What I Learned, and Re-learned, About the Revolution

History teachers love to read about history, so when I saw that the first of three parts of Rick Atkinson's trilogy about the military part of the American Revolution, called The British Are Coming, had hit the shelves, I snapped one up.

It takes a while to absorb. It's 564 pages of text, with very detailed maps to which one needs to keep referring as Atkinson winds you through the very exciting, very dangerous, very precarious first two years of the Revolutionary War. Its language kept me near a dictionary. The sophistication of military and naval terminology, especially dated as they were, made my head shake. Sometimes it was as if he was so immersed in the 18th Century that he was talking to someone still living then. The research and notes are amazing. I'll leave it at that.

That can wear one out, but if one keeps going, the narrative is stirring and deep. I learned, and re-learned, quite a few things:

• This was no quaint conflict. This was fierce, no-holds-barred butchery, executed without hesitation by both sides. The British were especially fond of running the colonists through with their bayonets. The colonists were happy to pick off the proud British regulars as they marched with their bright red coats. Both greatly feared that aspect of the other.
• Should someone have died in the fighting, it would have been far better to have died immediately. Descriptions of those dying after days of helpless suffering were awful.
• Disease significantly slowed both sides: dysentary, cholera, and especially smallpox. Far more soldiers died from disease than from battle wounds.
• Colonial incompetence matched that of British unfamiliarity with the land, and in that sense, balanced each other out, at least early on. When the British knew where they were and what they were doing, as in Canada, they utilized their other advantages in training and supply to rout the Americans. When they didn't, they missed enormous opportunities, as in New York, to end the war quickly.
• George Washington was amazing, impetuous, and ambivalent all together. He and his undersupplied, perpetually underpaid, but incredibly inspired army--the numbers of which were never stable, since Continental Army regulars were supplemented by colonial militiamen whose numbers ebbed and waned--survived sometimes on sheer luck, sheer guts, and sheer feel for the situation. Smartly, he often convened war counsels of his officers before making big moves. Sometimes they disagreed, and he listened. Usually, they were right.
• The next time you're outside, walk about forty or fifty steps, or about thirty yards. Then look back. Atkinson writes that, at the Battle of Princeton (a week after the crossing of the Delaware at Trenton), Washington was that close to British regulars--and on top of his white horse to boot. You will think what I did: He's the bravest person I've ever heard of, or the craziest. He rode up there to inspire his men. Think it worked?
• One of the things that saved Washington in that situation was the inaccuracy of weaponry of that day. That's why soldiers stood together to fire at soldiers standing together on the other side: so they could hit someone. Still, there was plenty of carnage. See above.
• Congress exasperated Washington with its dithering. Fortunately, King George III insisted on trying to manage the war himself, not unlike Hitler long afterwards, and was obviously way off in some of his reasoning--which was badly shaded by the same British condescension which had a great deal to do with causing the conflict in the first place. But then, the American colonies were, by far, the largest and most lucrative part of the British Empire, which made their preservation under the crown an incredible priority. Once again, follow the money.
• Ben Franklin really was the walking, talking embodiment of what America seemed to represent to Europeans. That was good, because he was the driving force behind getting France, then Spain and the Dutch, to help out by shipping weapons (not all of which worked), then cash, and finally warships and soldiers.
• American schooners were re-equipped for fighting and poked holes in the British blockade of the colonies. At times, British supply ships were intercepted and captured, which frustrated the British to no end. Some of those ships carried messages meant for generals in the field. They never got there, causing confusion and mis-coordination. A regular round-trip to the colonies and back took over a year.
• The British treatment of American prisoners was ghastly. A good three-fourths of them died in captivity. Many of them were herded onto ships offshore, where they died of malnutrition, starvation, and disease. It reminded me of the Bataan Death March of WW II, or of Andersonville prison of the Civil War. Like I said: This was no "gentleman's war."
• I was led to believe that not much happened in the South during the war's early stages. Not so: The British tried to take the port of Charleston, South Carolina in 1776. The colonists threw them back. The British tried to organize a Tory militia in North Carolina the same year. The colonists routed them. The colonists drove the British out of the port of Norfolk, Virginia. The British burned the town to keep the colonists from benefiting from supplies.
