Lecture: Fred Zilian & The RI Campaign & Battle of Rhode Island (1778)

Rather than being a summer vacation playground as it is today, Newport County, during the Revolutionary War era, was a war zone. In December, 1776, British-German forces occupied Aquidneck Island and remained for almost 3 years. In the summer of 1778, American forces mounted a Rhode Island Campaign culminating in the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29th, the largest and final battle of the war in New England and the first operation jointly planned with America’s French allies. This lecture will provide the background to the campaign and its execution and explain the Battle of Rhode Island and its outcome and significance.

About the presenter: After a 21-year career as an infantry officer in the Army, Fred Zilian was an educator at Portsmouth Abbey School, where he taught history, ethics, and German, and an adjunct professor of history and politics at Salve Regina University. He now lectures on a wide variety of subjects, gives literature and poetry readings, and offers tours of Newport, the Battle of Rhode Island (1778), and Boston. Zilian holds a Ph.D. in international relations/strategic studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and book reviews on a wide variety of subjects in numerous publications and platforms from the Wall Street Journal to the Newport Daily News. For 10 years he was a regular columnist for the Newport Daily News. He has also published a book: From Confrontation to Cooperation: The Takeover of the National People’s (East German) Army by the Bundeswehr. For 20 years he performed as Abraham Lincoln in his one-man play, “Honest Abe.”

For More information visit the Tiverton Public Library’s website here.