Objective: To examine the events leading to the end of the Revolutionary War.

War in the South - The British moved the fighting to the South after France entered the war in an attempt to gain Loyalist support. Benedict Arnold - Arnold was an American general who secretly offered to turn over the fort at West Point to the British in exchange for money.

Battle of Yorktown (1781) • General Cornwallis set up camp in Yorktown, Virginia.

Battle of Yorktown (1781) • A French fleet, under the leadership of Admiral de Grasse, blocked the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, preventing Cornwallis from receiving supplies from the British navy. Help!!

Battle of Yorktown (1781) • George Washington, along with 6,000 French troops led by Gen. Rochambeau, marched to Yorktown from New York. • Cornwallis surrendered on October 17, 1781, ending the Revolutionary War! • The U.S. and French troops cornered Cornwallis in Yorktown. Help!! I surrender! Video: Surrender at Yorktown (7:56)

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781, by which over 7,000 British and Hessians became prisoners.

The Treaty of Paris April 1783 - The British recognized the U.S. as an independent nation. - U.S. territory stretched from Canada to Florida and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. - Britain returned Florida to Spain. - The U.S. promised to ask state legislatures to pay Loyalists for the property they lost in the war. (However, most states paid the Loyalists nothing.)

Washington's Farewell - In December of 1783, Gen. Washington bid farewell to his officers at Fraunces' Tavern in New York City. “Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed. ..The simple thought that we were then about to part from the man who had conducted us through a long and bloody war, and under whose conduct the glory and independence of our country had been achieved, and that we should see his face no more in this world, seemed to me utterly unbearable.” - Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge