The Brandywine Battle

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Historian Thomas J. McGuire calls the Battle of Brandywine, on Sept. 11th, 1777, a turning point in the American Revolution and a case study in "strategy, generalship, and lost opportunities." The dawn-to-dusk battle saw several military milestones, but the only "first" that has never been fully documented is the story of how the Battle of Brandywine became the best historic example of the ebb and flow of battlefield preservation.This illustrated book is the first to tell the story of how generations of individuals - former soldiers, historians, county commissioners, and even Congressmen - worked to commemorate the battle and later to protect a 10-square-mile area ¬¬- centered in Birmingham and Pennsbury Townships - that officially became the Brandywine Battlefield National Historic Landmark (NHL) on January 20, 1961. Today the American Battlefield Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1996 has helped the Brandywine Battlefield Task Force to oversee the protection of what is now a 35,000 acre- battlefield landscape. The expanded protection is rooted in the idea that only open and intact land can reveal the military decisions that were made on that dark day in 1777.