Edward G. Lengel - The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution

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To our ancestors

I ts hard to believe that just a couple of generations ago the best single treatment of the Revolutionary War was Christopher Wards two-volume treatise, The War of the Revolution, published in 1952. We have come a long way since then. Over the past twenty years several broad studies of the war have appeared in print; at the time of this writing, Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Rick Atkinson has finished the first volume in his new trilogy about the Revolutionary War and is well into the research for his secondrelying in part upon expert assistance from the authors of some of the essays in the book you now hold in your hands.

The American War for Independence remainsnow, nearly 250 years since its onseta relatively new field of study. Historians are exploring parts of it for the first time. Shocking as it may seem, many of the wars campaigns and battles have become the subjects of book-length treatments only over the past several years. Some, incredibly, remain largely ignored to this very day. Fortunately, this generation is blessed by the emergence of a new phalanx of dedicated and talented Revolutionary War historians determined to fill the outstanding gaps in our understanding of the war that created the United States of America.

This book, The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution, represents some of the best new work and keenest insights on the Revolutionary War. In it, the wars leading historians look closely at the campaigns that paved the way to victory in the quest for American independence. This is history in the truest sensecarefully researched, clearly described, and best of all told with a storytellers instinct for high drama and excitement. For the story of Americas founding is dramatic, indeedone of the most dramatic stories ever told.

Glenn Williams, one of Americas leading military historians and the author of books on Lord Dunmores War and General John Sullivans 1777 campaign against the Iroquois, leads off with the story of the shots that echoed round the world in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. What began as a parade for British redcoats against what they assumed would be negligible opposition became a humiliating rout at the hands of American minutemen, inspiring confidence in thousands of their countrymen that they held the power to determine their own destiny.

Mark Anderson, the author of several books on Canadas crucial role in the Revolutionary War, follows up with one of the conflicts most exciting campaigns: Benedict Arnolds campaign to Quebec in the fall and winter of 17751776. Never, perhaps, has there been a more thoroughly quixotic military campaign in the annals of North American history; and yet, Arnold and his fellow adventurers very nearly pulled it off. The adventure ended in disaster, however; and as historian Todd Braisted describes in his gripping account of the struggle for Long Island and Manhattan in the summer of 1776, it was followed by an equally devastating series of defeats that lost New York City to British occupation and nearly ended the Revolution before it even began in earnest. And yet it was here, in these dark times, that the Declaration of Independence marked the birth of a new nation.

And the turnaround was not long in coming. William L. Larry Kidder, author of the new book Ten Crucial Days, takes us along with George Washingtons half-frozen soldiers as they leave bloody footprints in the snow on the way to their world-shaking victories at Trenton and Princeton in the winter of 17761777. Never in military history, perhaps, have such numerically small engagements had such wide-ranging implications. On a much larger scale, as Professor James Kirby Martin explains to us in his exciting study of General John Burgoynes campaign into Upstate New York in the fall of 1777, the British defeat and surrender at Saratoga marked a strategic victory of epic proportions, wrecking British hopes of occupying the Hudson River corridor and inciting France to intervene in the war on behalf of American independence.

Still, victory was not to be easily won, as George Washington and his soldiers learned to their sorrow in the brutal Philadelphia campaign of AugustDecember 1777. Michael C. Harris, the author of important new books on the under-studied battles of Brandywine and Germantown, tells the story of how the American commander in chief nearly lost everythingincluding his own positionin a series of defeats that culminated in the British occupation of Philadelphia and the Delaware River corridor and led to the traumatic winter encampment at Valley Forge. Incredibly, though, Washingtons magnificent leadership ensured that the Continental Army would emerge from these horrendous trials even stronger than before.

Until very recently, no serious study of the June 1778 Battle of Monmouth had ever been written. Professor Mark Lender and Garry Wheeler Stone put that to rights with their seminal 2017 work Fatal Sunday, demonstratingas Lender does again here in his essay for this volumethat the battles impact, following on the British evacuation of Philadelphia thanks to French intervention in the war, was magnified by Washingtons ability to spin it as a victory that confirmed his own leadership and inspired hope for ultimate victory. Washington, a man who famously lost more battles than he won but eventually achieved victory in the Revolutionary War, understood that the conflict was above all a contest for American hearts and minds.

Nowhere was this truer than in the war in the South, which is the subject of the final three essays in this volume. John Jack Buchanan, author of the firstand what remain the bestfull studies of the southern campaigns, shows how American fortunes in this theater swung from what seemed total defeat at the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780, to smashing victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain in October of that same year. Historian John Maass, author of several important books on the culminating battles of the southern campaigns, continues the story with his stirring account of the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781 and the Battle of Guilford Courthouse two months later. Together, these two battles sealed the fate of British general Charles Lord Cornwalliss southern army and led directly to the wars final dramatic campaign.