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- Written by Danske Dandridge
“Never before or since, in the dark annals of human sufferings, has so small a space enclosed such a heavy weight of misery. No other prison has destroyed so many human beings in so short a space of time.”
Purposely brutalized by their British captors, between 11,000 and 13,000 American prisoners of war died from disease and starvation on the Jersey, seventy-five percent of the total number imprisoned. King George III considered them traitors, and as such, without rights. More Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War.
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- Written by John Howard Brown
"The fame of the first admiral of the American Navy has suffered an eclipse almost total, while other men who were materially helped to do what they did through his exertions, have filled much larger places in the Naval history of the Revolution."
Esek Hopkins was a successful merchant who, at the Revolution’s beginning, held the same rank as Washington, but was destroyed by his former friends and business associates who did not share his sense of honor and unselfish love of country.
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- Written by Thomas Baldwin
"When they came to a halt, it was to consult and agree in what manner they should inflict the greatest torture on my poor son, in retaliation for the death of the savage who had fallen by his hands. The mode finally agreed upon was to burn him alive, at a stake, after their usual manner of putting to death a great portion of their prisoners."
An entire family taken from a father by events common on the frontier. The edge of civilization was a violent place, where cultures collided for the future of a continent.
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- Written by Alfred Thayer Mahan
"It was a strife of pygmies for the prize of a continent, and the leaders are entitled to full credit both for their antecedent energy and for their dispositions in the contest; not least the unhappy man who, having done so much to save his country, afterward blasted his name by a treason unsurpassed in modern war."
The importance of Lake Champlain, of its tributary Lake George, and of the Hudson River, as forming a consecutive, though not continuous, water line of communications from the St. Lawrence to New York was plain to all. It was always a goal of the British to control the waterways and split the colonies, defeating each in turn.
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- Written by Alfred Thayer Mahan
"The little American navy on Champlain was wiped out; but never had any force, big or small, lived to better purpose or died more gloriously, for it had saved the Lake for that year."
General Nathaniel Greene summed up his strategy in the south as, "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." This was exactly the outcome for the Americans after the naval battle on Lake Champlain. The British won the battle, but in "losing" the Americans halted the British advance and made possible the alliance with France.
Battles of the Revolution
All articles in this category were taken from "Battles of the American revolution, 1775-1781," written by Henry B. Carrington, published in the Centennial year 1876. Henry Beebee Carrington (March 2, 1824 – October 26, 1912) was a lawyer, professor, soldier, and prolific author. Carrington was an active anti-slavery Whig, and helped organize the Republican Party in 1854. He was an officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War and in the Old West during Red Cloud's War. A noted engineer, he constructed a series of forts to protect the Bozeman Trail, but suffered a major defeat at the hands of the warchief Red Cloud. Read entire Wikipedia article.