This book is an attempt to understand better the evolution of an early American way of war that condoned the use of violence against enemy noncombatants. As a serving officer in the United States Air Force, I have tried to focus on a larger audience than colonial historians. As such, I hope this book will encourage military professionals to think about the other sides of our martial culture. Military leaders should look at all the ways, even if they seem brutal and out of character, that we wage war. Similarly, there remains little doubt that a significant part of the future for the American soldier will involve the challenges, in their modern manifestations, that early American soldiers faced. Especially to my colleagues in the profession of arms, therefore, I suggest that relevant lessons abound in a study of early American military history.

Attributing names to the various groups involved in the conflicts that shaped early American history is a difficult task. I have made an effort to distinguish systematically among the different participants in seventeenth-through early-nineteenth-century American wars. First, important differences existed among “Englishmen,” “Britons,” “Anglo-Americans,” and “Americans.” “Englishmen” refers to natives of England and Wales; I use “Britons” to describe the same peoples, together with the Scots, after 1707. “Anglo-American” describes Europeans born in England's or Great Britain's North American colonial possessions or those individuals who immigrated to North America.