Although American independence was no miracle, the timing of the country's independence and its huge scope, both political and territorial, do seem miraculous. In The Miracle of American Independence Jonathan R. Dull reconstructs significant events before, during, and after the Revolutionary War that had dramatic consequences for the future as the colonies sought independence from Great Britain. Without these surprising and unexpected results, Dull maintains, the country would have turned out quite differently. The Miracle of American Independence reimagines how the British might have averted or overcome American independence, and how the fledgling country itself could have lost its independence. Drawing on his nearly fifty years of research and a lively imagination, Dull puts readers in a position to consider the American Revolution from the perspective of the European states and their monarchs. This alternative history provides a stimulating reintroduction to one of the most exciting periods in American and European history, proving that sometimes reality is even stranger and more miraculous than fiction.

The Puritan Way of Death is more than a book about Puritans or about death. It is also about family, community, and identity in the modern world. Even before publication, eminent historians, sociologists, and religious scholars in the United States and Europea-among them, Gordon Wood, Philippe Aries, William Clebsch, and Robert Nisbet-hailed it as a "pathbreaking, provocative, and exciting" work, a "terse, urbane, learned, clear, humane" volume."

This study considers the subtle and frequently confused relationship of armed force and political control in the British Empire before the American Revolution. It also clarifies a number of points of controversy and uncertainty about the causes of the American Revolution. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Military history is an essential component of wartime diplomatic history, Jonathan R. Dull contends, and this belief shapes his account of the French navy as the means by which French diplomacy helped to win American independence. The author discusses the place of long-range naval requirements in the French decision to aid the American colonists, the part played by naval rivalry in the transition from limited aid to full-scale war, and the ways naval considerations affected French wartime diplomacy. His book focuses on military strategy and diplomatic requirements in a setting in which military officers themselves did not participate directly in decision-making, but in which diplomats had to take continual account of military needs. Since military action is a means of accomplishing diplomatic goals, even military victory can prove hollow. The author examines the American war not as a successful exercise of French power, but rather as a tragic failure based on economic and political miscalculations. Among the questions he asks are: What relationship did the war bear to overall French diplomacy? What strains did the limited nature of the war impose on French diplomacy and war strategy? How did the results of the war relate to the objectives with which France entered the conflict? Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada examines the economic development of both the original American colonies and early French Canada, looking at the impact of changing prices, capital flows, and shifts in demand. It is a companion volume to Marc Egnal's well-regarded earlier book, Divergent Paths, which emphasized the influence of culture and institutions upon growth. New World Economies studies transatlantic ties and sets forth a rigorous model to explain the pattern of growth. It features seventeen tables and more than one hundred graphs, many of which are based on original data. Several appendices present these valuable new statistics.
Egnal's core argument is that the pace of economic development in the colonies reflected the rate of growth in the mother country. In advancing this central notion, the book employs a theoretical foundation that builds upon, and then moves beyond, the traditional "staple thesis." Thoroughly documented and rich in quantitative data, this study traces the trajectory of economic growth by region and establishes a clear connection between colonial and European rates of growth.
Given its clear arguments, its rich data, and its persuasive overall method, New World Economies will interest scholars and students of economic history, of American and French-Canadian colonial culture, and of transatlantic relations during the eighteenth century.

A synthesis of literary critical and historical methods, Porterfield's book combines insightful analysis of Puritan theological writings with detailed examinations of historical records showing the changing patterns of church membership and domestic life. She finds that by conflating marriage as a trope of grace with marriage as a social construct, Puritan ministers invested relationships between husbands and wives with religious meaning. Images of female piety represented the humility that Puritans believed led all Christians to self-control and, ultimately, to love. But while images of female piety were important for men primarily as aids to controlling aggression and ambition, they were primarily attractive to women as aids to exercising indirect influence over men and obtaining public recognition and status.

