Nah, even a minor change in strategy after the capture of New York would've destroyed the Continental Army and led to a likely British victory, and after 1778 even a slight uptick in naval deployment would've forced the French out (that ridiculously narrow ass margin in the Chesapeake), the British were just being cheap

But you make a mistake in identifying the Revolution as the catalyst to the heap of abolitionism in Britain

That's not what I was saying; my point is slave revolts in the Caribbean served as a catalyst and supercharged abolitionism in Britain by giving abolition an imperial logic and elite social sanction (even if the elites were politically divided and Jacobins weren't popular in themselves); the fear of slave revolts served to sour British elites on slavery as an imperial enterprise

The French Revolution absolutely triggered slave revolts in the Caribbean, but the slave revolts themselves didn't create some grand upsurge of moralistic feeling; no, even better, it led to elite terror at the idea that slavery would generate more Jacobinistic radicalism, which in its own cynical way had a profound effect on the prospects of abolitionism everywhere

[–] Euergetes@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Absolutely not. the Battle of Long Island, though it could have been concluded with that heap of a douchebag Washington on a tree, was in our TL an overwhelming British victory. you don't automatically win the war by pressing that more. They still needed to take Philly.

The congress was still active and frankly, sans Washington, they would have had a better command staff.

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Focusing on taking useless cities and not pursuing the reeling Continental Army to its destruction is precisely why the British lost, they treated the war as a peer-to-peer conflict and naively believed taking the capitals would end the war

If the Continental Army had disintegrated, the blow to morale and legitimacy would've been absolute, and the colonial loyalists would've won the day politically, especially in the south