1776

David McCullough, “1776”, Simon & Schuster, 2005, 294pp, plus 64pp notes and bibliography

In McCullough’s book the detailed story of George Washington and those who marched with him, especially in the critical year of the Declaration of Independence, 1776, is told and documented with extensive research from both American and British archives.  At the center of the conflict along with Washington is the intriguing story of Nathaniel Greene, a Quaker, and Henry Knox who conceived and carried out the idea of hauling the guns of Fort Ticonderoga overland to Boston in the dead of winter.

The book begins in London in 1775 when George III went before Parliament to declare America in rebellion.  The story then moves to the Siege of Boston, then to New York, where British ships appear in numbers larger than any other 18^th century force ever put to sea. 

McCullough is a noted historian and well worth reading.

My Notes:

Pg. 44:  George Washington was born in 1732.  He was the great-grandson of John Washington, who had emigrated from Northampton, England, in 1657.  When George was eleven, his father died and because of the family’s reduced circumstances, he had little education—only seven or eight years of schooling by private tutor, no training in Latin or Greek or law, as had so many prominent Virginia patriots—and, as those close to him knew, he was self-conscious about this.

Pg. 47:  George Washington became quite wealthy mostly due to his marriage to Martha Custis.  He owned more than one hundred slaves.

Pg. 122:  Larger than Boston but smaller than Philadelphia, New York had a peacetime population of perhaps 20,000 people crowded into an area of less than a square mile.

Pg. 270:  In December of 1776, Washington’s army had only 7,500 members.  Possibly 6,000were fit for duty.  By all reasonable signs, the war was over and the Americans had lost.

However, the war did drag on for another six years before the Treaty of Paris ending the war was signed in 1783.  Of all the general officers who had taken part in the Siege of Boston, only two were still serving at the time of the British surrender at Yorktown, Washington and Greene.  Henry Knox, who had become a brigadier general after the Battle of Trenton, and who fought in every battle in which Washington took part, was also present at Yorktown. 

Pg. 294:  The war was 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.