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Author: James L. Nelson
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071743170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
One shining yet overlooked moment that changed the course of the Revolutionary War In the opening months of 1781, General George Washington feared his army would fail to survive another campaign season. The spring and summer only served to reinforce his despair, but in late summer the changing circumstances of war presented a once-in-a-war opportunity for a French armada to hold off the mighty British navy while his own troops with French reinforcements drove Lord Cornwallis's forces to the Chesapeake. The Battle of the Capes would prove the only time the French ever fought the Royal Navy to a draw, and for the British army it was a catastrophe. Cornwallis confidently retreated to Yorktown, expecting to be evacuated by a British fleet that never arrived. In the end he had no choice but to surrender. Although the war sputtered on another two years, its outcome was never in doubt after Yorktown. General Washington's Great Gamble is the story of the greatest naval engagement of the American Revolution. It is also a study in leadership, good and bad, political machinations and the wild, unpredictable circumstances that led to the extraordinary confluence of military and naval resources at that time and place. Topics include: Looking South; Sea Power for the General; Arnold; Copper Bottoms; Head of Elk; The Battle of Cape Henry; An Attempt to Conquer Virginia; Greene and Cornwallis: Looking North; The American Command; The Battle of Guilford Courthouse; Pyrrhic Victory; Reinforcing the Chesapeake; "[T]he enemy have turned so much of their attention to the Southern States..."; The Battle of Blandford; The British War at Sea; Juncture; "I am inclined to think well of York..."; The Promise of a Fleet; The Battle of Green Springs; The March on New York; An Operation to the Southward; The Arrival of De Grasse; The Battle of the Capes;Cornwallis Surrenders
Author: James L. Nelson
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071743170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Get Book
Book Description
One shining yet overlooked moment that changed the course of the Revolutionary War In the opening months of 1781, General George Washington feared his army would fail to survive another campaign season. The spring and summer only served to reinforce his despair, but in late summer the changing circumstances of war presented a once-in-a-war opportunity for a French armada to hold off the mighty British navy while his own troops with French reinforcements drove Lord Cornwallis's forces to the Chesapeake. The Battle of the Capes would prove the only time the French ever fought the Royal Navy to a draw, and for the British army it was a catastrophe. Cornwallis confidently retreated to Yorktown, expecting to be evacuated by a British fleet that never arrived. In the end he had no choice but to surrender. Although the war sputtered on another two years, its outcome was never in doubt after Yorktown. General Washington's Great Gamble is the story of the greatest naval engagement of the American Revolution. It is also a study in leadership, good and bad, political machinations and the wild, unpredictable circumstances that led to the extraordinary confluence of military and naval resources at that time and place. Topics include: Looking South; Sea Power for the General; Arnold; Copper Bottoms; Head of Elk; The Battle of Cape Henry; An Attempt to Conquer Virginia; Greene and Cornwallis: Looking North; The American Command; The Battle of Guilford Courthouse; Pyrrhic Victory; Reinforcing the Chesapeake; "[T]he enemy have turned so much of their attention to the Southern States..."; The Battle of Blandford; The British War at Sea; Juncture; "I am inclined to think well of York..."; The Promise of a Fleet; The Battle of Green Springs; The March on New York; An Operation to the Southward; The Arrival of De Grasse; The Battle of the Capes;Cornwallis Surrenders
Author: Richard Borkow
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625842139
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
A look at Westchester County’s place in the American Revolution and Washington’s plan to trick Cornwallis and march to Yorktown. During the summer of 1781, the armies of Generals Washington and Rochambeau were encamped in lower Westchester County at Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont, and White Plains. It was a time of military deadlock and grim prospects for the allied Americans and French. Washington recognized that a decisive victory was needed, or America would never achieve independence. In August, he marched these soldiers to Virginia to face General Cornwallis and his redcoats. Washington risked all on this march. Its success required secrecy, and he prepared an elaborate deception to convince the British that Manhattan, not Virginia, was the target of the allied armies. Local historian Richard Borkow presents this exciting story of the Westchester encampment and Washington’s great gamble that saved the United States. Praise for George Washington’s Westchester Gamble “Borkow has done a first-rate job of telling the story of the American Revolution in Westchester County and putting dramatic events there in the context of the larger war--especially the decision to march to Yorktown.” —Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace “Just when it seemed that the subject of the American Revolution had been thoroughly explored, Richard Borkow has given us a fresh look at the war's culminating event—the 1781 march of French and American troops to Virginia.” —Joseph Wheelan, author of Jefferson’s War and Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade
Author: Charles Cerami
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 140223435X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller! The fascinating story of how four great men fought for the Louisiana Purchase, changing the future of our nation. Jefferson's Great Gamble tells the incredible story of how four leaders of an upstart nation—Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Livingston—risked the future of their country and their own careers; outwitted Napoleon Bonaparte, the world's most powerful ruler; and secured a new future for the United States of America. For two years before the Louisiana Purchase, the nine principal players in the deal watched France and the United States approach the brink of war over the most coveted spot on the planet: a bustling port known as New Orleans. And until the breakthrough moment when a deal was secured, the men who steered their countries through the tense and often beguiling negotiations knew only that the futures of both nations were at stake. Jefferson's Great Gamble is an extraordinary work that redefines one of the most important and overlooked events in American history. To read Jefferson's Great Gamble is to experience the tense days and nights leading to a decision that changed the face of the world. From the early American infighting to the heated French negotiations to the battle needed years later to secure the purchase, this new history is a story of dedicated men, each driven by love of country, who created an event that Robert Livingston called "the noblest work of our lives."
