Monthly Archives: December 2013

I am pleased to announce the release of my next book, Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee and Richard Prescott. Westholme Publishing, 2013. 343 pages (of which the main text is 219 pages), 35 images and maps. On December 13, 1776, a party of British dragoons surprised and captured at an isolated tavern in New Jersey Major General Charles Lee, second-in-command in the Continental Army, behind only George Washington. In order to have a British captive the same rank as Lee, Rhode Island’s William Barton planned and on the night of July 10-11, 1777, executed the cross-bay capture of Major General Richard Prescott at the Overing house in Middletown, at a time when Prescott commanded the British garrison occupying Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island. Barton’s raid was the outstanding special operation of the Revolutionary War, and still ranks as one of the greatest special operations in American military history. But did the pride he earned from this mission after the war ruin thirteen years of his life? The book also addresses related topics, such as Charles Lee acting as if he deserved to take the command of the Continental Army from George Washington just prior to his capture, and the evolution of British treatment of American captive officers, from at first threatening to hang them as criminal “rebels” to eventually treating them with the same respect Americans treated British captive officers. This is my second book on the Revolutionary War. My first was The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation of the Revolutionary War, also published by Westholme Publishing. For more, click here.