This dissertations studies the problem of military shelter and its impact on the Continental Army’s conduct during the War of American Independence. It examines ideas and practices about military housing during the eighteenth century; how Continental officers sought and obtained lodging for themselves and their men, refinements in military camp administration; how military decisions regarding shelter affected strategy, logistics, and social relationships within the army; as well as how quartering practices structured relations between civilians and the military. This dissertation maintains a geographic focus on Northwestern New Jersey, a region it defines as the Highlands, because this area witnessed a Continental Army presence of greater size and duration than anywhere else in the rebelling Thirteen Colonies. Using official military correspondence, orderly books, diaries, memoirs, civilian damage claims, and archaeological studies, this dissertation reveals that developments in military shelter formed a crucial yet overlooked component of Continental strategy. Patriot soldiers began the war with inadequate housing for operations in the field as well as winter quarters, and their health and morale suffered accordingly. In the second half of the war, Continental officers devised a new method of accommodating their men, the log-hut city. This complex of hastily-built timber huts provided cover for Patriot troops from the winter of 1777-1778 through the end of the war. This method, unknown in Europe, represented an innovation in the art of war. By providing accommodations secure from enemy attack for thousands of soldiers at little cost to the government and little inconvenience to civilians, the log-hut city made a decisive contribution to the success of the Continental Army’s war effort. / History

Using a wealth of secondary and primary sources; such as town records, diaries, tax valuations, and genealogical data, this project will attempt to shed light on the reaction of Dedham, Massachusetts, and its middle class, to military service during the American Revolution. Although extremely responsive during the opening months of the war, Dedham's middle class became reluctant to contribute its fathers and sons to the military cause when the war moved outside of their periphery, and for good reason, they needed them back home. This study determined that the lack of zeal on the part of the town's middle class was part and parcel of historical, economical, and political factors that combined to keep the fathers and sons of Dedham from serving in the war. Although declining to serve in the Continental Army, Dedham was able to continue its support for the war effort by hiring others to do the fighting for them. / Department of History

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Nathan Greene is the Revolutionary Warfare general most associated with unconventional warfare. The historiography of the southern campaign of the revolution uniformly agrees he was a guerrilla leader. Best evidence shows, however, that Nathanael Greene was completely conventional -- that his strategy, operations, tactics, and logistics all strongly resembled that of Washington in the northern theater and of the British commanders against whom he fought in the south. By establishing that Greene was within the mainstream of eighteenth-century military science this dissertation also challenges the prevailing historiography of the American Revolution in general, especially its military aspects. The historiography overwhelmingly argues the myth of the valiant few -- the notion that a minority of colonists persuaded an apathetic majority to follow them in overthrowing the royal government, eking out an improbable victory. Broad and thorough research indicates the Patriot faction in the American Revolution was a clear majority not only throughout the colonies but in each individual colony. Far from the miraculous victory current historiography postulates, American independence was based on the most prosaic of principles -- manpower advantage.

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