Steve Wiegand

When you look at the problems the British had and then look at the dilemmas the Americans faced, it’s no wonder the American Revolutionary War took eight years.In the early years at least, probably as few as a third of Americans supported the revolution. About 20 percent, called loyalists or Tories after the ruling political party in Britain, were loyal to the crown, and the rest didn’t care much one way or another.

The first thing the British had going for them when it came to fighting the Americans was a whole bunch of fighters. The British army consisted of about 50,000 men. They “rented” another 30,000 mercenary German soldiers. In addition, they had the best navy in the world.And the people the Brits were fighting, the colonists, had no regular army, no navy at all, and few real resources to assemble them.

This Cheat Sheet provides key dates that outline some of the most important events in U.S. history, which is as complex and fascinating as the people who populate the country. Key dates in US historyYou may think U.S. history starts with the American Revolution, but before that pivotal event came the hunters who first explored the continent and the Europeans who tried to colonize it.

During the mid-1760s, America and Britain had managed to confine their differences to rhetorical battles and bloodless economic boycotts. But the conflict took a decided turn after the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. ©Tony Baggett / Adobe StockAn engraved illustration of George Washington crossing the River Delaware during the American Revolutionary War, from a Victorian book dated 1886.

One of the remarkable aspects of the American Revolution is the staying power of the basic structure of government the founding fathers laid down. That doesn’t mean, however, that the structure was either simple or perfect.To help you understand a bit more about the complexities — and flaws — in the governmental building blocks they used, here are “backgrounders” on three of those blocks: the Electoral College, reapportionment (gerrymandering), and amending the U.

Ronald Reagan figured that if you cut taxes on companies and the very wealthy and reduced regulations on business, they would invest more, the economy would expand, and everyone would benefit. Of course, this approach, based heavily on the views of economist Milton Friedman, a Reagan advisor, would require cutting government services, which would most affect Americans on the bottom of the economic ladder.

America’s independence was ultimately won not by the actions of a few extraordinary individuals, but by the efforts and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” people. The impact of the struggle on various groups within the country, however, and their reactions to it, varied widely and often set neighbor against neighbor.

The American Revolution has had enormous effects on the development of world history since that time. We can learn a lot from exploring other events that happened following the American Revolution and from considering the reasons that this revolution, unlike many others, was a successful endeavor.It was a revolution like no other, “a revolution,” in the words of the 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke, “made not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing states (nations), but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe.