by David McCullough, 2005
(Merlin’s book) Nonfiction about the War from late 1775 to early 1777, takes us through the early, early stages of the War for Independence. What I learned is how terrible and dire our straits were. We had a sick, deserting, poor, unarmed, ragged army against the most powerful, experienced army in the world. The Battle of Bunker Hill, in Boston, was successful at the start of the war – the British retreated to New York. But then most of 1776 was spent losing and retreating in New York and New Jersey until Washington crossed the Delaware on the night of December 25, 1776, in a horrible snow-ice storm, and surprised the hired Hessian army. That was the turning point. The war went on 6 1/2 more years until the Treaty of Paris ending the war was signed in 1783.
Last page: “…Without Washington’s leadership and unrelenting perseverance, the revolution almost certainly would have failed. As Nathaniel Greene foresaw as the war went on, “He will be the deliverer of his own country.”
“The war was a longer, far more arduous, and more painful struggle than later generations would understand or sufficiently appreciate. By the time it ended, it had taken the lives of an estimated 25,000 Americans, or roughly 1 percent of the population. In percentage of lives lost, it was the most costly war in American history, except for the Civil War.
“The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too, they would never forget.
“Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning – how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities or strengths of individual character had made the difference–the outcome seemed little short of a miracle.”
Perseverance – that is the key word – perseverance.