Download or read book Southern Gambit written by Stanley D. M. Carpenter and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world rife with conflict and tension, how does a great power prosecute an irregular war at a great distance within the context of a regional struggle, all within a global competitive environment? The question, so pertinent today, was confronted by the British nearly 250 years ago during the American War for Independence. And the answer, as this book makes plain, is: not the way the British, under Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis, went about it in the American South in the years 1778–81. Southern Gambit presents a closely observed, comprehensive account of this failed strategy. Approaching the campaign from the British perspective, this book restores a critical but little-studied chapter to the narrative of the Revolutionary War—and in doing so, it adds detail and depth to our picture of Cornwallis, an outsize figure in the history of the British Empire. Distinguished scholar of military strategy Stanley D. M. Carpenter outlines the British strategic and operational objectives, devoting particular attention to the strategy of employing Southern Loyalists to help defeat Patriot forces, reestablish royal authority, and tamp down resurgent Patriot activity. Focusing on Cornwallis’s operations in the Carolinas and Virginia leading to the surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, Carpenter reveals the flaws in this approach, most notably a fatal misunderstanding of the nature of the war in the South and of the Loyalists’ support. Compounding this was the strategic incoherence of seeking a conventional war against a brilliant, unconventional opponent, and doing so amidst a breakdown in the unity of command. Ultimately, strategic incoherence, ineffective command and control, and a misreading of the situation contributed to the series of cascading failures of the British effort. Carpenter’s analysis of how and why this happened expands our understanding of British decision-making and operations in the Southern Campaign and their fateful consequences in the War for Independence.

Download or read book Decision at the Chesapeake written by Harold Atkins Larrabee and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Battle of Chesapeake Bay was one of the decisive battles of the world. Before it, the creation of the United States of America was possible; after it, it was certain.” — Michael Lewis, The History of the British Navy “On the afternoon of September 5, 1781, off the Capes of Virginia, two and a half hours of cannonading between warships of the British and French navies determined the outcome of the American Revolution. It was the one decisive engagement of the bitter six-year struggle of the thirteen colonies against England, and it could have gone either way. Not many Americans have ever heard of it... Almost no one, at the time, seems to have grasped its full significance. George III called it ‘a drawn battle’; Rear Admiral Thomas Graves, ‘a lively skirmish’; Rear Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, ‘a feeble action’; and George Washington, ‘a partial engagement.’ As modern battles go it was a small affair. Probably less than ten thousand men came under fire on each side, and the total casualties did not exceed six hundred... One of the many paradoxes about the Chesapeake struggle is that one of the greatest naval victories of all time was decisive because it was indecisive. Not a single ship was taken or sunk during the battle itself, although the British were forced to burn one afterwards; and neither admiral was driven from the field. Yet the result was as crushing to the hopes of General Earl Cornwallis as if every British warship had been sent to the bottom. To save his army of seven thousand men, the British fleet had to win control of Chesapeake Bay. This it failed to do. England lost naval supremacy just long enough to insure the winning of American independence. Once the sea-approaches to the Chesapeake were sealed the siege of Yorktown and Cornwallis’s surrender were foregone conclusions.” — Harold A. Larrabee, Introduction to Decision at the Chesapeake “[An] excellent study of the naval battle fought off the Chesapeake on Sept. 5, 1781, between French and English fleets... The account of the battle itself takes up only a small portion of the book, the rest being devoted to the backgrounds of the war, brief biographies of politicians and officers on both sides... the reasons behind Cornwallis’s fatal decision to fortify himself at Yorktown, and to puncturing long-accepted theories as to why France sent ‘foreign aid’ to America. Carefully documented and highly readable, filled with fascinating details of 18th-century naval warfare, the book will appeal to naval buffs ashore and afloat and to all historians of America’s first Civil War.” — Kirkus Reviews “Harold A. Larrabee does [the story of the Yorktown campaign] full justice... his lucid and fast-moving account will interest any one who cares to know the role of sea power in achieving American independence... The author’s treatment of the Yorktown campaign itself is excellent... In discussing the naval operations, Larrabee is at his best... The story is told in all its complexity, yet is never mystifying. It is so clear that the reader can follow it with ease, and so vivid that he feels like an eyewitness of a campaign that in its combination of brilliance and blunder is perennially fascinating.” — William B. Willcox, The Journal of Modern History “Decision at the Chesapeake is a delight. It combines scholarly acumen, scholarly methodology, and a good style — not what is popularly labeled scholarly — with a sense of direction and purpose. The author endeavors to demonstrate, and to my mind does it very well, that the fate of Cornwallis was definitely determined not so much by his own actions but because the British lost control of the sea in early September 1781.” — S. W. Jackman, The William and Mary Quarterly “For the student of sea power this is interesting reading, indeed. It has been written: ‘The Battle of Chesapeake Bay was one of the decisive battles of the world. Before it, the creation of the United States of America was possible; after it, it was certain.’ The author sets out to explore this thesis, and brings together from many sources-some of them obscure-most of what is known about this battle of the American Revolution. War, certainly, can and must be viewed from many perspectives, and the author is not unmindful of this.” — F. A. Baldwin, Naval War College Review “With a keen sense of the dramatic, a strict adherence to fact, and a facile pen, the author has created an outstanding contribution to the naval history of the American Revolution, and has presented another graphic illustration of the importance of sea power in warfare... Dr. Larrabee has written one of the most penetrating accounts of the events leading up to the battle and a vivid word picture of the battle itself. His device of creating a stage, whereon the various ‘Architects of Defeat’ exhibit either their incompetence or their blunders, is a piece of graphic historical writing. There are profiles of George III, and the Lords North, Germain and Sandwich, which clearly expose their fatuous belief that the American Colonies could be conquered with ease; of the Admirals Graves, Hood and Rodney, and the Generals Clinton and Cornwallis, which place them in no favorable light as strategists or tacticians.” — William Bell Clark, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Download or read book The Enigma of General Howe written by Thomas Fleming and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General William Howe had a reputation as a bold, resourceful commander. Yet in battle after battle, he had George Washington beaten - and failed to pursue the advantage. Was "Sir Billy" all glitter and no gold? Or was he actually in sympathy with the rebellion? Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming are the answers.

