The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

Here, then, was the crux. The king and his men believed that British wealth and status derived from the colonies. The erosion of authority in America, followed by a loss of sovereignty, would encourage rebellions in Canada, Ireland, the Caribbean, India. Dominoes would topple. “Destruction must follow disunion,” the colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth, warned. With the empire dismembered, an impoverished Great Britain, no longer great, would invite “the scorn of Europe” and exploitation by enemies in France, Spain, and elsewhere. Those windrows of wet tea leaves foretold political and economic ruin.

The second consequence was epochal and enduring: the creation of the American republic. Surely among mankind’s most remarkable achievements, this majestic construct also inspired a creation myth that sometimes resembled a garish cartoon, a melodramatic tale of doughty yeomen resisting moronic, brutal lobsterbacks. The civil war that unspooled over those eight years would be both grander and more nuanced, a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Beyond the battlefield, then and forever, stood a shining city on a hill.

But something opaque and awful also had happened, a fraternal bloodletting. The enmity of recent years had curdled into hatred. Young men had died in agony, as befell young men in war, and many, many more were still to die.

The graves of many others remained unmarked and unremembered, except for the long bones and the ribs and the skulls that over the years pushed to the surface in Middlesex meadows and woodlands, memento mori from one raving afternoon on Battle Road.

Of all the king’s officers who would die in battle during the long war against the Americans, more than one out of every eight had perished in four hours on a June afternoon above Charlestown.

Bunker Hill also reinforced the conviction that inflamed citizen soldiers, summoned to battle from field or shop, could hold their own against professional legions, a charming myth that took deep root and would nearly prove the undoing of America.

War, he knew, was a struggle of political wills. Winning a war did not require winning every battle; the French war had proved that. Tactical developments often had little influence on strategic success. And Washington was—instinctively, brilliantly—a political general: in the month following his departure from Philadelphia, he wrote seven letters to Congress, acknowledging its superior authority while maneuvering to get what he needed. He used all the tools of a deft politico: flattery, blandishment, reason, contrition. More letters went to colonial governors. Congress had adopted the New England militia as a national force, to be augmented with regiments from other colonies, and he was aware that placing a southerner in command of this predominately northern army was a fragile experiment in continental unity.

the coupling of a national army with its commander marked the transformation of a rebellion into a revolution.

In truth, an immensely wealthy man to the manner born, with scores of slaves to tend his business in his absence, could hardly comprehend the sacrifice made by most of his men in leaving their families, shops, and farms in high season. For that vital link between commander and commanded to be welded imperishably, Washington would have to know in his bones—and the men would have to know that he knew—what was risked and what was lost in serving at his side.

British colonial policy, quite simply, sought revenue for the greater good of the empire. But “that damned American war,” as North called it, forced the government to confront a displeasing dilemma: either accede to conciliation and forgo income from the colonies or prosecute a war that would cost more money than could ever be squeezed from America. Moreover, success in crushing the rebellion would likely be followed by an expensive, protracted occupation. Even from the lofty vantage of a throne, coherent British war aims were hard to discern.

Roughly five thousand African Americans would eventually serve in the Continental Army, a more integrated national force than would exist for nearly two centuries.

Little had come of the Crown’s adventurism in the American South. The diversion of Royal Navy ships to Virginia, Cape Fear, and South Carolina had hindered efforts to blockade the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, allowing American gunrunners virtually unimpeded passage for months. Rebels completely controlled four colonies that now called themselves states—Virginia, Georgia, and the two Carolinas—and for the most part they would be left in peace for the next several years. Virginia loyalists, shattered and dispersed, never again formed a potent force. Thousands of rebel troops, now free to reinforce the Continental Army, tramped off to help General Washington.

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.

The commanding general had misread the battlefield and botched the battle. Though Congress wanted New York defended, Washington had failed to recognize that holding Long Island—the key to holding New York—would be impossible with a weak, divided, overmatched army that lacked naval power. Once the fight began, he did little more than stand on his fortified hill and wait for the bad news to drift in. Even as darkness descended on Tuesday night, he neglected to realize that the Heights of Guana had been completely lost. In the coming days he would tell Hancock that he could still defend New York “if the men would do their duty,” an unseemly affront toward the troops by their leader. In his first true test as a battle captain, Washington was found wanting.