Key to the Northern Country

Offers nearly forty years of interdisciplinary scholarship on the Hudson River Valley's role in the American Revolution.

Offers nearly forty years of interdisciplinary scholarship on the Hudson River Valley's role in the American Revolution.

The Hudson River Valley, which George Washington referred to as the "Key to the Northern Country," played a central role in the American Revolution. From 1776 to 1780, with major battles fought at Saratoga, Fort Montgomery, and Stony Point, the region was a central battleground of the Revolution. In addition, it witnessed some of the most dramatic and memorable aspects of the war, such as Benedict Arnold's failed conspiracy at West Point, the burning of New York's capital at Kingston, and the more than six-hundred-mile march of Washington and the Continental Army and Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, and his French Expeditionary Corps to Yorktown, Virginia. Compiled from essays that appeared in the Hudson Valley Regional Review and the Hudson River Valley Review, published by the Hudson River Valley Institute, the book illustrates the richly textured history of this supremely important time and place.

James M. Johnson is Executive Director of the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College, Military Historian of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, and Dr. Frank T. Bumpus Professor of Hudson River Valley History. He is also coeditor (with Christopher Pryslopski and Thomas S. Wermuth) of America's First River: The History and Culture of the Hudson River Valley, also published by SUNY Press. At the Hudson River Valley Institute, Christopher Pryslopski is Program Director and Andrew Villani is Coordinator.

"The quality of the book speaks to the various editors and authors involved in creating a text which is of the highest academic level of history writing, yet is at the same time easily accessible to a general audience. In short, this collection is a work that is a valuable addition to any classroom as well as to any home in the Hudson Valley and beyond." — About Town

"…a rich compilation … This is a veritable treasure trove of Revolutionary War trivia." — Kaatskill Life