The British captured the colony during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and governed it as the Province of New York. Agitation for independence during the 1770s brought the American Revolution. New York endorsed the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776. The New York state constitution was framed by a convention which assembled at White Plains, New York on July 10, 1776, and after repeated adjournments and changes of location, terminated its labors at Kingston, New York on Sunday evening, April 20, 1777, when the new constitution was adopted with but one dissenting vote. It was not submitted to the people for ratification. It was drafted by John Jay. On July 30, 1777, George Clinton was inaugurated as the first Governor of New York at Kingston.
The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga provided the cannon and gunpowder necessary to force a British withdrawal from the Siege of Boston in 1775. The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared - and the largest battle of the entire war - was fought in New York at the Battle of Long Island in 1776, and the first of two major British armies were captured by the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, influencing France to ally with the revolutionaries. The withdrawal of General George Washington from Manhattan Island was followed by the British making New York City their military and political base of operations in North America for the duration of the conflict, and consequently the center of attention for Washington's intelligence network. The notorious British prison ships of Wallabout Bay saw more American combatants die of intentional neglect than were killed in combat in every battle of the war, combined. Four of the Iroquois nations fought on the side of the British. They were defeated in the Sullivan Expedition of 1779.
New York was the third largest state in population after California and Texas, with an estimated population of 19,306,183. The major ancestry...