About this item
A Major New Biography of a Man of Humble Origins Who Became One of the Great Military Leaders of the American Revolution On January 17, 1781, at Cowpens, South Carolina, the notorious British cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton and his legion had been destroyed along with the cream of Lord Cornwallis's troops. The man who planned and executed this stunning American victory was Daniel Morgan. Once a barely literate backcountry laborer, Morgan now stood at the pinnacle of American martial success. Born in New Jersey in 1736, he left home at seventeen and found himself in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. There he worked in mills and as a teamster, and was recruited for Braddock's disastrous expedition to take Fort Duquesne from the French in 1755. When George Washington called for troops to join him at the siege of Boston in 1775, Morgan organized a select group of riflemen and headed north.
About the Author
I was raised in Greenwich, a colonial New Jersey village still proud of hosting its own revolutionary tea party in the market square. Our neighbors were farmers, trappers, and watermen, and these Delaware Bay traditions sparked my interest in the past and its places.As a historian, I'm particularly interested in the American South during the colonial and revolutionary eras. How people form their culture, build their society, work out what they believe-these are things that fascinate me.My first book is about just such a person, Daniel Morgan of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Morgan was the action hero of the American Revolution. But he was more than that. He was one of those people that America and every society depend upon to build communities, to invest in them, nourish them, help them grow and succeed. How he managed to do that, after starting out as a homeless boy, is a great story, sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring.
