Whirlwind Quotes

“Some 2,500 of Washington’s Continentals perished that winter, roughly one in five of those who had entered Valley Forge just before Christmas. (In contrast, one in thirty American soldiers died in combat in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the nation’s costliest engagements in World War II.)”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“Independence may have been declared in 1776, but it still had to be won. Years of bloody warfare followed. The death toll was staggering, for soldiers and noncombatants. Of all the wars in the history of the United States, only the Civil War witnessed a greater percentage of deaths among those who soldiered. The ratio of”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“Empires exist for the benefit of the parent state. That, and the fact that the colonists eventually came to appreciate this truth, goes a long way toward explaining the origins of the American Revolution. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the authorities in London, the seat of Great Britain’s empire,”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“Britain’s decision to send troops to the city did more to change the thinking of Bostonians than any step previously taken by London.”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“Some Continental army officers joined the search, looking for African Americans they had once owned. General Washington was one who spent some time combing the countryside. He found two of his slaves who had escaped in the raid of the HMS Savage. He sent them back to Mount Vernon and a lifetime of servitude.35 In this hour of triumph for a revolution waged for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Washington also found the time to congratulate his army on the victory that had brought “Joy” to “every Breast.”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“We fight[,] get beat[,] rise and fight again.”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“For Adams, the American Revolution was about independence from Great Britain and what he called the “Purification” of America—the eradication of “Vices” left over from British rule and “an Augmentation of our Virtues.” The foremost vice, which had provoked resentment in Adams throughout his adult life, and especially once he became a successful Boston lawyer, was that a handful of old, wealthy families monopolized important offices. Sometimes, one individual held numerous high offices. Adams thought that merit, not old money or ties to the powerful in London, should be the basis of holding office. Furthermore, it was bad enough to see his ambitions blocked by the scions of those “opulent, monopolizing” clans, but he was enraged by the “Scorn and Contempt and turning up of the Nose” that these people exhibited toward an accomplished and educated man like himself who descended from the “common People.” More than a decade before the Declaration of Independence, Adams said that those who rode the coattails of their “Ancestors’ Merit” had no right “to inherit the earth… . All men are created equal.”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

“Jefferson subsequently came to believe that Henry’s speech attacking the Stamp Act had been “the dawn of the Revolution.”36”
― John Ferling, Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It