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Colonel David G. Fitz-Enz Cooper
Square Press 244 pages & 50 illustrations Retail $28.95 Amazon.com
$20.26 Book review
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The author incorporates recently uncovered documents to shed new light on the last invasion of the continental United States. In 1814 British troops crossed the Canadian border with the strategic objective of splitting New England from the United States and restoring it as a colony. The key to the plan was controlling Lake Champlain; the immediate objective was the city of Plattsburg, at the north end of the lake. The author does an excellent job describing the weapons and munitions used by the parties, including such arcane ordnance as heated shot and Congrieve rockets. Although an Infantry officer, he focuses on the naval battle, the decisive element of the campaign. Locally made ships with scratch crews fleshed out with soldiers and even convicts broke the British fleet, forcing the unsupported army to retreat. The author discusses the land battle in less detail, but describes the regular and militia units of both sides. The British regulars were veterans of the Napoleonic wars, the American regulars surprised the British, they had been practicing, apparently a new idea to the politically appointed officers of the day. Both sides employed militia. The Americans tried to use them as regulars, with typically mixed results, although an ad hoc collection of teen-agers stood against the British regulars and became national heroes. Curiously the author claims that American recruits had no knowledge of how to load guns. Such extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In an otherwise well-documented work, he fails to explain or document this claim. It appears that the author has been influenced in this by the discredited work of Michael Bellesiles in Arming America. Despite this digression, the work is a readable account of the pivotal battle of the War of 1812. It’s primary use to modern soldiers is an example of how training, preparation, and imagination can turn an unpromising collection of units into victors.
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