Download or read book The Compleat Victory written by Kevin J. Weddle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late summer and fall of 1777, after two years of indecisive fighting on both sides, the outcome of the American War of Independence hung in the balance. Having successfully expelled the Americans from Canada in 1776, the British were determined to end the rebellion the following year and devised what they believed a war-winning strategy, sending General John Burgoyne south to rout the Americans and take Albany. When British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga with unexpected ease in July of 1777, it looked as if it was a matter of time before they would break the rebellion in the North. Less than three and a half months later, however, a combination of the Continental Army and Militia forces, commanded by Major General Horatio Gates and inspired by the heroics of Benedict Arnold, forced Burgoyne to surrender his entire army. The American victory stunned the world and changed the course of the war. Kevin J. Weddle offers the most authoritative history of the Battle of Saratoga to date, explaining with verve and clarity why events unfolded the way they did. In the end, British plans were undone by a combination of distance, geography, logistics, and an underestimation of American leadership and fighting ability. Taking Ticonderoga had misled Burgoyne and his army into thinking victory was assured. Saratoga, which began as a British foraging expedition, turned into a rout. The outcome forced the British to rethink their strategy, inflamed public opinion in England against the war, boosted Patriot morale, and, perhaps most critical of all, led directly to the Franco-American alliance. Weddle unravels the web of contingencies and the play of personalities that ultimately led to what one American general called "the Compleat Victory."

Download or read book Saratoga written by Richard M. Ketchum and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian Richard M. Ketchum's Saratoga vividly details the turning point in America's Revolutionary War. In the summer of 1777 (twelve months after the Declaration of Independence) the British launched an invasion from Canada under General John Burgoyne. It was the campaign that was supposed to the rebellion, but it resulted in a series of battles that changed America's history and that of the world. Stirring narrative history, skillfully told through the perspective of those who fought in the campaign, Saratoga brings to life as never before the inspiring story of Americans who did their utmost in what seemed a lost cause, achieving what proved to be the crucial victory of the Revolution. A New York Times Notable Book, 1997 Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Award, 1997

Download or read book The Heiress written by John Burgoyne and published by . This book was released on 1787 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Saratoga written by John F. Luzader and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saratoga weaves together the political, strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of this decisive Revolutionary War campaign. Supported by original maps, engaging appendices, and extensive end notes, Luzader's magisterial study is simply history at its finest--Cover.

Download or read book Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign written by John Burgoyne and published by Arthur H. Clark Company. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign, Douglas R. Cubbison presents the papers that Burgoyne gathered preparatory to his appearance before Parliament, together with Cubbison's own interpretive narrative of the campaign, based on these documents and other sources. The papers, most of them published here for the first time, comprise Burgoyne's correspondence with the governor general of Canada, the British secretary of state for America, and the commander of the British army during the Saratoga expedition.

Download or read book 1777 written by Dean Snow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the autumn of 1777, near Saratoga, New York, an inexperienced and improvised American army led by General Horatio Gates faced off against the highly trained British and German forces led by General John Burgoyne. The British strategy in confronting the Americans in upstate New York was to separate rebellious New England from the other colonies. Despite inferior organization and training, the Americans exploited access to fresh reinforcements of men and materiel, and ultimately handed the British a stunning defeat. The American victory, for the first time in the war, confirmed that independence from Great Britain was all but inevitable. Assimilating the archaeological remains from the battlefield along with the many letters, journals, and memoirs of the men and women in both camps, Dean Snow's 1777 provides a richly detailed narrative of the two battles fought at Saratoga over the course of thirty-three tense and bloody days. While the contrasting personalities of Gates and Burgoyne are well known, they are but two of the many actors who make up the larger drama of Saratoga. Snow highlights famous and obscure participants alike, from the brave but now notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold to Frederika von Riedesel, the wife of a British major general who later wrote an important eyewitness account of the battles. Snow, an archaeologist who excavated on the Saratoga battlefield, combines a vivid sense of time and place with details on weather, terrain, and technology and a keen understanding of the adversaries' motivations, challenges, and heroism into a suspenseful, novel-like account. A must-read for anyone with an interest in American history, 1777 is an intimate retelling of the campaign that tipped the balance in the American War of Independence.

