As we predicted in our previous edition, our October meeting was memorable. Our speaker (and former chairman) Tom Fleming took us deep inside his new book, The Perils of Peace, America's Struggle to Survive After Yorktown. A main selection of the History Book Club, Perils is rich in hitherto unexplored aspects of the last two years of the Revolution. After Yorktown, the British still had 26,000 troops on the continent. Congress was bankrupt. France was reeling in the same direction. George III was grimly committed to continuing the war. Moving with stunning ease from America to Europe, Tom told us how the French edged toward a deal with England that would have left Britain in possession of southern New York, South and North Carolina, Georgia and present day Maine. Vermont was semi-independent and negotiating with both the British and Congress, ready to jump with the winner. Disarray reigned among America's diplomats, with John Adams flinging slanders against Benjamin Franklin that were repeated on the floor of Congress, prompting Franklin to resign in disgust. The climax of this tangled tale came in 1783, when Franklin, persuaded not to quit his job, joined Adams and John Jay in negotiating a treaty of peace without consulting France — and proceeded to soothe the French foreign minister into accepting it. But in America, infuriated officers, unpaid for years, threatened to march on Congress. Washington dissuaded them, but he warned Congress that if they failed to pay these men, "then would I know what ingratitude means, and it would embitter every moment of my future life." Enough said? Tom took us to the searing climax of the story and applauding Round Tablers rushed to buy copies of Perils at a bargain price thanks to Jim Davis's generous subsidy.
We're playing catch-up here, telling you about both June and October reviews. I hope the reviewers will forgive the need for condensation. Fred Cookinham enlivened our June evening with Die Fasting: Thomas Dordrecht In 1758 by Jonathan Carriel. Fred found this first foray into novel writing by Mr. Carriel a fast paced absorbing drama of a Kings County farm boy during the French and Indian War. Readers find themselves in the world of 1758, with its mixture of Dutch and English language and customs. We meet Indians, both allies and enemies and the French foe. The mystery side deals with the death of Dordrecht's friend and the hero's realization that the killing was neither an enemy act nor an accident but a pre-meditated murder. The climax is a trial in the wilderness near Oswego, meting out punishment to the guilty parties. There are more of these adventures to come and Fred can't wait to read them.
Tom Fleming added to our June enjoyments with Realistic Visionary, a Portrait of George Washington by Robert Henriques. He declared it one of the most interesting books on GW that he has read in a long time. The title sums up the author's basic opinion, which he elaborates in a series of fascinating essays. He takes Washington from the French and Indian War to his death. Practically every page is packed with insights, many of them new. Tom's favorite was "Reluctant Enemies," about Washington's failed friendship with Jefferson. Henriques sums it up in a pithy sentence: Washington believed in order, Jefferson in liberty. He minces no words in describing TJ's amazing ability to lie to himself and others about his role in slandering Washington when he was president. A must (or maybe should) read, Tom said.
October found us electrified by Jonathan Carriel's review of Bolt of Fate, Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax by Tom Tucker. Jon said the book was a serious contribution to the history of science and its interplay with society. To appreciate it, we have to understand how electricity studies became a fad that gripped everyone from 1743-53. You could do tricks like killing chickens and making bells ring. Newspaperman Franklin caught the bug and soon outdistanced almost everyone, from rapt amateurs to posturing scientists, coining terms like positive, negative, plus, minus and battery. Then Tucker goes revisionist. He argues that Franklin never flew his famous kite. He simply reported he'd done it and instantly became world famous. Mr. Carriel found the argument "interesting and convincing." But he backs off Tucker's next contention, that this Big Lie enabled BF to coax the French into an alliance with the Americans twenty five years later. He still found this offbeat tome "entertaining and worthwhile."
Next came Peter Ford, telling us about Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought by Michael Stephenson. Peter began by declaring himself very disappointed with this book. There is an appalling number of grammatical and spelling errors. On page 284, an entire sentence is run together into a single monstrous word. Worse, the book is full of the author's dull opinions about irrelevant things like Blenheim Palace. He also calls the Battle of Long Island the Battle of Brooklyn. The latter was a tiny village in 1776. He blames some of GW's failures as a general on his "nervous system being burnt out." He dismisses atrocities such as Henry Lee's massacre of Col John Pyle's loyalists in 1781 as "propaganda." Ultimately, Peter asked: Would I recommend this book? The answer was no. He added a postscript, urging the author to "leave the comparisons of President Bush to George III for something else."
Lee Wittenberg gave us his take on So Obstinately Loyal, James Moody, 1744-1809 by Susan Burgess Shenstone. Lee found Ms Shenstone relied on "probably" and "perhaps" a bit too much. But the book is supported by factual research in most places. Moody was a "plain, contented" New Jersey farmer when the Revolution began. Rebel persecution turned him into a daring guerilla, "the best partisan we had" according to William Franklin, Ben's loyalist son. Moody's tale is replete with hairbreadth escapes while recruiting loyalists and gathering intelligence. His postwar story takes him to London where he tried mostly in vain to be compensated for his services. He wound up a freezing refugee in Nova Scotia, trying to start life anew. Lee thought it was a gripping, heartbreaking story, definitely worth a read.
Our book review chair, Lynne Saginaw, entertained us with a report on one of her favorite topics, the history of the theater. She told us that the Williamsburg Foundation hosted a three day conference last spring about the results of a ten year excavation of their 1760 playhouse, one of the earliest commercial theaters in the New World. They found a total of 270 tiny seats (each about ten inches wide). The theater was built for the London Company of Players, led by manager David Douglass. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were among their steady customers. The building fell into disrepair during the Revolution, when Congress banned plays, and was eventually destroyed. Williamsburg would like to rebuild it, if someone will come up with the estimated $35 million it would cost.
