Best Little Stories from the American Revolution - Softcover

C. Brian Kelly; Ingrid Smyer-Kelly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1581820062 ISBN 13: 9781581820065

Publisher: Cumberland House, 1999

Synopsis

Best Little Stories of the American Revolution is a journalistic history of the birth of the United States in the form of more than 100 vignettes reflecting the period. Here is the history of the war as it affected soldiers and civilians, loyalists and patriots, leaders and common folk - people who courageously prevailed against an enemy with vastly superior resources.

Included are such stories as:

• Thomas Jefferson's painful discomfort as the Continental Congress made changes in his vaunted Declaration of Independence.
• Two rogue warriors, loyalist and patriot, who thought nothing of murder, arson, and kidnapping as a means to victory during the conflict.
• Henry Knox's gritty effort to drag a large number of cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in northeastern New York to Boston.
• George Washington's embarrassment and fury in dealing with Benedict Arnold's young wife - hysterical and scantily clad - on the day Arnold deserted the American cause.
• British soldiers who got General Charles Lee's horse drunk after capturing Lee one morning in a surprise raid on his New Jersey "bed and breakfast."
• Teenager Andrew Jackson, later president, rescued from British captivity by his mother, to Britain's chagrin.
• Burton Gwinnett of Georgia, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who was fatally wounded in a senseless pistol duel by Lachlan McIntosh, a patriot leader.

Also included are fascinating stories of several founding mothers, including Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Betsy Ross, Molly Pitcher, Janet Livingston Montgomery, and many others.

About this title

About the Author

C. Brian Kelly, a prize-winning journalist, is cofounder of Montpelier Publishing and a columnist and editor emeritus for Military History magazine. He is also a lecturer in newswriting at the University of Virginia. Kelly's articles have appeared in Reader's Digest, Friends, Yankee, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and other magazines. He is the author of several books on American history and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

They disembarked from their boats and were on the march by 2:30 AM, first passing through "swamps and slips of the Sea," wrote Ensign Jeremy Lister of England's Tenth Regiment of Foot. It was "soon after" he and the troops hit the road to Lexington that "the Country people begun to fire their alarm guns (and) light their Beacons, to raise the Country."

He could have guessed right then that it was only the beginning of a long night and day for himself and his fellow soldiers of the Crown. He, for one, would survive, but not entirely unscathed.

The first action he saw was at Lexington, "the first Blood drawn in this American Revolution."

About this edition

• Publisher: Cumberland House
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1581820062
• ISBN 13: 9781581820065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480