Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Revolutionary War
Ninth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
All through the spring and summer of 1781 Major General Nathanael Greene had fought his way through the Garolinas, never quite winning a battle but always hurting the British more than they hurt him.
Who today remembers John Paulding, Isaac Van Wert, or
David Williams? Yet for a century they were renowned as the
rustic militiamen who captured Major John André
Before September 23, 1780, the three seemed unlikely stuff for heroes. But on that day Major John André came their way, and fame for the trio followed.
The brilliant Polish engineer who made possible the victory at Saratoga was a fighter for freedom in both America and his homeland
A large crowd was on the wharf as the Adriana arrived in Philadelphia from England on the evening of August 18, 1797. Aboard was a distinguished passenger whose name few Americans could pronounce but whose noble reputation was well known.
When one of the wealthiest men in the Colonies sided with the Patriot cause, he was called a “wretched and plundered tool of the Boston rebels.”
Like Abou Ben Adhem, his name led all the rest.
BATTLES OF THE REVOLUTION
On July first of 1777 the able, affable “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne set out from Crown Point on Lake Champlain with his competent Hessian ally, Baron Friedrich von Riedesel, thereby opening a campaign that he had wagered would see him home victorious by Chris
Eighth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
On September 23, 1779, Captain John Paul Jones, wallowing along the English coast in the unwieldy Bonhomme Richard , met the British frigate Serapis .
It hardly seemed possible that a British garrison of seven hundred men could withstand a siege by the greatest American armada of the Revolution. But luck was not with the Americans that summer
“When the British came I was at Fox Island, with my uncle—where we went fishing in an open boat.
Seventh in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
At its northern end Manhattan Island shrinks to a spur of ground three quarters of a mile wide, bounded by the Harlem River on one side and the Hudson on the other.
Sixth in a series of paintings for AMERICAN HERITAGE
The first and most unusual battle of the American Revution began in earnest when the seven hundred British regulars under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith left Concord and started back for Boston on the afternoon of April 19, 1775.
WHAT IS THERE TO CELEBRATE?
As we approach the bicentennial of the American Revolution we find ourselves in a paradoxical and embarrassing situation. A celebration of some kind certainly seems to be in order, but the urge to celebrate is not exactly overwhelming.
The brothers were expected to perform an almost impossible task, subduing a people of the same flesh and blood and heritage.
Wars are more often lost than won, but in 1775 a man who predicted British defeat in the Revolution would have been taken for a fool.
Rakehells, men of good will, adventurers, and bunglers were all in the glittering pageant when the Old World came to help out the New
Two great historic figures, men who have merged into myth, are almost the sole remains of the alliance between France and the revolutionary forces of America—Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin. And like most myths time has changed them, clothing the reality in a web of romance.
Fifth in a series of painting for
AMERICAN HERITAGE
One of the ghastliest incidents of the Revolution took place at Groton, Connecticut, during the last engagement of the war in the north.
In September a statue of Nathan Hale, martyr-patriot of the Revolution, is to be unveiled near the main entrance to the CIA headquarters in Washington.
Credited with shouting “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at Bunker Hill, he was perhaps the most experienced general in the American army. But “Old Put” was not without his faults.
In the early summer of 1775, when the time came to appoint major generals to serve with George Washington in the Continental Army, Congress voted unanimously that Israel Putnam was to be one of them.
Crowds on both sides of the Atlantic shouted “Wilkes and Liberty!” after he was jailed and tossed out of Parliament for defending the rights of Colonists and the “middling and inferior sort of people who stand most in need of protection.”
Not many political martyrs are born to the part; more often they are cast in it by government officials who are stupid or self-righteous or both.
At one point in the Battle of White Plains an American militiaman whose unit was temporarily not engaged with the enemy called out to a nearby civilian: “Who’s ahead?” The civilian, holding a small square object up to one ear, replied: “Oakland, 3 to 1.”
Second in a series of paintings for
AMERICAN HERITAGE
Mid-October of 1776 found a badly beaten American army in full retreat from Manhattan Island into the forests and farmlands of Westchester County.
Yorktown was not the end of the Revolutionary War. The Americans were to gain one victory more.
Clark’s career was like the passage of a meteor—a quick, fiery moment that lit up the heavens for all to see and wonder at, then vanishing in oblivion.
It is of a piece with the rest of the story that the portrait of George Rogers Clark which his son described as “a Masterpiece” was painted long after the events that made him famous, when he was in the throes of his final illness, embittered and forgotten.
Form the Journal of Comte Jean-Francois-Louis de Clermont-Crèvecoeur
Common Sense was a bestseller and turned the tide of public feeling toward independence, but for its author fame was followed by ingratitude.
The whole history of America affords examples of men who fitted precisely the needs of a particular moment, only to be cast aside, forgotten or traduced when the tide of events they created or manipulated waned and time passed them by.
To read Thomas Jones’s acerb History of New York during the Revolutionary War is to behold the outward man of the portrait—prim, carping, easily outraged, a nob who looks as though he had sniffed something odious.
The British Prime Minister for most of the Revolution was fiercely loyal to King George, but had no stomach for war.
Given the necessities of the times, the prevailing mood of the country, and the configuration of political power in Great Britain, the selection of Frederick, Lord North, as prime minister to His Majesty George in was no surprise.
When British dragoons captured this brilliant and ambitious general, it put an end to his ambition to replace Washington as commander-in-chief.
One acquaintance nicknamed him Naso, for the long beak that dominated his dark, pinched face. Mohawk warriors, with whom he lived during the French and Indian War, called him Ounewaterika, or “Boiling Water”—a name that only partially suggested his disposition.
The key to control of Canada was a city whose defenders doubted they could hold out for long once the American Rebels attacked
Sixteen years after General James Wolfe’s famous assault on Quebec, the city was subjected to another siege—and another storming—that, though less celebrated, was vitally important to Americans in the early months oj their revolution.
Defeated at Saratoga, Burgoyne’s troops faced nearly five years of enforced exile in a hostile countryside
On October 17, 1777, Elijah Fisher confided the following information to his diary: … Gen. Burgoin and his howl army surrendered themselves Prisoners of Ware and Come to Captelate with our army and Gen. Gates.
The British commander-in-chief at the beginning of the Revolution was popular and conscientious, but events were beyond his control.
On October 10, 1775, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage took his last salute as commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in North America and the next day sailed for England aboard the transport Pallas .
As the fourth ice age of the Pleistocene epoch receded some eleven thousand years ago, an almost impenetrable forest of oak, elm, birch, maple, and pine trees sprang up between the coast of New England and the shores of the Mississippi.
Featured Authors
