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November 19, 2010 John W. Hall (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Washington's Irregulars: Scholars of George Washington's military career have long contested the popular image of Washington as a quintessentially "American" general, baptized in the fire of frontier Indian warfare and destined to lead an army of farmers against European automatons and mercenaries. Citing his disdain for the militia and his faith in traditional military discipline, most biographers have characterized Washington as an essentially conventional warrior who cast himself and his army in European molds. But many of these interpretations emerged as historians sought to understand the United States' failure in Vietnam, and they imposed twentieth century taxonomies on the warfare of an earlier age. Examining Washington's conduct in the light of contemporary military theory and his own writings, John Hall reevaluates both Washington's practice of petite guerre and the anachronisms used to characterize "irregular warfare" in the Revolutionary era. John W. Hall is the Ambrose-Hesseltine Assistant Professor of U.S. Military History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He previously served fifteen years as an officer in the U.S. Army and taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Hall is the author of Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War, which Harvard University Press published in 2009. He is presently working on a military history of Indian removal (also to be published by Harvard). Dr. Hall is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Co-sponsored by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies |