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| 1780, May |
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| Charleston surrendered. | 1 |
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| July |
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| Count Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau arrived at Newport with 6,000 French troops. | 2 |
| Despite brave resistance of Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, South Carolina was overrun by the British. | 3 |
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| Aug. 16 |
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| In the Battle of Camden, Gates was defeated by General Charles Cornwallis. | 4 |
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| Aug. 18 |
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| Sumter's force was defeated by Tarleton, and Marion retreated to North Carolina. | 5 |
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| Sept. 23 |
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| A plot of Benedict Arnold to surrender West Point to Sir Henry Clinton was revealed through capture of the British agent Major John André. Arnold escaped, but on Oct. 2, 1781, André was hanged as a spy. | 6 |
| Women in Philadelphia proposed to create a national women's organization to coordinate their fund-raising efforts to support the troops. | 7 |
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| Sept. 8 |
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| Battle of Eutaw; defeat of American general Nathanael Greene, followed by retreat of British to Charleston. | 8 |
| Meanwhile British forces under Cornwallis were concentrating in Virginia, where they fortified themselves at Yorktown. While Cornwallis remained inactive, Washington, Lafayette, and Rochambeau closed in on him at Williamsburg, and Count François de Grasse, with the French fleet, entered Chesapeake Bay. | 9 |
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| Sept. 30–Oct. 19 |
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| Siege of Yorktown. | 10 |
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| Oct. 19 |
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| Finding himself bottled up, CORNWALLIS SURRENDERED with 7,000 men. | 11 |
| In the peace negotiations, Vergennes was in the difficult position of trying to please both of his allies, Spain and the United States. This led to delay, which aroused the impatience of the American commissioners, who, disregarding their instructions not to negotiate a separate peace with Great Britain, proceeded to do so. The British, eager to win American friendship and trade, thereby defeating the aspirations of the French, readily acceded to the American demand for the Mississippi as the western boundary and full rights in the fisheries off the Canadian coast. | 12 |
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