Arthur S. Lefkowitz

In late August 1776, a badly defeated Continental Army retreated from Long Island to Manhattan. By the end of September, George Washington’s inexperienced army had been forced out of New York into New Jersey and, by the end of the year, into Pennsylvania. During this dark night of the American Revolution—“the times that try men’s souls”—Washington began developing the strategy that would win the war. In this illuminating account, Arthur Lefkowitz reveals how George Washington turned defeat into victory.During his retreat across New Jersey, Washington reconceived the war: keep the army mobile, target small parts of the British Army, rely on surprise and deception, form guerrilla units, and avoid large-scale battles. This new strategy first bore fruit in the crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 and the attack on the British at Trenton and Princeton. From there, Washington took up winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, and moved into the mountains, an ideal position from which to check British movements toward Philadelphia or north up the Hudson. The British tried and failed several times to coax Washington into a decisive battle. Stymied, the British were forced to attack Philadelphia by sea, and they would not be able to seize Philadelphia in time to support the British invasion of upstate New York which ended in defeat at Saratoga.Lefkowitz relies on a lifetime of deep research on the Revolutionary War and close knowledge of New Jersey to tell this exciting, important story whose impact rippled throughout the rest of the war.

The final meeting of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr took place on the banks of the Hudson in 1804. Their first was in August 1775 at the Continental Army camp outside Boston, during the early months of the Revolutionary War. Their wartime experiences shaped their lives and contributed to the fraying of the friendship that ended in the famous duel. Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Burr recounts the dramatic Revolutionary War service of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. The war helped turn Burr into an outsider: his early mentor and patron General Richard Montgomery died in battle, and Burr failed to secure a place on Washington’s staff, despite valorous service at New York in 1776, New Jersey in 1777, Valley Forge, and Monmouth in 1778. Ever ambitious, he would live the rest of his life on the fringes of greatness. Hamilton, thanks in large part to his relationship with Washington forged during the war, would enter the pantheon of the country’s Founding Fathers. Not only did he serve as Washington’s chief aide for four years, he served well at New York and Trenton, crossed the Delaware on Christmas night 1776, and commanded three battalions at Yorktown.The Revolutionary War remains an important source of the Hamilton-Burr conflict, and Lefkowitz explores their roles vividly and traces the war through their later careers and conflicts.

A brilliant American combat officer and this country's most famous traitor, Benedict Arnold is one of the most fascinating and complicated people to emerge from American history. His contemporaries called him "the American Hannibal" after he successfully led more than 1,000 men through the savage Maine wilderness in 1775. The objective of Arnold and his heroic corps was the fortress city of Quebec, the capital of British-held Canada. The epic campaign to bring Canada into the war as the 14th colony is the subject of Benedict Arnold's Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War, now available in paperback.George Washington provided the initiative for the assault when he learned that a fast moving detachment could surprise Quebec by following a chain of rivers and lakes through nearly uncharted wilderness. Washington picked Col. Benedict Arnold, an obscure and controversial Connecticut officer, to command the corps of men who signed up for the secret and dangerous mission.Instead of a twenty-day march, the route consumed months as Arnold's men toiled across 270 miles of treacherous rapids, raging waterfalls, and trackless forests—at times up to their waists in freezing water dragging and pushing their clumsy boats through surging rapids and hauling them up and over waterfalls. In one of the greatest exploits in American military history, Arnold led his famished corps through the early winter snow up and over the Appalachian Mountains to the St. Lawrence River. On the distant riverbank, Quebec beckoned. Arnold crossed his corps and besieged the British. When the second prong of the invasion arrived under General Montgomery, the officers launched a daring assault on the last day of the year upon the walled city.Based upon extensive primary sources and a keen understanding of the terrain, Benedict Arnold's Army examines in fascinating detail a largely unknown but important period of both the Revolution and Arnold's fascinating life. An award-winning author, Arthur Lefkowitz provides key insights into Arnold's character during the earliest phase of his military career, revealing his aggressive nature, his need for recognition, his experience as a competitive businessman, and his obsession with honor. When readers close this book, they will understand for the first time what started one of Washington's favorite and most capable officers down the fateful path to treason.While preparing to write this book, Lefkowitz made numerous trips along the same route that Arnold's army marched. This knowledge, coupled with his peerless research, makes him uniquely qualified to write Benedict Arnold's Army.There is a growing interest in the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War as a source of national pride and identity. The Arnold Expedition, as told in the pages of Benedict Arnold's Army, is one of the greatest adventure stories in American history.

While history has immortalized George Washington, it has largely forgotten those who helped to propel him to greatness—the thirty-two men who served as his aides-de-camp during the Revolutionary War. Washington relied heavily on these men—among them a young Alexander Hamilton—for help in formulating policy and strategy. George Washington’s Indispensable Men details the fascinating and sometimes tragic lives of these aides, providing a new and refreshing look at the American Revolution.

Winner of the 1998 Best Book on the Revolution published in 1998 by the Board of Governors of the American Revolution Round Table | Named 1999 Honor Book by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. On the morning of November 20, 1776, General Charles Cornwallis overran patriot positions at Fort Lee, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. The attack threw George Washington's army into turmoil. Thus began an American retreat across the state, which ended only after the battered rebels crossed the Delaware river at Trenton on December 7. It was a three-week campaign that marked the most dramatic and desperate period of the War for Independence. In The Long Retreat, Arthur Lefkowitz has written the first book-length study of this critical campaign. He adds compelling new detail to the narrative, and offers the most comprehensive account in the literature of the American retreat to the Delaware and of the British pursuit. What emerges is a history misconceptions about the movements of the armies, the intentions of their leaders, and the choices available to rebel commanders and their British counterparts. Lefkowitz presents a patriot military pounded into desperate straights by the forces of the Crown, but in the end more resilient and wily than most previous scholarship has allowed. If brought low over November and December of 1776, Washington's battalions were still a force to reckon with as they pulled away from the advancing British. Despite serious losses in material and personnel, Washington managed to keep his units operational; and even while making mistakes, he sought to consolidate patriot regiments and longed for a chance to counterattack. The Christmas night riposte at Trenton, a dramatic reversal of fortune in any case, stemmed from measures the rebel Commander-in-Chief had initiated even as he completed his retrogade across New Jersey. How all of this came about emerges and crisp narrative of The Long Retreat. It is the definitive book on a crucial chapter in the history of American Arms.