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Charles Cornwallis
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.
On the morning of October 17, 1781, an officer emerged from the British lines holding a white handkerchief
As October began, Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his army of 8,000 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.
In the summer the stretch of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey, is as alluring as any place in the country.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
At Cowpens, Dan Morgan showed how militia can be used. The formula worked in three later fights.
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