George Washington and his Continental Army braving the frigid winter at Valley Forge form an iconic image in the popular history of the American Revolution. Such winter camps, Steven Elliott tells us in Surviving the Winters, were also a critical factor in the waging and winning of the War of Independence. Exploring the inner workings of the Continental Army through the prism of its encampments, this book is the first to show how camp construction and administration played a crucial role in Patriot strategy during the war. As Elliott reminds us, Washington's troops spent only a few days a year in combat. The rest of the time, especially in the winter months, they were engaged in a different sort of battle-against the elements, unfriendly terrain, disease, and hunger. Victory in that more sustained struggle depended on a mastery of camp construction, logistics, and health and hygiene-the components that Elliott considers in his environmental, administrative, and operational investigation of the winter encampments at Middlebrook, Morristown, West Point, New Windsor, and Valley Forge. Beyond the encampments' basic function of sheltering soldiers, his study reveals their importance as a key component of Washington's Fabian strategy: stationed on secure, mountainous terrain close to New York, the camps allowed the Continental commander-in-chief to monitor the enemy but avoid direct engagement, thus neutralizing a numerically superior opponent while husbanding his own strength. Documenting the growth of Washington and his subordinates as military administrators, Surviving the Winters offers a telling new perspective on the commander's generalship during the Revolutionary War. At the same time, the book demonstrates that these winter encampments stand alongside more famous battlefields as sites where American independence was won.

In this penetrating biography of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, S. Scott Rohrer takes readers deep into the intellectual world of a leading loyalist who defended monarchy, rejected rebellion and democracy, and opposed the American Revolution. Talented, hardworking, and erudite, this Anglican minister from New Jersey possessed one of the Church of England's most outstanding minds. Chandler was an Anglican leader in the 1760s and a key strategist in the effort to strengthen the American church in the years preceding the Revolution. He headed the campaign to create an Anglican bishopric in America-a cause that helped inflame tensions with American radicals unhappy with British policies. And, in the 1770s, his writings provided some of the most trenchant criticisms of the American revolutionary movement, raising fundamental questions about obedience, subordination, and rebellion that undercut Whig assertions about republicanism and popular control. Working from Chandler's library catalog and other primary sources, Rohrer digs into Chandler's political and religious beliefs, exploring their origins and the events in British history that shaped them. An intriguing and thoughtful reappraisal of a consequential figure in early American history, this biography will captivate students, scholars, and lay readers interested in politics and religion in Revolutionary-era America.

Historians have debated how the clergy's support for political resistance during the American Revolution should be understood, often looking to influence outside of the clergy's tradition. This book argues, however, that the position of the patriot clergy was in continuity with a long-standing tradition of Protestant resistance. Drawing from a wide range of sources, Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy's Argument for Political Resistance, 1750-1776 answers the question of why so many American clergyman found it morally and ethically right to support resistance to British political authority by exploring the theological background and rich Protestant history available to the American clergy as they considered political resistance and wrestled with the best course of action for them and their congregations. Gary L. Steward argues that, rather than deviating from their inherited modes of thought, the clergy who supported resistance did so in ways that were consistent with their own theological tradition.

In his celebrated account of the origins of American unity, John Adams described July 1776 as the moment when thirteen clocks managed to strike at the same time. So how did these American colonies overcome long odds to create a durable union capable of declaring independence from Britain? In this powerful new history of the fifteen tense months that culminated in the Declaration of Independence, Robert G. Parkinson provides a troubling answer: racial fear. Tracing the circulation of information in the colonial news systems that linked patriot leaders and average colonists, Parkinson reveals how the system's participants constructed a compelling drama featuring virtuous men who suddenly found themselves threatened by ruthless Indians and defiant slaves acting on behalf of the king. Parkinson argues that patriot leaders used racial prejudices to persuade Americans to declare independence. Between the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and the Declaration, they broadcast any news they could find about Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and Hessian mercenaries working with their British enemies. American independence thus owed less to the love of liberty than to the exploitation of colonial fears about race. Thirteen Clocks offers an accessible history of the Revolution that uncovers the uncomfortable origins of the republic even as it speaks to our own moment.

"Larson's elegantly written dual biography reveals that the partnership of Franklin and Washington was indispensable to the success of the Revolution." -Gordon S. Wood From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a masterful, first-of-its-kind dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, illuminating their partnership's enduring importance. NATIONAL BESTSELLER * One of Washington Post's "10 Books to Read in February" * One of USA Today's "Must-Read Books" of Winter 2020 * One of Publishers Weekly's "Top Ten" Spring 2020 Memoirs/Biographies Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin-an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north-and George Washington-a slavehold ing general from the agrarian south-were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention, held in Franklin's Philadelphia and presided over by Washington. And yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since. Illuminating Franklin and Washington's relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project. After long sup porting British rule, both Franklin and Washington became key early proponents of inde pendence. Their friendship gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when Franklin led America's diplomatic mission in Europe (securing money and an alliance with France) and Washington commanded the Continental Army. Victory required both of these efforts to succeed, and success, in turn, required their mutual coordination and cooperation. In the 1780s, the two sought to strengthen the union, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the founding document that bears their stamp. Franklin and Washington-the two most revered figures in the early republic-staked their lives and fortunes on the American experiment in liberty and were committed to its preservation. Today the United States is the world's great super power, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago-the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college-as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson's Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.

