American History - The Coughs of Change

The American Revolution was a history changing event, but it wasn’t the only history changing event which began in Boston in 1775.  While the Patriots besieged the British, smallpox began to spread, an outbreak which would grow into a continent wide pandemic.  Of all the diseases faced by old timey people, smallpox was one of the most feared.  It was highly infectious with symptoms not showing up for weeks, killed a high percentage of those who caught it, and left survivors forever scarred.  So feared was the disease that by the time of the American Revolution all Thirteen Colonies had laws requiring newly arrived people off of ships be isolated for a period of time and laws requiring households be reported and quarantined if anyone in them showed signs of being sick, with guards often placed to ensure such measures were enforced.  Basically people weren’t fucking around with it.  Variolation was also beginning to become popular, a practice adapted from the Middle East where people put puss from a smallpox sore into an open wound to purposefully given themselves a more survivable low-grade infection, and therefore gain immunity.  However, due to there still being a risk of death and nobody having a fucking clue how germs worked, it was rather controversial. 

With volunteers coming from all over the place to fight, many periodically returning home, the pandemic quickly spread across the Thirteen Colonies and into Canada, wreaking havoc in an already very chaotic situation.  Largely unaffected thanks to a policy of having all soldiers undergo variolation, the British army was more than happy to do little to nothing to stop the spread of the disease.  The Continental Congress debated enacting a similar variolation policy for their soldiers, but debated over it for so long that George Washington just finally up and did it without permission, likely saving the war effort.  The general population was not so lucky.  With the breakdown in government authority efforts to halt the spread of smallpox was piecemeal and localized, resulting in it spreading far and wide and killing far more people than previous outbreaks. 

From the Thirteen Colonies and Canada, the pandemic spread westward into the native nations of the Great Lakes, Midwest, and Southeast, following trade routes and marching Patriot and British troops.  Though most of these nations had experienced outbreaks of smallpox many times by this point and had adopted practices such as quarantining anyone who showed any signs of being sick, the death toll was still as high a third of the population in some areas, further reducing their ability to resist future excursions into their territory by their colonial neighbors.  By 1778, the pandemic reached the Mississippi and Missouri River basins where the death toll rose sharply.  Less experienced with smallpox, the large Siouan and agrarian native towns were devastated, with the death toll as high as two-thirds of the population in some areas.  At first less affected, the Sioux and other more horse-oriented nations seized greater control of the region, but quickly found themselves also falling ill.  With numbers depleted, the various nomadic horse nations entered into a near constant state of conflict, raiding each other and the more agrarian nations not just for horses and European goods, but now also for women and children, intermingling cultures to a much higher degree than had previously been the case.

At the same time, the pandemic reached New Orleans and Texas in 1778 and Mexico in 1779, where it killed off a large percentage of the children in Mexico City before moving its way down through Central America and into South America.  From Mexico, the pandemic also spread north, reaching the southwest by 1780, where it then spread to the Comanche, who spread it north to the Shoshone via their horse trading networks, who in turn spread it via their extensive trade networks across the Great Basin, California, and the Pacific Northwest, and finally into the furthest northern regions of the Canadian Prairies by 1782.  Both the Comanche and Shoshone lost up to two-thirds of their populations, forcing them to lean more heavily into their reputations as formidable and vicious warriors to retain their territories, a strategy that worked for the Comanche but not as much for the Shoshone.  Pushed southward by the Blackfoot Confederacy and westward by the Sioux and other Plains nations, the Shoshone lost power and prestige outside of the Great Basin.  However, though victorious, the Blackfoot Confederacy soon after fell victim to the same smallpox malady which had laid their rivals so low.    

The small pox pandemic of the late eighteenth century was the first time many native nations in the western half of the continent had experienced the devastating effects of Old World diseases.  With little immunity, the results were devastating, spreading further chaos in a part of the world already in upheaval thanks to the introduction of horses and guns.  Entire cultures shifted to survive in the new post-apocalyptic world in which they found themselves.  Across the Plains and Great Basin large villages were abandoned, women and children became commodities, and a constant state of guerilla warfare became the norm. 

