Book Review: Memoir of Benjamin Tallmadge by Benjamin Tallmadge
Four Stars
“I soon left the paternal abode and entered the tented field.”
As a student of history I love primary sources. What letters and journals of participants suffer in bias they make up in immediacy. Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge was a Revolutionary War hero, known to viewers of AMC’s TURN: Washington’s Spies as Washington’s spymaster. (They got that much right.)
His brother along with thousands of other captured Americans “… perished in prison by severe usage, sickness, etc.”
He was also a participant in most major and many minor military actions in and around New York City throughout the war. Though these memoirs were written forty years after the fact, they provide a literate (Tallmadge graduated from Yale in 1773) record of American leadership and battlefield fortunes.
“At this time a very dense fog began to rise … I recollect this particular providential occurrence perfectly well.”
Twice Tallmadge recounts Continue reading
As a Matter of Fancy 