George Washington and his Continental Army braving the frigid winter at Valley Forge is an iconic image in the popular history of the American Revolution. Such winter camps, Steven Elliott tells us in Surviving the Winters, were also a critical factor in the waging and winning of the War of Independence. Exploring the inner workings of the Continental Army through the prism of its encampments, this book is the first to show how camp construction and administration played a crucial role in Patriot strategy during the war. As Elliott reminds us, Washington's troops spent only a few days a year in combat. The rest of the time, especially in the winter months, they were engaged in a different sort of battle - against the elements, unfriendly terrain, disease, and hunger. Victory in that more sustained struggle depended on a mastery of camp construction, logistics, and health and hygiene - the components that Elliott considers in his environmental, administrative, and operational investigation of the winter encampments at Middlebrook, Morristown, West Point, New Windsor, and Valley Forge. Beyond the encampments' basic function of sheltering soldiers, his study reveals their importance as a key component of Washington's Fabian strategy: stationed on secure, mountainous terrain close to New York, the camps allowed the Continental commander-in-chief to monitor the enemy but avoid direct engagement, thus neutralizing a numerically superior opponent while husbanding his own strength. Documenting the growth of Washington and his subordinates as military administrators, Surviving the Winters offers a telling new perspective on the commander's generalship during the Revolutionary War. At the same time, the book demonstrates that these winter encampments stand alongside more famous battlefields as sites where American independence was won.

The dramatic story of George Washington's first crisis of the fledgling republic. In the war's waning days, the American Revolution neared collapse when Washington's senior officers were rumored to approach the edge of mutiny. After the British surrender at Yorktown, the American Revolution blazed on, and as peace was negotiated in Europe, grave problems surfaced at home. The government was broke and paid its debts with loans from France. Political rivalry among the states paralyzed Congress. The army's officers, encamped near Newburgh, New York, and restless without an enemy to fight, brooded over a civilian population indifferent to their sacrifices. The result was the Newburgh Conspiracy, a mysterious event in which Continental Army officers, disgruntled by a lack of pay and pensions, may have collaborated with nationalist-minded politicians such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Robert Morris to pressure Congress and the states to approve new taxes and strengthen the central government. A Crisis of Peace tells the story of a pivotal episode of General Washington's leadership and reveals how the American Revolution really ended: with fiscal turmoil, political unrest, out-of-control conspiracy thinking, and suspicions between soldiers and civilians so strong that peace almost failed to bring true independence.

In this fresh look at liberty and freedom in the Revolutionary era from the perspective of black Americans, Woody Holton recounts the experiences of slaves who seized freedom by joining the British as well as those -- slave and free -- who served in Patriot military forces. Holton's introduction examines the conditions of black American life on the eve of colonial independence and the ways in which Revolutionary rhetoric about liberty provided African Americans with the language and inspiration for advancing their cause. Despite the rhetoric, however, most black Americans remained enslaved after the Revolution. The introduction outlines ways African Americans influenced the course of the Revolution and continued to be affected by its aftermath. Amplifying these themes are nearly forty documents -- including personal narratives, petitions, letters, poems, advertisements, pension applications, and images -- that testify to the diverse goals and actions of African Americans during the Revolutionary era. Document headnotes and annotations, a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and index offer additional pedagogical support.

The First Mapping of America tells the story of the General Survey. At the heart of the story lie the remarkable maps and the men who made them - the commanding and highly professional Samuel Holland, Surveyor-General in the North, and the brilliant but mercurial William Gerard De Brahm, Surveyor-General in the South. Battling both physical and political obstacles, Holland and De Brahm sought to establish their place in the firmament of the British hierarchy. Yet the reality in which they had to operate was largely controlled from afar, by Crown administrators in London and the colonies and by wealthy speculators, whose approval or opposition could make or break the best laid plans as they sought to use the Survey for their own ends.