Download or read book Hadden s Journal and Orderly Books written by James Hadden and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2009-02 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Battle of Bennington Soldiers Civilians written by Michael P. Gabriel and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 16, 1777, a motley militia won a resounding victory near Bennington, Vermont, against combined German, British and Loyalist forces. This laid the foundation for the American victory at Saratoga two months later. Historian Michael P. Gabriel has collected over fifty firsthand accounts from the people who experienced this engagement, including veterans from both sides and civilians--women and children who witnessed the horrors of the battle. Gabriel also details a virtually unknown skirmish between Americans and Loyalists. These accounts, along with Gabriel's overviews of the battle, bring to life the terror, fear and uncertainty that caused thousands to see the British army as loved ones departed to fight for the fledgling United States.

Download or read book The British Campaign of 1777 written by Gavin K. Watt and published by King City, Ont. : G.K. Watt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cabal written by Mark Edward Lender and published by . This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Comprehensive Historical Investigation into the Conway Cabal, the Attempt to Remove George Washington from Command In the spring of 1778, General George Washington wrote to his friend Landon Carter about a rumored "disposition in the Northern Officers to see me superceded in my Command." This was as candid a statement as the general ever made about the so-called "Conway Cabal" of patriot officers and politicians critical of his leadership. Most early historians of the Revolution took the threat to Washington seriously, but by the mid-twentieth century interpretations had reversed, with the plot--if one existed--posing no real danger to the commander-in-chief. Yet, as historian Mark Edward Lender reveals in his compelling Cabal! The Plot Against General Washington, clues found in original new research provide a more comprehensive understanding of the personalities and political maneuverings of those involved in the Cabal, and the real nature of the challenge to Washington. Rather than the "classic Cabal" of Generals Horatio Gates, Thomas Mifflin, and Thomas Conway in a plot to remove Washington quickly, the threat to Washington's command was a gradual administrative attempt by the Board of War and political allies to take over the war effort. Reorganized in late 1777 under the leadership of Mifflin, with Gates assuming the board presidency in January 1778, the Board of War sought authority to determine military policy and strategic goals, all training, organizational, personnel, and logistical functions, and even the assignment of theater commanders. Had they succeeded, Washington's title of commander-in-chief would have been utterly hollow. The Cabal tested Washington as few other things did during the war and perhaps tempered him into the man we remember today. Washington adroitly navigated the challenges to his leadership, meeting and defeating every attempt to curtail his authority. His response revealed a leadership style that saw him safely through the war, and gave him overwhelming support from his countrymen to become their first president.

Download or read book The Men Who Lost America written by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning popular belief, a historian and re-examines what exactly led to the British Empire’s loss of the American Revolution. The loss of America was an unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. In interlinked biographical chapters, the author follows the course of the war from the perspectives of King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, military leaders including General Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and others who, for the most part, led ably and even brilliantly. Victories were frequent, and in fact the British conquered every American city at some stage of the Revolutionary War. Yet roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort. The book concludes with a penetrating assessment of the years after Yorktown, when the British achieved victories against the French and Spanish, thereby keeping intact what remained of the British Empire. “A remarkable book about an important but curiously underappreciated subject: the British side of the American Revolution. With meticulous scholarship and an eloquent writing style, O'Shaughnessy gives us a fresh and compelling view of a critical aspect of the struggle that changed the world.”—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

Download or read book A Devil of a Whipping written by Lawrence E. Babits and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle of Cowpens was a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War in the South and stands as perhaps the finest American tactical demonstration of the entire war. On 17 January 1781, Daniel Morgan's force of Continental troops and militia routed British regulars and Loyalists under the command of Banastre Tarleton. The victory at Cowpens helped put the British army on the road to the Yorktown surrender and, ultimately, cleared the way for American independence. Here, Lawrence Babits provides a brand-new interpretation of this pivotal South Carolina battle. Whereas previous accounts relied on often inaccurate histories and a small sampling of participant narratives, Babits uses veterans' sworn pension statements, long-forgotten published accounts, and a thorough knowledge of weaponry, tactics, and the art of moving men across the landscape. He identifies where individuals were on the battlefield, when they were there, and what they saw--creating an absorbing common soldier's version of the conflict. His minute-by-minute account of the fighting explains what happened and why and, in the process, refutes much of the mythology that has clouded our picture of the battle. Babits put the events at Cowpens into a sequence that makes sense given the landscape, the drill manual, the time frame, and participants' accounts. He presents an accurate accounting of the numbers involved and the battle's length. Using veterans' statements and an analysis of wounds, he shows how actions by North Carolina militia and American cavalry affected the battle at critical times. And, by fitting together clues from a number of incomplete and disparate narratives, he answers questions the participants themselves could not, such as why South Carolina militiamen ran toward dragoons they feared and what caused the "mistaken order" on the Continental right flank.

