I
previously read and enjoyed Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition: George Washington,
Benedict Arnold, and the fate of the American Revolution”. Spotting another
book by him at the library made this an easy choice: take it out. The full
title is “In the Hurricane’s Eye; The Genius of George Washington and the
Victory at Yorktown”. I wondered about the genius part. A good way
through the book I realized he was talking about Washington’s political genius,
which set the fledging nation on the path of a stable democracy which has stood
us in good stead these past two centuries and more. One hopes it will weather
the pressures of modern social media politics. But I digress.
I thought Yorktown was cut
and dried: the French Navy chased off the Royal Navy, Washington and the French
besieged Cornwallis, end of story. But it was not such a simple thing.
Philbrick goes into detail about the naval and diplomatic underpinnings of the
Allied victory. The reason so much naval power was around in 1781 was due to a
deadly round of hurricanes in the Caribbean the previous year. The Royal Navy
lost at least 6 ships. Some 15 to 20,000 islanders died. Both French and
British Navies decided to get their fleets out of the Caribbean during the
hurricane season in 1781, even though both prized the lucrative sugar islands.
This set the stage for major fleet action off the Atlantic coast of North
America. Philbrick details much that I had never considered. The book includes
a description of Greene’s campaign in the Carolinas to explain why Cornwallis
marched to Virginia.
In the meantime, the first
two mutinies by long-suffering Continental Line troops had taken place. I
thought these occurred after Yorktown. Washington realized that the restive troops
had to be paid with something more substantial than nearly worthless Continental
paper money before sending them off on the long march from New York to
Virginia. Francisco Saavedra, a Spanish ex-military diplomat in Cuba was
instrumental in both insuring the whole French Caribbean fleet sailed north and
in raising a loan from Cuban planters. This enabled De Grasse to loan actual coin
to Washington. The troops received, for the first and last time in the war, a
month’s pay in actual specie.
Before the main event, two
naval squadrons (each about 5 or 6 ships of the line) had tangled. The British
fired at French hulls, causing greater losses. The French fired at British
rigging, disabling enough ships for the British to fear a renewal of combat.
The French squadron, unsure of how much damage they had caused, sailed off.
Cornwallis was safe for the moment. I had never heard of this earlier fight.
The main event, the Battle
of the Chesapeake, saw only the vans of each fleet engaged. The British came
off worse and in time sailed back to New York to refit. This sealed Cornwallis’
fate, since he could not escape from the combined French and Continental
armies. But it had taken a lot more things falling into place to arrive at this
than I’d been aware of.
The book goes on to note the
many ways Washington went on to mold the American nation, from quashing the
nascent coup at Newburgh, yielding power with grace when resigning command of
the army and stepping down after two terms as president.
I am quite pleased with the
book. Along the way, he used numerous
quotes from the memoir of enlisted man Joseph Plumb Martin. I was aware of this
fellow before but this got me off my butt to get a copy on my Kindle. And so, on
to the next book review.
Martin was born in
Connecticut, mostly raised in Massachusetts. He enlisted in a Connecticut
regiment and fought at Long Island (or Brooklyn as we New Yorkers prefer to
call it), Kips Bay, Harlem Heights and White Plains, along with smaller scrapes
here and there. He mustered out, then re-enlisted in 1777. He fought at
Germantown, the siege of Fort Mifflin, wintered at Valley Forge, fought at
Monmouth and various skirmishes in New York's Westchester County between Cowboys and Skinners.
Finally, when the Continental Light Infantry (led by Alexander Hamilton)
charged the British redoubt at Yorktown, Martin was one of the sappers tasked
with hacking a path through the British abatis!
Martin was a good writer. He
apologized for his lack of literary finesse. This makes his work much easier
for modern readers, being spared 18th century flourishes and
falderol. Mainly, he and his comrades suffered – unpaid, poorly equipped, very
rarely fed in decent quantity, often sleeping under the stars and sometimes sent
on fool’s missions. A number of the expeditions he was sent on were abortive:
sometimes the enemy had been warned and reinforced, sometimes weather
interfered, etc.
He was a spirited young man
who sometimes got into trouble during lulls in the fighting. Some had me
laughing out loud. He also recalls the ongoing struggle of enlisted men to do
things the officers would prefer they didn’t. His racial attitudes were about
what one would expect from a man of his era, not the worst, not the most
enlightened. He ended up getting
shafted, as just about all Continental Line veterans did. His Narrative ends
with the war, along with a short argument against those who looked down on
Continental Line veterans and resented their paltry, extremely belated pensions.
It is unfortunate that he felt it necessary to do so.
Philbrick did further
research on Martin. After the war, he moved to what would become the state of
Maine. A number of wealthy men aimed to become major landlords, based on
purchased contracts. These documents dated back before the revolution. Martin’s
farm was on land owned by General Knox, Washington’s chief of artillery and a
hero of the revolution. Unable to make
the rent, Martin wrote a letter to Knox asking that as a veteran he be given
some leeway. Knox did not respond favorably and Martin had to move, ending up
landless. At the start of the book, Martin wished for 6 feet of ground to lay
his bones in.
All I can say is, if you are
interested in the American Revolution, get these books. I would love to have a
heavily annotated hard copy of Martin’s book with maps.
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