American History - The Birth of a Nation

By 1778, the British were increasingly being forced to realize that they had completely screwed the pooch with regards to the war with their colonies.  Having completely lost their army invading from Quebec, the British soldiers who remained hunkered down in New York City while their Patriot counterparts did the same in nearby Valley Forge.  Both sides seemed content to take a wait and see attitude towards the conflict, though this was to the benefit of the Patriots and the detriment of the British.  Ongoing negotiations by Patriot leaders in Europe were beginning to bear fruit and the weakness of the British gave them the leeway to focus on the frontier.  One expeditionary force focused on taking British trading posts in the Ohio and Illinois countries, while a second went after the Iroquois and Loyalists in New York.  The latter of these was a scorched earth campaign so devastating that the thousands of Iroquois fled north into Quebec, with an estimated half of the population dying from disease, starvation, and warfare.  Though raids by the Iroquois and Loyalists continued, the Iroquois Confederacy was shattered and never again a great power on the North American continent.

Impressed by the Patriot victories, and rather wanting to see the British get the fucking shit kicked out of them, France entered into a military alliance with the Patriots in 1778, promising troops and ships to defeat the British.  The French then in turn entered into alliances with Spain and the Dutch Republic to harry British shipping and attack British colonies in Florida and the Caribbean.  This caused a pretty widespread panic in Britain given the sugar and coffee produced there was worth a metric shit ton more than all the goods produced in revolting colonies, their value being mostly in tobacco and buying British manufactured goods.  As a result, troops which were meant to put down the revolt were instead sent to the Caribbean, forcing the British army in New York City to re-assess its strategy.  What they came up with was a half-cooked plan which became known as the southern strategy.

Launched in 1779, the southern strategy was an attempt to forcefully seize the rebelling southern colonies to further isolate the more northern colonies.  The British figured there was a greater number of Loyalists there, meaning they’d need fewer British troops, and that victory would secure the profitable tobacco production of the region.  However, like all things done by the British during the war, they completely fucked it up.  While initially victorious, managing to recruit Loyalist militias and take Georgia and South Carolina, things quickly went to shit.  Policies such as forcefully seizing property of suspected rebels, offering freedom to slaves who were willing to fight with them, and in general being pompous dicks to anyone who didn’t lick their boots, alienated the populous and resulted in a guerilla war which sapped troops and supplies.  Despite this setback, in 1780 the British marched north into North Carolina, which failed to accomplish any of its goals while Georgia and South Carolina descended into chaos.  The British fared little better on other fronts, with an attempt to retake the Ohio Country ending in yet another defeat.

Things finally came to a head in 1781.  A French army was soon to arrive and the British were convinced it was going to attack New York City.  To prepare for the attack, they recalled the British army in North Carolina, which marched to Yorktown in Virginia to be picked up by the British Navy.  However, it was all a ruse.  While the French fleet blocked the escape by sea, a combined Patriot and French army besieged Yorktown.  With no hope of escape, the British army surrendered.  It was the last major action of the war.  Though the British still controlled New York City and Charleston, the British government lacked the will to send further troops.  Instead, they doubled down on arming their native allies along the frontier.  The resulting bloodbath killed nearly 10 percent of the colonial frontier population, an even greater percentage of the remaining native population, and imbedded a deep-seated distrust and hatred which would forever poison relations between the two groups.  However, it did nothing to change the final result.

In 1783, the British government finally broke and agreed to sign the Peace of Paris, which amongst other things, recognized the newly created states as an independent nation, granted them all territory westward to the Mississippi River, returned Florida to Spain, and gave a few Caribbean colonies to France.  All four European nations were heavily in debt and eager to end the war.  While Britain was the least in debt, popular support for the war effort had completely faded, with the British elite and merchants figuring they could make just as much money trading with independent states as they did with British colonies.  As a result, the stubbornness of the new confederacy of independent states had allowed them to get the upper hand in the negotiations.  However, they were also heavily in debt to France and the Dutch Republic, and the states were already beginning to squabble amongst one another, raising concerns of the longevity of their alliance.  Thus began the grand experiment known as the United States of America.

