As I read 1776, the best-selling introduction to the
Revolutionary War by historian David McCullough, I kept hoping the
American colonists and their British cousins would find a better
way to settle their differences. When King George III made his case
for war before Parliament, arguing that “the spirit of the
British nation” is too high to give up the colonies that she
had “nursed with great tenderness,” I muttered,
“Get real.” The reason violence was necessary, reasoned
King George, was that the Americans had resorted to violence. In
Parliament, Charles James Fox answered the king: “I cannot
consent to the bloody consequences of so silly a contest about so
silly an object. . . and from which we are likely to derive nothing
but poverty, disgrace, defeat, and ruin.” I cheered for the
Duke of Grafton, who, speaking in the House of Commons, called for
repealing the Stamp Act and every other law that was making America
mad. Any notion of conquering America on its home turf was
“wild and extravagant,” said the Earl of Coventry. But
King George had the votes and the war was on.
When David McCullough comes to lecture in
Springfield on Monday, I’d like to ask him how that first war
could have been avoided, and whether life here would be so very
different if it had been. Did the ultimate success of that war, and
the consequent linking of violence with freedom, lead to the war in
Iraq? Was George W of 1776 anything like the George W of today?
Tom Paine might call me a “summer
soldier and a sunshine patriot,” but I sided with the British
generals who wanted to take the winter off. The American generals
were elected by their men, so they kept finding excuses not to
fight in order to curry favor with the troops. Maybe we should go
back to electing generals. During the Siege of Boston, General
George Washington turned down the Harvard president’s house
for the largest mansion on the hill, and he thought New England
Yankees “exceeding dirty and nasty.” He kept trying to
rally the troops, telling them that everything “dear and
valuable to freemen” was at stake in the war, but some
noticed the incongruity that the leader of the battle for freedom
was the master of 100 slaves. Major General Charles Lee
thought it absurd that Washington, foe of monarchy, had people
address him as “His Excellency.” No wonder that when their one-year enlistments were up, troops headed
home by the thousands.
There may have been glory later, but not in
1776. This first year of the war, covered in McCullough’s
book, went badly for the colonists. For most of its 386 pages,
Washington is in full retreat. The famous painting of
“Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which I thought
portrayed the general triumphant, was in fact a scene witnessed by
the artist Charles Wilson Peale when Washington was escaping from
the British closing in from the New Jersey side. Even the
Declaration of Independence seemed little more than an effort by
the politicians in Philadelphia to rally the troops getting beat in
New York.
Time and again during that long and bloody
year, the British would make a peace overture. “Take it, take
it,” I found myself urging, and at one point thousands in New Jersey headed for the
British camps to declare their loyalty. Washington had to keep pleading
for the country to stay the course, calling for “patience and
perseverance.” As it turned out, writes McCullough, “The
war was a longer, far more arduous, and more painful struggle than
later generations would understand or sufficiently appreciate. By the
time it ended, it had taken the lives of an estimated 25,000 Americans,
or roughly 1 percent of the population.”
McCullough takes issue with
Washington’s ill-fated indecision about the defense of Fort
Washington, which resulted in a disastrous defeat and the British
capture of 2,800 American prisoners. “And it need never have
happened,” writes the historian. I wonder if he might say the
same thing about the entire war?
David McCullough speaks at Sangamon Auditorium on the UIS campus at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the UIS ticket office. He’ll sign books in the lobby outside the auditorium after his presentation.
David McCullough speaks at Sangamon Auditorium on the UIS campus at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the UIS ticket office. He’ll sign books in the lobby outside the auditorium after his presentation.
