Monmouth

France was in the war, the British were abandoning Philadelphia, and a 12-mile column was crawling across New Jersey in killing heat. Washington's council split: shadow the British and let them go, or strike. The army's most experienced general argued hard for letting them go, and then demanded command of the attack he had opposed.

Lee's attack came apart against troops that turned out to be Cornwallis's best, his vanguard fell back in good order but with no word sent to Washington, and Washington rode forward into the retreat. What he said to Lee is the most legend-scraped scene in the war. The seven men close enough to swear to it recorded cold fury and no profanity at all.

Behind the ravines, the line Steuben's winter had built: Stirling's guns on Perrine Ridge, Greene's on Combs Hill, Wayne forward at the hedgerow, an artillery duel in the heat, and a woman at a gun whose story the whole country would tell. By dark the army was advancing, Clinton was slipping away, and Charles Lee was writing the letters that would destroy him.