As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political History Book of the Year Award 2014. In August 1814 the United States' army is defeated in battle by an invading force just outside Washington DC. The US president and his wife have just enough time to pack their belongings and escape from the White House before the enemy enters. The invaders tuck into the dinner they find still sitting on the dining-room table and then set fire to the place. 9/11 was not the first time the heartland of the United States was struck a devastating blow by outsiders. Two centuries earlier, Britain - now America's close friend, then its bitterest enemy - set Washington ablaze before turning its sights to Baltimore. In his compelling narrative style, Peter Snow recounts the fast-changing fortunes of both sides of this extraordinary confrontation, the outcome of which inspired the writing of the 'Star-Spangled Banner', America's national anthem. Using a wealth of material including eyewitness accounts, he also describes the colourful personalities on both sides of these spectacular events: Britain's fiery Admiral Cockburn, the cautious but immensely popular army commander Robert Ross, and sharp-eyed diarists James Scott and George Gleig. On the American side: beleaguered President James Madison, whose young nation is fighting the world's foremost military power, his wife Dolley, a model of courage and determination, military heroes such as Joshua Barney and Sam Smith, and flawed incompetents like Army Chief William Winder and War Secretary John Armstrong. When Britain Burned the White House highlights this unparalleled moment in American history, its far-reaching consequences for both sides and Britain's and America's decision never again to fight each other.

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.

The first major work on this enigmatic British general for more than 40 years, William Howe and the American War of Independence offers fascinating new insights into his performance during the revolution in America. From 1775 to 1777, Howe commanded the largest expeditionary force Britain had ever amassed, confronting the rebel army under George Washington and enjoying a string of victories. However, his period in command ended in confusion, bitterness and a parliamentary inquiry, because he proved unable to crush the rebellion. Exactly what went wrong has puzzled historians for more than 200 years. For most Howe has been relegated to the role of a bit player, but, with the help of new evidence, this book looks afresh at his army, his relationships with key military and political figures and his own personal qualities. The result is a compelling reassessment of a forgotten general that offers a new perspective on a man who won his battles, but could not win his war.

The Battle of Eutaw Springs took place on September 8, 1781, and was among the last in the War of Independence. It was brutal in its combat and reprisals, with Continental and Whig militia fighting British regulars and Loyalist regiments. Although its outcome was seemingly inconclusive, the battle, fought near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, contained all the elements that defined the war in the South. In Eutaw Springs: The Final Battle of the American Revolution's Southern Campaign, Robert M. Dunkerly and Irene B. Boland tell the story of this lesser known and under-studied battle of the Revolutionary War's Southern Campaign. Shrouded in myth and misconception, the battle has also been overshadowed by the surrender of Yorktown. Eutaw Springs represented lost opportunities for both armies. The American forces were desperate for a victory in 1781, and Gen. Nathanael Greene finally had the ground of his own choosing. British forces under Col. Alexander Stewart were equally determined to keep a solid grip on the territory they still held in the South Carolina lowcountry. In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly 20 percent of its soldiers. Neither side won the hard-fought battle, and controversies plagued both sides in the aftermath. Dunkerly and Boland analyze the engagement and its significance within the context of the war's closing months, study the area's geology and setting, and recount the action using primary sources, aided by recent archaeology.

"Swords in Their Hands: George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy," is the first book-length account of a plot that can be described as the closest thing to a coup that the United States has ever experienced. In the autumn of 1782, many Revolutionary War officers in the Hudson Highlands have grown angry and frustrated that they have not been paid in months or even years. With victory over the British within sight, they begin to fear that they will never get their back pay and promised postwar pensions, because the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, meeting under the Articles of Confederation of 1777, has no power to raise funds to pay them. Two political factions are at loggerheads over taxation: nationalists want Congress to have direct taxation authority, while their opponents insist that only individual states should have the power to do so, as is the case under the Articles. As the new year begins and the last months of the war approach, several key army officers, supported by some nationalist members of Congress, set in motion a desperate plot: they will terrify state legislators, and their delegates in Congress, into granting Congress direct taxation authority it needs, under threat of two alternatives. One option is that, after defeating the British, they will turn their armies toward Philadelphia itself to enforce their demands; alternatively, they will lay down their arms before victory is achieved, and let the British quell the colonists' rebellion. In March hundreds of Washington's officers, "ready for revolt," gather in Newburgh, NY to agree on the first steps toward implementing their plan. But to their shock and chagrin, General Washington himself arrives, and in a 15-minute address changes the course of history. Having himself "grown almost blind in the service of my country," he gently chides the officers, puts down the uprising, and saves the future nation.

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