Book Review: 'The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777'
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| © 2019 Henry Holt and Company |
In The British Are Coming, Atkinson tells the story of the first 21 months of the Revolution from the perspectives of the rebellious colonists and their British opponents. Starting with a nuanced look at the genesis of the traumatic break between Great Britain - a new globe-straddling empire upon which it was said that the sun never set - and 13 of its North American colonies, this new book treads on the familiar narrative of how London's well-intentioned attempts to pay the bills for its increased military expenditures after its victories during the Seven Years' War metastasized into colonial discontent over "taxation without representation," civil unrest in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and escalated into open rebellion in the early morning hours of April 19, 1775 at the village green in Lexington.
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George III inherited his throne in 1760 at age twenty-two, on the eve of Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, which created the greatest empire the world had known since ancient Rome. As the American rebellion gained strength in the 1770s, he feared that loss of the colonies would lead to Britain’s fatal decline. (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777) . Johan Joseph Zoffany, George III, oil on canvas, 1771. (Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018) |
Take, for instance, Atkinson's description of how the insurgent colonists, from Gen. George Washington down to the lowliest rebel privates, reacted to the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776, almost 14 months into America's war with the Mother Country:
The fateful news traveled swiftly on the post road from Philadelphia, covering more than ninety miles and crossing five rivers in just a couple of days. Precise copies were then made of the thirteen-hundred-word broadside, titled “A Declaration,” that arrived at the Mortier mansion headquarters, and by Tuesday, July 9, General Washington was ready for every soldier in his command to hear what Congress had to say. In his orders that morning, after affirming thirty-nine lashes for two convicted deserters, he instructed the army to assemble at six p.m. on various parade grounds, from Governors Island to King’s Bridge. Each brigade major would then read—“with an audible voice”—the proclamation intended to transform a squalid family brawl into a cause as ambitious and righteous as any in human history.
That evening the commander in chief himself appeared on horseback at the Common with a suite of staff officers, not far from where Sergeant Hickey had tumbled from the scaffold two weeks earlier. Erect and somber, Washington rode into the middle of a hollow square formed by New York and Connecticut regiments while a chirpy throng of civilians ringed the greensward. A uniformed aide spurred his horse forward; the crowd hushed as he unfolded his script and began to read: “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” Even the most unlettered private recognized that something majestic was in the air.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
On and on it went, describing the “long train of abuses and usurpations,” then denouncing royal despotism, then enumerating twenty-seven grievances. Those shifting from foot to foot as the reader droned through a condemnation of “our British brethren” would have been relieved to know that Congress had pruned the original draft by a quarter for the sake of concision and restraint. The primary author—a lanky, ginger-haired Virginia planter named Thomas Jefferson—was widely acknowledged even at age thirty-three to have “a happy talent of composition,” as John Adams conceded. Perched in a swiveling Windsor chair on the second floor of rented rooms at Seventh and High Streets in Philadelphia, a compact, custom-built writing desk in his lap, Jefferson had sought, as he later explained, “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent. . . . It was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”
Just so, despite what he considered the “mutilations” imposed by his congressional colleagues, sitting at tables covered in green baize in the Pennsylvania State House, lashing at horseflies with their handkerchiefs while scratching up his draft with their quills. The leaner, edited result remained a stirring manifesto of republicanism, a radical assertion that power derived not from God or through bloodlines but from the people, and should benefit the many, not just the affluent or well-born. Of the ninety or more declarations and petitions drafted by the colonies in recent months, as counted by the historian Pauline Maier, none surpassed this document in elegance, clarity, or breathtaking vision. That at least a third of the delegates who would sign the Declaration were slave owners—Jefferson alone had two hundred—was a moral catastrophe that could never be reconciled with the avowed principles of equality and “unalienable rights,” at least not in the eighteenth century. But as Edmund S. Morgan would write, “The creed of equality did not give men equality, but invited them to claim it, invited them, not to know their place and keep it, but to seek and demand a better place.”
The reader finished his oration, a bit hoarse now, by proclaiming all political ties with Britain “to be totally dissolved” and the colonies to be “free and independent states.” To this declaration the disputatious men in Philadelphia had pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” A chaplain recited Psalm 80—“Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.” Loud cheers washed over the Common, and Thomas Mifflin, the adjutant general, reportedly climbed onto a cannon and shouted, “My lads, the Rubicon is crossed!”
