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Anthony Wayne
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Known as "Mad Anthony"
becuse of his violent nature, he was in fact very cool in battle. On the
outbreak of the war he organized a regiment and was commisioned as a colonel
in the continental army. He covered the American retreat from Quebec and
commanded a brigade at Brandywine. He was court-martialled after Paoli
but acquitted, and saw action at Germantown, Stony Point and Monmouth.
He became Commander-in-Chief of the American Army in 1792.
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An imaginative and dashing man who was
co-leader of the brilliant bloodless raid on Fort Ticonderoga, May 10
1775, in which the Americans acquired invaluble cannon and ammuniton.
Among other exploits he helped to secure victory at Bemis Heights by counter-attacking
Burgoyne who had driven in on general Gate's left. But his ambitious egoism
and lack of tact caused a lot of friction with his brother generals and
he began secretly parleying with the British to hand over the key post
at West Point. When this was discovered he fled to the British lines and
was employed in command of loyalist troops. After defecting he advised
the British that they could possibly buy Washington with a dukedom!
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Horatio Gates
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A former British Army officer with experience
in the french and indian wars, Gates had settled in America in 1772. Because
of his known revolutionary outlook he was commissioned as a general in
the American Army at the outset of the revolution, and at one time was
seriously considered as a replacement for Washington, but was made President
of the War Board instead. In 1780 he was sent to the south against Cornwallis
with a poorly trained and equipped force of 4,000 men. In a night action
at Camden this was routed by a British force of 2,300. Gates fled the
battlefield and lost his reputation that was won at Saratoga in 1777.
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Major-General Baron Friedrich
Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Von steuben
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Von Steuben had fought under Frederick
the Great at Prague, Rossbach and Kunersdorf. Taken prisoner by the Russians,
he was employed to train their soldiers! He had an estate in Swabia and
was Grand Marshal of the Court of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen.
His services were sought by the Emperor of Austria and the king of Sardinia,
but the French Minister of War, the Comte de Saint-Germain, persuaded
him instead to go to America and train Washington's Army.
Unlike so many martinets, Von Steuben
was a very good-hearted man. He would even visit the sick in their cabins',
which was hardly a common practice among the generals of his day, and
afterYorktown he is said to have sold his horse in order to have the means
to entertain some captured British officers.
When the war ended, Congress gave Von
Steuben a sword with a gold hilt; the state of New Jersey a small farm,
and that of New York 16,000 acres of wilderness in Oneida County. Seven
years later, Congress gave him a pension of 2,500 dollars.
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Major-General Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-
Gilbert Du Motier, Marquis De Lafayette
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His father was slain by a cannon-ball
at Minden (1759) and he came into an enormous fortune from his maternal
grandfather (1770). He was only a captain when in 1776 he bacame friendly
with Benjamin Franklin, bought a ship and began enlisting officers. He
reached America in 1777 from France and was given a major-general's commision
by the Continental Congress. Shot through the leg at Brandywine, he was
in the wintercamp at Valley Forge with Washington. He did not conduct
any important military operations and went back to France in 1778 for
a year to obtain more assistance but returned to America in time to be
present at Yorktown. His reputation as America's chief French partisan
has become somewhat inflated, though his republican sentiments are not
in doubt, and he had a long and interesting career before him.
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