For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
In the late summer and fall of 1777, after two years of indecisive fighting on both sides, the outcome of the American War of Independence hung in the balance. Having successfully expelled the Americans from Canada in 1776, the British were determined to end the rebellion the following year and devised what they believed a war-winning strategy, sending General John Burgoyne south to rout the Americans and take Albany. When British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga with unexpected ease in July of 1777, it looked as if it was a matter of time before they would break the rebellion in the North. Less than three and a half months later, however, a combination of the Continental Army and Militia forces, commanded by Major General Horatio Gates and inspired by the heroics of Benedict Arnold, forced Burgoyne to surrender his entire army. The American victory stunned the world and changed the course of the war. Kevin J. Weddle offers the most authoritative history of the Battle of Saratoga to date, explaining with verve and clarity why events unfolded the way they did. In the end, British plans were undone by a combination of distance, geography, logistics, and an underestimation of American leadership and fighting ability. Taking Ticonderoga had misled Burgoyne and his army into thinking victory was assured. Saratoga, which began as a British foraging expedition, turned into a rout. The outcome forced the British to rethink their strategy, inflamed public opinion in England against the war, boosted Patriot morale, and, perhaps most critical of all, led directly to the Franco-American alliance. Weddle unravels the web of contingencies and the play of personalities that ultimately led to what one American general called "the Compleat Victory."
Iraq in 2009 was a strange netherworld, not quite war but not yet peace. The country teetered on the threshold of great change with the impending national elections and the promised withdrawal of all US combat forces. These changes would usher in either an era of irreversible stability or a return to the sectarian carnage that nearly destroyed Iraq in 2006. It was during this period of uncertainty that Task Force Patriot arrived to take over as the last US combat force to occupy Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. In this gripping first-hand account of the final months of combat operations, author Pat Proctor brings his unique, insider perspective to reveal the circumstances that put this battalion in a position to turn the tide of the Iraq war. Despite resistance from insurgents, intransigent Iraqi politicians, and, occasionally, the US interagency team, this artillery-turned-infantry battalion found itself in a position to not only improve conditions in its area, but solve the last unsettled problem of the Iraq war, the sectarian divide. Task Force Patriot, through the confluence of lucky circumstances and innovative thinking, had stumbled upon a unique approach—a combination of hardball politics, economic investment, and a nuanced application of force—that could potentially end Sunni separatism in Iraq. This book tells the untold story of this critical period during the second national elections, which, eight months later, was only beginning to yield a government. More importantly, however, this book tells the story of the last crucial days of the Iraq War.
American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.
What is patriotism in our volatile age? This incendiary work by Danny Sjursen is a personal cry from the heart by a once model U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate who became a military dissenter while still on active duty. Set against the backdrop of the terror wars of the last two decades, Sjursen asks whether there is a proper space for patriotism that renounces entitled exceptionalism and narcissistic jingoism. Once a burgeoning believer and budding conservative, who performed an intellectual and spiritual about face, Sjursen calls for a critical exploration of our allegiances, and suggests a path to a new, more complex notion of patriotism. Equal parts somber and idealistic, this is a story about what it means to be an American in the midst of perpetual war, and what the future of patriotism might look like.
Americans like to think of themselves as a peaceful and peace-loving people, and in remembering their own revolutionary past, American historians have long tended to focus on colonial origins and Constitutional aftermath, neglecting the fact that the American Revolution was a long, hard war. In this book, John Shy shifts the focus to the Revolutionary War and explores the ways in which the experience of that war was entangled with both the causes and the consequences of the Revolution itself. This is not a traditional military chronicle of battles and campaigns, but a series of essays that recapture the social, political, and even intellectual dimensions of the military effort that had created an American nation by 1783. Book jacket.
The Civil War is often credited with giving birth to the modern American state. The demands of warfare led to the centralization of business and industry and to an unprecedented expansion of federal power. But the Civil War did more than that: as Melinda Lawson shows, it brought about a change in American national identity, redefining the relationship between the individual and the government. Though much has been written about the Civil War and the making of the political and economic American nation, this is the first comprehensive study of the role that the war played in the shaping of the cultural and ideological nation-state. In Patriot Fires, Lawson explains how, when threatened by the rebellious South, the North came together as a nation and mobilized its populace for war. With no formal government office to rally citizens, the job of defining the war in patriotic terms fell largely to private individuals or associations, each with their own motives and methods. Lawson explores how these "interpreters" of the war helped instill in Americans a new understanding of loyalty to country. Through efforts such as sanitary fairs to promote the welfare of soldiers, the war bond drives of Jay Cooke, and the establishment of Union Leagues, Northerners cultivated a new sense of patriotism rooted not just in the subjective American idea, but in existing religious, political, and cultural values. Moreover, Democrats and Republicans, Abolitionists, and Abraham Lincoln created their own understandings of American patriotism and national identity, raising debates over the meaning of the American "idea" to new heights. Examining speeches, pamphlets, pageants, sermons, and assemblies, Lawson shows how citizens and organizations constructed a new kind of nationalism based on a nation of Americans rather than a union of states—a European-styled nationalism grounded in history and tradition and celebrating the preeminence of the nation-state. Original in its insights and innovative in its approach, Patriot Fires is an impressive work of cultural and intellectual history. As America engages in new conflicts around the globe, Lawson shows us that issues addressed by nation builders of the nineteenth century are relevant once again as the meaning of patriotism continues to be explored.
The American Revolution was a decisive conflict, which saw the birth of a new nation. Continental Army regulars fought in massive and famous battles from New England to Virginia, but in the South a different kind of warfare was afoot. Local militia, sometimes stiffened by a small core of the Continental Line, played a pivotal role. This lesser-known war ultimately decided the fate of the Revolution by thwarting the British "Southern strategy". In this title, the authors provide a unique and personal focus on the history of their own ancestors, who fought for the South Carolina Militia, to show just how effective the irregular forces were in a complex war of raids, ambushes, and pitched battles. The book explores the tactics, equipment, leadership and performance of the opposing Patriot and Rebel forces, shining new light on the vicious struggle in the South.
The myth of the eighteenth-century British "war machine" persists, perplexing those who search for the reasons why Britain lost the Revolutionary War. In this book, R. Arthur Bowler argues that although recent and traditional studies have pointed out many problems of the British forces in America, they have failed to appreciate a major weakness—logistics. The author draws on the remarkably complete records of British government offices concerned with logistics during the Revolutionary War and army service departments such as commissary, quartermaster and barrack-master generals to provide a full account of the everyday life of the British army and an accurate record of how logistical and administrative problems in America affected the course of the war. His study makes it clear that the British army in America depended almost entirely on Britain for supplies, and that for six years inadequate and sometimes corrupt administration seriously affected the course of operations and the morale of the troops. An organization capable of supplying the army was not developed until 1781, too late to change the outcome of the war. Originally published in 1975. 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.
