Questions for our American friends

[jagturan]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

Jersey really is misunderstood, and it is in large part people's impression of the view from the turnpike, most likely because thats the road most people are going to use when they are going to or leaving Newark Int' Airport..I was born and raised in jersey, lived there 38 years, and it offers so much..beautiful beaches, rolling hill country, gorgeous woods down in south jersey,,,we've got so much history revolving around the war for independence as well, washington crossing state park is the site where he and the continental army crossed over christmas eve and attacked the hessian army headquartered in trenton, and as far as trenton being a pit, it is, but just outside you have the adjoining areas of ewing, hamilton township, bordentown is pretty close, I myself have 3 great great uncles buried in a cemetary designated a national historical landmark, their graves, one beside the other as they all succumbed to a flu epidemic, are no more than 20 paces from a half dozen gravesites of men who died while part of George Washington's continental army, which is why it is registered as a landmark..I sometimes wish people would give jersey a chance, it really can be very beautiful

You sound like you still remember your 5th grade text book, "ON THE GO IN NEW JERSEY" by John T. Cunningham. Yeap, that's where I learned that we were the 3rd smallest state in the Union but had as many cars as the entire continent of Africa back in 1975.

By the way, is that grave site near Jockey Hollow?

[ultrawildcat]

Originally Posted by jagturan

You sound like you still remember your 5th grade text book, "ON THE GO IN NEW JERSEY" by John T. Cunningham. Yeap, that's where I learned that we were the 3rd smallest state in the Union but had as many cars as the entire continent of Africa back in 1975.

By the way, is that grave site near Jockey Hollow?

the cemetary is in Rocky Hill

[deepsepia]

Also on the subject of New Jersey, sort of . . .

One of the curiosities of American history is that next to no one understands the American Revolution, due to the geographically odd nature of the war. The British were somewhat like the Americans in Vietnam, darting here and there in a very big country, using seapower to deliver troops, and there's not necessarily any great strategic logic connecting the campaigns of 1776 to those of 1778.

When you think about the battles as a kid in school, its completely obscure as to why they're fighting where they're fighting.

One minute its Boston -- "the British are coming!" (of course, that one stumped Michele Bachman, who seemed to think that they were coming to New Hampshire)

. . . but you could stump 99 out of 100 Americans with the question "coming from where, exactly?"

Anyway, Bunker Hill and Concord out of the way, and the action shifts . . . then down to New York, and then on to New Jersey.

Its in New Jersey that the Revolution could have easily been lost, but was probably won . . . Washington, operating out of Pennsylvania, crossed the Delaware not once but three times. I doubt you could find many people who know in which direction he crossed.

But back to Jersey, the battles of Trenton and Princeton were key. They lifted morale and demonstrated that the Continentals could defeat the British in the field, something about which there had been more than a little doubt on both sides.

[DTravel]

Well, part of why the battles of the American Revolution were all over the map is because British plans were *ahem* all over the map. They'd try a campaign in one area and expect the rebels to surrender if they lost in that one small area. Then when the Americans kept shooting at them they'd try the same thing in another small area, rinse and repeat. Except for the times when some English commander got it stuck in his head that if he could just trap and destroy this particular band of rebels the whole thing would be over, in which case the band of rebels would do a combination of fade away into the woods and lead the Brits on a wild goose chase halfway across the continent with little skirmishes all over the bleeping map.

And then you get in to the "well, we call them revolutionary battles 'cause they took place in the colonies between 1775 and 1781 but frankly they had absolutely nothing to do with the revolution. That was just cover for various clans and groups getting into bloody battles over stuff they grandparents fought over back in Europe and they still hate each other over."

We Americans can be right stubborn bastards.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by DTravel

...the American Revolution...

Clearly revolutions against unjust paras*tes are good, Comrade

[ultrawildcat]

those of you with a greater grasp of history than I possess, would you believe there's any validity to the hypothesis that one of the deciding factors to the colonies victory against the superior British forces in the Revolutionary War was the lessons learned from the French and Indian wars...the colonists had witnessed firsthand the native tribes tactics of hit and run, in other words guerrilla tactics..noone in their right mind would stand across a field of well trained well armed well diciplined British troops, the best in the world at the time, when they could easily hide in the trees, pick off a few officers and fade away in the forest, demoralizing the troops. Now I do realize there were lots of times that Washington and his various generals did stand toe to toe with the British and slug it out, but there are also many examples of them copying the native americans and playing hit and run games, making it expensive for the Brits, ruining morale, and making the war less and less attractive to the British back home. Ive never read a historian offering this particular explanation, but it does seem to make sense.

[bombermouse]

I think it's more a question of de facto guerrilla tactics than any kind of plan. They fought a poor man's war, i.e. a guerrilla war, using the only tactics they could under the circumstances. With limited resources, they were in no position to engage in set-piece battles.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by ultrawildcat

those of you with a greater grasp of history than I possess, would you believe there's any validity to the hypothesis that one of the deciding factors to the colonies victory against the superior British forces in the Revolutionary War was the lessons learned from the French and Indian wars...

The continentals certainly had guerilla skills, but in the end they defeated the British in the field, and most importantly, the French achieved a very brief window of naval parity.

That's the often forgotten variable -- for a very brief period in the 1770s, the French Navy could actually impede the British.

British strategy in North American was to use sealift to reinforce and withdraw-- when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the capitulation was as much due to Admiral De Grasse's squadron offshore, which was blockading the British, as it was due to Washingon's besieging troops.

To stick with the Vietnam analogy, guerrilla skills only get you so far. The Viet Cong guerrillas certainly made the South insecure-- but the actual military threat without the NVA would have been minimal. And if you imagine a Vietnam where the US lost control of the air . . .

To take another campaign where a European Army faced guerillas, consider Napoleon in Spain . . . the guerrillas made life hard, but it took Wellington and regular soldiers to actually win military victories.

[mizlaplan]

Thanks for the answers to my Washington question. It was fascinating watching them slowly morph into deepsepia's answer above. Very informative.
I've just been reading in the papers here about the collapse of talks between Republicans and Democrats which were designed to tackle the debt crisis in the US.
Now there's talk of Sequestration which looks like it a political and economic H-Bomb about to explode in everyone's faces, including the rest of the world.
Any thoughts?

[ultrawildcat]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

The continentals certainly had guerilla skills, but in the end they defeated the British in the field, and most importantly, the French achieved a very brief window of naval parity.

That's the often forgotten variable -- for a very brief period in the 1770s, the French Navy could actually impede the British.

British strategy in North American was to use sealift to reinforce and withdraw-- when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the capitulation was as much due to Admiral De Grasse's squadron offshore, which was blockading the British, as it was due to Washingon's besieging troops.

To stick with the Vietnam analogy, guerrilla skills only get you so far. The Viet Cong guerrillas certainly made the South insecure-- but the actual military threat without the NVA would have been minimal. And if you imagine a Vietnam where the US lost control of the air . . .

To take another campaign where a European Army faced guerillas, consider Napoleon in Spain . . . the guerrillas made life hard, but it took Wellington and regular soldiers to actually win military victories.

not arguing, as your statements are correct, but, and I admit it's been years since I read it, but isn't one of the underlying themes of "The Art of War" to make war so exhausting and deplorable amongst the civilian population of the attacking army, the military loses popular support at home,,,,surely that played a role in the continental's victory..monarchy or not, the king must have still heard the grumblings among the civilian population, even among his own nobility, and that gave him pause to think