New Jersey, Pivotal Theatre of the American Revolution

Often overlooked in accounts of the Revolution, New Jersey witnessed more of the War for Independence than any other state. In this new contribution to the Savas Beatie "Emerging Revolutionary War" series, Dunkerly, a National Battlefield Park guide and author of several books in military history, looks at operations in central New Jersey – Morris, Middlesex, Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Somerset, and Hudson Counties – where Washington's army spent much of the war. There were winter encampments, several famous battles like Trenton, Princeton, or Monmouth, and many smaller ones such as Bound Brook, Short Hills, or Springfield, as well as, guerrilla fighting and raiding, strategic movements, spies and counter-espionage, mutinies, and more.

The war came to New Jersey after the British seized New York City in September of 1776, and then pursued Washington through the state, until rebuffed at Princeton and Trenton, after which both sides went into winter quarters.

There followed years of campaigning back and forth, as Washington kept the principal Patriot army in the state in order maintain a threat to the British hold on New York City, so central New Jersey was repeatedly the "dance floor of war".

Dunkerly recounts the events chronologically, as they unfolded. He covers both sides with an even hand, as the fighting see-sawed back and forth across the state. Dunkerly's treatment includes the evolution of the Continental Army, showing how these events helped turn it into an effective fighting force, forged in battle that united soldiers of different European ethnicities, even including African Americans and Native Americans, into a capable fighting force which would ultimately win independence for the colonies. Moreover, unlike some authors, he gives us a look at how these events affected the local people, caught in the middle of what amounted to an increasingly vicious civil war, with homes and towns destroyed.

Dunkerly includes several appendices, written with three other historians, covering the first reenactments of these events, an archaeological overview of the region, the role of New Jersey as "Crossroads of the Revolutionary", and, "Why Preserve Revolutionary War Battlefields," this reviewers favorite.

Dunkerly does an excellent job of explaining how the New Jersey and Washington’s army helped win the war, and why it still matters. He also makes an important case for the need to seek out the remaining unpreserved sites from those days, to save for the future, helping us better remember what happened.

Unhappy Catastrophes is an invaluable read, and highly recommended.

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Note: Unhappy Catastrophes is also available in e-editions.

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