Separatist Americans and Their British Sympathizers

The Rebels in London and the Britons Who Backed Them

Benjamin Franklin's transformation from loyal subject to revolutionary, the Club of Honest Whigs, and the British dissenters who championed the American cause.

References 21 trail sites

The War Itself

When the American Revolution Came to British Shores

John Paul Jones's raids, the Battle of Jersey, prisoners of war and the home front experience of a conflict fought an ocean away.

References 27 trail sites

Loyal Americans in the UK

Exiles, Outcasts and the Human Cost of Choosing the Crown

The 60,000 Loyalists who fled to Britain, from Benedict Arnold's quiet London death to the bureaucratic grief of the Claims Commission.

References 16 trail sites

Politics and Diplomacy

How Westminster Lost an Empire

The parliamentary battles between Lord North and the opposition, the intelligence war, and the peace negotiations that redrew the map.

References 22 trail sites

The Founders' UK Heritage

British Roots of American Independence

Washington's English ancestors, the eight Declaration signers born in Britain and Ireland, and the irony of British-born men breaking from Britain.

References 18 trail sites

Diverse Voices

Race, Gender and the Revolution's Unfinished Promise

Joseph Brant's diplomacy, Phillis Wheatley's poetry, the Somerset case, Black Loyalists and Mary Wollstonecraft's extension of liberty to all.

References 11 trail sites

The Philosophical Roots of Revolution

From Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence

How centuries of English constitutional thought became the intellectual ammunition for American independence.

References 13 trail sites

The Aftermath of Revolution

How American Independence Reshaped Britain

From Richard Price's sermon to the Treason Trials, how the Revolution's ideas rippled through the Age of Revolution and transformed British politics.

References 19 trail sites