Excerpt from Battles of the American Revolution: 1775-1781, Historical and Military Criticism, With Topographical Illustration Historical and Military

This volume had its origin at Tarrytown, New York, in 1847, through the statement of Washington Irving that the battle known as that of White Plains was actually fought on Chatterton Hill. He pointed out the localities minutely, and approved the sketch which has developed as the present map. He stated, very seriously, that a similar examination and chart of other battle-fields, with the use of British, French, and Hessian field-notes, reports, and dispatches, would be necessary, before the character of Washington as a soldier, and of the contest itself, could be fully understood, but that years, possibly a generation, would be requisite for the task.

The undertaking, deliberately begun and kept in view through many interruptions, was completed at the end of nearly thirty years.

The proof-sheets of the first edition, six in number, were patiently and critically read by Ex-President Theodore D. Woolsey, of Yale College, Rev. Dr. Oliver Crane, of Morristown, New Jersey, Benson J. Lossing, Esq., Historian, and Adjutant-general Wm. S. Striker, of New Jersey, and the chief portion by General William T. Sherman. Hon. William M. Evarts, Henry Day, Esq., and James B. Brinsmade, Esq., of New York city, so fully examined maps and text as to endorse the accuracy of the research.

The subsequent endorsement of George Bancroft, the American Historian, of Earl Derby, Colonel Hamley, President of the Queen's Staff College, Sir Joseph Hooker, President of the Royal Society, Thomas Hughes and others, in Great Britain, and of President Thiers, Monsieur A. de Rochambeau, Senator Oscar de Lafayette, Louis d'Orleans, Comte d'Paris, and others, in France, inspired special care as to succeeding editions.

In preparing this, the fifth edition, additional aid has been rendered by other painstaking scholars, who have endeavored to eliminate even typographical errors, but in no material sense has the text been called in question, at home or abroad.

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