Rare Revolutionary War-Era Map to Be Displayed in D.C.

NBC News: Rare Revolutionary War-Era Map to Be Displayed in D.C.

The first map printed in North America, depicting the boundaries of the new American nation and showing the "Stars and Stripes" for the first time, will be displayed at the Library of Congress in the early spring thanks to the generosity of David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group.

The map was printed in early 1784 and is considered the best preserved of those few copies in existence. It's the single most important American cartographic document missing from the collection of the Library of Congress, according to John Hébert, chief of the Library’s Geography and Map Division.

The map by Abel Buell is entitled, "A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America Layd Down from the Latest Observations and Best Authorities Agreeable to the Peace of 1783." It is the first map to be copyrighted in the United States and was published only six months after the Treaty of Paris signing (Sept. 3, 1783) ended the Revolutionary War.

The document had been in the custody of the New Jersey Historical Society since 1862 and was sold at auction at Christie’s in Manhattan on Dec. 3. Rubenstein, a long-time supporter of the Library of Congress, paid $1.8 million for it.

"It is a great privilege for the Library of Congress to display this map, which will be on loan from Mr. Rubenstein for the next five years," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in a statement.

"The Library of Congress, under Jim Billington’s leadership, is widely recognized as the finest library in the world, and I am pleased to make the Buell Map available for all to see at the Library’s extraordinary facilities," Rubenstein added.

Washington's General, by Terry Golway

Washington's General: Nathanael Greene and The Triumph of the American Revolution, by Terry Golway
A John Macae book, Henry Holt and Company, 2005
315 pages plus Notes, Bibliography and Index. 1 illustrations, 2 maps
Library: 973.33092 GOL

Description
He was an unlikely warrior, even in an army of inexperienced officers and citizen soldiers. The Quaker with a pronounced limp, Nathanael Greene surprised fellow patriots by rising quickly to become George Washington's favorite soldier and heir apparent. Other generals could claim a deeper knowledge of strategy and tactics, but none possessed his foresight and ingenuity or his organizational skills.

Unjustly humiliated for the loss of New York early in the war, Greene demonstrated the ability to turn defeat into victory in countless engagements. Yet it wasn't until he replaced Horatio Gates, the failed commander of the southern army, and formulated an unconventional campaign employing hit-and-run guerilla tactics that his true military genius became apparent.

Gates-a traditional general of the old school, had spent the two years since Saratoga basking in the glow of that famous victory. In the meantime, he had stumbled into a series of catastrophes until finally his entire army-1,500 Continentals and 2,000 militia patriots-was annihilated at Camden South Carolina, in the summer of 1780. Benedict Arnold's stunning treason followed a month later to deliver a near-fatal blow to the rebel cause.

Greene knew that the lessons learned under WAshington on the battlefields of New Jersey and Pennsylvania would not apply in the South. Instead of risking conventional battles with Cornwallis' superior army, Greene kept his smaller field forces of Continentals and militia, calvary and lightly outfitted iunfantry in constant motion.

His was a partisan campaign, and its success depended on local support. His unorthodox strategy was to win by surprise attacks and hasty retreats, which cut the enemy's supply lines until the British leaders tired of hunger and bloody sacrifices.

In one of the most audacious decisions of the war, Greene divided his army, separating DAniel Morgan's nimble troops from his own by 120 miles, with Cornwallis' army between them. The gamble paid off handsomely: the victory that followed not only stunned the British, it gave heart to southern patriots. Conscious of doubt among many southerners about the REvolution, Greene believed civilians would be more inclined to join the Continentals if the cause did not seem unwinnable. Greene's unconventional campaign sealed the bargain, and the way was prepared for the final victory at Yorktown less than a year later.

Terry Golway's bold new book, drawn from field documents, letters, diaries and other sources, takes full account of the scope of Nathanael Greene's remarkable accomplishments, returning the forgotten patriot to his proper place in American history.