Download or read book Saratoga written by Rupert Furneaux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Strategy, the imaginative plan to divide the rebellious American colonies, ended in disaster. Originally published in 1971, from his study of all the correspondence that passed between the men involved, and by his visit to the campaign area, author Rupert Furneaux questions the long accepted view of where the blame lay.

Download or read book John Burgoyne of Saratoga written by James Lunt and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1975 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The heart of [this] book deals with Burgoyne's military adventures and misadventures in North America, most notably the recapture of Fort Ticonderoga, the preliminary defeat at Bennington, the final and crucial defeat at Saratoga. His account of these actions, and of the grueling conditions under which they were fought, is both lucid and graphic"--from jacket flaps.

Download or read book Captives of Liberty written by T. Cole Jones and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to popular belief, the American Revolutionary War was not a limited and restrained struggle for political self-determination. From the onset of hostilities, British authorities viewed their American foes as traitors to be punished, and British abuse of American prisoners, both tacitly condoned and at times officially sanctioned, proliferated. Meanwhile, more than seventeen thousand British and allied soldiers fell into American hands during the Revolution. For a fledgling nation that could barely afford to keep an army in the field, the issue of how to manage prisoners of war was daunting. Captives of Liberty examines how America's founding generation grappled with the problems posed by prisoners of war, and how this influenced the wider social and political legacies of the Revolution. When the struggle began, according to T. Cole Jones, revolutionary leadership strove to conduct the war according to the prevailing European customs of military conduct, which emphasized restricting violence to the battlefield and treating prisoners humanely. However, this vision of restrained war did not last long. As the British denied customary protections to their American captives, the revolutionary leadership wasted no time in capitalizing on the prisoners' ordeals for propagandistic purposes. Enraged, ordinary Americans began to demand vengeance, and they viewed British soldiers and their German and Native American auxiliaries as appropriate targets. This cycle of violence spiraled out of control, transforming the struggle for colonial independence into a revolutionary war. In illuminating this history, Jones contends that the violence of the Revolutionary War had a profound impact on the character and consequences of the American Revolution. Captives of Liberty not only provides the first comprehensive analysis of revolutionary American treatment of enemy prisoners but also reveals the relationship between America's political revolution and the war waged to secure it.

Download or read book A Most Gallant Resistance written by James McIntyre and published by Winged Hussar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key moment in the American Revolution comes to life Most histories of the American War of Independence discuss what are usually regarded as the two major campaigns in 1777. Either they describe the invasion from Canada led by General John Burgoyne which resulted in his subsequent defeat and the surrender of his force at Saratoga, New York, or they focus on William Howe’s Philadelphia Campaign. Often left out of these discussions, or treated only in passing, is the reduction of the Delaware River defenses that engaged the bulk of the resources and attention of both George Washington and William Howe through October and November of 1777. On the American side, maintaining the integrity of the river defenses involved an attritional campaign waged by an intrepid group of defenders which brought together the efforts of the Continental Army, as garrisons of the various forts, the Continental Navy and the Pennsylvania State Navy. If the Americans could hold their positions until winter set in, they would prevent William Howe from capitalizing his capture of Philadelphia, and possibly force him to abandon the city for want of supplies.

Download or read book The Battle of Hubbardton written by Bruce M. Venter and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British and German troops ran into stubborn rebel resistance at Hubbardton, Vermont on July 7, 1777. The day would ultimately turn the tide for the Patriot cause. After capturing Fort Ticonderoga, the British pursued a retreating Continental army. The American rear guard derailed the British general's plan for a quick march to Albany; the British suffered precious losses. The weakened British force ultimately surrendered at Saratoga on Octobery 17, 1777, paving the way to American independence. -- back cover.