When Americans think about the Revolution, they often picture Boston, Philadelphia, or Yorktown. But the war that created the United States was fought as fiercely in New York as anywhere in the colonies.
From the streets of Manhattan to the Hudson Valley and the Mohawk frontier, New York became the Revolution's central battleground—politically, militarily, and socially. In the new collection 'Fire and Freedom: The American Revolution in New York,' historian Thomas Wermuth and his fellow editors bring together leading scholars to tell a richer, more complicated story of the conflict and the people who lived through it.
Wermuth is the Frank Bumpus Chair in Hudson River Valley History at Marist University and Academic Director of the Hudson River Valley Institute. Today, we explore how New York helped shape the American Revolution—and why its story still matters.
