Colonial Wars History

The long-awaited biography of the frontier Founding Father whose heroic actions and neglected writings inspired an entire generation, from Paine to Madison. On May 10, 1775, in the storm-tossed hours after midnight, Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary firebrand, was poised for attack. With only two boatloads of his scraggly band of Vermont volunteers having made it across the wind-whipped waters of Lake Champlain, he was waiting for the rest of his Green Mountain boys to arrive....

Most people have heard about the French and Indian War, but you will find that most history classes have “forgotten” to explore some of the most interesting and important facets of this conflict. Its little-told stories and often underrated importance in world history have begun to be buried over the centuries. Was this epic struggle simply another war among many others in history?

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed 27 men, women, and children, and took 13 captives, including 39-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant. After witnessing her infant's murder, Duston resolved to get even.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, near Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman returning home from trading beaver pelts is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony by a vicious white runaway indentured servant. The tribesman, fighting for his life, is able with his final breaths to reveal the details of the attack to Providence’s governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government ensues to capture the killer and his gang, now the most hunted men in the New World.

Always smack dab in the thick of things, he was an ordinary citizen living in extraordinarily turbulent times. Revere played key roles in colonial tax fights and riots, the infamous Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and even the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. In this fast-paced, dramatic account, Paul Revere’s life pulses with energy as author Joel J. Miller explores his family and church life along with his revolutionary contribution as a spy, entrepreneur, express rider, freemason, and commercial visionary.

The conflict that historians have called King Philip’s War still ranks as one of the bloodiest per capita in American history. An Indian coalition ravaged much of New England, killing 600 colonial fighting men (not including their Indian allies), obliterating 17 white towns, and damaging more than 50 settlements. The version of these events that has come down to us focuses on Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay - the colonies whose commentators dominated the storytelling. But because Connecticut lacked a chronicler, its experience has gone largely untold.

The opening years of the French and Indian War were disastrous for the British. Hindered by quarrelsome provincial councils, incompetent generals, and the redcoats' inability to adapt to wilderness warfare, Britain was losing the war. Learning that most of Britain's military resources were allocated to Louisbourg, the French launched a campaign along the weakened frontier. French Commander Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and his American Indian allies laid siege to Fort William Henry; Monro could not hold out and was forced to surrender.

On September 13, 1759, a battle was fought on the Plains of Abraham outside the old city of Québec. It was one of the turning-point battles in world history. Thanks to the British victory and the events that followed, Canada went from being a colony of France (New France) to being a colony of Great Britain. This permanently changed Canadian history.

Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are known to all; men like Morgan, Greene, and Wayne are less familiar. Yet the dreams of the politicians and theorists became real only because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. The soldiers of the American Revolution were a diverse lot: merchants and mechanics, farmers and fishermen, paragons and drunkards. Most were ardent amateurs.

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day survival, political harmony, exploration of the continent, foreign policy, and - fixed deeply in the collective consciousness - hell and eternal damnation. The fear of fire and brimstone and the worm that never dies exerted a profound and lasting influence on Americans' ideas about themselves, their neighbors, and the rest of the world.

Of course, the most important war of all for Texas came in the early 19th century, and the common story heard in America is about rebellion against intolerance, oppression and Mexican cruelty. The Battle of the Alamo in particular, surrounded by legend and testimonies of heroism, is a textbook example of the fight for freedom, comparable to the Jewish defenders during the Roman siege at Masada.

New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? We have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed. We now have that history in Edward J. Larson's insightful synthesis of the founding.

The story of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys is one of those delightful tales that American schoolchildren hear about in school, but it is also one that is much more interesting to listen to in older age. Unlike revered founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who came from Virginian plantations, Allen was a rough and tumble frontiersman, more likely to fight than talk. And yet, he was in no way a dullard, but instead as well-read as many of his contemporaries and more so than the average man of his day.

During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling 60 tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some 300 miles south and east over frozen, often treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army.

Designed to be compatible with virtually every standard textbook in their subject field, Barron’s EZ-101 Study Keys give you a valuable overview of your college-level course. In American History to 1877, all key topics are covered, from the first Americans through the post–Civil War Reconstruction era. Also covered are brief key quotations and notes on major figures such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, John Marshall, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and many more.

George Washington was famously unknowable, but Robert Middlekauff penetrates the mystique to reveal the fears, values, and passions that drove him. Rich in psychological details regarding Washington's temperament, idiosyncrasies, and experiences, this audiobook shows us a self-conscious Washington who grew in confidence and experience as a young soldier, businessman, and Virginian gentleman; and was transformed into an American patriot by the revolutionary ferment of the 1760s and 70s.

After the siege of Boston forced the British to evacuate that city in March 1776, Continental Army commander George Washington suspected that the British would move by sea to New York City, the next logical target in an attempt to end a colonial insurrection. He thus rushed his army south to defend the city. Washington guessed correctly, but it would be to no avail. Unlike Boston, New York City's terrain featured few defensible positions. The city lacked a high point from which to launch a siege, as the peninsula of Boston was fortunate to have.

In "Rising Flames: America's Battle for Freedom," author Rev George Stoddard presents a gripping tale of an unprecedented invasion of the United States by China and Russia. As these powerful nations unleash a devastating attack using EMPs and cutting-edge weaponry, the American government is forced to declare martial law. Amidst this chaos, the question arises: will control be handed over to the United Nations? In this thrilling narrative, readers witness the resilience and determination of American Patriots as they rise up to defend their freedom. As they take up arms against the invaders,...