THE CAMPAIGN IN VIRGINIA : AN EXACT REPRINT OF SIX RARE PAMPHLETS ON THE CLINTON-CORNWALLIS CONTROVERSY WITH VERY NUMEROUS IMPORTANT UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT NOTES (TWO VOLUMES, COMPLETE); And the Omitted and hitherto Unpublished portions of the Letters and their Appendixes added from the Original Manuscripts

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Matching set of two: Octavo, 10.25 in. x 6.5 in., Volume I: pp. xxix, [1], 507; Volume II: pp. 465. Brown cloth boards. Gilt-framed title and gilt anchor emblem to spine. Publisher's gilt topstain. Untrimmed fore and bottom edges. Rubbing to extremities. Corners bumped. Dents to fore-edge of boards of Volume I. A few small dark stains to back board of Volume I. Previous owners' signatures to front free endpapers. Hinges and spines tight. Sir Henry Clinton (1730 - 1795) succeeded Major General Sir William Howe as commander-in-chief of the British army in America in May 1778 after serving three years under Howe and, before him, under Major General Thomas Gage. A temperamental commander, Clinton understood the full strategic and tactical scope of the War for Independence as few other Britons did though he was unable to turn that insight into victory. Clinton's attempts to enact a southern strategy to end the war were delayed by news that France entered the war on behalf of the Americans. In the summer of 1778, he was ordered to send a major part of his army to the Caribbean to secure the British West Indies. Clinton evacuated Philadelphia, won a tactical victory over Charles Lee and George Washington at the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778), and assisted the Royal Navy in fending off a French fleet threatening the Atlantic coast. Not until 1780 could Clinton turn his attention to a southern campaign, where he initially fared quite well. Charleston and its garrison of more than 3300 American soldiers and 300 cannon fell on May 12, 1780. Clinton then returned to New York and left the southern strategy in the hands of Major General Charles Cornwallis. The arrival of a French fleet in Narragansett Bay and trouble cooperating with his own naval colleagues kept Clinton from making any headway in the northern theater, while Cornwallis increasingly acted independently in moving his army of regulars and loyalists through the Carolinas and, without orders, into Virginia. Once Cornwallis settled in Yorktown, Clinton attempted to reinforce him and use the Royal Navy to prevent French and American forces from concentrating in the Chesapeake. Clinton failed on both counts. Much of the blame for Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown, in October 1781, was placed on Clinton, and it effectively ended his military career, though he retained his commission and continued to advance in rank. After the war he engaged in a pamphlet war to rehabilitate his reputation against that of Cornwallis, and he wrote his own history of the Revolution. He died in London on December 23, 1795. (from Our American Revolution). Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 86601

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