1776: America and Britain at War [Paperback]

While there's nothing new in the material, this book will be a revelation for those who mainly know the political history of the American Revolution. That political history wouldn't mean anything except for the military having found its footing and eventually succeeding against the British with a lot of help from our friends, the French.

The book's main focus is on the efforts to secure the British evacuation from Boston, the ill-led and disastrous defense of Long Island and New York City, the bloody retreat through New Jersey, and the counter-attacks at Trenton and Princeton.

Mr. McCullough does a fine job of putting the military history into context in terms of politics, social and economic conditions, the weather, provisioning, atrocities and the maneuvering between Great Britain and the Americans.

Within the military history, there's a superb consideration of strategy, structure, resources, command styles, personalities and terrain. In many cases, you will feel like you were there. He brings an intensity that many of the best of the Civil War historians bring to their descriptions of those battles.

Overall, though, this is a biography of George Washington as a learning military leader who wasn't up to the challenge . . . but won out through determination and perseverance in the face of enormous disadvantages, crushing setbacks and personal anguish. I suspect you'll see Washington differently after reading this book. Here is a great man, severely tested, rather than the hero in a statue or a portrait whom we normally think of.

I encourage you to share this book with young people. They probably don't realize what a close thing it is that we have our freedom as Americans, and how hard even the greatest have to work to accomplish their goals . . . even when their lives are on the line.

My only complaint about this book is that text could have used some easy-to-read maps for all of the New York campaign. The reproduced British maps are interesting, but hard to read. I suggest that you examine a topographical map of southeastern New York to study as you read those sections.

Great stuff, Mr. McCullough! I can hardly wait to see what he will write about next.

"1776" actually covers a sixteen month period, beginning on October 26, 1775 when King George III went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and ending essentially with the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777. In between McCullough divides the military history of the war into three periods: "The Siege" of Boston, the "Fateful Summer" trying to defend New York City, and "The Long Retreat" that found the American army retreating to Pennsylvania before crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve to surprise the Hessians at Trenton. This military history begins with the stalemate at Boston and then moves to the string of defeats at Brooklyn, Kips Bay, White Plains, and Fort Washington, where the key commonality is a pair of brilliant maneuvers at night, one to put cannons on the heights of Dorchester and the other to evacuate the army to New York. This sets up the most demonstrative successes by such endeavors with the pair of victories in New Jersey that ended the year favorably for the cause of Independency.

Several things stand out as I think about what I learned from this book. First, I realize that my knowledge of the American Revolution does not have the same liner clarity as what I know about the Civil War. Even having read Jeff Sharaa's two books covering this period I still had it in my head that the attack on Trenton came after the winter at Valley Forge, when obviously that is not the case. Second, I was struck by the happenstance of weather that worked to the advantage of the Americans and against the interests of the British on more than one occasion during this period of time. When both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration the nation say in the coincidence the hand of God. It would be difficult not to reach the same conclusion given the fortuitous fog, massive thunderstorm, and ill blown wind that McCullough details in his narrative.

Third, the disdain the British and Hessian troops had for the Americans is made palatable. Not only did the Colonials have the nasty habit of shooting from behind rocks and trees, but given an untenable situation they would rather retreat to fight another day then stay and die. McCullough provides details on the American "rabble" because he makes good use of the letters and diaries of common men as well as those put down by the Founding Fathers. Fourth and probably most important is how McCullough extends the central importance of commitment, what Washington called "perseverance," to the cause beyond the commanding general to other patriots, most notably Henry Knox and Nathaniel Greene. Still, in the end "1776" is an appreciation for Washington as "the deliverer of his own country" (the quoted prediction was made by Greene). McCullough amplifies their perseverance by contrasting it with the suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement and fear that these men had to contend with in 1776.

Consequently, McCullough ends his book with a grandiose example of litotes that serves as his ultimate thesis statement: "Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning--how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities or strengths of individual character had made the difference--the outcome seemed little short of a miracle." The advantage of McCullough saving his understated thesis for the final line of the book is that he is well aware by that by the time we reach it he has already proven his point.

Reading McCullough is different from reading most historians because his voice is so ingrained from his narration of the Ken Burns documentarian on "The Civil War" and other works. Having the on-line audio excerpt to listen to McCullough reading from pages 6-7 is unnecessary because when I read the book I was always hearing his dulcet tones. Almost the last 100 pages of the book are devoted to McCullough's Acknowledgments, Source Notes, Bibliography, and Index, so anyone interested in purusing particular subjects in more detail will have starting points. I know that "1776" is supposed to be a companion volume to McCullough's Pulitzer Prize winning look at "John Adams," but I can assure you that you can enjoy one before the other and there is no clear argument to be made for either book as a starting point.