John Ferling gave us an estimate of George Washington as a general which added new weight to the title of his book, Almost A Miracle, a narrative of the struggle for independence, winner of our 2007 book of the year award. It was also a preview of his new book, The Rise of George Washington. Mr. Ferling found Washington a flawed commander who made numerous mistakes in the early years of the war. He found him indecisive in 1776, more or less agreeing with critics General Charles Lee and aide Joseph Reed. In 1777, Washington was "25 miles out of position," allowing General Howe’s army to cross the Schuylkill and march unopposed to seize Philadelphia. He lost the battle of Germantown because he became obsessed with the struggle to take the Chew House, far in the rear of his advancing battalions. During the Valley Forge winter, there were many critics of Washington in and out of Congress, notably former Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin, who deplored Washington’s insistence on "incense" [worshipful devotion] from his subordinates and Congressman John Dickenson Sergeant, who wrote a ferocious letter that began, "We want [need] a general." But Mr. Ferling found no concerted plot to dump Washington. Valley Forge ended with the news of the French alliance, which seemed a virtual guarantee of victory. For the next two years, Washington did little or nothing in the North while the British shifted the war to the South and won significant victories. As the currency and economy began to collapse, General Washington’s policy of "not losing" began to look worse and worse. But the British commander in the South, Lord Cornwallis, blundered badly and guerilla resistance flared. In the fall of 1781, the commander of the French expeditionary force, General Rochambeau, rescued the situation by persuading Washington to join him in a march to Virginia that trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown and ended the war. Washington, Mr. Ferling said in summary, was a lucky general and the United States was "lucky to have him."
We all but wallowed in first rate book reviews this April. Jim Davis launched things with Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson by Alan Pell Crawford. One word summed up this book, in Jim’s opinion: WONDERFUL. The narrative covers Jefferson’s last 17 years, from the end of TJ’s second presidential term to his death in 1826. The book charts Jefferson’s accomplishments in these years—and his errors in judgment. The author himself makes one of these errors by spending 55 pages on a needless "refresher course" on Jefferson’s previous life. Except for this flaw, the book is a gripping "extremely sad" account of a man trapped in a social and family structure he was less and less able to control. His extended family, including 15 grandchildren, became more and more dependent on him. His minimal skills as a farmer were engulfed by the deep recession into which Virginia plunged after the Panic of 1819.. Crawford sympathetically discusses Jefferson’s conflicted view of slavery. He detested the institution but did not see how slaves could or should be freed as long as society as a whole did not favor emancipation. As for Sally Hemings, the author points out how many other males with Jefferson DNA were in the vicinity of Monticello. Jefferson’s final illness and death on the brink of bankruptcy is told with heartbreaking intensity. There are also many small gems. For instance, at the burial, one of the onlookers was a young student from Richmond named Edgar Allan Poe.
Dave Jacobs reported on Mr. Jefferson’s Women by Jon Kukla. The book ranges over the women in Jefferson’s life, from his early infatuation with sultry Rebecca Burwell to his fragile wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, to Maria Cosway, with whom some think he had a liaison in Paris, to his "infamous relationship" with Sally Hemings. Along the way Kukla discusses friendships with Abigail Adams and other women. He sums up Jefferson’s attitude toward women in politics with a quote: "The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I." Kukla blames Jefferson’s misogyny on growing up with six sisters, But he notes with approval his warm lifelong relationship with his older daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and his apparently happy ten year marriage. Dave summed it up by saying he enjoyed this exploration of a little known aspect of Jefferson’s life.
Peter Ford regaled us with Saratoga: A Military History of the Decisive Campaign of the American Revolution by John T. Luzader. A former National Parks historian at Saratoga, Luzader has devoted years of thought and study to his subject. He provides step-by-step guidance through the battle, including "all the secret nooks and crannies that make history so interesting." There are explorations of what-ifs, such as a sidebar on Burgoyne’s five options after capturing Ticonderoga, and convincing explanations of why he didn’t choose four, especially the seemingly easy cruise down Lake George, There is even a photographic tour of the Historic Park. Peter opined it would make a great movie but Hollywood would do its usual butcher job on the facts. "Let’s hope Mel Gibson doesn’t read it."
David Ansel Weiss inducted us into Old World, New World by Kathleen Burk. He noted the book, which covers the relationship between England and America from the first comers to the present, had received "extraordinary acclaim" in England and had a blurb-drenched cover including quotes from Henry Kissinger and our own Tom Fleming. David tailored his review for the Round Table and concentrated on Burk’s treatment of the American Revolution – some 80 pages. He compared the book to Stanley Wintraub’s Iron Tears, which also told the English side of the upheaval. But Tears only covered the war years, while Burk goes back to the roots of the grievances that brought on the revolt. It has interesting material on how Parliament wrested control of the colonies from the King and a thorough account of the European diplomacy that wound through the conflict, once it began. Burk cites the use of the Hessians as one of the worst British blunders. Americans saw it as an "affront" and reconciliation became impossible. The book is not only a good read, it is a valuable reference work –with the bonus of all those other pages detailing the rest of the "special relationship" with our so-called mother country.
