War Without Mercy

Drawing on vivid contemporary accounts, this is a fascinating exploration of how and why the Revolutionary War descended into a brutal existential struggle.
This engrossing history of the Revolutionary War conclusively shows that those caught up in it believed they had nothing to lose by fighting without regard for the rules of so-called "civilized warfare." The clarion call to arms "Liberty or Death" was far more than just rhetoric. At its grimmest level, it was a conflict in which military restraint was more the exception than the rule, a struggle in which combatants believed their very existence was in question. This led to an acceptance of violence against persons and property as preferable to a defeat equated with political, cultural, and even physical extinction. It was war with an expectation and acceptance of ferocity and brutality - anything to avoid defeat.
A number of historians have previously concluded that United States' founding struggle reached a level of ferocity few Americans now associate with the movement for independence. However, these studies have described what happened, without looking in detail at why the conflict took such a violent a turn. Written by two esteemed Revolutionary War historians, War Without Mercy does exactly that. Based on years of research and enlivened by little known primary sources, this is an intriguing and fresh look at a period of history we thought we knew.

Mark Edward Lender is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University. He is author or co-author of more than a dozen books including, with James Kirby Martin, the acclaimed A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789 (Wiley, 2015) - which for several years was required reading at West Point - and, with Garry Wheeler Stone, the award-winning Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016). He served on the design team for the Army's special 250th Anniversary Exhibit at the National Museum of the U.S. Army. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.