• If it's possible, the rebel colonists hated the Tories more than the British. The Tories hated right back. In those terms, this truly was a no-mercy civil war.
• If there was an MVP for the colonists in those first two years, it had to be Benedict Arnold. No one had more talent, and no one used it better. He was both a field general and an admiral, fighting the British to a standstill in both ways in Canada and upper New York. He was badly wounded at Quebec, but kept commanding his troops through a desperate retreat with the British right on their heels. No, he did not get the credit he deserved, due somewhat to haughty arrogance that repelled many. Atkinson points out that he had a right to be bitter about it, though. His infamous betrayal is yet to come.
• How the hell the colonists got those field guns all the way from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston during the winter of 1775-76, through snow and over the Adirondacks (including downhill all that way, think about that) to drive the British out of there is a feat that surpasses the imagination. Henry Knox, later to become the first Secretary of War, was the mastermind.
• The crossing of the Delaware was an act of desperation. Washington's army was amazingly lucky, with help from a foggy night, to have escaped from New York, but he had lost plenty from desertions and enlistments that weren't renewed. He personally begged others to stay on if only for a couple of more weeks. In a scene made for television, he lined them up and asked them to give yet more for their country and their families. First no one stepped forward, so he asked them again. Then a couple did. He asked again and got a couple more. He kept asking, and a few dozen more stepped up. It allowed him to surprise the Hessians at Trenton the morning after Christmas. Then he pulled a fast one on Cornwallis to win at Princeton.
• Speaking of that battle: Two Americans we would hear from a bit later were participants. Colonel Alexander Hamilton got out of sickbay to help guide artillery. His death from gunfire would come later, applied by another former rebel, Aaron Burr. Captain James Monroe, all of 18, was wounded twice at Trenton, including in a lung. He must have carried it with him the rest of his life, including during two presidential terms, like Andrew Jackson.
• Paul Revere probably did not exactly say The British are coming, nor did martyred spy Nathan Hale probably exactly say I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. They probably did say something akin to that. The rest is the makings of legend. By the way: Revere was captured during his ride and the British later let him go, which I already knew. Hale was allowed to hang for several days as an example, which I did not know.
• Most of the time, dead soldiers and limbs that had been amputated were buried en masse. No time to lose on ceremony; there was a war to fight.
• Washington understood early that the defeat of his army, not necessarily the taking of territory, would decide the war. He knew he only had to outlast the British, who would eventually exhaust themselves. Victory meant only to avoid capture, fighting here and there to pare the British numbers and keep his own people engaged and feeling competent. More than once, the British knew they had him. Each time, inexplicably, they rested rather than relentlessly pursue. Each time, he got away, just barely.
• On the other hand, the British never hesitated to kill colonial livestock and burn cities. There were also reports of rape, sometimes stemming from the German Hessians who had been hired to take care of this dirty business. This, of course, enraged the colonists even more deeply.

My theory of warfare is bearing out. War, I taught the students, is about four things: Technology, production, strategy and morale, all over time. Who wins those four battles wins it all, or morale overwhelms the other three. One side either stops fighting because it can't, or because it doesn't want to anymore. That's why, for instance, when independence was declared, colonists pulled down a statue of George III in downtown New York City, and melted the lead into 42,000 bullets. Not much for technology and strategy, but for production and especially morale, it was a real winner. Good for them, because when General William Howe's army came in and took over the city, the British held New York for the rest of the war--another seven years.

In those years would come gradual, building, undeniable resistance that would become an unbeatable force. To paraphrase John Adams, the revolution really began in the hearts and minds of the American people. As of early 1777, it was already beginning to tell. The British would not only have to subdue Washington's army, but its whole support system, too, which grew with dreams of freedom and independence that needed to be established, not just declared. We know how that went. Rick Atkinson promises two more tries to tell us how. I look forward to both of them.