New Power Appeared

The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. A combined force of American and French troops surrounded the British and forced them to surrender. Fighting continued in some areas for other two years, and the war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence.

Exercise № 34. Match these expressions with their meanings and use them all to make sentences, which summarize the article below.

1. To take the pulse of a) cruel and violent act

2. The aftermath b) to be the best example of something

3. An atrocity c) a violent attack

4. To boil down to d) to measure / to gauge

5. An assault E) without required resources

6. To embody f) the effects and results of something

7. Ill-equipped g) very basic

8. To give rise to h) very basic

9. Root and branch I) obviously without shame

10. Blatantly j) to be the main reason for something

Developing Your Reading Skills

Exercise № 35. Vocabulary practice. Read and make root forms of the following words:

1. Presumptuous – presumption – presume - ……

2. Preposterous – ……

3. Deflate – …..

Exercise № 36. Reading comprehension.

There was no better place to take the pulse of British and American sentiment than Yorktown, the place of the final battle that swept the region, the pan-American secular nationalism of which the President George Washington was the champion, and the British ‘political mercantilism’ that finished with the British Empire failure and decline. It is hard to imagine today how presumptuous the United States seemed in 1776. A group of 13 small colonies joined together to wage a war against the most powerful nation in the world, and they had organized their government around democratic principles that seemed preposterous in a world accustomed to aristocracy.

The Boston Tea Party became the most significant and starting point in the war for independence. When British ships delivered three large cargoes of tea to the port of Boston in a hope to make profitable business and sell tea with the tax to the British Crown, some radical Bostonians sneaked at the ships and loosened all the tea into the water. And they made a very strong tea for Britain that immediately ordered to blockade the American frontiers. And Americans held the weapons to fight the mother country back.

Against all odds the Americans won this Revolutionary War. At the final battle, Yorktown, the British were deflated but retained a sense of humor. They were marching to the surrender field with a regimental band playing a popular ditty, “The World Turned Upside Down.” The song envisioned a multitude of fantastic events, none more fantastic than the revolution itself.

The American Revolution was remarkable because the colonies defeated their “mother country, ” and American politicians created a government without a formal aristocracy. It was, however, a revolution that had only just begun with the signing of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war in 1783. Americans declared that “all men are created equal, ” but they didn’t have worked out the implications of that radical idea. They freed the slaves in the North, but in the South the institution was too deeply rooted to be abolished so easily. Women also were disadvantaged, they had no rights to vote or own property. Indians, as well, were not given equal rights with white settlers. Additionally, the first American constitution created a loose confederation of states rather than a powerful central government.