Washington trotted back to his headquarters, but the rambunctious crowd meandered south on Broadway. Here George III, identified that very evening in the Declaration as a tyrant “unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” sat atop his gilt horse on Bowling Green. Whooping vandals broke through the iron fence surrounding the statue, clambered onto the marble pedestal, and lassoed the equestrian figure. Scores of soldiers and civilians tugged on the ropes until the two-ton statue capsized with a tremendous crash—“leveled with ye dust,” a witness reported. The baying crowd decapitated the king, whacked off his nose, and clipped the laurels from his brow. Someone fired a musket ball into the head, and more balls punctured the torso. Others scraped away the ten ounces of gold leaf that covered rider and mount. With fife and drums playing “The Rogue’s March,” the severed head was first wheeled in a barrow to the Mortier house, then impaled on a spike outside the Blue Bell Tavern. To one spectator the scene evoked the fallen angel Lucifer, as described by poet John Milton: “O, how fallen! How changed!”
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| Amos Doolittle, A View of the Town of Concord, plate II, engraving, Dec. 1775, reprint by
Charles E. Goodspeed, 1903.
Although most of Atkinson's work focuses on America's involvement in wars and conflicts of the 20th and 21st Centuries, he has always been fascinated with the American Revolution and the birth of the United States. Even as he put the finishing touches on The Guns at Last Light: The War in Northwest Europe, 1944-1945, he was already researching material for a new trilogy that would cover the war for independence from 1775 all the way to 1783, when the Treaty of Paris was signed between the British government and its former American colonial subjects.
Per the publisher's website:
From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1776-1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.
Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.
 My Take |
I have studied American history - both as a public school and college student and as a reader - since I was nine years old. I am fascinated by many facets of our national story, including the triumphs and tragedies that have shaped the "American character." These include, naturally, pivotal events such as the Westward movement, the abolition of slavery, Prohibition, and even the race for the Moon. All of these events and social movements are linked, in one way or another, to America's armed conflicts, including the Revolution and the contradictions between its Enlightenment Era ideals and the socio-cultural realities of the past...and the present.
Shelby Foote, in one of his interviews for Ken Burns' 1990 documentary The Civil War, once said that any understanding of the American character has to be based on understanding the tragedy that befell the nation in the mid-19th Century. I can't disagree with that, but I also believe that before we attempt to do that, we must first learn about how the U.S. was born in the late 18th Century by going beyond the mythology, i.e. that George III was a tyrannical monarch who cruelly wanted to tax his poor subjects in America to death; that the Founding Fathers were intent on creating an egalitarian (and Christian) nation along the Eastern Seaboard, and that most of the colonists supported the Revolution wholeheartedly.
I have read several books about the Revolution, most of which focus on the political and economic aspects of the war. A few delve into the military aspects, as well, so I'm at least somewhat familiar with the Revolution, its causes, most of the major battles and campaigns, and its outcome and consequences.
Still, I have never read any book on the Revolution that is as detailed or lively as The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777.
Perhaps it's because my main focus as a reader and history buff has always been the Second World War and other modern conflicts, including the 1990-1991 Gulf War. I don't often go out of my way to search for books about 18th Century events with the same level of interest as I do for books like The Longest Day, The Battle of Midway, or Atkinson's The Liberation Trilogy, cos I figure that if I have the DVD set of History's The Revolution, that topic is covered and thus I don't need to read more about it.
Truth be told, I was drawn to The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 because I'm a huge and unabashed fan of Atkinson's books. I admire the way that he can take the most obscure or arcane detail about an event - the design of George III's horse-drawn carriage, say, or the way that British warships were built in the late 1700s - and make it interesting to the 21st Century reader.
As Joseph Ellis writes in his advance review in The New York Times:
“To say that Atkinson can tell a story is like saying Sinatra can sing…. It is as if Ken Burns somehow gained access to a time machine, traveled back to the Revolutionary era, then captured historical scenes on film as they were happening…. It is difficult to imagine any reader putting this beguiling book down without a smile and a tear.”
If you have never read any histories of the Revolution, or even if you have read some of the "standard" accounts by such historians as Grant S. Woods, Bruce Lancaster, or Pauline Miller, then Atkinson's The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 is a must-add book to your To Be Read pile. I have not finished reading my copy yet, but if what I've read so far is any hint, the rest of The British Are Coming: The War for America and the rest of the trilogy are going to be amazingly brilliant.
Henry Holt and Company has published this magnificent first volume of what I believe will be a classic trilogy about the Revolution in various formats, including hardcover, ebook, and audio (both as a digital edition on Audible.com and on CD).
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