American History - The Shot Heard Around The World

By the end of the Seven Years War, Britain was considered the pre-eminent superpower, with a reputation for having the most powerful navy and the most well-disciplined and organized army in the world.  Which is probably why they thought they could easily be the shit out of the rebelling colonists, who had never had a standing military and relied on volunteer militias for their defense.  In early 1775, the British marched an army out of Boston, intent on attacking a Patriot arms depot at Concord and ending the revolt in Massachusetts.  By the next day the British had been forced to retreat back to Boston and the city was encircled by a force which quickly grew to include Patriots from across New England.  When attempts to break the siege resulted in high losses for the British, they settled in for a prolonged siege. 

The situation in the Thirteen Colonies quickly spiraled out of control for the British.  Emboldened by the situation in Massachusetts, Patriots rose up in every colony and forced out the royal governors and other appointed officials, replacing them with new Patriot elected and appointed assemblies which ran things via an implied threat of violence.  Though only a third of the population supported the Patriot cause, another third being neutral and the remainder Loyalist, the Patriots were the most organized, had the guns, and were the most willing to overtly intimidate those who disagreed with them.  Though some royal governors tried to fight, several in southern colonies by offering freedom to any slaves who were willing to fight with them, such resistance proved ineffective and by the end of 1775 the Patriot assemblies were firmly in control.  Debating what type of governments they should setup for themselves, these assemblies sent representatives to Philadelphia in an attempt to create a unified front against the British.  A thrown together affair, this Second Continental Congress became the de facto leaders of united colonies, though their ability to lead were fairly limited.  Though they did create a national army, led by George Washington because he was the only guy to show up to the meeting wearing a military uniform.

Things were a real cluster fuck for most of 1775.  Though the rebelling colonies were somewhat united in resisting the British, they couldn’t agree what the end result should be.  Mere weeks after authorizing an invasion of Quebec, the Continental Congress sent the British a petition for peace, quickly followed by a declaration that the British parliament was a bunch of assholes.  As one can probably imagine, this was fairly confusing to the British, who just said fuck it and declared the Patriots and anyone who supported them to be traitors who deserved to be hanged.  This greatly weakened the position of more moderate Patriots who wished to see conciliation with Britain, sparking more open dialogue of the possibility of independence, which eventually culminated in the passing of the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776.  From that point forward, the Thirteen Colonies saw themselves as thirteen independent states.

While this was taking place, the invasion of Quebec did not go well for the Patriot forces.  While the Patriots had hoped Quebec would join them in rebellion, a century of New England protestants declaring all Catholics should burn in hell did not really engender all that much support for the invaders.  Though initially successful, winter weather and disease resulted in a fiasco of nightmarish proportions and a retreat back south.  As well, while the British evacuated Boston in the spring of 1776, they soon after returned that summer with more British troops and German mercenaries from Europe, seizing control of New York City, Providence, and the entirety of New Jersey.  They also convinced the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Iroquois to attack the colonial frontier.  In the case of the Shawnee and Cherokee, this was rather an easy sell given colonial settlers had started pouring into what is today Tennessee and Kentucky the moment the British appointed governors lost control.  The Iroquois were a bit of a tougher sell.  Though most chose to side with the British, others decided to side with the Patriots, resulting in the collapse of the once powerful Iroquois Confederacy.  To further confuse things, colonists in lands claimed by both New York and New Hampshire declared themselves an independent nation.  Called the Republic of Vermont, this new nation sought to ensure its survival by playing the British and Patriots against each other, openly supporting both sides at one point or another throughout the war.

Though 1776 proved to be a difficult year for the Patriots, they did not just sit idle.  Recruiting military officers from France, Germany, and Poland, they better trained their army, which successfully retook the majority of New Jersey by the end of the year.  In 1777, the British retaliated via a two-pronged assault.  An army moving south from New York City took Philadelphia, forcing the Continental Congress to flee, and a second army moved south from Quebec with the goal of cutting New England off from the rest of the rebelling colonies.  However, this attack soon became bogged down in northern New York, eventually resulting in the surrender of the entire invading force.  Representing the most decisive Patriot victory to date, it gained the attention of many nations in Europe, nations who would be more than happy to see the British cut back down to size.