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A wintry December 1776 forced General Washington's army to struggle against the ice, snow, sleet, and wind as well as against Hessian and British soldiers.John L. Moore's nonfiction book draws on first-person accounts to chronicle these struggles. In the weeks prior to Washington's victory over the Hessians at Trenton: Continental regiments coming south from Albany, New York, to join Washington in Pennsylvania's Bucks County ran into a severe snowstorm as they marched across northern New Jersey.Militia troops from Dover, Delaware, marched through snow to join Washington in eastern Pennsylvania. En route, they met a congressman fleeing Philadelphia who predicts that Washington may soon need "to obtain the best terms (of surrender) that could be had from the enemy."A Philadelphia militia company, ordered to make a night march, "hadn't marched far before it began to rain and snow," the sergeant said. When the men reached their objective, they were "as wet as rain could make us and cold to numbness."Washington's offensive against Trenton began on a "fearfully cold and raw" Christmas night on the Delaware River's Pennsylvania side with "a snow storm setting in," an officer said."The wind is northeast and beats in the faces of the men," the officer said. "It will be a terrible night for the soldiers who have no shoes." Even so, the soldiers crossed into New Jersey, then marched nine miles to Trenton.Downriver, hundreds of General John Cadwalader's militiamen also managed to reach New Jersey even though, as Colonel Joseph Reed reported, "the ice began to drive with such force and in such quantities as threatened many boats with absolute destruction." Cadwalader called off the offensive when his men couldn't get the cannons ashore.

One Sunday in 1782, white vigilantes suddenly appeared at a camp of Delaware Indians on an island in the Allegheny River near Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. Guns blazing, they attacked, killing several Indians and neutralizing U.S. soldiers assigned to guard them.These Delawares were active allies of the American army. Two held the rank of captain, and others had served as scouts. The chief, Colonel Killbuck, escaped by swimming.The title of John L. Moore's nonfiction book, "Murder at Killbuck Island," comes from the true story of these killings. It is among the most obscure of the many unprovoked attacks that Native Americans suffered at the hands of white people.The book is the fifth in Moore's ongoing Revolutionary Pennsylvania Series. The account of the attack on Killbuck's camp is one of seven dealing with various aspects of the Revolutionary War. Others tell how: Church bells rang to signal Benjamin Franklin's return from London in May 1775. Hundreds of Philadelphians rode out to meet John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Adams, coming from Massachusetts to attend the Continental Congress.Pennsylvania soldiers mutinied in their winter camp at Morristown, N.J., in January 1781. Ten months later, they were in the American army's front lines at Yorktown, Va.A wealthy landowner on the Susquehanna River's West Branch wanted Hessian POWs to build a stone fort to replace a wooden defense burned by pro-British Indians.Pennsylvania militia officers confiscated the guns of Loyalists, then redistributed them to soldiers marching off the fight the British.Tories in Buck County robbed tax collectors whose revenues financed the local militia. After the war, several fled to Canada. At least two were hanged.

When the American Revolution began in 1775, neither the British nor the Americans wanted to involve the native tribes. "This is a family quarrel between us and Old England," the U.S. Congress told the Iroquois Confederacy. "You Indians are not concerned in it."The Indians didn't want to take sides. "We will not suffer either the English or Americans to march an army through our country," Guyasuta, the ranking Iroquois chief in the Ohio River Valley, declared at Pittsburgh in 1776.The natives' neutrality didn't last another year."The western Indians are united against us," Brigadier General Edward Hand said in September 1777. The Outposts tells how Hand led a mostly militia force from Fort Pitt into Indian Country in February 1778. When his troops met friendly Delawares in the woods, they "were so impetuous that I could not prevent their killing the man and one of the women," he said.John L. Moore's nonfiction book draws on first-person accounts to chronicle these events.Late 1778 saw the Americans erect two forts-Fort McIntosh at present-day Beaver, Pa., and Fort Laurens at Bolivar, Ohio-along a key trail linking Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit, 300 miles to the northwest. The construction was ordered by General Lachlan McIntosh, a Georgian who didn't appreciate the severity of northern winters.Delaware Indians, still friendly toward the United States, welcomed Fort Laurens, but the British and their native allies realized the outpost would support an American march against Detroit. When hostile warriors prevented McIntosh from shipping provisions to the fort, soldiers in the garrison began to starve. Hungry soldiers "washed their moccasins and broiled them for food, and broiled strips of old dried hides," an elderly veteran recalled decades later.