David McCullough's best-selling 1776 (Simon & Schuster, 5/05, 973.3 M) ranks as one of the greatest books ever written about America and her War of Independence.
In celebration of our nation's birthday and a wonderful book, I've posted an excerpt from a review of 1776 that appeared in the May 23, 2005 issue of The New Yorker.
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It's time for Americans to see that to really honor our country and troops overseas, whatever we buy must keep Americans working. A strong economy requires that we consumer-citizens must demand of our political leaders that corporations make our food, toys, appliances, clothes, etc. in the USA. Buying American not only means more American jobs, but avoids so many of the problems we've encountered recently with unsafe imports from China.
BOOKS
National Treasure
In the year 1776, character was destiny.
by Joshua Micah Marshall May 23, 2005
The title of the book, “1776,” is no mere flourish; the narrative is confined almost entirely to that single year, in which the fledgling Continental Army battled and retreated—mainly retreated—from Boston to New York and then, finally, across a wintry New Jersey to the outskirts of Philadelphia, before snapping back at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. The Continental Congress, sitting at Philadelphia, figures in the narrative as little more than a faraway home office, freely dispensing suggestions and requests that seldom square with the desperate situation at hand. Even the Declaration of Independence, splitting the year in two on July 4th, plays only a cameo role in the story. There are vivid biographical vignettes of Washington’s deputies, including Knox and General Nathanael Greene, and of foes like General William Howe (Lord Richard’s brother) and George III, but Washington remains the moral axis around which the drama revolves. McCullough, whose books include superb biographies of John Adams and Harry S. Truman, rarely finds his way into clashes of ideas or vast impersonal forces. (The word “equality” gets its only mention halfway through the book.) This is history at the ground level, sometimes even a few inches below. There is squishing mud for soldiers to trudge through, letters about absent loved ones and heartbreaking deaths, driving snow, and battlefields tipped with sun-gleaming bayonets like so many teeth grasping for prey. The prose is vibrant, and there is a telling insight into each character—William Howe, we learn, is valiant and courageous in battle, lackadaisical and self-indulgent when not. But the book is essentially a portrait of the Continental Army’s commander.
The title of the book, “1776,” is no mere flourish; the narrative is confined almost entirely to that single year, in which the fledgling Continental Army battled and retreated—mainly retreated—from Boston to New York and then, finally, across a wintry New Jersey to the outskirts of Philadelphia, before snapping back at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. The Continental Congress, sitting at Philadelphia, figures in the narrative as little more than a faraway home office, freely dispensing suggestions and requests that seldom square with the desperate situation at hand. Even the Declaration of Independence, splitting the year in two on July 4th, plays only a cameo role in the story. There are vivid biographical vignettes of Washington’s deputies, including Knox and General Nathanael Greene, and of foes like General William Howe (Lord Richard’s brother) and George III, but Washington remains the moral axis around which the drama revolves. McCullough, whose books include superb biographies of John Adams and Harry S. Truman, rarely finds his way into clashes of ideas or vast impersonal forces. (The word “equality” gets its only mention halfway through the book.) This is history at the ground level, sometimes even a few inches below. There is squishing mud for soldiers to trudge through, letters about absent loved ones and heartbreaking deaths, driving snow, and battlefields tipped with sun-gleaming bayonets like so many teeth grasping for prey. The prose is vibrant, and there is a telling insight into each character—William Howe, we learn, is valiant and courageous in battle, lackadaisical and self-indulgent when not. But the book is essentially a portrait of the Continental Army’s commander.
Washington lacked Adams’s intellectual rigor and Jefferson’s curiosity, and, unlike younger members of the founding generation, such as Madison and Hamilton, he contributed no signal writings or ideas to American statecraft. Hamilton, who served under him as an aide-de-camp during the war and understood his iconic power, found him admirable but dull. He could even be a poor general, especially in 1776, when he was still learning how to command an army. Yet men held him in awe. Almost everyone who worked with him or around him or came up against him could see his power, usually from the first moment. It was his stature and gravitas, more than anything else, that held the country together through the dark months that followed the Declaration of Independence.
The key fact about the Revolutionary War is that the colonists didn’t have to win their independence from Britain so much as they had to fend off Britain’s efforts to snatch it back. Before the revolutionary crisis began, in the seventeen-sixties, British dominion had rested lightly on the American colonies. Merchants in port towns who shipped goods overseas had to contend with the King’s laws and tariffs, but few other Americans had much contact with either. In the century and a half after the first colonies were established, the mother country had tried to exert real control for only a few short spells. Each time, Crown and Commons soon shifted their attention to some other pressing matter, and the colonists were once more left to their own devices. Royal authority in America collapsed as swiftly as it did because it was scarcely entrenched to begin with, not because there was overwhelming support for the patriot cause.
The fledgling United States had only to avoid being overrun or demoralized. As Washington quickly saw, above all else that meant keeping the Continental Army intact—safe from annihilation in the field and from hunger and disease off it. He proved uniquely suited to the task, although just what it was that set him apart is often difficult to grasp at a remove of two centuries. Sometimes we can make it out only as astronomers discern black holes, from its effects on things nearby. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, claimed that Washington had “so much martial dignity in his deportment that . . . there is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.” Shortly after making Washington’s acquaintance, General Greene, a Rhode Islander who became one of his most trusted deputies, told a friend that Washington’s very presence spread “the spirit of conquest . . . through the whole army.” Greene hoped that “we shall be taught to copy his example and to prefer the love of liberty in this time of public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life and support ourselves with manly fortitude amidst all the dangers and hardships that attend a state of war.”
The fledgling United States had only to avoid being overrun or demoralized. As Washington quickly saw, above all else that meant keeping the Continental Army intact—safe from annihilation in the field and from hunger and disease off it. He proved uniquely suited to the task, although just what it was that set him apart is often difficult to grasp at a remove of two centuries. Sometimes we can make it out only as astronomers discern black holes, from its effects on things nearby. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, claimed that Washington had “so much martial dignity in his deportment that . . . there is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.” Shortly after making Washington’s acquaintance, General Greene, a Rhode Islander who became one of his most trusted deputies, told a friend that Washington’s very presence spread “the spirit of conquest . . . through the whole army.” Greene hoped that “we shall be taught to copy his example and to prefer the love of liberty in this time of public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life and support ourselves with manly fortitude amidst all the dangers and hardships that attend a state of war.”
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