Download or read book The British Are Coming written by Rick Atkinson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the George Washington Prize Winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History Winner of the Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.

Download or read book 1777 written by John S. Pancake and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1977-06-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A revisionist view of the Revolution's most crucial year... it explodes many of the myths surrounding Burgoyne's Canadian expedition and Howe's Pennsylvania campaign. There is a wealth of fascinating detail in this book, including information on arms and supplies, rations for women camp followers, and even the numbers of carts (30-odd) carrying Burgoyne's luggage." --History Book Club Newsletter

Download or read book Journal of the American Revolution written by Todd Andrlik and published by Journal of the American Revolu. This book was released on 2017-05-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth annual compilation of selected articles from the online Journal of the American Revolution.

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 Cornwallis Papersthe Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Theatre of the American Revolutionary War written by Charles Cornwallis Marquis Cornwallis and published by Naval & Military Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This work deals with Britain's last throw of the dice in the American Revolutionary War. Comprising six volumes, it contains a fully edited transcript of almost all the papers that were written by, or came before, Lord Cornwallis during his command in the south. The papers cover the siege of Charlestown, his tenuous occupation of South Carolina and Georgia, the autumn, winter and Virginia campaigns, and ultimately his capitulation at Yorktown. Among a mass of matters that are also covered are Craig's occupation of Wilmington, his operations there, the Spanish threat to East Florida, and the eventual collapse of British authority elsewhere in the south. The papers are arranged in 14 parts and 68 chapters. In view of the numberless inaccuracies published about the war most parts begin with an introductory chapter, the purpose of which is to present the papers in an accurate, balanced and dispassionate way. Whether such chapters are seen to succeed will, inevitably, depend to a degree on the perspective from which the papers are viewed. The papers open the door to re-evaluating certain aspects of the war. The introductory chapters very briefly provide pointers besides addressing certain important considerations that have long gone by default"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Engineers of Independence written by Paul K. Walker and published by The Minerva Group, Inc.. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.

Download or read book American Military History Volume 1 written by Army Center of Military History and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-05 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.

Download or read book Washington s Spies written by Alexander Rose and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Turn: Washington’s Spies, now an original series on AMC Based on remarkable new research, acclaimed historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors—including the spymaster at the heart of it all. In the summer of 1778, with the war poised to turn in his favor, General George Washington desperately needed to know where the British would strike next. To that end, he unleashed his secret weapon: an unlikely ring of spies in New York charged with discovering the enemy’s battle plans and military strategy. Washington’s small band included a young Quaker torn between political principle and family loyalty, a swashbuckling sailor addicted to the perils of espionage, a hard-drinking barkeep, a Yale-educated cavalryman and friend of the doomed Nathan Hale, and a peaceful, sickly farmer who begged Washington to let him retire but who always came through in the end. Personally guiding these imperfect everyday heroes was Washington himself. In an era when officers were gentlemen, and gentlemen didn’ t spy, he possessed an extraordinary talent for deception—and proved an adept spymaster. The men he mentored were dubbed the Culper Ring. The British secret service tried to hunt them down, but they escaped by the closest of shaves thanks to their ciphers, dead drops, and invisible ink. Rose’s thrilling narrative tells the unknown story of the Revolution–the murderous intelligence war, gunrunning and kidnapping, defectors and executioners—that has never appeared in the history books. But Washington’s Spies is also a spirited, touching account of friendship and trust, fear and betrayal, amid the dark and silent world of the spy.

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 No Useless Mouth written by Rachel B. Herrmann and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesis―all based on extensive archival research―produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative."―The Journal of American History In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war. In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors—food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare—the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay. Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"—not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power—who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era. Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Download or read book The American Revolution written by John Fiske and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a general history of the American Revolution, from the first grievances of trade to the end of the conflict. Most attention is dedicated to military, political, and revolutionary social proceedings in relation to the war.

Download or read book The Battles That Changed History written by Fletcher Pratt and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2000-03-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles of 16 decisive struggles from ancient and modern times. Gripping accounts range from Alexander the Great's overthrow of the Persian empire in the 4th century BC to World War II's Battle of Midway. Pratt depicts the circumstances leading up to the decisive clashes, the personalities involved, and the historically important aftermath. 27 maps.

Download or read book The Oxford Companion to British History written by John Cannon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 1030 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In over 4,500 entries, this Companion covers all aspects of the history of Britain from 55 BC to the present day. Completely revised and updated, this is the go-to reference work for students and teachers of British history, as well as for anyone with an interest in the subject.

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.