[PDF] Valley Forge eBook

Author : Bob Drury
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 30,2 MB
Release : 2019-11-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1501152726

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The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Heart of Everything That Is return with “a thorough, nuanced, and enthralling account” (The Wall Street Journal) about one of the most inspiring—and underappreciated—chapters in American history: the Continental Army’s six-month transformation in Valley Forge. In December 1777, some 12,000 members of America’s Continental Army stagger into a small Pennsylvania encampment near British-occupied Philadelphia. Their commander in chief, George Washington, is at the lowest ebb of his military career. Yet, somehow, Washington, with a dedicated coterie of advisers, sets out to breathe new life into his military force. Against all odds, they manage to turn a bobtail army of citizen soldiers into a professional fighting force that will change the world forever. Valley Forge is the story of how that metamorphosis occurred. Bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin show us how this miracle was accomplished despite thousands of American soldiers succumbing to disease, starvation, and the elements. At the center of it all is George Washington as he fends off pernicious political conspiracies. The Valley Forge winter is his—and the revolution’s—last chance at redemption. And after six months in the camp, Washington fulfills his destiny, leading the Continental Army to a stunning victory in the Battle of Monmouth Court House. Valley Forge is the riveting true story of a nascent United States toppling an empire. Using new and rarely seen contemporaneous documents—and drawing on a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that capture the innovation and energy that led to the birth of our nation—Drury and Clavin provide a “gripping, panoramic account” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) of the definitive account of this seminal and previously undervalued moment in the battle for American independence.

Author : Bob Drury
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 15,57 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1451654685

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Draws on Red Cloud's autobiography, which was lost for nearly a hundred years, to present the story of the great Oglala Sioux chief who was the only Plains Indian to defeat the United States Army in a war.

Author : Richard Ammon
Publisher : Holiday House
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 35,40 MB
Release : 2005-11-23
Category :
ISBN : 9780823420162

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The odds were against George Washington as he marched the defeated Continental army toward an old ironworks known as Valley Forge. After losing two important battles, the untrained and poorly equipped soldiers now faced winter. With no quarters, little food, and few supplies, how could they survive? Yet over the freezing winter of 1777-78, the Continental army transformed itself from a ragtag outfit into a professional army. Valley Forge tells how inspiration, determination, and a genius for organizing enabled Washington, his talented staff, and his courageous soldiers to overcome extreme hardships and remake the army.

Author : Lorett Treese
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 14,55 MB
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780271041735

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More than four million people a year visit Valley Forge, one of America's most celebrated historic sites. Here, amid the rolling hills of southeastern Pennsylvania, visitors can pass through the house which served as Washington's Headquarters during the famous winter encampment of 1777-1778. Others picnic and jog in the huge park, complete with monuments, recreated log huts, and modern visitor center, all built to pay tribute to the Valley Forge story. In this lively book, Lorett Treese shows how Valley Forge evolved into the tourist mecca that it is today. In the process, she uses Valley Forge as a means for understanding how Americans view their own past. Treese explores the origins of popular images associated with Valley Forge, such as George Washington kneeling in the snow to seek divine assistance. She places Valley Forge in the context of the historic preservation movement as the site became Pennsylvania's first state park in 1893. She studies its "Era of Monuments" and the movement to "restore" Valley Forge in the spirit of Rockefeller's enormously popular colonial Williamsburg. Treese describes a Valley Forge fraught with controversy over the appropriate appearance and use of a place so revered. One such controversy, the "hot dog war," a brief but intense battle over concession stands, was spawned by Americans' changing perceptions of how a national park was to be used. The volatile Vietnam era prompted the state park commission to establish its "Subcommittee on Sex, Hippies, and Whiskey Swillers" to investigate park regulation infractions. Even today, people differ over exactly what happened at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778. The modern visitor sees the remains of over a century of commemoration, competition, and contention. The result, Treese shows, is a historic site that may reveal more about succeeding history than about Washington's army. This book will give its readers a new way to look at Valley Forge--and all historic sites.

Author : Nancy K. Loane
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 10,57 MB
Release : 2021-11-29
Category : History
ISBN : 1640123954

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Friday, December 19, 1777, dawned cold and windy. Fourteen thousand Continental Army soldiers tramped from dawn to dusk along the rutted Pennsylvania roads from Gulph Mills to Valley Forge, the site of their winter encampment. The soldiers' arrival was followed by the army's wagons and hundreds of camp women. Following the Drum tells the story of the forgotten women who spent the winter of 1777-78 with the Continental Army at Valley Forge--from those on society's lowest rungs to ladies on the upper echelons. Impoverished and clinging to the edge of survival, many camp women were soldiers' wives who worked as the army's washers, nurses, cooks, and seamstresses. Other women at the encampment were of higher status: they traveled with George Washington's entourage when the army headquarters shifted locations and served the general as valued cooks, laundresses, or housekeepers. There were also the ladies at Valley Forge who were not subject to the harsh conditions of camp life and came and went as they and their husbands, Washington's generals and military advisers, saw fit. Nancy K. Loane uses sources such as issued military orders, pension depositions after the war, soldiers' descriptions, and some of the women's own diary entries and letters to bring these women to life.

Author : Wayne Bodle
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 12,29 MB
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780271045467

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Refuting commonly held myths about the American Revolution, this comprehensive history of the colonial army's winter encampment of 1777-1778 reveals the events that occurred both inside and outside the camp boundaries, discussing interactions between the soldiers and local civilians, divisions within the army, the political and military strategies of George Washington, and their implications in terms of the future of the United States. Reprint.

