Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
A military guide to American land battles of the time is
The Compact History of the Revolutionary War
by Colonel Ernest and Trevor Dupuy. For the general reader seeking a comprehensive and lively survey of the period, I recommend John C. Miller’s
Triumph of Freedom 1775–1783
and Samuel B. Griffith’s
In Defense of the Public Liberty
. The essential underpinnings lie in the seven volumes of Douglas Southall Freeman’s
George Washington
; in the thirty-nine volumes of the
Writings
of Washington edited by John Fitzpatrick; in the life and correspondence of John Adams in three volumes by Page Smith; and in specialist studies like Samuel Flagg Bemis’
A Diplomatic History of the United States
.
For the Yorktown campaign itself two excellent books based on thorough research with well-chosen quotations by the participants, are Thomas J. Fleming’s
Beat the Last Drum
and Burke Davis’
The Campaign That Won America
.
For the long march from the Hudson to Yorktown there are six eyewitness journals of particular interest: by Claude Blanchard, the Commissary or Quartermaster for the French army; by Baron Ludwig von Closen, Aide to General Rochambeau; by Gaspard Gallatin of the French general staff; Rochambeau’s own memoirs; and especially the indispensable journal of Karl Gustaf Tornquist, a Swedish Lieutenant serving under de Grasse, and an anonymous work of two French Officers entitled
Operations of the French Fleet Under the Count de Grasse
.
There is no English first-hand account of the American war overall, understandably in view of the outcome, except Sir Henry Clinton’s sad post-war narrative. This lack is made up for by the thorough work concentrating on the American campaigns of Lord Cornwallis by Franklin and Mary Wickwire and by the psychological portrait of Sir Henry Clinton by the late Professor William Willcox. Of English diaries, the most interesting is that of
Captain Frederick MacKenzie, a keen observer with a sharp pen, writing from General Headquarters.
English diaries of social life not directly connected to the war are ample and invaluable: they include Sir N. William Wraxall’s
Memoirs
; the diaries of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury, who was British minister at The Hague and St. Petersburg; the memoirs of John Heneage Jesse; and above all the correspondence and
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