Review of THE BRITISH ARE COMING: The American Revolution - in all its gory & glorious detail
I hesitated starting this book. I then hesitated again a third of the way in. This long book is Atkinson’s first in yet another military history trilogy. This time it is the American Revolution. I worried that this often told (badly) story would not hold up in such a deliberate and impeccably research effort that is the Rick Atkinson signature. The book is packed with detail as it covers 1775 thru 1776 in over 500 pages based on research that covers over 200 pages of footnotes & sources.
This book requires a commitment of weeks of reading – it is worth it. The American Revolution is a story totally obscured in myth. Our typical revolution narrative has evolved over the years into a Genesis like treatment of a war that had all the hallmarks of any other war: violence, horrors, incompetence, heroism and endless drudgery. The traditional narrative is unalterably wedded to a David v Goliath storyline when, in fact, Atkinson makes it all too clear that as long as the Americans did not self-destruct, the actual underdog were the British. Atkinson’s detail brings the ferociousness of the war to light making it a real event filled with real people. Washington remains on his horse throughout and is never hoisted onto his posthumous pedestal. Americans behave like a people in a de-facto civil war. They might shoot from behind a tree or two but more often they are either badly led or badly outnumbered. Some rape and pillage suspected loyalists while others fight to the last man against the terrifying British army. The following are several bullet points that jumped out at me and, I hope, give you a sense of just how illuminating this book can be.
· American resistance in New England starting in 1775 was much better organized, more widespread and ferocious than one imagines. The fighting at Concord & Lexington and the British army’s retreat was a foreshadowing of the “no prisoner” violence that is often lost amidst the mythic narratives of minutemen, Valley Forge and George Washington. The British army came within a whisker of being wiped out during the retreat from Concord. Add to that the pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill where the British lost much of its North American officer corps, and it became clear to many in London that from the beginning this war was not winnable.
· The Atlantic turned out to be as valuable an ally as the French. The British army was never able to live off the land in America in part because of the patriotic loyalties of the colonists but even more because of the wholesale violence the British army unleashed on their American civilian counterparts. Rape and pillage was no small part of the colonial experience during this war. Sometimes it was Americans themselves turning against loyalists but the great majority of depravations came from the British. This forced the British to provision tens of thousands of soldiers from the British Isles and the West Indies. The army was not only reliant on a transatlantic supply chain for weaponry and reinforcements but for everything else ranging from food and horses to medical supplies and wagons. The Atlantic often swallowed up these convoys or sent them violently off course. The Americans piloted armed coastal boats that would pick off the survivors of the treacherous Atlantic voyages, capturing thousands of soldiers and tons of valuable supplies. This logistical Achilles heel made a British victory in America improbable from the start.
· The war was fought with the threat and the existence of disease always there. Thousands of soldiers on both sides as well as civilians were in constant fear of smallpox, yellow fever and other such 18th century killers. The dislocation of war and the fetid conditions of army encampments only made things worse; however, it is apparent that terrible diseases were considered part and parcel of life.
· The Continental Army had a terrible time recruiting and holding onto recruits. The lack of consistent pay, terrible conditions and the too often exercised option to simply walk home made Washington’s “standing army” a pretty wobbly affair. One result was the recruiting of free blacks. Until the US Army in Vietnam, the Continental Army was the most integrated in American history.
· The British establishment prosecuted this war from the start with a degree of magical thinking that is shockingly similar to the American mindset in Vietnam. The British, from their London offices 3500 miles and one vast ocean away, were convinced that there was a decisive level of actual and latent support among the colonists for King and country. They thought they could win the “hearts and minds” of the majority of colonists despite the terrible violence their army was unleashing on the lives and properties of Americans. The British also believed in the ultimate victory brought about by the “shock and awe” of their superior weaponry, soldiering and leadership. Despite the horrible losses at Bunker Hill, the near elimination of a Hessian army at Princeton and Trenton and the almost miraculous effort of Arnold at stopping a vast British armada from penetrating through to the Hudson River, the British always assumed that the American was a vastly inferior soldier led by idiots. This lethal underestimation would plague them throughout the war.
· George Washington may have been an inconsistent general but he was a great leader. Keeping his underfunded, undersupplied and underfed army together was a miracle he was personally responsible for. The political backbiting and general level of indifference and neglect from the Continental Congress was breathtaking. This was only a war we could LOSE. The British were never going to win it unless we handed it to them and often we came terribly close to doing just that.
· In the summer of 1776, a northeast wind and a bank of fog allowed the Continental army and militia to cross the East River from Brooklyn into the temporary sanctuary of New York City. Outside the fog bank, stalled by the northeast wind was a Royal Navy armada that would have sealed Washington’s army’s fate. Chance allowed the revolution to continue. It is hard to imagine how the revolutionary cause would have survived the loss of almost its entire fighting force so early in the war. Washington later took full responsibility for his terrible strategic judgment. He would make up for it with his disciplined retreat through New Jersey followed by the audacious Christmas victories at Princeton & Trenton.
· This book only underscores how history has maligned Benedict Arnold. Separate from his betrayal and all that went into it, up to that point he was by far the best fighting general in the army whose boldness, outspokenness, and military success provoked as much envy and intrigue among his contemporaries as it provoked undying loyalty and affection from the soldiers who fought with him.
· Last but not least … we were born as much in civil war (patriot v loyalist) every bit as much as we were in a revolution. This is particularly relevant today as we struggle to understand the Red v Blue partisan horror of present day America and the never ending and very present reality of our racist heritage. America survived a Civil War that destroyed 95% of the Southern cities and infrastructure while killing and wounding an entire generation. Most nations do not survive such a bloodletting. Maybe our resilience and our continued civil strife can be better understood if we look at the American Revolution as the first of many civil wars. Today’s bitter divisions may, in fact, be yet more grist for the democratic mill we fought for 245 years ago.
The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775 – 1777
Rick Atkinson (2019)
564 pages (before 200 pages of footnotes & sources)