launched throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, and all the
ancient methods of impressment were tried, but the British were never able to recruit enough men to meet the
needs of their commanders in America.
Providing adequate support for this army over a long ocean supply line was equally difficult. Even for food
and forage, the British Army had to rely primarily on sea lines of supply. Transports were in short supply,
the hardships of the 2- to 4-month voyage terrible, and the loss of men and supplies to natural causes heavy.
Moreover, though the Americans could muster no navy capable of contesting British control of the seas, their
privateers and the ships of their infant navy posed a constant threat to unprotected troop and supply
transports. British commanders repeatedly had to delay their operations, awaiting the arrival of men and
supplies from England.
Once in America, British armies could find no strategic center or centers whose capture would bring victory.
Flat, open country where warfare could be carried on in European style was not common; and woods, hills, and
swamps suited to the operations of militia and irregulars were plentiful. A British Army that could win
victories in the field over the Continentals had great difficulty in making those victories meaningful.
American armies seemed to possess miraculous powers of recuperation, while a British force, once depleted
or surrendered, took a tremendous effort to replace.
As long as they controlled the seas, the British could land and establish bases at nearly any point on the
long American coast line. The many navigable rivers dotting the coast also provided water avenues of
invasion well into the interior. But to crush the revolt the British Army had to cut loose from coastal
bases and rivers. When it did so its logistical problems multiplied and its lines of communications
became vulnerable to constant harassment. British armies almost inevitably came to grief every time they
moved very far from the areas where they could be nurtured by supply ships from the homeland. These
difficulties, a British colonel asserted in 1777, had "absolutely prevented us this whole war from
going fifteen miles from a navigable river."
The British could not, in any case, ever hope to muster enough strength to occupy with their own troops the
vast territory they sought to restore to British rule. Their only real hope of meaningful victory was to use
American loyalists as an instrument for controlling the country, as one British general put it, to help
"the good Americans to subdue the bad." There were many obstacles to making effective use of
the Tories. Patriot organization, weak at the center, was strong at the grass roots, in the local
communities throughout America, whereas the Tories were neither well organized nor energetically led.
The patriots seized the machinery of local government in most communities at the outset, held it until
the British Army appeared in their midst, and then normally regained it after the British departed.
Strong local control enabled the patriots to root out the more ardent Tories at the very outset, and
by making an example of them to sway the apathetic and indifferent. British commanders were usually
disappointed in the number of Tories who flocked to their standards and even more upset by the alacrity
with which many of them switched their allegiance when the British Army moved out. They found the Tories
a demanding, discordant, and puzzling lot, and they made no really earnest effort to enlist them in
British forces until late in the war. By 1781 they had with their armies some 8,000 "provincial
rank and file"; perhaps 50,000 in all served the British in some military capacity during the war.
On the frontiers the British could also expect support from the Indian tribes who almost inevitably drifted
into the orbit of whatever power controlled Canada. But support of the Indians was a two-edged sword, for
nothing could raise frontier enthusiasm for battle like the threat of an Indian attack.
Finally, the British had to fight the war with one eye on their ancient enemies in Europe. France, thirsting
for revenge for defeat in the Seven Years' War, stood ready to aid the American cause if for no other purpose
than to weaken British power, and by virtue of a Family Compact could almost certainly carry Spain along in
any war with England. France and Spain could at the very least provide badly needed money and supplies to
sustain the American effort and force the British to divert their forces from the contest in America. At
most the combined Franco-Spanish fleet might well prove a match for the British Fleet and neutralize that
essential control of the seas needed by the British to carry on the American war.
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