Author: Gregory J. W. Urwin

Gregory J. W. Urwin, the immediate past president of the Society for Military History, is a professor of history at Temple University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame, and has published nine books and many articles, essays, and reviews. He is now researching a social history of Lord Charles Cornwallis’ 1781 Virginia campaign. Urwin is a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center for the Study of America and the West, Academic Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and general editor for the Campaigns and Commanders Series from University of Oklahoma Press.

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Historiography Posted on

The Yorktown Tragedy: Washington’s Slave Roundup

On October 19, 1781, Gen. George Washington attained his apex as a soldier. Straddling a spirited charger at the head of a formidable Franco-American army, Washington watched impassively as 6,000 humiliated British, German, and Loyalist soldiers under the command of Lt. Gen. Charles, Second Earl Cornwallis, emerged from their fortifications to lay down their arms […]

by Gregory J. W. Urwin
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The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

With Cornwallis to the Dan: Deconstructing the “Forbes Champagné Letter”

The American War of Independence produced many dramatic episodes, but none surpassed the campaign that Lt. Gen. Charles, Second Earl Cornwallis, conducted in North Carolina during the first three months of 1781 for hair-raising suspense and heartbreak. Things got off to a bad start for the British on January 17, 1781, at the Battle of […]

by Gregory J. W. Urwin