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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Ferling
Read between
August 31 - September 13, 2019
He liked just about everything about Boston except the Bostonians.
XD Kinda hard to avoid Bostonians in Boston...
The colonists learned how to minimize the chances of an enemy ambush, sometimes employed a hit-and-run style of fighting, often utilized a mobile strategy, and not infrequently adopted terror tactics that included torture; killing women, children, and the elderly; the destruction of Indian villages and food supplies; and summary executions of prisoners or their sale into slavery in faraway lands.
He added: “fear … is not an American art.”
He spoke “the language of doggism,” Lee said, adding that he found canines attractive because, unlike many people, they were neither bigoted nor inclined to put their “convenience, pleasure, and dignity” ahead of his.
Muskets were notoriously inaccurate above fifty yards, which doubtless led to the saying among British soldiers at the time that “it took a man’s weight in bullets to kill him.”
but before the summer ended Carleton reported what he called the “backwardness” of Canada’s Indians and “peasantry,” virtually none of whom were eager to serve.19
Well, gee, maybe if you wanted their help, you shouldn't have started so many wars with them.
enlistees could join for three years or the duration of the war, rather than the customary lifetime commitment, and these volunteers were awarded a bounty of a guinea and a half (about the cost of three theater tickets).
Wowee.
but they were to be dispersed from Canada to the Caribbean in a desperate attempt to staunch the further erosion of royal authority.
When it rains, it pours.
Nevertheless, most were confident that the war could be won, probably in 1776.
Lawl.
was taken for granted that the Canadian citizenry, which was mostly French, was hostile toward Great Britain and would welcome a rebel army as liberators.
When has that ever happened? Srsly.
The war that Congress embarked on in May 1775 was not a war for independence. Congress was waging war for reconciliation, but on its terms.
“Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and execution” of plans, he had observed, “and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system.”
Oceans rise and empires fall...
In January 1776 Congress had offered its first bounty, a tempting $6.66, to those who enlisted in the army that was to be sent to Canada.
Lol. $6.66.
But the greatest difference in the composition of the Continental army after 1777 was that the enlistees were more likely than their predecessors to be poor, landless, unskilled, itinerant semi-employed or unemployed, unmarried, and not infrequently foreign born.
Twenty-six miles west of New York City, astride both the Whippany River and the post road that linked the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, Morristown was a market center for local farmers and iron miners. Situated in a region of rolling, sometimes lofty hills, the craggy narrow passes leading to the village could be easily defended, and the river that coursed through it was entirely in American hands. The village sat atop a triangular plateau. Hollows fell down two sides of the town and rugged Thimble Mountain stood tall at its back. Morristown was a carefully chosen site. The Continental army
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Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-two years old (the date of his birth is uncertain), Hamilton had risen from humble origins in the West Indies, and the stigma of illegitimacy, to attend King’s College, which later became Columbia University. Since 1775 he had commanded a New York artillery company. Either during the fight for New York or the desperate retreat across New Jersey, Hamilton’s actions had brought him to the attention of his superiors, one of whom (probably Henry Knox) arranged for his interview with Washington for the vacant aide position. Short and slight—Harrison nicknamed
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Jersey militiamen, who had come alive in December to reclaim their occupied state, remained active, waging what Europe’s professional soldiers called a petite guerre, what today would be variously called partisan or guerrilla warfare.
I will let loose the dogs of Hell Ten Thousand Indians, who shall Yell And foam and tear, and grin and roar, And drench their mocassins in gore… I swear by George and St. Paul, I will exterminate you all.
“What harm have we people done to you, that you Germans come over here to suck us dry and drive us out of house and home?”
Just wait until WWII and ask that again.
the most appalling case—Washington maintained later that it was the single most important reason why the army was denied victory—two American units crossed paths and each, mistaking the other for the enemy, opened fire.
Well, shit. Almost a hundred years too early for that.
“[W]hilst unconditional submission is the language of the ministers and parliament, all efforts to conquer America must prove in vain,” he insisted.5
Prophetic.
In some enlightened circles America had long been proclaimed as unspoiled and uncorrupted, a land inhabited by simple rustics who enjoyed social equality and religious freedoms to a degree unknown in the Old World.
Yeah, that's not true anymore.
With his sure hand for public relations, Franklin put away his powdered wig and velvet suits, and assumed the role of the primitive American by donning a fur hat and unpretentious clothing (while living in a mansion with a cellar stocked with more than one thousand bottles of wine).
His avuncular face even peered up from the bottom of porcelain chamber pots.
Ew. Why...
North later claimed that he had toyed with offering major concessions to the Americans even before Saratoga, but hard evidence is lacking that he contemplated genuine conciliation until after he learned of Burgoyne’s epic capitulation.
Sounds like Trump.
Many southerners were drawn to Toryism as a result of their economic ties to the mother country, their fear of the African Americans that they kept in bondage, and their membership in the Anglican Church, the established church in every southern colony.
(facepalm)
One soldier spoke of his diet as consisting of “a leg of nothing.
Reminds me of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, with the imaginary food from a fat kids' camp.
The most memorable spark to come from these affairs occurred when Colonel Hamilton became engaged to Elizabeth Schuyler, the general’s daughter, one month after he renewed her acquaintance at the winter encampment in 1780.
When Private Joseph Plumb Martin fell ill with yellow fever he believed, not without good reason, that he had survived only because the regimental physician was away on furlough.
asserting—as aggressors invariably do—that their soldiers were being sent for defensive purposes, in this instance to safeguard Kentucky.
In no time, Conyngham seized two British vessels with full cargoes, but acting “imprudently” (as Franklin put it), stupidly (according to Vergennes), he attempted to sell what he had taken in Dunkirk.
Along the way, he crossed the Hudson at Peekskill, where he dined with Benedict Arnold, now the commander of America’s most important Hudson Highlands post, the installation at West Point. It was a delightful dinner and a pleasant evening. Washington liked the younger general and, with all the uncertainties in this war, he knew that Benedict Arnold was a man upon whom he could depend.
Like almost everything else in this war, it arrived late.
The “sort of people you need to win your wars are seldom if ever going to be the ones you would call normal human beings,” Hastings has said. Often they “possessed an uncongenial personality” and were “somewhat unhinged,” and not infrequently they “terrified” or at least aroused the “deepest suspicion by other soldiers around them.”
It is conceivable that had his request been granted he might never have reached his infamous agreement with the enemy.
(At least one partisan band lured recruits by offering African American slaves as pay—one slave for a private who signed on for ten months, three for an officer who agreed to serve for a year.)
Jfc.
Ten years older than Washington, and even taller, de Grasse allegedly greeted the American commander: “Mon cher petit général!” It is doubtful that Washington, who was vain and thin-skinned, found the salutation amusing, though everyone within earshot cracked up.
It was an act known in European warfare as the baroud d’honneur, a face-saving action by a doomed commander (and one for which eight redcoats paid with their lives).
When the little ceremony was concluded, the British soldiers came forward to ground their weapons. It was a lengthy process, and at times the redcoat band played mournful tunes, though contrary to legend it likely never played “The World Turned Upside Down,” a popular song of the day.
As foreseen by Hamilton, one of the most daring, cunning, and devious figures who ever played on the American political stage, a relieved Congress voted for commutation, threw in three months back pay for the soldiery, and adopted the impost amendment.21
French help was the single most important factor in determining the outcome of the War of Independence.
