From Lexington to Yorktown: Battlegrounds of the Revolution
No one really knows who fired the first shot at Lexington Green that fateful day in April of 1775. The British Army had left Boston with 900 troops as Paul Revere made his famous ride warning that the redcoats were coming. The small American force was rooted at Lexington but another U.S. militia took its stand at Concord, touching off a bitter war for independence, ending in General George Washington’s stunning victory at Yorktown six years later.
Times That Try Men's Souls
Perhaps Thomas Paine, the volatile American writer, described those troubled Revolutionary days best. He said, "These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
Now, Americans facing new challenges to their freedom in the 21st Century are visiting many of those hallowed Revolutionary battlegrounds.
Lexington, Massachusetts
A small U.S. militia was overrun by British troops that killed eight Americans at Lexington, sending the survivors fleeing into the woods. But it was a different story down the road at Concord’s North Bridge where Americans successfully fought back. Minuteman National Historical Park, opened in 1959, provides historic insights and the landscapes of those opening battles.
Kingston, New York
The small village about 75 miles north of New York City was a center of defiance to the British. Kingston, on the banks of the Hudson River, became the state capital. But in the fall of 1777, a British army under the command of Major General John Vaughan, seeking to relieve the stress colonial troops were putting on General John Burgoyne’s troops at Saratoga, took Kingston by storm.
The British punishment against Kingston, which King George III viewed as a "hotbed of perfidy and disloyalty," was massive. The redcoats burned down just about every house in town. Local lore has it that the only house saved belonged to a woman who was being wooed by a British officer.
Today’s residents of Kingston recall that dark day with a regular celebration featuring the assault on Kingston and the mock burning of the town.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/kingston/
Saratoga, New York
The day after the Kingston fire, Burgoyne’s forces lost a decisive battle to the Continental Army at Saratoga, an event that led France to enter the war on the American side. Historians have called the battle as the "turning point of the American Revolution." It showed that the ragtag American army really did have a chance to defeat a military behemoth. A four square mile park in Saratoga and a battlefield mark the site today.
Valley Forge
The Saratoga victory came a few months after the invigorating Christmas Night 1776 American strike across the Delaware River against 6,000 celebrating Hessian soldiers in Trenton. Gentlemen were not supposed to fight on such a holiday and the inebriated Germans were thoroughly defeated.
Despite those victories, by the winter of 1777-78, Washington’s impoverished army was in dire condition in winter quarters at Valley Forge outside Philadelphia. A visitor to the small primitive log barracks where the Continental Army endured the grueling cold can only marvel that the army survived at all. The troops often had little more than rags to wear. Many had not been paid in months and were leaving to return home after their enlistments ended.
But in the snows of Valley Forge the soldiers of the Continental Army underwent intensive training, turning themselves into a professional fighting force. Their greatest admirer was George Washington who remarked, "Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery."
Morristown, New Jersey
The British occupied New York City when George Washington established his headquarters at the Ford Mansion in the rural hamlet of Morristown, about 20 miles west of the city, in the winter of 1779-80. A national park features the Upper Redoubt site (built in 1777 following the battles of Princeton and Trenton) and the historic Wick House. The park also has more than 27 miles of hiking trails crossing the New York and New Jersey Brigade areas.
Yorktown, Virginia
The final battle of the Revolutionary War was fought at this tidewater Virginia town for almost a month in the fall of 1781. By now, the French fleet and troops were full-fledged allies and the combined American-French force fielded 17,000 troops against Lord Cornwallis's 8,000 British and German soldiers. The British, fighting a war that had become increasingly unpopular back in London, surrendered and two years later, the new United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris formally recognizing American independence.
Books
Find these books online at Barnes and Noble.com.
The American Revolution
Gordon S. Wood, Random House, Incorporated, January 2002
The Winter of Red Snow
Kristiana Gregory, Scholastic, Inc., August 1996
Common Sense
Thomas Paine, Barnes & Noble Books, June 1995
The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Penguin Putnam, May
1999
