In the Hurricane's Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick

The defeated British army trudged out of the ruins of Yorktown to the slow beat of a drum, surrounded by the American militia on one side of the road and the French on the other. The British General and his army showed their disdain of the Americans, giving their attention to the French. How could a barely clothed army of ill-fed and unpaid country yahoos defeat their magnificence? Only the French were worthy enemies.

And yet somehow General George Washington had achieved the unthinkable. Yes, he needed the French navy to do it. He knew this battle would be fought on water. And even if the French generals often ignored Washington's directive and did what they wanted, they were pivotal.

It all started with hurricanes in the Caribbean. The French were forced to move their ships to safer latitudes. The rest is history. The history Philbrick covers In The Hurricane's Eye.

Maps show readers the battles that are the focus of this installment of Philbrick's history of the Revolutionary War. There is no focus on one big personality, like Benedict Arnold was in Philbrick's previous volume Valiant Ambition. This is an ensemble cast of characters--British, French, and American.

But some things stand out. Washington for his ability to reign in his passions to keep a cool head. A favorite story is how Washington deceived the British by building ovens to bake the fresh bread the French army found a necessity on a route to New York City while the army headed south.

Readers are reminded of the plight of the common American militiaman, who after six years at war are released without recompense, worn out, to an uncertain future. 200,000 men had served. The escaped slaves who served the British with hopes of freedom were left without protection, starving and diseased, preyed upon by Southerners rounding up their property.

At war's end, America consisted of individual states unwilling to work together. They would not agree on taxes to pay for the war, and now they all vied for their own concerns. Anarchy threatened.

This narrative takes readers on a journey into an understanding of our past that will challenge the simplistic vision of America's beginnings encountered in school textbooks. Was victory at Yorktown all because of hurricanes? Or Washington's superior leadership? Was it because the French funded the war that Americans refused to support financially? Or the missteps of British generals?

Near the end of the book, Washington is quoted from a letter written to the French Admiral de Grasse: "A great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices to secure an important general good." I was appalled by the war crimes and suffering described in the book, but I was also inspired by Washington's ability to always chose what was right for his country. If only our leaders today would channel the Founding Father's vision of personal sacrifice and self-control, to do what was right for the many and the country.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
by Nathaniel Philbrick
PENGUIN GROUP
ISBN: 9780525426769
PRICE: $30.00 (USD)

Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick's new book Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, like his previous book Bunker Hill (my review found at here), changes how we think about the American Experience.

Philbrick tears away the veil of myth to reveal a far messier path to Democracy, one rife with conflict. We see that Washington was not always right and Arnold was a brash hero who resented being overlooked. The Revolution was, Philbrick points out, in itself an act of treason.

The book started slow for me, then picked up interest and in the end swept me along to its conclusion.

Benedict Arnold was motivated by ruthless self-interest, his betrayal based on a desire to be lauded for bringing peace to the war-weary Americans by reuniting the colony to Britain.

 I am hoping for a next book to continue the American story.

I was just finishing the book when I happened to catch NPR's interview with Philbrick on the book. You can read the interview at http://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478188328/valiant-ambition-tells-of-benedict-arnolds-turn-from-hero-to-traitor

I was visited by an aching nostalgia while reading about so many places I had lived near or had visited. I wished I had understood more deeply the history of these places. Particularly moving for me was the account of the Battle for Fort Mifflin.

We visited Fort Mifflin several times. It sits on Mud Island in the Delaware River south of the city, not far from the airport. The fort is restored to its 1834 condition. The first time we visited was on a warm summer day. The stone powder room was cool and dark. The air hummed with the sounds of nature. We watched a Green Heron sitting on a tree near the water. Suddenly a jet came overhead and at that moment the Heron started and took off, the two flying in tandem. It was an awesome sight that summed up everything I was struggling with at the time: the battle between the man-made and God's nature, the pull between the excitement of the city and the peace of the Maine woods.

Oh, had I realized the blood that had spilled on those grounds! I would have seen ghosts and heard the cries of anguish instead of the frogs and birdsong near the still waters. Reading the account of the Battle of Fort Mifflin I could not connect that summer stillness to the continual bombardment of cannonade, the groan of the wounded, the sleepless weeks under barrage.

After the British took Philadelphia they wanted sea access to bring in supplies. That meant clearing out the Patriot forts. Fort Mifflin's four hundred American soldiers held off thousands of British troops and 250 ships for several months. Philbrick's account is devastating to read, the horrors endured by one soldier accounted the worst he had undergone. The end the British ships drew up to the island and lobbed in grenades. The fort was finally abandoned. 250 of the 400 men were killed.

