Leon Reed_ 
Alliance With France. On February 6, 1778, following the shocking surrender of General John Burgoyne’s English army at Saratoga, an American diplomatic team led by Ben Franklin signed a treaty of alliance with France. French King Louis XVI had no love for the American cause. But he had been itching for payback from England since
After fighting well but losing at Brandywine in September 1777 and again at Germantown in October, George Washington faced the inevitable that the British army would spend the winter in comfort in Philadelphia and that his troops would spend another winter in makeshift quarters. On December 19, 1777, he established a winter camp at Valley
After Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton at the end of 1776, the British abandoned all their outposts in southern New Jersey. This meant thy started the 1777 campaigning season precisely where they had been the previous autumn. Having failed to take Philadelphia the previous year by marching through New Jersey, British commander Sir William
The most prominent statue in Lafayette Park, directly behind the White House, is the famous Andrew Jackson equestrian statue. But in each corner of the park, visitors will find statues of the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, the Comte de Rochambeau, and Tadeusz Kościuszko. Two Frenchmen, one Prussian, and one Pole, they represent an
January 1781 didn’t seem like a promising time for the U.S. Army in South Carolina. In the previous year, the army of 5000 men defending Charleston had surrendered and another army had basically been destroyed at the Battle of Camden. For a time, guerrilla forces commanded by Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion and a few others