The Council of American Revolutionary Sites (CARS) was established in 1984 as an association of the historic sites and museums in New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania which preserve and interpret the Revolutionary War to the public. In addition to public programming, CARS also serves its member organizations as a meeting ground for shared interests.

Similar educational aims are primary among the charter purposes of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution (PSSR). Beginning in 1890 and continuing to the present time, the PSSR has engaged in an active program of monuments, memorials, and public programs which seek to inform the general public and celebrate the achievement of American Independence.

CARS and PSSR were brought together in March 1997 by "An Account of the Action," a CARS-sponsored seminar on the impact of the Revolutionary War in the Delaware Valley held at Independence National Historical Park. PSSR was pleased to provide support which enabled CARS to print and distribute the papers presented at the seminar.

In 1986 CARS published Anita D. Blackaby's 111-page Washington and the American Revolution: A Guide to the Campaigns in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. In his "Introduction" to Blackaby's book, Daniel B. Reibel pointed out that a person interested in the American Revolution may visit the historic properties and museums of the Revolutionary War "in a logical sequence. If you start out with the 1776 retreat of the American Army at Fort Lee and follow it from historic site to historic site through the Battle of Monmouth in summer of 1778, you will have seen almost every place related to the War [in the Delaware Valley]."

The web pages below follow Blackaby's and Reibel's chronological framework for the presentation of the Revolutionary War in the mid-Atlantic states. The number of CARS institutions has grown since 1986, from 25 to 44. The placement of new CARS institutions conforms to the existing narrative.

The text below also notes PSSR programs related to CARS historic properties or museums. In its first fifty years the PSSR often commemorated a Revolutionary War site by stone marker or bronze plaque. Over the past half century the Society has supported a broad range of educational programs. Every effort has been made to incorporate mention of these programs in the description of each historic site.

In addition to Blackaby's Washington and the American Revolution, the narrative has relied on four other secondary sources. The earliest of these is William S. Baker's Itinerary of General Washington from June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1892). Baker, one of the founders of PSSR, is representative of the first generation of scholars who sought to document the Revolutionary War. His publication is now considered a rare book, but it guided those who celebrated the events of the Revolution for nearly a half century.

The second is John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745 - 1799 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-44). The U.S. Congress published this set of 39 volumes in celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of George Washington. Volumes 9 and 10, which cover the period 1777-78, were particularly useful in documenting the Philadelphia Campaign. It was hoped to utilize the most recent scholarship on George Washington, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, edited by William Wright Abbott and Dorothy Twolig, but while seven volumes have been published to date, the contents extend only so far as January 1777.

The third source is a popular and widely-read account of the Revolution, The Compact History of the Revolutionary War by R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy (New York: 1963).

The last is Independence Hall Association's website ushistory.org. IHA has created and is maintaining web sites for several CARS institutions, including the Betsy Ross House, the Brandywine Battlefield, Elfreth's Alley and the Mantua Maker's Museum House, Hope Lodge & Mather Mill, the Paoli Battlefield Preservation Trust, and the Valley Forge Historical Society. PSSR wishes to acknowledge that any information gleaned from those sites which appears below is information courtesy of ushistory.org.

IHA has also created and is maintaining a web site entitled The Philadelphia Campaign 1777, "a virtual marching tour of the American Revolution." This site is a twelve-part historical narrative, which covers the period August through December 1777 and describes several events now interpreted by CARS institutions. These include the Battle of Brandywine, the Paoli Massacre, the Battle of Germantown, Fort Mifflin, and the encampments at Whitemarsh and later, at Valley Forge. The reader of the PSSR site may often find it useful to click to these IHA sites. Information courtesy of ushistory.org.

The guide begins with an account of the New York Campaign of 1776, which is intended to introduce the reader to the first military engagements of the War, those which took place in the months immediately following the Declaration of Independence. The New York Campaign is well documented with hypertext links to the five principal engagements of those five months, the battles of Long Island (now generally called Brooklyn), Manhattan, Harlem Heights, White Plains, and Fort Washington. It is hoped that the reader will thereby gain a useful knowledge of the historical context which existed when the British invaded New Jersey in November of 1776. The guide is not inclusive of all Revolutionary War events in the mid-Atlantic and contains only a summary account of War after the withdrawal of the British from Philadelphia to New York in June 1778.