Author: Daniel H. Boone
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476646171
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The American Revolution is seen as a colossal defeat of the powerful British Empire by colonial rebels. Yet the British emerged from the conflict in better shape than the newly independent United States. After the revolution became a global conflict with the entry of France, Spain and later the Netherlands on the American side, Britain's desire to maintain prestige in Europe through dominance of her many colonies--particularly the West Indies and India--was the driving force behind British strategy. Military victories late in the war, along with retention of the rest of the empire, allowed Britain to remain a significant power. This history explores the view that Great Britain did not really "lose" the Revolutionary War.
Author: James L. Nelson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429968079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
A masterful history of the first set-piece battle of the Revolutionary War, James L. Nelson's WithFire and Sword offers critical new insights into one of the most important actions of our country's founding. On June 17, 1775, the entire dynamic of the newborn American Revolution was changed. If the Battle of Lexington and Concord was, in the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the "shot heard round the world," Bunker Hill was the volley that rocked Britain's Parliament and the ministry of King George III to its core. The Battle of Bunker Hill was the first hostile engagement of the Revolution between two organized armies, and the first time that a genuine American army had ever taken the field. It gave the British their first inkling that the Colonial rabble-in-arms they had envisioned might actually prove to be a formidable fighting force. In this book, award-winning author James L. Nelson tells the exciting and dramatic story of the fight that changed the face of the American Revolution. He looks at the events leading up to that fateful day, the personalities on both the British and American sides who made momentous decisions, and the bloody outcome of those crucial choices, which would affect the British strategy on the battlefield throughout the coming six more years of active warfare.
Author: James L. Nelson
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071502246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
An epic story of one man’s devotion to the American cause In October 1776, four years before Benedict Arnold’s treasonous attempt to hand control of the Hudson River to the British, his patch-work fleet on Lake Champlain was all that stood between British forces and a swift end to the American rebellion. Benedict Arnold’s Navy is the dramatic chronicle of that desperate battle and of the extraordinary events that occurred on the American Revolution’s critical northern front. Written with captivating narrative vitality, this landmark book shows how Benedict Arnold’s fearless leadership against staggering odds in a northern wilderness secured for America the independence that he would later try to betray. Praise for James L. Nelson: "James Nelson is a master both of his period and of the English language." --Patrick O'Brian, author of Master and Commander "James L. Nelson tells this story with clarity and literary skill and with such ease and order that the reader feels he is attending a dissertation on history given by a consummate lecturer." --Ron Berthel, Associated Press, on Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, winner of the American Library Association’s 2004 Award for Best Military History "It is, by far, the best Civil War novel I’ve read; reeking of battle, duty, heroism and tragedy. It’s a triumph of imagination and good, taut writing . . . " --Bernard Cornwell on Glory in the Name, winner of the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award
Author: George C. Daughan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324573X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
The untold story of the fight for the Hudson River Valley, control of which, both the Americans and the British firmly believed, would determine the outcome of the Revolutionary War. No part of the country was more contested during the American Revolution than New York City, the Hudson River, and the surrounding counties. Political and military leaders on both sides viewed the Hudson River Valley as the American jugular, which, if cut, would quickly bleed the rebellion to death. So in 1776, King George III sent the largest amphibious force ever assembled to seize Manhattan and use it as a base from which to push up the Hudson River Valley for a grand rendezvous at Albany with an impressive army driving down from Canada. George Washington and every other patriot leader shared the king’s fixation with the Hudson. Generations of American and British historians have held the same view. In fact, one of the few things that scholars have agreed upon is that the British strategy, though disastrously executed, should have been swift and effective. Until now, no one has argued that this plan of action was lunacy from the beginning. Revolution on the Hudson makes the bold new argument that Britain’s attempt to cut off New England never would have worked, and that doggedly pursuing dominance of the Hudson ultimately cost the crown her colonies. It unpacks intricate military maneuvers on land and sea, introduces the personalities presiding over each side’s strategy, and reinterprets the vagaries of colonial politics to offer a thrilling response to one of our most vexing historical questions: How could a fledgling nation have defeated the most powerful war machine of the era? George C. Daughan—winner of the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Award for Naval Literature—integrates the war’s naval elements with its political, military, economic, and social dimensions to create a major new study of the American Revolution. Revolution on the Hudson offers a much clearer understanding of our founding conflict, and how it transformed a rebellion that Britain should have crushed into a war they could never win.