Table of Contents
1. The Quaker General
2. A Downright Democracy
3. The Making of a Rebel
4. An Uncommon Degree of Zeal
5. The Dark Part of Night
6. Victory or Death
7. The Cries of the People
8. Low Intrigue
9. "It Wounds My Feelings"
10. "O, This WAr!"
11. "The Prospect is Dismal"
12. Victory
13. Forging a Nation
14. Unfinished Business
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index


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A book is added every Monday and Thursday. On other days, news reports, if any, regarding any aspect of the war will be shared.

The Minute Men, by Major John R. Galvin, USA

The Minute Men: A Compact history of the Defenders of the AMerican Colonies, 1645-1775, by Major John R. Galvin, USA
Hawthorn Books, 1867
258 pages, Notes, Bibliography, Indexc, no illustrations
Library: 973.3311 G182

Description
The patriots of April 19, 1775 have become part of an American myth-a legend that a bunch of heroes in homespun spontaneously stood up to a superior force of highly trained British soldiers, with almost miraculous success.

In reality Paul Revere and the "embattled farmers" of history were part of a vast colonial army with long traditions of organization and training. The Minute Men s the first book to develop thoroughly the thesis that the minute man idea was a century and a half old at the start of the REvolution, and to trace its growth from the first colonists' preparation for defense against Indian attacks to the last battle of the colonial militia-in which was fired "the shot heard round the world."

Major Galvin interweaves his original analysis of the colonial defense system with the exiting story of pre-Revolutionary America, to add a new dimension to the military history of that era. Hid impeccable historical research combined with expert knowledge of military tactics has produced what is probably the most exciting-as well asauuthoritative-account of the Battle of Lexington and Concord ever written.

Experts will find The Minute Men valuable for its new information and stimulating interpretations. Students and general readers will be equally fascinated by the clear, accurate and fast-paced writing of this exciting chapter in American history.

Table of Contents
Prologue: The Men and the Myth
1. The Minute Man Concept
2. The Concept in Practice: King Philip's WAr
3. The Snow Shoe Men
4. The Picket Guards
5. The Last Decade
6. The Showdown at Worcester
7. The Birth of the Minute Men
8. Winter Preparations
9. Marches
10. The Salem Affair
11. Gage
12. The Order
13. The March to Lexington
14. Lexington
15. The March to Concord
16. The REgulars at Concord
17. The Bridge Fight
18. Concord Surrounded
19. Smith Marches From Concord
20. The Bloody Angle
21. Parker's Revenge
22. Percy's Relief Column
23. Lexington Surrounded
24. Percy Retreats
25. The Menotomy Fight
26. Charlestown
27. The Aftermath
28. The Minute Men and the New Army
29. The Minute Men in Perspective
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The Author and his Book



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A book is added every Monday and Thursday. On other days, news reports, if any, regarding any aspect of the war will be shared.

14 Jan 2011: News: On Jan. 14, 1784, the United States ratified a peace treaty with England, ending the Revolutionary War

Los Angeles TImes: On Jan. 14, 1784, the United States ratified a peace treaty with England, ending the Revolutionary War

"Today's highlight in history"

14 Jan, 2011: News: March before Battle of Cowpens commemorated in SC

Lake Wylie Pilot: March before Battle of Cowpens commemorated in SC
COWPENS, S.C. -- South Carolina residents have the chance to retrace the path which Revolutionary War Gen. Daniel Morgan used to reach the battlefield at Cowpens in Spartanburg County.

The 230th anniversary of the famous march of is being commemorated during the weekend. In the battle, the American Army defeated Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his loyalists on Jan. 17, 1781.

The victory was a turning point of the war in the South and the march is now an annual event.

The first day's walk starts at Wagsop Plantation and covers about 15 miles while re-enactors and historians describe what happened leading up to the battle.

On Sunday, following a stay at an overnight camp, the group walks the last 10 miles to the battlefield.

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This blog updated every Tuesday and Friday with book info, and on other days as news occurs

Revolutionaries, by Jack Rakove

Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America, by Jack Rakove
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010
442 pages plus acknowledgments, notes, further reading and index. No photos.
Library: 973.3 RAK

Description:
In the early 1770s, the men who ivented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic bakwateres of the New World, devoted primarily to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become "revolutionary" by ambition, but when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved, in a matter of months, fromn protest to war.