Valiant Ambition is a complex, controversial, and dramatic portrait of a people in crisis and the war that gave birth to a nation. The focus is on loyalty and personal integrity, evoking a Shakespearean tragedy that unfolds in the key relationship of Washington and Arnold, who is an impulsive but sympathetic hero whose misfortunes at the hands of self-serving politicians fatally destroy his faith in the legitimacy of the rebellion. As a country wary of tyrants suddenly must figure out how it should be led, Washington's unmatched ability to rise above the petty politics of his time enables him to win the war that really matters. from the publisher

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



Valiant Ambition
Nathaniel Philbrick
Viking
$30 hard cover
ISBN:9780525426783

Old Fort Mifflin

by Nancy A. Bekofske

Wide vistas where once colonial soldiers trod

with its perimeter of aged barracks,

the cool dark recesses of powder houses,

slit windows looking out into summer sun,

history's memory, empty and still

but for voyeurs peering on the past's leavings.

Nearby the river ran round like a moat,

catchment of brush and reed, crickets

and frogs singing and leaping,

and looking down in contemplation

sitting on its barren branch, a heron.

Unexpectedly, a mechanical roar disturbed

this Eden of river and fort.

Above us hovered a great silver belly

its mass blocking out the sun,

its labored ascent a mystery.

We believed we could have stroked the silver belly,

it hung so low above us.

Machine made holier than all else

diminishing the heron's tandem flight

parallel under the great belly.

Convergent deities of flight

vying for preeminence.

And when the two had flown

we were left godless on the wide vistas

of a wasteland past.

When the Yankees Realized They Had Declared Independence

Nathaniel Philbrick's latest book Bunker Hill:a City, a Siege, a Revolution begins  with an seven-year-old John Quincy Adams standing with his mother Abigail on a hill near their home in Braintree. They were looking down at Boston where the British army and American militia were in battle. Boston was almost an island, with only a slender isthmus connecting to the mainland. The bay around the city was filled with British ships, their cannons bombarding the the hills where the militia had made their stand.

John Adams was in Philadelphia representing Massachusetts a the Continental Congress. His family were unprotected and feared the British would  reach their hamlet. But the worst memory for John Quincy was when he learned that their family friend and physician, John Warren, was killed in that battle.

The battle of Bunker Hill predated General Washington's command of the militia, before he made the local militias into an American army. New England was supported by other colonies,sending food and supplies, but the idea of a United States separate from Britain was not yet formulated. The leaders who opposed the Stamp Act and tea tax still believed that King George III was an okay guy. It was just his governors and bureaucracy that was at fault.

Philbrick does not present British rule as unduly harsh. They had sent armies to defend the colonies during the French and Indian War. They needed to pay off a war debt of over $800,000. Plus they had this little thing going on with Napoleon. They really needed the cash. That tea that was dumped into the big saltwater teapot? They had a surplus and were selling it at a deep discount, and thought, wrongly, that a few pence tax on the tea would not be objectionable seeing it was being sold so cheaply.

Those Yankees were headstrong and independent from the get-go. Philbrick's earlier book Mayflower was about the Puritan settlers in Massachusetts. They wanted religious freedom. The colonists felt they had bought their freedom with their own sweat, toil, and blood. They didn't like anyone telling them what to do.

Almost a comedy of errors, misunderstandings, chance and bad decisions, the outcome of the battle of Bunker Hill changed the world when the British troops, and loyalist citizens, sailed out of Boston harbor.

The hero of Philbrick's story is the almost unknown John Warren. He had saved John Quincy Adam's forefinger when it was badly fractured. At that time the usual practice would have been amputation. John Quincy never forgot how Dr. Warren saved his finger. Warren was as important as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and other leaders of his time. But Warren could not resist joining the fray, and lost his life at Bunker Hill.

Philbrick ends the book in 1843 with John Quincy Adams refusing to attend celebratory remembrances of Bunker Hill. He was seventy-five years old and serving in congress where he fought for abolition. The Adams family revered Warren so much that when Abigail first saw John Trumbull's painting Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill she wrote "...in looking at it, my whole frame contracted, my blood shivered, and I felt a faintness in my heart." She felt the painting would "transmit to posterity characters and actions which will command the admiration of future ages and prevent the period which gave birth to them from ever passing away into the dark abyss of time..."

John Trumbull's Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill

Previously I have read Phlbrick's Mayflower, In the Heart of the Sea, and have Sea of Glory on my to read shelf. I have enjoyed his books. This book, being about a battle, was not as engrossing for me but his portrayal of the personages involved kept my interest.

Bunker Hill
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin

Thank you to Penguin and NetGalley for providing the -ebook for my review.