Author: Gregory Feifer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061143189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the twenty-first century. In The Great Gamble, Gregory Feifer examines the conflict from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground. During the last years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent some of its most elite troops to unfamiliar lands in Central Asia to fight a vaguely defined enemy, which eventually defeated their superior numbers with unconventional tactics. Although the Soviet leadership initially saw the invasion as a victory, many Russian soldiers came to view the war as a demoralizing and devastating defeat, the consequences of which had a substantial impact on the Soviet Union and its collapse. Feifer's extensive research includes eye-opening interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict. In gripping detail, he vividly depicts the invasion of a volatile country that no power has ever successfully conquered. Parallels between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are impossible to ignore—both conflicts were waged amid vague ideological rhetoric about freedom. Both were roundly condemned by the outside world for trying to impose their favored forms of government on countries with very different ways of life. And both seem destined to end on uncertain terms. A groundbreaking account seen through the eyes of the men who fought it, The Great Gamble tells an unforgettable story full of drama, action, and political intrigue whose relevance in our own time is greater than ever.
Author: Nathaniel Philbrick
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143111450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Nathaniel Philbrick is a masterly storyteller. Here he seeks to elevate the naval battles between the French and British to a central place in the history of the American Revolution. He succeeds, marvelously."--The New York Times Book Review The thrilling story of the year that won the Revolutionary War from the New York Times bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower. In the concluding volume of his acclaimed American Revolution series, Nathaniel Philbrick tells the thrilling story of the year that won the Revolutionary War. In the fall of 1780, after five frustrating years of war, George Washington had come to realize that the only way to defeat the British Empire was with the help of the French navy. But coordinating his army's movements with those of a fleet of warships based thousands of miles away was next to impossible. And then, on September 5, 1781, the impossible happened. Recognized today as one of the most important naval engagements in the history of the world, the Battle of the Chesapeake—fought without a single American ship—made the subsequent victory of the Americans at Yorktown a virtual inevitability. A riveting and wide-ranging story, full of dramatic, unexpected turns, In the Hurricane's Eye reveals that the fate of the American Revolution depended, in the end, on Washington and the sea.
Author: Jason Q. Bohm
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611216273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
The fighting prowess of United States Marines is second to none, but few know of the Corps’ humble beginnings and what it achieved during the early years of the American Revolution. That oversight is fully rectified by Jason Bohm’s eye-opening Washington’s Marines: The Origins of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775-1777. The story begins with the oppressive days that drove America into a conflict for which it was ill-prepared, when thirteen independent colonies commenced a war against the world’s most powerful military with nothing more than local militias, privateers, and other ad hoc units. The Continental Congress rushed to form an army and placed George Washington in command, but soon realized that America needed men who could fight on the sea and on land to win its freedom. Enter the Marines. Bohm artfully tells the story of the creation of the Continental Marines and the men who led them during the parallel paths followed by the Army and Marines in the opening years of the war and through the early successes and failures at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Canada, Boston, Charleston, and more. As Washington struggled to preserve his command after defeats in New York and New Jersey in 1776, the nascent U.S. Navy and Marines deployed the first American fleet, conducted their first amphibious operation, and waged a war on the rivers and seas to block British reinforcements and capture critically needed supplies. Desperate times forced Congress to detach the Continental Marines from the Navy to join the embattled army as Washington sought an “important stroke” to defeat his adversary. Washington’s Marines joined their fellow soldiers in a protracted land campaign that culminated in turning-point victories at Trenton, Assunpink Creek, and Princeton. This chapter of the Continental Marines ends in Morristown, New Jersey, when Washington granted Henry Knox’s request to leverage the Marines’ expertise with naval guns to fill the depleted ranks of the army’s artillery during the “Forage War.” Washington’s Marines is the first complete study of its kind to weave the men, strategy, performance, and personalities of the Corps’ formative early years into a single compelling account. The sweeping prose relies heavily on primary research and the author’s own extensive military knowledge. Enhanced with original maps and illustrations, Washington’s Marines will take its place as one of the finest studies of its kind.
