Christopher's Reviews > 1776

I loved it, and wish it would have been longer. Or that he'd do another one, about 1777, which was no less interesting. But there were some amazing stories from the year 1776, the first full year of the Revolution. Washington's strategic withdrawal from Brooklyn is an incredibly dramatic story, oddly similar to the British evacuation from Dunkirk. It would make a great movie. And the way the entire campaign led to the army crossing the Delaware to attack Trenton is incredibly engaging.

McCullough's descriptions of some of the key people of the American Revolution were even-handed, and without the usual hyperbole. He readily admits Washington was plagued by indecision and made some serious mistakes, particularly during this year. But overall, he was still the ideal person for the time. McCullough also writes about two of the most important and least known people in the history of the U.S., Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene. Greene in particular has been a hero of mine since I was a kid, and this book does a great job portraying the significance of his contribution. I remain on a never-ending search for a good biography of him.

What was probably most interesting was how incredibly small and disinterested the Continental Army was in 1776. There is no shortage of blow-hards around today who love to talk about the founding fathers, and the circumstances in which our country came to be, and it's ironic how few of them have any idea what they're talking about. There were high percentages of British sympathizers all over the colonies, the soldiers in the Continental Army deserted in huge numbers, and some of the highest-ranking officers, like Horatio Gates and Charles Lee, hated Washington and were actively trying to find ways to usurp him. And the British Empire were not going to just allow the colonies to break off on their own. The fleet that landed at New York in 1776 was the largest ever sent from Great Britain, and the largest ever seen in the Western Hemisphere. How Washington, Greene, Knox and a very few others managed to persevere in spite of all of this, is a remarkable story, and one people in our country today don't care enough about.