Who says there’s nothing new under the sun? Alan Huston, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, on his last day of a venture into the British Library in London, found copies of 47 hitherto unknown letters by, to or about Benjamin Franklin. They had been copied by Thomas Birch, a Franklin contemporary, who had a compulsion to transcribe historical documents. The letters were between Franklin, his son, William and his wife, Deborah, as well as the unlucky English general, Edward Bradock, among others. They cover a period in the French and Indian War when Franklin was trying to rally Pennsylvania against an enemy invasion. The letters were published in the April issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.
In the course of adapting David A. Weiss’s review for condensation, we discovered he is a collector of offbeat history in a column he writes for the resuscitated Brooklyn Eagle. Here is a sample of his recent revelations:
Did you know that in its 2008 brochure celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, the Society of Old Brooklynites published the names of 8,000 of the estimated 12,000 prisoners of war that the British held in prison ships on Wallabout Bay?
The Old Stone House in J. J. Byrne Park in Park Slope has another claim to fame besides being the scene of the fiercest fighting in the Battle of Brooklyn. Seems in the latter part of the 19th Century it served as the first clubhouse of the team that became the Brooklyn Dodgers when they played at nearby Washington Park.
According to local lore on the last night of the Battle of Brooklyn, a loyalist sympathizer named Mrs. John Rapalje living on Front St. noticed soldiers moving down Old Ferry Road and getting into boats. Realizing the Continental Army was retreating, she sent her slave to alert Generals Clinton and Howe. Unfortunately, the first British soldier approached by the slave was a Hessian who did not understand English and put the slave into temporary detention. The message was not delivered until his release in the morning. By that time George Washington had completed one of the most successful retreats in history.
As we heard in a recent review of a book on the slave trade by Simon Schama, the British love to pontificate about how they got rid of slavery long before the greedy Americans by browbeating the West Indians into emancipating their chattels. There have been recent films and books extolling the British abolitionists and their fiery speeches as little less than sainted heroes, whose holy effulgence casts a glow over the island’s less than idealistic history. (The less than idealistic side gets larger if you talk to anyone with Irish blood in his veins.) New research by the University College of London has blown a big hole in the goody goody version of how the our transAtlantic cousins got rid of slavery. Dr. Nick Draper reports in History Today that the British government paid more than 20 million pounds to the owners of the slaves and the plantations on which they worked. That was a staggering 40% of the government’s annual expenditures at the time. The total is the equivalent of $2 billion in today’s money. Even more surprising are the backgrounds of the recipients. The standard version pictures the slave owners as arrogant upper class types who deserved to be insulted and denounced by the abolitionists and shamed into abandoning their evil ways. In fact, most of the recipients of the $2 billion bonanza were middle class Londoners, merchants, lawyers, doctors, who invested in the slave trade like it was any other other industry. Some of the "slavers" revealed by Draper’s research include poet Elizabeth Barret Browning and the Lord Mayor of London, John Atkins.
In a recent issue of the New York Post, a writer contributed an historic chortle over the French Navy’s recent capture of marauding pirates off the Somalia coast. "It appears that the French – whose last significant triumph at sea was against China in the 1884 battle of Foochow -- are on a roll battling the pirates,." A knowledgeable Revolutionary War buff responded a few days later. "Your laugh at the French Navy was a funny bit of news but a not so smart assessment of French naval history. If it weren’t for the assistance of the French fleet at the battle of Yorktown in 1781, American independence might not have come to pass. Stop laughing.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported there is a strenuous movement in the City of Brotherly Love to control local tour guides. The town fathers have grown weary of guides who solemnly assure visitors that Ben Franklin had 80 illegitimate children. From now on, a guide has to take a history test and correctly answer 65% of the questions about the city’s historic sites. The guides are screaming censorship and comparing the regulators to George III. Damaging their case is a fellow tour guide who has compiled a list of 91 flubs he has heard with his own ears. These include claiming George Washington is buried in Washington Square, he once dined with Abraham Lincoln at Powel House and the equestrian statue near the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Frederick the Great with George’s head. Maybe they need that test, no matter what some guides think.
Roundtablers who have visited Valley Forge fondly remember the magnificent statue of General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, overlooking the Pennsylvania countryside, facing towards the house in which he once lived. It was because of Wayne's familiarity with the region, that Washington assigned him the task of rounding up supplies for his hungry soldiers. This reporter still remembers the drawing in his elementary school history book of Wayne's troops driving cattle towards the frozen wooden huts. But did you know that this forage was a joint Army/Navy expedition, with none other than John Barry, "The Father of the American Navy" involved?
According to Tim McGrath, in the June, 2009 issue of "Naval History," in the winter of 1778 Barry moved barges and boats down the Delaware River in an attempt to harass British supply ships. Washington, who commanded both Army and Navy, issued orders on February 18th, for Barry's squadron to ferry Wayne's 300 man force across the river to New Jersey for some cattle rustling.
The four day expedition almost ended on a sour note. Both Wayne and Barry learned that cattle and barges don't mix well on the wide and deep Delaware south of Philadelphia. Moving north to a better fording location, Wayne was blocked by British army forces at Bristol, PA.: they having made the same determination. Wayne and Barry then created a classic Army/Navy maneuver.
Wayne moved his forces and cattle inland while Barry's men sailed south along the Jersey shore, burning haystacks along the route, to trick the British into thinking that Wayne was again traveling south while performing a "scorched earth" policy. The plan worked, the British also moved south and Wayne returned to the Delaware, where he crossed at Burlington, New Jersey and arrived, men and cattle intact, at Valley Forge.