Author : David Taylor
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 35,58 MB
Release : 2018-04-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1789121329

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A THRILLING NOVEL OF COURAGE, LOVE AND TREACHERY DURING THE YEARS OF OUR COUNTRY’S BIRTH The desperate year of 1778. Philadelphia is occupied by the British. Not far away in Valley Forge the ragged and courageous army of George Washington is just coming through its bitter winter stand. Meanwhile the Continental Congress is being beleaguered by a number of officers and influential people to replace Washington as Commander of the patriot armies. At the center of this cabal is General Charles Lee. In this setting of intrigue and revolutionary passion, David Taylor has woven a sanguine and stirring narrative of young Captain Jonathan Kimball of Virginia, assigned to live as a servant in the house of Enoch Ladd, an imprisoned Patriot shipowner, and to spy on the British. With him in this enterprise is the lovely and daring Elizabeth Ladd, daughter of the household and a spy herself. Mutually suspicious at first, Jonathan and Elizabeth come to trust one another after each has been through some dangerous escapades. There is the time Elizabeth overhears some vital information at a masquerade ball she attends on a stolen invitation, and the time when Jonathan helps La Fayette out of a trap set by the British. With a wonderful insight into this exciting historical period Taylor tells of the British Fleet trying to evacuate the Delaware, of the bravery of Molly Pitcher, and the almost disastrous treachery of Lee. Climaxing the whole story is a blow-by-blow description of the illustrious Battle of Monmouth.

Author : David Garland
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 17,65 MB
Release : 2006-11-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780312327224

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British officer Captain Jamie Skoyles is given the mission of infiltrating George Washington's inner circle as a double agent at Valley Forge, where he finds himself torn between his British loyalties and his admiration for the American cause.

Author : Phillip S. Greenwalt
Publisher : Savas Beatie
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 13,7 MB
Release : 2021-07-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1611214947

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“[Serves] as both a helpful concise history text and as a phenomenal field guide to modern Valley Forge and its surroundings.” —The Colonial Review An Army of skeletons appeared before our eyes naked, starved, sick and discouraged . . . Gouverneur Morris recorded these words in his report to the Continental Congress after a visit to the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge as part of a fact-finding mission. Morris and his fellow congressmen arrived to conditions far worse than they had expected. After a campaigning season that saw the defeat at Brandywine, the loss of Philadelphia, the capital of the rebellious British North American colonies, and the reversal at Germantown, George Washington and his harried army marched into Valley Forge on December 19, 1777. What transpired in the next six months prior to the departure from the winter cantonment on June 19, 1778 was truly remarkable. A stoic Virginian, George Washington solidified his hold on the army and endured political intrigue; the quartermaster department was revived with new leadership from a former Rhode Island Quaker; and a German baron trained the army in the rudiments of being a soldier and military maneuvers. Valley Forge conjures up images of cold, desperation, and starvation. Yet Valley Forge also became the winter of transformation and improvement that set the Continental Army on the path to military victory and the fledgling nation on the path to independence. In The Winter that Won the War, historian Phillip S. Greenwalt takes the reader on campaign in the year 1777 and through the winter encampment, detailing the various changes that took place within Valley Forge that ultimately led to the success of the American cause. “Compelling. . . . wonderfully written. . . . Readers will come away better understanding the challenging duties, hardships, and stubbornness that transformed the army of these common soldiers of different ethnicities and immigrant groups, with African Americans and Native Americans among them, into a capable fighting force.” —The NYMAS Review

Author : Thomas Fleming
Publisher : New Word City
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 41,65 MB
Release : 2015-12-31
Category : History
ISBN : 161230933X

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"A superb retelling of the story of Valley Forge and its aftermath, demonstrating that reality is far more compelling than myth." - Gordon S. Wood The defining moments of the American Revolution did not occur on the battlefield or at the diplomatic table, writes New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming, but at Valley Forge. Fleming transports us to December 1777. While the British army lives in luxury in conquered Philadelphia, Washington's troops huddle in the barracks of Valley Forge, fending off starvation and disease even as threats of mutiny swirl through the regiments. Though his army stands on the edge of collapse, George Washington must wage a secondary war, this one against the slander of his reputation as a general and patriot. Washington strategizes not only against the British army but against General Horatio Gates, the victor in the Battle of Saratoga, who has attracted a coterie of ambitious generals devising ways to humiliate and embarrass Washington into resignation. Using diaries and letters, Fleming creates an unforgettable portrait of an embattled Washington. Far from the long-suffering stoic of historical myth, Washington responds to attacks from Gates and his allies with the skill of a master politician. He parries the thrusts of his covert enemies, and, as necessary, strikes back with ferocity and guile. While many histories portray Washington as a man who has transcended politics, Fleming's Washington is exceedingly complex, a man whose political maneuvering allowed him to retain his command even as he simultaneously struggled to prevent the Continental Army from dissolving into mutiny at Valley Forge. Written with his customary flair and eye for human detail and drama, Thomas Fleming's gripping narrative develops with the authority of a major historian and the skills of a master storyteller. Washington's Secret War is not only a revisionist view of the American ordeal at Valley Forge - it calls for a new assessment of the man too often simplified into an American legend. This is narrative history at its best and most vital.