July 4, 2026
World

# Fact Check: The American Revolution

You were lied to about the real history of the American-British engagement

✕Fiction

America won independence in 1776.

America won the war in 1781, several years later, and almost lost in 1776.

Fact✓

The war ran from 1775 to 1783, over eight years. The USA feigned a 'victory' in 1776 by founding the USA, but by then most Americans had given up all hope of winning the war against the British. July 4 marks the press release; the actual victory came years later in 1783. The fireworks land seven years early, every single year.

15% true
History says, 'Ya Burnt'
Check It Yourself › “Howe's capture of New York City”
✕Fiction

Brave Americans won the American Revolutionary War.

The French won the American Revolutionary War for us.

Fact✓

Americans lost nearly every battle and just about gave up in 1776. Benjamin Franklin saved the war by getting the French to do the next six years of fighting for us. Beside us. Probably in front of us, while we 'supervised' from the back. America then didn't even repay the French loans, and the cost of saving us helped bankrupt France into a revolution of its own. Americans blame the French Revolution on heartless aristocrats and a cake quote the queen never said. The French Revolution came partly because France bankrolled our war and fought Britain worldwide at the same time.

30% true
Stolen Valor, from the FRENCH, of all militaries
Check It Yourself › “a major and decisive contribution”
✕Fiction

Americans united against the British tyranny.

Most Americans did not care for, and even opposed the war, except the Founders who got rich from winning.

Fact✓

Only a third of Americans backed the Revolution, according to biased polls probably done by the Founding Fathers. A third definitely opposed it and wanted to surrender to the British. The last third waited to see who would win before having an opinion, a tradition that we still honor today. Who won? The Founding Fathers who owned slave plantations and gave themselves a huge tax break by firing King George.

33% true
Fair-weather winners, aren't we?
Check It Yourself › “tried to avoid involvement in the struggle”
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Forever Paper It's only FACT if the record survives that long. This survives forever.
✕Fiction

Washington's troops rallied behind him to a glory-filled victory.

American troops went Jan 6th on the American Capitol, which is what happens when you stiff your Army.

Fact✓

The army went unpaid for years. In 1783 its officers came within one speech of marching on Congress, until George Washington put on his reading glasses and shamed them into standing down.

20% true
Jefferson's every-19-years revolution, arriving 19 years early.
Check It Yourself › “any further experiments on their [the army's] patience may have fatal effects”
✕Fiction

George Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree and told the truth.

His family owned tobacco, not cherry trees, and later George planted and cared for a small fruit orchard, while his slaves harvested the tobacco.

Fact✓

The cherry tree story was invented in 1806 by a book salesman, Parson Weems, to move biographies. The tale certifying Washington's honesty is itself a fabrication.

5% true
Liar, liar, cherry defiler.
Check It Yourself › “exaggerated or invented anecdotes”

> “History says, 'Ya Burnt'”

✕Fiction

Washington bravely crossed the Delaware River to win the war.

The crossing was real and genuinely daring, made overnight through a sleeting nor'easter. It just did not look like the painting, and it won a small battle, not the war.

Fact✓

The crossing itself was a genuine gamble that paid off. Washington got 2,400 men across an ice-choked river at night, then surprised the Hessians at Trenton the next morning. The weather was so brutal that two other planned crossings never made it over, and the wins at Trenton and Princeton became the real turning point of the war. They kept the cause alive until Saratoga convinced France to enter the war for good. The man who won Saratoga on the battlefield was Benedict Arnold, three years before his name became the American word for traitor. The legend is all in the painting. It was made seventy-five years later in Germany, using the Rhine and American tourists as models. The boat in that painting would have sunk, and the flag did not yet exist. Future President James Monroe was there, though he did not hold any flag, and he came by a different boat. Washington stood on the gunwale because the boat's bottom held its standard delivery of ice water. Fake images were painted by hand long before Photoshop, and long before AI started doing it.

70% true
Truth is cold as ice-water in a freezing barge.
Check It Yourself › “not the Delaware, but the Rhine”
✕Fiction

Americans were superior fighters with superior cannons.

The British lost the opening fight at Concord's North Bridge because they were exhausted from an all-night forced march. The Hessians at Trenton were not drunk either, just worn down by weeks of false-alarm raids.

Fact✓

The British who decimated the Minutemen at Lexington had already marched some twenty miles from Boston overnight, with no sleep. Exhausted, they were routed by the main American force at Concord's North Bridge and harried all the way back. The Hessians at Trenton were exhausted, not drunk. They had been worn down by weeks of false-alarm raids until they stopped trusting their own sentries.

25% true
Cheat to win.
Check It Yourself › “no truth to the legend”
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✕Fiction

Paul Revere galloped through the night alone, shouting 'The British are coming!'

He rode with two other men, got captured before Concord, and never shouted that.

Fact✓

Revere set out with William Dawes, and they picked up Samuel Prescott along the way. A British patrol caught Revere before Concord, Dawes fell off his horse, and only Prescott finished the ride to warn the town. He also would not have yelled 'The British are coming,' since the colonists still thought of themselves as British and the whole point was to stay quiet. The lone galloping hero is a creation of Longfellow's 1860 poem, written eighty-five years later.

15% true
The British were already there, as Americans.
Check It Yourself › “only Prescott arrived at Concord”
✕Fiction

The shot heard round the world rang out at Lexington.

Emerson coined the phrase in 1837 for a fight at Concord, not Lexington. Nobody knows who fired the first shot.

Fact✓

Emerson coined the phrase in 1837, sixty-two years after the fighting, and it described the militia at Concord's North Bridge. At Lexington, where the first shots rang out, nobody could say who fired first. The Americans were armed, undisciplined, and had every reason to shoot first.

40% true
Han shot first, and so did we.
Check It Yourself › “shot heard round the world”
✕Fiction

The American National Anthem's "rockets' red glare" celebrates America winning its independence.

Key wrote it in 1814 watching the British bombard Baltimore, a different war entirely.

Fact✓

Francis Scott Key scribbled the poem in September 1814 while British rockets pounded Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. He watched from a truce ship the British would not let him leave until the battle was over. The rockets' red glare was enemy fire aimed at Americans, and he set the words to a popular British song. Every Fourth of July, the nation reenacts getting bombarded by the country it is toasting its freedom from. And America did not even win that war. It ended in a draw, the same year the British burned the White House.

20% true
Well, it was one of those wars.
Check It Yourself › “in the War of 1812”

Satyr Satire is confident in our assertions, because we still keep Ben Franklin on the payroll. His demented 300-year-old memory is the very basis of truth here.

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Tags: Fact Check