In the fall of 1775, it wouldn't have seemed unusual for the British to suspect that their army could easily overtake this supposed American rebellion. Just by viewing the battle from a military angle, it would seem clear that Britain was the superior power - and in some ways they were. Yet from other perspectives, from a tactical angle, they were at a disadvantage: they were fighting on, now, American soil. That alone still left it a no-win situation; despite being right at home, the Americans were facing a civil struggle as well because as the majority wanted to secede from Britain there was still the minority present that remained loyal. The loyalists would indeed be a detriment to the Americans, but there were greater worries than that. Britain, too, could not completely focus on her colonies and that would fracture the communication that could have made this war a hopeless cause for the Americans. Both sides possessed strengths that would bring them ahead and weaknesses that would drag them behind, and although Britain had a nice chain of victories in the early years of the war the true victory would have been to sustain that. .
At the time that the war broke out, the population of the colonies was 2.5 million, of which a good twenty percent was African slaves. That didn't compare to the population of Great Britain, and would prove to flaw the Americans from the very beginning. The first task would be to collect men and form a credible army - the main Continental Army never reached beyond 24,000. Congress, in the early years, would promise to triple the size of their force but never did. Generals were left complaining that they"re men were "weak in numbers, dispirited, naked, destitute of provisions, without camp equipage, with little ammunition, and not a single piece of cannon." One the other hand, Britain had a strong and much more superior army, and not to mention a navy that would in the beginning set the boundaries for the Americans.
