Americans often think of the Civil War as the conflict that
consolidated the United States, including its military values and
practices. But there was another, earlier, and more protracted
struggle between "North" and "South," beginning in the 1600s and
lasting for more than two centuries, that shaped American
geopolitics and military culture. Here, Eliot A. Cohen explains how
the American way of war emerged from a lengthy struggle with an
unlikely enemy: Canada.
In Conquered into Liberty, Cohen describes how five
peoples-the British, French, Americans, Canadians, and
Indians-fought over the key to the North American continent: the
corridor running from Albany to Montreal dominated by the Champlain
valley and known to Native Americans as the "Great Warpath." He
reveals how conflict along these two hundred miles of lake, river,
and woodland shaped the country's military values, practices, and
institutions.
Through a vivid narration of a series of fights- woodland
skirmishes and massacres, bloody frontal assaults and fleet
actions, rear-guard battles and shadowy covert actions-Cohen
explores how a distinctively American approach to war developed
along the Great Warpath. He weaves together tactics and strategy,
battle narratives, and statecraft, introducing readers to such
fascinating but little-known figures as Justus Sherwood, loyalist
spy; Jeduthan Baldwin, self-taught engineer; and La Corne St. Luc,
ruthless partisan leader. And he reintroduces characters we thought
we knew-an admirable Benedict Arnold, a traitorous Ethan Allen, and
a devious George Washington. A gripping read grounded in serious
scholarship, Conquered into Liberty will enchant and
inform readers for decades to come.
