Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)

In this revisionary look at the eighteenth-century frontier, Michael A. Bellesiles shows us that more than a legendary Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen was the leader of a group of frontier subsistence farmers united in their opposition to New York elites and land speculators; the independence Allen and his followers fought for was as much from eastern elites as it was from the British crown. But what makes the story of the Green Mountain frontier so remarkable is that the settlers won.

Revolutionary Outlaws is both a biography of Ethan Allen and a social history of the conflict...

Volume 7 documents the dramatic events of the New York campaign and the ensuing New Jersey campaign, a seemingly endless string of American reverses and retreats terminated by surprising victories at Trenton and Princeton. The volume opens with Washington's withdrawal of most of his army from Manhattan Island north to White Plains, where on 28 October British and Hessian troops routed the American right wing on Chatterton hill. Although Washington subsequently succeeded in blocking any further British advance to the north, his indecisiveness about ordering the evacuation of Fort...

Volume 8 documents Washington's first winter at Morristown. Situated in the hills of north central New Jersey, Morristown offered protection against the British army headquarters in New York City yet enabled Washington to annoy the principal enemy outposts at Newark, Perth Amboy, and New Brunswick. To discover Howe's intentions for the next campaign, Washington refined his intelligence-gathering network in New Jersey and New York during the winter months and kept a watchful, if distant, eye on the British armies in Rhode Island and Canada.

Most of the remainder of Washington's time...

Volume 9 covers the spring of 1777, a period when Washington's resourcefulness and perseverance were tested as much as at any time during the war. Instead of opening the new campaign by taking the field with a reinvigorated Continental army as planned, Washington was obliged to spend much of his time pleading with state authorities to fill their recruiting quotas and with officers to bring in the men whom they had enlisted. He was further hampered by a high desertion rate, which he blamed on the failure of many officers to pay their men regularly.

Painfully aware of the weakness of...

In the fall of 1798, Washington was immersed in the business of creating a military force to deal with the threat of an all-out war with France. A clash over Alexander Hamilton's rank in the army led Washington to contemplate resignation of his own post as commander in chief of the army, and the resolution of this affair brought no opportunity for rest as Washington engaged in the tedious task of finding officers for the new military formations. Despite all of this he still found time in the months that followed to build houses on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., seek the funds to put his...

In the spring of 1799, the relaxation of tensions between France and the United States allowed Washington to redirect his attention to his personal affairs. He drew up a new will that summer and made arrangements for the breakup of the estate he had amassed in the course of his life; but he also kept his gaze on the future, drawing up extensive plans for farming at Mount Vernon in 1800, the management of which he planned to take on himself. Washington also supervised the compilation of a comprehensive list of his Mount Vernon slaves, while at the same time making plans for their eventual...

RESPONDING TO a near-constant flow of requests, George and Martha Washington sat for about two dozen portraits from 1789 to 1797, collected here in this elegantly illustrated volume. From miniatures executed on ivory for family and friends to a historical portrait that depicts Washington during the Revolution, the../images vary widely in treatment and setting. What they all reflect, Ellen Miles suggests, is the great need the new republic had for portraits of its first chief executive, often to stand in for Washington himself. In the portraits, Martha Washington is usually dressed plainly,...

Volume 10 of the Revolutionary War Series opens with Washington headquartered at the Continental army's encampment at Middlebrook, New Jersey, about seven miles northeast of New Brunswick, the location of the main British force under General William Howe. From this strategic vantage point in the Watchung Mountains, Washington could survey the country between Perth Amboy and New Brunswick while keeping an eye on the road to Philadelphia. Here he weighed contradictory intelligence reports. -The views of the Enemy, - surmised Washington, -must be to give a severe blow to this Army and to get...

Volume 11 of the Revolutionary War Series contains correspondence, orders, and other documents covering one of the most militarily active periods of the war. The volume begins with Washington's army camped about twenty miles north of Philadelphia. Having planned to march toward the Hudson River to engage General John Burgoyne's northern expedition, Washington had to change course when scouts sighted the British fleet carrying General William Howe's army in the Chesapeake Bay on 22 August. Three days later Washington's troops were at Wilmington, Delaware, when Howe's army began landing at...

Volume 12 of the Revolutionary War Series documents Washington's unsuccessful efforts to capitalize on the American victory at Saratoga and his decision to encamp the Continental army for the winter at Valley Forge. The volume opens with the British forces at Philadelphia, where they had returned following the Battle of Germantown, and the Continental army, in Washington's words, -hovering round them, to distress and retard their operations as much as possible.- Recognizing the importance of restricting communication between General William Howe and the British fleet, Washington dispatched...

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison's advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington's prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation. Together, Stuart Leibiger argues, Washington and Madison struggled to conceptualize a political framework that...

Thomas Jefferson believed that the American revolution was a transformative moment in the history of political civilization. He hoped that his own efforts as a founding statesman and theorist would help construct a progressive and enlightened order for the new American nation that would be a model and inspiration for the world. Peter S. Onuf's new book traces Jefferson's vision of the American future to its roots in his idealized notions of nationhood and empire. Onuf's unsettling recognition that Jefferson's famed egalitarianism was elaborated in an imperial context yields strikingly...

In the five-month period covered by this volume of the Secretary of State Series, Madison and Jefferson work jointly to acquire final possession of, and establish a preliminary government for, the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of May 1803 while simultaneously dealing with merchants' complaints arising from the associated claims convention. The loss and destruction of the frigate Philadelphia at Tripoli and the enslavement of the crew, an incident which Madison considered of far less import than did U.S. consuls in Europe and Africa and later historians, shocked Americans....

Volume 13 of the Revolutionary War Series documents a crucial portion of the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, when the fate of Washington's army hung in the balance. The volume begins with Washington's soldiers hard at work erecting log huts to the general's specifications and building a bridge over the Schuylkill River under the direction of Major General John Sullivan. Most of the fighting that characterized the bloody year of 1777 had drawn to a close by Christmas, and although British foraging and raiding parties ventured out of Philadelphia from time to time,...

Volume 14 of the Revolutionary War Series opens on 1 March 1778 with Washington praising his troops for their -uncomplaining Patience during the scarcity of provisions in Camp- and exhorting them to persevere in the face of any -occasional- shortages that might yet occur. Indeed, the documents generated during these two months of the army's stay at Valley Forge demonstrate that although the crisis had passed, shortages, especially of clothing, continued to concern Washington. The problem was magnified as the commander in chief turned his attention to gathering men and supplies for the...

Founded in May 1783 at Steuben's headquarters near Newburg, N.Y., by officers of the Continental army and navy, the Society of the Cincinnati was at one time one of America's most controversial organizations. In Liberty without Anarchy, Minor Myers relates how the officers, who had not been paid for four years, began to circulate rumors of a military coup. The society, with Washington as President-General, was formed to exert political pressure on Congress to guarantee payment in response to the angry men.

Many Americans, Thomas Jefferson principal among them, viewed the new...