Charles Cornwallis

Charles C. Mann | Winter 2010

As much as nine-tenths of the indigenous population of the Americas died in less than a generation from European pathogens.

In the summer of 1605, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed along the coast of New England, looking for a likely spot to place a colony — a place more hospitable than the upper St. Lawrence River, which he had previously explored.

Time Machine

Frederic D. O'Brien | October 2006

25 Years Ago

The World Turned Upside Down

Frederic D. O'Brien | October 2006

On the morning of October 17, 1781, an officer emerged from the British lines holding a white handkerchief.

As October began, General Charles Cornwallis and his army of 8000 redcoats and Hessians knew they were in deep trouble. In late August, after a summer filled with conflicting instructions, they had been ordered to establish a naval base on the Chesapeake.

Trenton And Princeton

Richard F. Snow | December 1987

In the summer the stretch of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey, is as alluring as any place in the country.

Triumph At Yorktown

Jack Rudolph | October/november 1981

Everything depended on a French fleet leaving the Indies on time; two American armies meeting in Virginia on time; a French fleet beating a British fleet; a French army getting along with an American one; and a British general staying put.

A Bicentennial Monument ToOur Fumbling Foes Of ’76

Frederick Bernays Wiener | April 1975

Although the bicentennial of American independence is just over a year away, it is the unhappy fact that the United States has not yet expressed the slightest appreciation to those who did the most to make that independence possible.

Protégé Of Cornwallis, Guest Of Washington

Robert C. Alberts | August 1973

“1795.—The state of my health rendering a voyage to Europe necessary, I determined to proceed by way of America. Accordingly, towards the end of November, I left Santipore, taking with me a small Bengal cow, in addition to my doombah and other curiosities brought from Delhi.

Men of the Revolution: Cornwallis

Richard M. Ketchum | August 1973

Courageous and resourceful, the Marquis was bred for better things than defeat at the hands of rebellious provincials.

In war the final defeat is the one that counts. Yet there are wars and wars, and only rarely do historians conclude that a particular surrender was not only a cessation of fighting but a watershed marking the end of one epoch and the start of another.

Encounter at the Brandywine

Richard F. Snow | February 1973

“The damn rebels form well”

With Cornwallis At Yorktown

The Editors | October 1961

America’s Most Imitated Battle

Lynn Montross | April 1956

At Cowpens, Dan Morgan showed how militia can be used. The formula worked in three later fights.

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Featured Authors

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Atkinson, Rick

Rick Atkinson is the author of dozens of best-selling books on American military history, including The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with General David H. Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has also written a three-part narrative history of the U.S.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brands, H. W.

H. W. Brands is a best-selling author, historian, and the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written thirty books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator, a dual biography of the abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln, as well as The First American and Traitor to His Class, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize.