Days of Siege: A Journal of the Siege of Fort Stanwix in 1777

64 pp. Edited with Commentary by Larry Lowenthal. "The image of a young soldier-scholar sitting in his bunk and writing by candlelight while enemy shells, exploding overhead, shake dust down on his pages has always appealed to the romantic imagination - and it is an image authentic to the siege of Fort Stanwix during the Revolutionary War. Although the document in question is probably not the original and the identity of the soldier who wrote it is not certain, it is apparent that during the month of August 1777, someone in the besieged American garrison took the trouble to keep a journal while surrounded, cut off, and bombarded almost daily by an enemy force more than twice the size of his own. This document has proven to be our most valuable single source of information on the siege of Fort Stanwix and has brought to life the events of 1777."