The First American Army : The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom

This is the first book that offers a you-are-there look at the American Revolution through the eyes of the enlisted men. Through searing portraits of individual soldiers, Bruce Chadwick, author of George Washington's War, brings alive what it was like to serve then in the American army. With interlocking stories of ordinary Americans, he evokes what it meant to face brutal winters, starvation, terrible homesickness and to go into battle against the much-vaunted British regulars and their deadly Hessian mercenaries. The reader lives through the experiences of those terrible and heroic times when a fifteen-year-old fifer survived the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Private Josiah Atkins escaped unscathed from the bloody battles in New York and when a doctor and a minister shared the misery of the wounded and dying. These intertwining stories are drawn from their letters and never-before-quoted journals found in the libraries belonging to the camps where Washington quartered his troops during those desperate years. Title Page 2 Also by Bruce Chadwick 3 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Author to Reader 10 Chapter One: Bunker Hill: The Arrival of Private John Greenwood, Age Fifteen, Fifer 16 Chapter Two: The Siege of Boston, 1775–1776: Private Greenwood Joins an Armed Camp 24 Chapter Three: Camp Life 34 Chapter Four: Mother and Son Reunion 48 Chapter Five: The Soldiers, The War 54 Chapter Six: Why They Fought 66 March to Quebec 72 Chapter Seven: Private Jeremiah Greenman and Benedict Arnold, The War 74 Chapter Eight: Jeremiah Greenman: Prisoner of War 88 Chapter Nine: A Harrowing Retreat 100 Chapter Ten: The Healers: The Reverend, the Doctor, and the Smallpox Scourge 110 Chapter Eleven: Death Becomes a Daily Visitor 128 Chapter Twelve: The Compassionate Minister and the Enraged Doctor 134 Chapter Thirteen: Christmas, 1776: Private John Greenwood Crosses the Delaware, The War 150 Chapter Fourteen: The Victory That Saved the Revolution 168 Chapter Fifteen: New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1777–1778: Lieutenant James McMichael: A Poet Goes to War, The War 178 Chapter Sixteen: Women of the Revolution 192 Chapter Seventeen: Saratoga, 1777: The Arduous Journey of Sergeant Ebenezer Wild, Nineteen, The War 200 Valley Forge 222 Chapter Eighteen: The Harsh Road to a Winter Camp, The War 224 Chapter Nineteen: Private Elijah Fisher and the Agony of Valley Forge 230 Chapter Twenty: “The Soldiers of Our Army Are Almost Naked . . .” Lieutenant James McMichael: The Poet 244 Chapter Twenty-One: Private Elijah Fisher Joins Washington’s Elite Life Guard, 1778 258 Chapter Twenty-Two: Monmouth, 1778: Captain Sylvanus Seely’s Militia Goes to War 272 Chapter Twenty-Three: The Secret Life of Captain Seely 286 Chapter Twenty-Four: Spring 1778: The African American Soldiers, The War 292 Chapter Twenty-Five: The Heroism of the Black Rhode Island Regiment 308 Chapter Twenty-Six: John Greenwood, Privateer 318 Chapter Twenty-Seven: 1779–1780: The War’s Worst Winter and Mutiny, The War 334 Chapter Twenty-Eight: Springfield: The Militia Saves the Revolution 352 Chapter Twenty-Nine: 1781: Victory at Yorktown, The War 360 Afterword 378 Acknowledgments 384 Bibliography 386 Notes 392 Index 406 Draws from the letters and journals of those who served under George Washington in the Continental Army to provide a narrative of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of the ordinary men who fought the battles Early on the warm morning of June 17, 1775, British artillery in Boston and on Her Majesty's ships in the harbor opened fire on the Charlestown peninsula, north of the city.