By Donna Price

dprice@americanpress.com

Non-fiction book review: “1776,” by David McCullough. Published by Simon & Schuster, 293 pages.

By Bill Shearman

Special to the American Press

The “miracle,” of the American War of Independence (McCullough’s choice of words) wasn’t that it happened; it was that the Americans won!

McCullough chooses 1776 as the pivotal year, the “birth” of young America on July 4, 1776. But plenty had happened prior to that date and plenty would happen afterwards. McCullough’s focus is on that year.

The War of Independence began on April 19, 1775, with the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Mass. It pitted 13 colonies, almost separate feudal states, against Great Britain, which was well on its way to becoming the greatest power in the world.

The British had triumphed twice internationally in the same year, 1763. They had won in America in the French & Indian Wars (1754-63) and had won in Europe against the French in the Seven Years War.

Both wars had been over turf and hegemony, both here and in Europe. The British, with the mightiest fleet in the world, and a population of 7 million, one million alone in London, were high on the international hog. America had perhaps 2.5 million people.

However, the French & Indian Wars had taught the Americans a new style of warfare learned from Native Americans; backwoods combat and sniping as opposed to frontal assaults with sheer overpowering numbers.

Worst of all for the British, George Washington, then a young American officer on the side of the British, had gained experience in the new style of combat which aided his invaluable leadership when he was chosen general of the Continental Army in July 1775.

McCullough is not a cheerleader here; he is a historian and a realist who, in a terse summary for him, shows how America fitted a round peg into a square hole.

America had been wholly dependent on Britain for finished goods. For instance, America did not produce any gunpowder; it had to be imported. And in an era when control of the oceans meant control of nearly everything, the Americans had no navy to speak of.

They really had no army by conventional definitions; officers like Nathaniel Greene (a farmer) and Henry Knox (a bookseller) led this “undisciplined rabble,” (King George III’s comment) against seemingly hopeless odds: haphazard food supplies, inadequate clothing and a lack of ammunition.

George III, in his address to Parliament in October 1775, labeled the War of Independence “the increasingly distressing issue of war in America.”

And from his side of the Atlantic, it may have been no more than “distressing.” There was a highly significant amount of loyalty (Loyalists) in America to Great Britain and only a fraction of American manhood had volunteered for the Continental Army.

The Americans began climbing this tall mountain one step at a time in a plodding, six-year war. The first good news was on June 17, 1775, when the British charged Breed’s (or Bunker) Hill near Boston and lost a thousand men.

The first bad news was the invasion of New York in August, 1776. The British had 90 vessels and thousands of troops. Here, rather than suffer another defeat, Washington ordered a retreat and overnight – without one casualty, his army left to fight another day.

The last real good news of 1776 was on Christmas Eve, when Washington and his rag tag Army crossed the Delaware River and completely surprised and captured an army of 900 Hessian German soldiers hired by George III in Trenton, N.J.

Rather than sit on his considerable laurels, Washington attacked again at Princeton and suddenly, the insurmountable mountain didn’t seem so insurmountable.

There is no doubt that Thomas Paine’s immortal pamphlet “Common Sense,” (Jan. 10, 1776) played into a feeling for independence in a country of individualists who liked being 3,000 miles away from authority.

At the time of the American Revolution, young America was the most literate nation in the world.

Young America in the 18th century had the highest standard of living in the world. British soldiers were astonished to see colonial homes, farms, orchards with a cornucopia of produce and livestock.

That was, as it turns out, more than enough to fight for. About 25,000 Americans died in the War for Independence, about one percent of the American population.

It was, for Great Britain, an incredibly devastating defeat, one they would repeat again 29 years later, when America won the War of 1812, this time with the help of an American Navy.

That was the last time Great Britain ever threatened America and the last time America fought a war in America.