Don't Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting

H.W. Crocker III

Sep 2006 · Crown Forum

About this ebook

• Did America win its independence because British generals were too busy canoodling with their mistresses?

• Should America have annexed Mexico—all of it—and Cuba too?

• Did 1776 justify Southern secession in the nineteenth century?

• Should Patton have been promoted over Eisenhower?

• Did the U.S. military win—and Congress lose—the Vietnam War?

• Was it right to depose Saddam Hussein—and is it wrong to worry about a possible Iraqi civil war?

The answer to these questions is a resounding yes, says author H. W. Crocker III in this stirring and contrarian new book.

In Don’t Tread on Me, Crocker unfolds four hundred years of American military history, revealing how Americans were born Indian fighters whose military prowess carved out first a continental and then a global empire—a Pax Americana that has been a benefit to the world.

From the seventeenth century on, he argues, Americans have shown a jealous regard for their freedom—and have backed it up with an unheralded skill in small-unit combat operations, a tradition that includes Rogers’ Rangers, Merrill’s Marauders, and today’s Special Forces.

He shows that Americans were born to the foam too, with a mastery of naval gunnery and tactics that allowed America’s Navy, even in its infancy, to defeat French and British warships and expand American commerce on the seas.

Most of all, Crocker highlights the courage of the dogface infantry, the fighting leathernecks, and the daring sailors and airmen who have turned the tide of battle again and again.

In Don’t Tread on Me, still forests are suddenly pierced by the Rebel Yell and a surge of grey. Teddy Roosevelt’s spectacles flash in the sunlight as he leads his Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill. American doughboys rip into close-quarters combat against the Germans. Marines drive the Japanese out of their island fortresses using flamethrowers, grenades, and guts. GIs slug their way into Hitler’s Germany. The long twilight struggle against communism is fought in the snows of Korea and the steaming jungles of Vietnam. And today, U.S. Navy SEALs and U.S. Army Rangers battle Islamist terrorists in the bleak mountains of Afghanistan, just as their forebears fought Barbary pirates two hundred years ago.

Fast-paced and riveting, Don’t Tread on Me is a bold look at the history of America at war.


Also available as an eBook

Ratings and reviews

In an age of liberal revisionist apologists posing as historians, it is refreshing indeed to read this open, honest, and factual book about the development of the U.S military and its soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. This history of the United States' struggle down through the centuries with its enemies - foreign and domestic - is a superb historical account of the American fighting forces.

About the author

H. W. Crocker III is the author of Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History and Robert E. Lee on Leadership: Executive Lessons in Character, Courage, and Vision, as well as the prize-winning comic novel The Old Limey. He has worked as a journalist, speechwriter for the governor of California, and book editor. He lives near the battlefields of northern Virginia.