Daily Excerpt:
Next book in my American history section is George Washington: A Life (Galahad Edition)
A huge book – this was the first biography I’ve ever read of Washington, actually. My main interests had been John Adams and Thomas Jefferson for years … and somehow I took Washington for granted. So it was quite a revelation to read about the tremendous scope of his whole life, how he became a soldier, how he began to become irritated by Britain – and for him it was primarily economic. That was where it began for him. They were keeping him from making choices, in who to trade to, buy from … they were taxing the shit out of him … He became obsessed with getting around all of this, and so he made changes in his crops – he was determined to become self-sufficient. Eventually, this translated into: we need to be independent. But I was really interested in his journey – so different from the other men I’ve been studying.
So many good Washington stories. It’s real goosebump territory, if you know what I mean.
Here’s an excerpt about the winter of 1775-76. One of my favorite stories of the Revolutionary War is the hijacking of the cannons and the moving of the cannons over a damn mountain range. It’s just … you know. Goosebumps.
From George Washington: A Life (Galahad Edition)
Increasingly as the winter went by the talk in Washington’s camp reflected the mood in Congress. The nonimportation agreement was expanded as the British tightened the coastal naval blockade. With spring the Americans expected an onslaught of fresh British armies. Many Americans began to believe it was high time to give up on reconciliation with England and declare American independence. This growing movement received a considerable boost when Washington’s army suddenly acquired a large supply of modern artillery. In November 1775 Washington had dispatched his massive young artillerist, a tall, deep-voiced, 280-pound former bookseller named Henry Knox, to fetch the cannon Benedict Arnold had seized at Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Knox waited until the Hudson River froze over and then, with requisitional teams of oxen scarcely bigger than himself, towed a long column of sledges bristling with fifty-nine French- and British-forged cannon over the Berkshire Mountains along the route of the present-day Massachusetts Turnpike. His arrival in Framingham heralded the birth of a state-of-the-art American army.
By February, Washington was ready to use his new weaponry, and when on March 8 he learned from a spy inside Boston that the British command had received orders to evacuate, he decided to make political capital out of their departure by seizing the high ground of Dorchester Heights and fortifying it overnight. Anything less than a careful and quick movement would court disaster and the loss not only of his new artillery but of his army. Colonel Rufus Putnam submitted a plan to Washington on which he decided to gamble everything. Thousands of men were put to work making large frames of timber in which gabions, fascines, and bales of hay could be hauled quickly up on Dorchester Heights. The woven gabions were to be filled with earth; the hay was to be covered with as much dirt as the men could dig. Large branches, cut from nearby orchards, were sharpened to act as protective abatis to slow and ensnare infantry. Barrels of earth were readied to roll down on attackers.
By the night of March first, everything was ready. Washington put “Old Put,” Israel Putnam, the hero of Bunker Hill, in command and designated John Sullivan of New Hampshire and Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island in charge of the divisions. To cover the noise of thousands of men and their carts and draft animals Washington began an artillery barrage that night and resumed it the next night. On the night of March 4 the exchange of cannon fire was heavy. Around 7 p.m., 2000 men headed for Dorchester Heights, 800 infantry screening 1,200 workmenn who threw up breastworks and laid out the redoubts for the cannon as 300 oxcarts brought up the tools, the gabions, the fascines. A fresh work party relieved them toward dawn; by this time there were two redoubts lined with cannon infantry.
The British were stunned when dawn revealed the night’s work. Washington’s artillery could fire easily into Boston and sink any Royal Navy ship. Howe’s first reaction was to attack. He assembled troops and barges, but a storm scattered his landing craft, giving him time to ponder the possibility of another Bunker Hill. He had already decided to abandon Boston. He decided another attack was impossible and ordered the evacuation to begin. On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, three weeks after Washington’s cannon appeared on Dorchester Heights the last British transport crowded with the loyal English subjects of Massachusetts and everything Howe’s army could carry off sailed from Boston harbor. Washington had his first great victory.
The British retreat made Washington a popular hero. Harvard College granted him an honorary degree, Doctor of Laws for honoria causa, and Congress struck him a gold medal. But the real effect of his success at holding an army of farm boys and fishermen together under the glower of the British army for nearly a year was to convince Americans that men like John Adams – considered radicals a year before – were behaving rationally when they said America was ready to become a self-supporting nation. Only six weeks after Howe’s withdrawal to Nova Scotia, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a motion in Congress that “these states are and have right to be free and independent states.” As members of Congress hurried home to obtain authorization to vote for – or against – independence, Washington prepared to ward off the powerful counterattack he expected any day from the British. On July 4, when Congress voted narrowly to declare American independence, John Adams could have been speaking for his friend Washington when he wrote to Abigail Adams, “The revolution is now complete: all that remains is a war.”
