Join us for an America250 Book Talk with Colonel (Retired) James M. Johnson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of History, Marist University.
Dr. Johnson will share insights from his latest book, Key of America: Fortress West Point and the Highlands Department in the American Revolution.
The West Point Military Reservation, home of the United States Military Academy, lies on the banks of the Hudson River in the Hudson Highlands some fifty miles north of New York City. Its service to the nation began in the American Revolution long before it became a training and educational institution for future Army officers. Today it is the oldest active military post in the country to have flown the nation’s flag. George Washington understood the significance of the Hudson River and West Point’s location. He would champion the fortifications on the Hudson throughout the war. Ultimately, the works at West Point would pose a challenge to the British so formidable that they chose never to attack them. This work details the history and significance of the Highlands during the Revolution, as well as the hardships endured by soldiers and workers who toiled without benefit of modern machinery in a primeval landscape. Descriptions of the planning, building, and equipping of the fortifications reveal how an eighteenth-century society and economy were able to accomplish so much in a revolutionary environment that Washington considered the “key of America.”
Dr. James M. Johnson is Professor Emeritus in History and the Emeritus Dr. Frank T. Bumpus Chair in Hudson River Valley History at Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York. Now a resident of Danville with his wife Lois, he taught courses in military and Hudson River Valley history there from 2000-2018 and served as founding Executive Director of the Hudson River Valley Institute from its inception in 2002 until 2021.
Author of Militia, Rangers, and Redcoats, co-compiler of America’s First River, and the co-editor of “Key to the Northern Country”: The Hudson River Valley in the American Revolution, Dr. Johnson graduated from United States Military Academy in 1969 and served for thirty years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel. Duke University awarded him a Master of Arts in History in 1977 and a PhD in History in 1980. He received a second Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 1995. He commanded two field artillery batteries one in Germany and the second in Korea and taught for fifteen years in two tours in the Department of History at West Point. In his second tour there, he headed the military history program, rising to the rank of Professor of History.
