Operational history
Battle results make more sense when read inside the movement, logistics, geography, command problems and strategic objectives of a campaign.
1775 · Northern
From Lexington and Concord through Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights, the Boston Campaign transformed local resistance into an organized continental war and ended with the British evacuation of the city.
1775 · Northern
Fort Ticonderoga opened the Lake Champlain corridor to the rebels; after the failed Canadian invasion, Benedict Arnold’s improvised fleet fought at Valcour Island to delay a stronger British advance south.
1775 · Northern
The Continental invasion of Canada combined Montgomery’s advance up the Richelieu with Arnold’s difficult march through Maine, failed at Quebec, and ended in a retreat toward Lake Champlain.
1775 · Southern
Great Bridge, Moores Creek Bridge and Sullivan’s Island formed three distinct southern crises in which Patriot forces defeated or frustrated Crown efforts to restore authority before the main British war effort shifted north.
1776 · Northern
The New York and New Jersey Campaign joined a British amphibious offensive, a sequence of American withdrawals, the collapse of the Hudson positions, and Washington’s winter counteroffensive. Reading Brooklyn, Manhattan, Westchester, Fort Washington, Fort Lee, Trenton, Assunpink Creek, and Princeton as one operational sequence reveals how naval mobility, roads, rivers, intelligence, logistics, and preservation of the Continental Army repeatedly changed the strategic meaning of tactical victories and defeats.