The War of the American Revolution was conducted mainly at sea and its outcome was ultimately determined by naval power. The war involved the two greatest naval powers in the world—Britain and France—in a maritime conflict of unprecedented scale. The two navies deployed more than 1,200 warships, 25,000 naval cannons and more than 300,000 sailors […]
“In a country where every gentleman is a soldier, and every soldier a student in the art of war, it necessarily follows that military treatises will be considerably sought after, and attended to.” – Hugh Henry Ferguson, editor of the American edition of Military Instructions for Officers Detached in the Field (Philadelphia, 1775) The […]
The American republic was born in war. While statesmen asserted the independence of the United States in an eloquent declaration, tens of thousands of British soldiers and sailors converged on New York to subdue the rebellion by force. Revolutionaries armed with muskets and swords had to wage an eight-year war to free the new nation […]
Alexander Hamilton arrived in America in 1772 at the age of fifteen—a poor, self-taught, ambitious immigrant from the West Indies. He settled in New York City in the midst of the colonial crisis, when oppressive taxes and other policies pushed Americans to question British rule. Hamilton soon befriended prominent patriots and embraced the cause for […]
March 1780: The marquis de Lafayette is entrusted by his king with a message for George Washington. It is a message the American commander-in-chief has been hoping to receive for nearly five years—that France will send troops to America’s aid. The twenty-two-year-old Frenchman boards a French navy vessel bound for the United States and sets […]