Was Thomas Jefferson our first Jewish president? The New York Times raised this startling question in reporting on a study of Jefferson's DNA. As you will recall, everyone got interested in this topic when the Sally Hemings scandal achieved a second (or third) lease on life with a story about supposedly matching the founding father's Y chromosome with one of her descendants. British geneticists have been surveying the lineage to which this relatively rare chromosome belongs. It is especially common in the Middle East, which raises the possibility that the author of the Declaration of Independence had a Jewish ancestor. Should we urge someone to start a Jerusalem Round Table of the American Revolution?
Jack Buchanan, RT member and talented historian, recently ventured to the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival to discuss "History as Literature." Jack purloined the title of his talk from one of his favorite historians, Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote an essay, "History as a Literary Art." The problem, as Jack saw — and still sees — it is the scarcity of this idea in most contemporary history books. He compared the 19th Century historians, who stressed writing style, to the current crop, which features what he called "the obscure academic style." Jack told the Carolinians that words are inseparable from the facts of history. Badly written history misses the drama of the past and in that sense, is not telling the whole truth.
In one of his less glorious moments, on September 24, 2007, Mayor Bloomberg compared the Iraq War to the American Revolution, "but this time we're the British." He was not comparing motives, he said. Only the way Iraq insurgents were apparently flummoxing our trained regular army. Mr. Bloomberg doesn't seem to realize that the Americans of 1776 had a regular army too, and Washington insisted the war could not be won without this "army to look the enemy in the face." Mike seems to think (as do many people) that our Revolution pitted guerillas against regulars. If Washington were listening, he would say: "Don't let this guy become president." Ten to one the mayor thinks the militia won the American Revolution — if — a big if — he knows the difference between a militiaman and a Continental.
Space problems in October prevented us from reporting that long time RT member Dr. John K. Latimer died last May at the age of 92. Who among the veteran RTablers can forget his electrifying visit on the 200th anniversary of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, in 1975? John showed up brandishing Ethan Allen's sword — the very weapon he waved when he demanded surrender of the fortress "In the name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" John was a direct descendant of the fabled Green Mountain soldier. His career as a urologist was distinguished but he was better known to the public as a ballistics expert and collector of historical relics. He also treated top-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg trials. He was the first non-government expert who was invited to examine the evidence in President John F. Kennedy's assassination. His findings supported the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The third floor of John's Englewood, NJ home was lined with medieval armor, Revolutionary and Civil War guns and swords, and drawings by Adolf Hitler. Few people loved history with more passion and breadth of interest.
Three cheers for the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. On their founders' blog, they are publishing over the next year James Madison's Notes on the Federal Convention, and The Federalist Papers as written by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. They will remain on the site permanently, once the series is completed in August 2008. "You can't understand the United States Constitution," they say, "unless you first understand how it was debated and created." Check it out on http://founders-blog.blogspot.com/ .
After two days of visiting the Revolutionary battlefields of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, it was time for this writer to join Ed Bearss in the front of the bus. Folks, sometimes it is true: God helps those who help themselves.
The date picked was a Sunday: a good choice. And it was Father's Day: the best choice. There were no parades or street fairs in the Big Apple that day. And (here's where the real luck comes in) the weather was beautiful, we found parking at all our stops, and the Mets/Yankees game in the Bronx was the ESPN Sunday night game.
We left Monmouth, heading into Staten Island over the Outerbridge Crossing. Thus our first stop was a no brainer: The Conference House in Tottenville, a visit not on many Revolutionary tours due to it's remoteness. It was here, on Sept.11th, 1776 that John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Edward Rutledge met with Admiral "Black Dick" Howe in a futile attempt to end the war. The tour members were pleased to know that they had seen an historical site that probably 99.9% of all New Yorkers had never visited. I gave a running commentary on how NYC is greatly different geographically than in GW's days due to such things as landfill, and the leveling of the land for building projects.
Next we crossed the Narrows and headed up Ft. Hamilton Parkway, following, as closely as possible, the route of British General James Grant's attack against the Continental right flank. We passed Greenwood Cemetery, where I read a listing of the rich and famous buried there, and stopped at Prospect Park where the patriots' center under Gen. John Sullivan made it's stand at Flatbush Pass. As Ed Bearss spoke next to the plaques signifying the "American Line of Defense" bikers yelled out "George Washington!!" It's nice to know that New Yorkers do stop and read about their history.
The Old Stone House was next. It was here that Gen. William Alexander's (Lord Stirling) troops consisting of Smallwood's Marylanders and an attached Delaware regiment, held off Grant's infantry while others retreated to the Forts on Brooklyn Heights. The museum has excellent displays tracing the Battle of Long Island and a wonderful miniature model of the fighting around the house. Tour members, who were interested in Ebbetts Field, were surprised to find out that they were in Washington Park where the Dodgers first played and that the museum had been their clubhouse. Knowing that restaurants in NYC on Father's Day would be mobbed, we pre-ordered deli sandwiches. Folks from all over the nation found out another reason we live in The Big Apple.
Next, we stopped at Fulton Ferry Landing where Ed spoke of GW's evacuation across the East River and I pointed out such sites as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Woolworth Building. But what the group asked about was where the World Trade Center had stood. Never had I been prouder to be a native New Yorker. See you in February.
The October GW Headquarters answers: 1. Hasbrouck House in Newburgh, NY which in 1850 became the first publicly owned historic house museum in the USA (purchased by NYS).2. The Ford Mansion in Morristown, NJ which in 1933 became the first National Historical Park.
A week after appointing Washington commander of the Continental Army, Congress appointed four major generals. Who were they? A free dinner to all winners by email, snail mail, or phone.