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Ten towns spanning the opening acts of the Revolution — from the shots fired at Lexington and Concord to the siege of Boston, the maritime resistance of the North Shore, and the interior defiance that shut down royal courts before a single battle was fought.

The crossroads of the war — from Washington’s desperate crossing of the Delaware to two brutal winters at Morristown that tested the Continental Army to its limits.

Virginia produced the Revolution’s most consequential leaders — Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry — and its final chapter was written at Yorktown, where the last major British army surrendered in 1781.

New York was the strategic prize of the entire war. The British held New York City from 1776 to 1783; the Patriot victory at Saratoga brought France into the war; and Washington’s army spent its most desperate years in the Hudson Valley.

Pennsylvania hosted both the Continental Congress and the darkest winter of the war. From the political debates in Philadelphia to the suffering at Valley Forge, the state’s history captures the Revolution at its most fragile.

South Carolina’s war was the most brutal in the colonies — a civil war within a war, with Patriot and Loyalist militias fighting in a landscape of isolated plantations and dense backcountry.

Connecticut’s Revolutionary story spans the colony’s maritime economy, Tory loyalists, and the brutal British raid on Danbury that pushed many fence-sitters toward the Patriot cause.

North Carolina’s backcountry became the decisive theater of the Southern campaign. The overmountain men at Kings Mountain and Nathanael Greene’s grinding campaign broke British control of the South.

Newport, occupied by the British for three years, and Providence, which emerged as the Patriot headquarters and naval center — two towns that capture the tension at the heart of the Revolution.

Maryland’s location between the Northern and Southern colonies made it a crucial logistical hub, and its state constitution of 1776 became a model for republican government studied throughout the founding generation.

New Hampshire struck first — its militia seized Fort William and Mary in December 1774, months before Lexington, making it one of the earliest acts of armed resistance in the colonies.

Georgia was the only colony the British successfully reconquered — and held for years. Savannah’s occupation and the failed Franco-American siege teach students about the war’s international dimensions and the limits of alliance.

Vermont in 1777 was a disputed territory claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, and its Green Mountain Boys fought for independence on two fronts: against the British and against colonial authority.

Delaware’s decision to break with Pennsylvania and form its own delegation gave the Continental Congress its key swing vote for independence, and its “Blue Hen” regiment became one of the Continental Army’s most celebrated units.

Maine, then part of Massachusetts, suffered some of the war’s earliest British raids — Falmouth (now Portland) was bombarded and burned in 1775 — and its Penobscot Expedition of 1779 was one of the largest American naval disasters.