David Price is the author of John Haslet’s World: An Ardent Patriot, the Delaware Blues, and the Spirit of 1776, The Road To Assunpink Creek: Liberty’s Desperate Hour and the Ten Crucial Days of the American Revolution, and Rescuing The Revolution: Unsung Patriot Heroes and the Ten Crucial Days of America’s War for Independence. His Revolutionary War blog "Speaking of Which" is featured at dpauthor.com. A historical interpreter at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania and Princeton Battlefield State Park in New Jersey, David is a contributing author to "An American Revolution Diary: Reliving Ten Crucial Days of 1776-77" on the Princeton Battlefield Society’s website and the recipient of a Sons of the American Revolution Certificate of Appreciation. His work has been recommended by the American Revolution Podcast, the Princeton Battlefield Society, and Ten Crucial Days.org.
Along the banks of the Delaware River—in what is now Upper Makefield Township on the Pennsylvania side and Hopewell Township on the New Jersey side—lie a pair of preternaturally venerated sites, indelibly linked by their shared connection to one of the most notable military enterprises the world has ever known. That would be the legendary […]
The Paradox as Context The literature of the Revolution is replete with references to the Founding Fathers’ recognition of the anguishing contradiction between the ideals they ostensibly endorsed in the Declaration of Independence—specifically Thomas Jefferson’s rhetoric about human equality and inalienable rights—and the commitment many of them made to sustaining the institution of human bondage […]
The saying that “an army marches on its stomach” has been attributed to both Napolean Bonaparte and Frederick II, King of Prussia, known as “Frederick the Great.”[1] If this observation is correct, it can be argued that nobody did more to keep the Continental Army on the move during perhaps its time of greatest travail, […]
Albigence Waldo was a man of various talents but, in a Revolutionary context, is best known for the diary he kept before and during the Valley Forge encampment in the winter of 1777-1778. This article reflects the value of that work while also seeking to convey an appreciation of his life and accomplishments, as well […]
The “Ten Crucial Days” winter campaign of 1776-1777 reversed the tide of war just when Washington’s army appeared near collapse. Beginning with the Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River, Washington recorded his first three significant victories over the British and their Hessian auxiliaries under the overall command of Maj. Gen. William Howe and the […]
The Battle of Hobkirk Hill (or Hobkirk’s Hill), sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Camden, remains one of the less prominent engagements of the Revolutionary War, even as John Buchanan’s masterful study of the campaign in the Deep South terms it “a major and controversial battle” in the American effort to reclaim South […]
The Battle of Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, on September 8, 1781 was the last major open-field battle of the Revolutionary War and perhaps its most savage. The close-quarter fighting that occurred there ranks among the bloodiest and most intensely contested military encounters in young America’s quest for independence.[1] It has, however, been eclipsed in historical […]
The “Ten Crucial Days” winter campaign of 1776-1777 reversed the momentum of the War for Independence at a moment when what George Washington termed the “glorious Cause” of American independence appeared on the verge of final defeat.[1] During the period from December 25, 1776 through January 3, 1777, beginning with the fabled Christmas night crossing of […]
In 1776, John Cadwalader was a thirty-four-year-old merchant and prominent member of the Philadelphia gentry who had risen to command the volunteer militia known as the Philadelphia Associators. In his capacity as a militia colonel, he would play a distinctive—and today largely unappreciated—role in what historians have termed the “Ten Crucial Days” of the Revolutionary […]
It has been said of Edward Hand that he was “the stuff of which the hard core” of Washington’s army was made.[1] Indeed, he may have been the most unsung Patriot military hero of the American Revolution. On the second day of 1777, Hand organized a remarkable defensive action along the road from Princeton to Trenton, […]
The Battle of Mamaroneck, known to some as the “Skirmish of Heathcote Hill,” was one of the most obscure military engagements of the Revolution but noteworthy for being the first time in the war that organized infantry units composed entirely of Americans—including Continental Army soldiers—encountered each other. To that extent, it might be regarded as […]
The story of Thomas Knowlton in the American Revolution is brief but meaningful. He was only thirty-five at his death, arguably a full-fledged hero in what George Washington termed “the “glorious Cause”[1] of American independence. The Connecticut colonel remains largely obscure in our collective historical consciousness but has been long recognized by serious students of […]
Gen. George Washington did not sleep here but many of his soldiers did—that is, on the grounds or nearby. The historic site known today as the Thompson-Neely house and farmstead is located in upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and is a featured attraction of Washington Crossing Historic Park (WCHP). In fact, it is the historic focal […]
