ERIC D. LEHMAN

      WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

      Middletown, Connecticut

      WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

      Middletown CT 06459

      www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2014 Eric D. Lehman All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Richard Hendel Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

      The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

      Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8195-7329-2

      Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8195-7330-8

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      available upon request

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover illustration: detail from the mural “Battle of Groton Heights,” by David R. Wagner.

      Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xxiii
On the Edge of Spring	1
Flashpoint	14
Resist Even Unto Blood	28
The Shadow War	46
Invasion	62
Villainous Perfidy	79
The Scandal of the Age	97
A Parricide in Old Virginia	113
William Ledyard’s Last Summer	127
The Sixth of September	140
The Battle of Groton Heights	151
Remember New London	162
The Fall of Silas Deane	178
Epilogue	197
A Note on Sources	205
Notes	207
Index	255

      Preface

      Just after midnight, a fleet of twenty-four ships slid east on the calm black water of the Devil’s Belt. It was late summer in 1781, and the fleet had waited until complete darkness to weigh anchor and move up from the west, with a fair wind behind them. Now they stood near Plum Island, outside Gardiner’s Bay, at the very tip of Long Island, ten miles southwest as the crow flies from the entrance to New London harbor. The ships would have to go farther to avoid

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