Author: John E. Selby
Publisher: Colonial Williamsburg
ISBN: 9780879352332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
Unsurpassed as a single-volume history, John E. Selby's masterpiece analyzes the political, administrative, and military history of Virginia during the American Revolution. Stressing the contributions, in both men and material, that the state made to the new nation's war effort, Shelby shows how Virginia's leaders responded to the need to expand the state's administration and mobilize its people for war while at the same time looking westward to the vast territory beyond the Appalachians. Now available for the first time in paperback and with a new foreword by the historian Don Higginbotham, this classic is a must-read for anyone interested in the origins of our nation.
Author: Michael Cecere
Publisher: Journal of the American Revolu
ISBN: 9781594162794
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
By the sixth year of the American Revolution, Britain determined that Virginia would be the key to subduing the entire rebellion. The American War for Independence was fought in nearly every colony, but some colonies witnessed far more conflict than others. In the first half of the war, the bulk of military operations were concentrated in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Following the battle at Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey, in 1778, British strategy moved to the South, where their armies clashed with Continental troops in Georgia and South Carolina. Surprisingly, Virginia saw little fighting up to this point in the war. This changed suddenly in 1781, when the turncoat Benedict Arnold led 1,600 seasoned British troops on a successful raid up the James River to Richmond, destroying Patriot property along the way. Arnold's bold stroke demonstrated Virginia's vulnerability to attack and the possibility that the colonies could be divided and subdued piecemeal. British General Henry Clinton decided to reinforce Arnold in Virginia, while events in North Carolina, including the battle of Guilford Courthouse, convinced British General Charles Cornwallis that defeating the Patriots in Virginia was the key to ending the war. As historian Michael Cecere relates in The Invasion of Virginia 1781, the war's arrival in the largest colony had unintended consequences for Cornwallis and his powerful British force. -- Inside jacket flap.
Author: Woody Holton
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807899860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions against their own rule. The Virginia gentry's efforts to shape London's imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by a coalition of Indian nations. In 1774, elite Virginians suspended trade with Britain in order to pressure Parliament and, at the same time, to save restive Virginia debtors from a terrible recession. The boycott and the growing imperial conflict led to rebellions by enslaved Virginians, Indians, and tobacco farmers. By the spring of 1776 the gentry believed the only way to regain control of the common people was to take Virginia out of the British Empire. Forced Founders uses the new social history to shed light on a classic political question: why did the owners of vast plantations, viewed by many of their contemporaries as aristocrats, start a revolution? As Holton's fast-paced narrative unfolds, the old story of patriot versus loyalist becomes decidedly more complex.
Author: John Ferling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635572770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 753
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Book Description
Co-Winner of the 2022 Harry M. Ward Book Prize From celebrated historian John Ferling, the underexplored history of the second half of the Revolutionary War, when, after years of fighting, American independence often seemed beyond reach. It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the U.S a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France's entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a “southern strategy.” The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its pre-war American empire. Deep into 1780 Britain's new approach seemed headed for success as the U.S. economy collapsed and morale on the home front waned. By early 1781, Washington, and others, feared that France would drop out of the war if the Allies failed to score a decisive victory that year. Sir Henry Clinton, commander of Britain's army, thought “the rebellion is near its end.” Washington, who had been so optimistic in 1778, despaired: “I have almost ceased to hope.” Winning Independence is the dramatic story of how and why Great Britain-so close to regaining several southern colonies and rendering the postwar United States a fatally weak nation ultimately failed to win the war. The book explores the choices and decisions made by Clinton and Washington, and others, that ultimately led the French and American allies to clinch the pivotal victory at Yorktown that at long last secured American independence.
Author: Patrick Henry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 42
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Book Description
"'Give me Liberty, or give me Death'!" is a famous quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Virginia Convention. It was given March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, ..
Author: Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300195249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 876
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Book Description
Questioning popular belief, a historian and re-examines what exactly led to the British Empire’s loss of the American Revolution. The loss of America was an unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. In interlinked biographical chapters, the author follows the course of the war from the perspectives of King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, military leaders including General Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and others who, for the most part, led ably and even brilliantly. Victories were frequent, and in fact the British conquered every American city at some stage of the Revolutionary War. Yet roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort. The book concludes with a penetrating assessment of the years after Yorktown, when the British achieved victories against the French and Spanish, thereby keeping intact what remained of the British Empire. “A remarkable book about an important but curiously underappreciated subject: the British side of the American Revolution. With meticulous scholarship and an eloquent writing style, O'Shaughnessy gives us a fresh and compelling view of a critical aspect of the struggle that changed the world.”—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Author: Harry M. Ward
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786486015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
The phrase "American Revolutionary War Hero" usually brings to mind George Washington, John Paul Jones and other famous officers. Heroes, however, existed throughout the ranks during the Revolution, and many made their marks without ever receiving proper recognition. These portraits of 28 Virginia Revolutionary soldiers expand the historical record of those who can be called a "hero." Whether as infantryman, cavalryman, marine, militiaman, spy, frontier fighter or staffer, all performed with distinction that contributed to victory. A strongman who performed superhuman feats during battle; a woman who fought as a soldier; a militiaman who sounded a fateful alarm--some gave their lives, others were terribly wounded, but all demonstrated heroism beyond the call of duty.
Author: Claudio Saunt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324430X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
This panoramic account of 1776 chronicles the other revolutions unfolding that year across North America, far beyond the British colonies. In this unique history of 1776, Claudio Saunt looks beyond the familiar story of the thirteen colonies to explore the many other revolutions roiling the turbulent American continent. In that fateful year, the Spanish landed in San Francisco, the Russians pushed into Alaska to hunt valuable sea otters, and the Sioux discovered the Black Hills. Hailed by critics for challenging our conventional view of the birth of America, West of the Revolution “[coaxes] our vision away from the Atlantic seaboard” and “exposes a continent seething with peoples and purposes beyond Minutemen and Redcoats” (Wall Street Journal).
Author: John A. Ruddiman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813936187
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
Young Continental soldiers carried a heavy burden in the American Revolution. Their experiences of coming of age during the upheavals of war provide a novel perspective on the Revolutionary era, eliciting questions of gender, family life, economic goals, and politics. "Going for a soldier" forced young men to confront profound uncertainty, and even coercion, but also offered them novel opportunities. Although the war imposed obligations on youths, military service promised young men in their teens and early twenties alternate paths forward in life. Continental soldiers’ own youthful expectations about respectable manhood and their goals of economic competence and marriage not only ordered their experience of military service; they also shaped the fighting capacities of George Washington’s army and the course of the war. Becoming Men of Some Consequence examines how young soldiers and officers joined the army, their experiences in the ranks, their relationships with civilians, their choices about quitting long-term military service, and their attempts to rejoin the flow of civilian life after the war. The book recovers young soldiers’ perspectives and stories from military records, wartime letters and journals, and postwar memoirs and pension applications, revealing how revolutionary political ideology intertwined with rational calculations and youthful ambitions. Its focus on soldiers as young men offers a new understanding of the Revolutionary War, showing how these soldiers’ generational struggle for their own independence was a profound force within America’s struggle for its independence.
Author: George Washington
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
