#1A_Daniel_Morgan

Award-winning author Al Zambone crafts compelling narratives grounded in historical context. His book Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, describes the struggles of one of the finest soldiers of the American Revolution, not only during but before and after that war. A homeless runaway who became a Brigadier General and a Congressman, Morgan’s life is a window that provides a unique view of the world of early America. Daniel Morgan can be found in bookstores everywhere, as hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

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Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life

Winner of the 2018 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Biography
Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award, Honorable Mention

On January 17, 1781, at Cowpens, South Carolina, the notorious British cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton and his legion were destroyed along with the cream of Lord Cornwallis’s troops. The man who planned and executed this stunning American victory was Daniel Morgan. Once a barely literate backcountry laborer, Morgan now stood at the pinnacle of American martial success.

Born in New Jersey in 1736, he left home at seventeen and washed up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. There he worked in mills and as a teamster, and was recruited for Braddock’s disas­trous expedition to take Fort Duquesne from the French in 1755. He learned to read, married, became a landowner, a slaveowner, and a father. A Captain of Virginia Militia, when Congress called for riflemen to join the siege of Boston in 1775, Morgan organized a select group of riflemen and headed north. From that moment on, Morgan’s presence made an immediate impact on the battlefield and on his superiors. Washington soon recognized Morgan’s leadership and tactical abilities. When Morgan’s troops blocked the British retreat at Saratoga in 1777, ensuring an American victory, he received accolades from across the colonies. 

In Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, the first major biogra­phy of this iconic figure in sixty years, historian Albert Louis Zambone presents Morgan as the quintessential American everyman, who rose through his own dogged determination from poverty and obscurity to become one of the great battlefield commanders in American history. Using social history and other advances in the discipline that had not been available to earlier biographers, the author provides an engrossing portrait of this storied per­sonality of America’s founding era—a common man in uncommon times.

Prologue from the Book

A Reader's Companion

Available at these fine bookstores

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“Zambone establishes himself as a gifted popular historian with this nuanced and engrossing look at the life of the soldier and colonial politician Daniel Morgan. . . . The result—a look at a consequential but now-obscure figure who came from as Zambone puts it, “the often-silent ranks of the colonial poor”—will fascinate readers.”

—Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review)

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“Mr. Zambone tells Morgan’s story with gusto and wit. . . . Morgan succeeded with those unproven troops at Cowpens, Mr. Zambone writes, “not because he trusted militia as a group but because he believed in them as individuals.” There’s something peculiarly American about that, and it might say a great deal about whey we won the war and the British lost.”

—The Wall Street Journal

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“Zambone has done an excellent job re-creating Morgan’s life. This well-documented account offers a very readable, modern reappraisal of Morgan, the first significant treatment of this key Revolutionary figure since Don Higginbotham’s Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman and North Callahan’s Daniel Morgan: Ranger of the Revolution (both, 1961).”

—Choice Reviews

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“The audio book of Daniel Morgan sounds as good as I’d hoped. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that the book was written to be listened to, and Tom Taverna is worth listening to.”

—Al Zambone, author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life

“Daniel Morgan, Virginian”—delivered May 23, 2019, at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, VA

“Daniel Morgan gives substance to the legends and mythology surrounding the American Revolution…He was a self-made man who could never have risen through the ranks of the British army and yet played a critical leadership role in two of the most decisive battles of the war: Cowpens and Saratoga. Elegantly written, Al Zambone has not only produced an original new account of his military career but has successfully placed him in the context of his times and integrated his biography into the wider world of Revolutionary and Early Republican America.”

Andrew Jackson O’Shaugnessy, author of The Men Who Lost America

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“Albert Louis Zambone’s evocative and engaging book illuminates the interplay between the Revolutionary War and the larger American Revolution, which transformed Daniel Morgan’s life and the society he inhabited. Daniel Morgan is important and crisply written and not to be missed.”

Lorri Glover, author of Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution

“Daniel Morgan has been long overdue for a new biography, and Zambone has given us a tour-de-force. His volume is exhaustively researched, elegantly written, and deeply revealing—by far the best biography we have of this fascinating yet enigmatic member of the founding generation. A wonderful book.”

Mark Edward Lender, coauthor of Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle

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“This welcome reappraisal of the dramatic life of one of America’s finest military leaders places Daniel Morgan squarely in the context of his times. Rugged and defiant, Morgan was also a clever and innovative officer whose influence on the American military ethos reaches right down to today.”

Edward G. Lengel, author of General George Washington: A Military Life

“Roughhewn backwoodsman Daniel Morgan, known as the ‘Old Wagoner,’ was truly a front line hero of the American Revolution. Think of the invasion of Quebec in 1775, the battles of Saratoga in 1777, and his classically brilliant victory at the Cowpens in 1781 during the Southern campaigns. Morgan constantly provided invaluable martial leadership during the Revolutionary War. Albert Zambone’s new biography beautifully captures the old wagoner’s action-packed military adventures and life story. A gem of a book.”

James Kirby Martin, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor of History at the University of Houston, author of the award-winning Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero

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In his riveting biography of Daniel Morgan, a home-grown military genius who left an indelible mark on America’s Revolutionary War, Albert Zambone provides a thrilling account of a world in upheaval as seen through the eyes of the canny though unlettered Morgan.  With his frontier riflemen and tactical brilliance, Morgan did as much to beat the British as any American soldier except Washington, and inhabits these pages with a rough grace and compelling charm.”

David O. Stewart, author of George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father

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Albert Louis Zambone earned his DPhil in American History from the University of Oxford, an MA in Medieval Studies at the Catholic University of America, and a BA in History from Johns Hopkins University. He has taught in a variety of settings, including a great texts program within the Indiana Correctional system. His scholarships and awards in the field of early American history include a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Born in Philadelphia, Zambone grew up in the small South Jersey village of Greenwich, known for hosting its own revolutionary tea party in the market square. His principal research interests are centered on the colonial and revolutionary American South.