Books: Battlefield Hamlet

THE AMERICAN REBELLION (658 pp.)—Sir Henry Clinton—Edited by William B. Willcox—Yale University ($7.50).

Few generals can resist explaining how they happened to lose a battle. Make it a campaign or a whole war and the need becomes almost compulsive. In Sir Henry Clinton's case, the explanation is one that ought to interest every U.S. citizen. And who was Sir Henry? Most schoolboys know that Lord Cornwallis surrendered the British army at Yorktown, but few know that Sir Henry, the British commander in chief, left New York on the very day of the surrender with a rescuing army.

The rescue,...