The Glorious Cause was published by Ballantine Books in 2002, completing the American Revolution duology. The novel covers the war itself — from the catastrophic retreat across New Jersey in late 1776 through the decisive victory at Yorktown in October 1781 — with perspectives from Washington, Nathanael Greene, the Marquis de Lafayette, and British General Charles Cornwallis.
Shaara’s treatment of Washington is particularly effective: not the marble monument of mythology but a man constantly improvising, managing an army that is perpetually on the verge of dissolution, and making decisions that posterity would call brilliant but that felt, in the moment, like desperate gambles. The crossing of the Delaware and the attacks on Trenton and Princeton — often presented as triumphant turning points — are shown as the acts of a commander whose army was literally disintegrating and who had perhaps two weeks before it ceased to exist entirely.
The novel captures what is often lost in accounts of the Revolution: how close it came to failure at virtually every stage. The Continental Army was never adequately supplied, rarely paid, and frequently outnumbered. Washington’s achievement was not military genius in the Napoleonic sense but rather the extraordinary capacity to keep an army in the field year after year under conditions that would have broken most organizations.
The French alliance — obtained through Franklin’s diplomacy in Paris and made real by Lafayette’s devotion and Rochambeau’s professionalism — is shown as the genuinely decisive factor it was.
Collecting The Glorious Cause
First edition (Ballantine Books, New York, 2002): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $8–$20
- Signed first edition: $25–$60
- Revolution duology set (signed): $50–$100