In this remarkable book, the historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers-how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated cultural thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policy maker.

Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their purposes. In Revolutionaries, we see the founders before they were fully formed leaders,
as individuals whose lives were radically altered by the explosive events of the mid 1770s. They were ordinary men who became extraordinary-a transformation that finally has the literary treatment it deserves.

Spanning the two crucial decades of the country's birth, from 1773 to 1792, Revolutionaries uses little-known stories of these famous (and not so famous) men to capture-in a way no single biography ever could-the intensely creative period of the republic's founding.

From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation.

Thoughtful, clear-minded and persuasive, Revolutionaries is a majestic blend of narrative and intellectual history, one of those rare books that makes us think afresh about how the country came to be, and why the idea of America endurse.

Table of Contents
Prologue: The World Beyond Worcester
Part I: The Crisis
1. Advocates for the Cause
2. The REvolt of the Moderates
3. The Character of a general
Part II: Challenges
4. The First Constitution Makers
5. Vain Liberators
6. The Diplomats
Part III: The Legacies
7. The Optimist Abroad
8. The Greatest Lawgiver in Modernity
9. The State Builder
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources and Further REading
Index



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This blog updated every Tuesday and Thursday

The Campaign That Won America, by Burke Davis

The Campaign That Won America: The Story of Yorktown, by Burke Davis
The Dial Press, 1970
289 pages, plus chapter notes, index and 16 pages of b&w photos
Library: 973.337 D261

Description
The story of the campaign that won American Independence is fully told for the first time in this splendidly dramatic book. Though it moves swiftly and easily, with the vitality and suspense of good fiction, the narrative is based upon hunfreds of eye-witness accounts-diaries, letters, journals and memoirs-as well as official records.

It is the story of how the ragged Continental Army, in despair after almost six years of hunger and defeat, joined with its new French allies in a lightning stroke that brought victory within two months.

We witness: Washington's cunning as he slips away from the British in fortified New York, and his march 500 miles southward with Rochambeau and the combined army to trap Cornwallis at Yorktown, Va; Lafayette, together with a brilliant if undisciplined complement of American backwoods militia, holding Cornwallis at bay; and the coming of a huge Frencg fleet to take command of the sea, drive off the English fleet in a remarkable battle, and make American triumph inevitable.

The narrative is richly detailed, alive with vivid personalities: Washington as the French and his own troops saw him in moments of candor-now despairing, now raging, playing ball with his officers, danving with joy at good news from the French fleet, pardoning prisoners but hanging deserters after his victory; Papa Rochambeau, the gracious veteran where Washington was concerned, but to his officers an irritable and officious bear; the incredible Lafayette, a Major GEneral at 23, unsure of his own capacities, but mature beyond his years, a key factor in the victory; the neurotic, hesitant, bumbling Sir HEnry Clinton, busy with his pretty mistress in New York, blind to the corruption of his staff, squabbling with Cornwallis while the Colonies are frittered away; and the proud, stubborn, short-sighted Cornwallis, politically powerful, dealing directly with London headquarters rather than with Clinton.

By turns humourous and tragic, always gripping, this brilliant account captures the spirit and sensations of the decisive months of our violent birth as a nation.

Table of Contents
1. The Vanishing Army
2. A Perplexed Onlooker
3. The Great Ships Gather
4. The Long March
5. War in the Backwoods
6. The Boy GEneral
7. Into the Trap
8. Decision at Sea
9. "Every Door is Shut"
10. "The Liberties of America...Are in Our Hands"
11. The Last Cannonade
12. Thirteen Councils of War
13. Surrender
Epilogue

Photos
-Cornwallis, by Gainesborough
-The Marquise de Lafayette, by CW Peale
-Henry Knox, by CW Peale
-Washington firing the first American gun at Yorktown
-General Comte de Rochambeau and staff before Yorktown
-General von Steuben, by CW Peale
-Alexander Hamilton, by CW Peale
-Generals at Yorktown: Washington flanked by Lafayette and Rochameau and other, unidentified officers
-The Storming of REdoubt No. 10, by Eugene Lami
--Admiral de Grasse, by A. Rosenthal
Banastre Tarlerton, by Joshua REynolds
-The Surrender of Yorktown, by John Trumbull. Charles O'Hara and Benjamin Lincoln
-The Thomas Nelson House, Yorktown, a few years after the siege


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This blog is updated every Tuesday and Thursday

Who Is C. W. Peale?

Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741 – February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier and naturalist.

Early life
Peale was born in Chester, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. In 1749 his brother James Peale (1749–1831) was born. Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was thirteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop; however, when his Loyalist creditors discovered he had joined the Sons of Liberty, they conspired to bankrupt his business.

Career as painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for two years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.

Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1777, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.

Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington ever sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and there would be six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full length portrait of "Washington at Princeton" from 1779 sold for $21.3 million dollars, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.

One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Peale's Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum.

This museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and it was the first to display North American mastodon bones (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today).

The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.

The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.

The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.

The museum would eventually fail in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.

Personal
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children. The sons included Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), and Rubens Peale (1784–1865). Among the daughters: Angelica Kauffman Peale married Alexander Robinson, Priscilla Peale wed Dr. Henry Boteler, and Sophonisba Peale became the wife of Coleman Sellers.

In 1791, he married Elizabeth de Peyster (d. 1804), his second wife, with whom he had another six children. One son, Franklin Peale, born on October 15, 1795, became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint. His last son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799–1885), became an important naturalist and pioneer in photography. Their daughter, Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–57), married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.

Hannah More, a Quaker from Philadelphia, became Peale's third wife in 1804. She helped raise the children from his previous two marriages.

In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown where he intended to retire. Peale named this estate 'Belfield', and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826.

Expertise
Peale could accurately be described as a "Renaissance man",[by whom?] having expertise not only in painting, but also in other diverse fields, such as carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing now sits with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.

Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.

Peale wrote several books, among which were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803). Peale named all of his sons for artists or scientists, and taught them to paint. Three of them, Rembrandt, Raphaelle, and Titian, became noted artists in their own right.

He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation. The World War II Liberty Ship SS Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.

(Washington -- 1772)

George Washington's Expense Account, by General George Washington

George Washington's Expense Account, by General George Washington and Marvin Kitman
Simon and Schuster, 1970
285 pages, no index.
Library: 973.3 KIT

Description
George Washington didn't invent the Expense Account. He was only the founding father of the American way of life called expense account living.

First published by the Treasury Department in June 1833, Washington's expense account has long been neglected by serious students of American history. Now, at last, the priceless document is made available to every reader.

Here, item by authenticated and padded item, is the General's bill for the eight years he led the bedraggled Revolutionaries-starting with the deluxe carriage he bought in Philadelphia (at a price that would equal a dozen Cadillacs in today's currency) en route to taking command of the troops, right up to the stylish spread he provided on the eve of the victory at Yorktown.

No mere wallet's-eye view of the hostilities, the richly footnoted expense account is filled with tales of violence, sex, and camaraderie; of betrayal and espionage, of night patrols and hot pursuits; of men living on the edge of death or of capture by the hated tyrant.

But Washington's tour de force evokes more than the rattle of sabers, the roar of muskets, and the smell of defective gunpowder foisted off on the army by privateers. It evokes, too, the aromas of good food steaming in the special dining hut the GEneral ordered built for his wife's visit to Valley Forge, the rustle of clean sheets in countless inns during eight years of enforced bachelorhood, and the romance and mystery of such far-off places as Perth Amboy, the Paris of New Jersey.

Viewed, then, as the great model for expense-accountmanship or as an unsettlingly intimate narrative of the Revolutionary War, George Washington's Expense Account is a major contribution to Americana (or anti-Americana, for present-day revolutionaries.)

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Original version: Accounts, G. Washington with the United States, Commencing June 1775, and Ending June 1783, Comprehending a Space of 8 Years [facsimiles of Washington's expense account]
3. Financial Note
4. A Translation from the Olde English to the New English: Accounts, G. Washington with the United States, Commencing June 1775, and Ending June 1783, Comprehending a Space of 8 Years [Kitman provides commentary on the various entries, in a humorous manner]
5. Conclusion