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American Revolution
The battle of Monmouth was pivotal in the struggle for independence, enabling George Washington to change the narrative of the war and eventually solidify his own role in our nation's history.
Unlike Saratoga or Yorktown, the battle of Monmouth was not a clear-cut American victory.
It became convenient to portray Benedict Arnold as a conniving traitor, but the truth is more complex. The brilliant general often failed to get credit for his military wins, suffered painful wounds, lost his fortune while others profiteered, and finally gave up on the disorganized and often ineffective efforts to win the American Revolution.
In the teeth of near defeat, General George Washington pulled out miraculous mid-winter victories.
A new look at a famous Revolutionary figure questions whether history’s long-standing judgment is accurate.
AT 9 O’CLOCK ON THE morning of September 25, 1775, a French Canadian habitant banged on the main gate of Montreal. The Americans were coming, he blurted breathlessly to a British officer.
MANY YEARS AFTER PLAYING THEIR famed roles in promoting revolution and republicanism among the dispersed peoples of colonial North America, John Adams and Benjamin Rush engaged in a lively correspondence about the importance of human agency in determining the course of history.
America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.
On April 22, 1775, three days after a British column marched out of Boston and clashed with militiamen at Lexington and Concord, the news—and the cry of Revolution!—reached Danbury, Connecticut, where 18-year-old Stephen Maples Jarvis was working on the family farm.
Sharp business skills ensured the first president’s phenomenal success.
America’s greatest leader was its first—George Washington. He ran two start-ups, the army and the presidency, and chaired the most important committee meeting in U.S. history, the Constitutional Convention. His agribusiness and real-estate portfolio made him America’s richest man. He was as well-known in his time as any star actor, rapper, or athlete is now. Men followed him into battle; women longed to dance with him; famous men, almost as great as he was, some of them smarter or better-spoken, did what he told them to do. He was the Founding CEO.
Some of the infuriating questions surrounding the great hero-traitor can be answered by visiting the fields where he fought. The trip will also take you to many of the most beautiful places in the Northeast.
I’ve been fighting the war of the American Revolution (on paper, that is) off and on since 1962, and my research has included journals, diaries, letters, newspapers, and books on nearly all the campaigns.
The Battle of Monmouth
On June 18, 1778, the last of 10,000 British troops led by General Henry Clinton left Philadelphia and began marching toward New York City. The withdrawal was one of the first fruits of the colonists’ alliance with France, as Clinton had feared a blockade by the French Navy.
Richard Brookhiser has spent four years trying to capture for the television screen the character of one of the greatest Americans.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR SUBMARINE
“WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS…”
On July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress brought a new nation into the world by adopting the Declaration of Independence.
It was all over by 9:30 a.m. Colonel Rall mortally wounded, the last of his Hessian troops, driven out of the town by the Continentals and surrounded in a desolate winter orchard, dropping their muskets to the ground.
The young German fought for American independence went home and returned as a man of peace.
Georg Daniel Flohr, a butcher’s son, enlisted at 19 in the Regiment Royal-Deux-Ponts, a German outfit in the service of France, and came to America in 1780 with the Comte de Rochambeau’s army to help the Continentals in their struggle against Great Britain.
Benedict Arnold never quite understood the cause he served superbly and then betrayed.
A good many Americans have been accused of betraying their country over the past two centuries. Yet only Benedict Arnold’s name has entered the language as a synonym for treason.
From Newport to Yorktown and the battle that won the war: A German foot soldier who fought for American independence tells all about it in a newly discovered memoir.
The American Revolution was in fact a bitter civil war, and a remarkable book offers us perhaps the most intimate picture we have of what it was like for the ordinary people who got caught in its terrible machinery.
What was the American Revolution really like, for real homes and real families caught up in its hardships and dangers?
To the end of his life, America’s most notorious traitor believed that he was a primary hero of the Revolution.
Shortly after noon on Thursday, April 20, 1775, a weary post-rider swung out of the saddle at Hunt’s Tavern in New Haven, Connecticut with an urgent message from the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence.
The little town of Lebanon, Connecticut played a larger role in the Revolution than Williamsburg, Virginia did. And it’s all still there.
Natives of eastern Connecticut like to say that, except for Boston and Philadelphia, the village of Lebanon stands first in America in Revolutionary importance.
Only one man had the wit, audacity, and self-confidence to make the case.
At the end of 1775, when fighting had already begun between the Americans and the British, an essay about the character of rattlesnakes appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal signed by “An American Guesser.” The Guesser, obviously a patrio