David mccullough 1776 (v4 0)

David McCullough For Rosalee Barnes McCullough Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages —General George Washington TABLE OF CONTENTS Part Chapter One Sovereign Chapter Two Rabble Section I Section II Section III Chapter Three Dorchester Section I Section II Section III Section IV Part Chapter Four The Lines are Drawn Section I Section II Section III Chapter Five Field Section I Section II Section III Section IV Part Chapter Six Fortune Section I Section II Section III Chapter Seven Darkest Section I Section II Section III Other Acknowledgments Bibliography Photographs & Maps Also By David McCullough Copyright Scan and Proof Notes Part I The Siege The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep Few people know the predicament we are in —General George Washington January 14, 1776 Chapter One SovereignDuty Contents - Prev / Next God save Great George our King, Long live our noble King, God save the King! Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign o’er us; God save the King! ON THE AFTERNOON of Thursday, October 26, 1775, His Royal Majesty George III, King of England, rode in royal splendor from St James’s Palace to the Palace of Westminster, there to address the opening of Parliament on the increasingly distressing issue of war in America The day was cool, but clear skies and sunshine, a rarity in London, brightened everything, and the royal cavalcade, spruced and polished, shone to perfection In an age that had given England such rousing patriotic songs as “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia,” in a nation that adored ritual and gorgeous pageantry, it was a scene hardly to be improved upon An estimated 60,000 people had turned out They lined the whole route through St James’s Park At Westminster people were packed solid, many having stood since morning, hoping for a glimpse of the King or some of the notables of Parliament So great was the crush that late-comers had difficulty seeing much of anything One of the many Americans then in London, a Massachusetts Loyalist named Samuel Curwen, found the “mob” outside the door to the House of Lords too much to bear and returned to his lodgings It was his second failed attempt to see the King The time before, His Majesty had been passing by in a sedan chair near St James’s, but reading a newspaper so close to his face that only one hand was showing, “the whitest hand my eyes ever beheld with a very large rose diamond ring,” Loyalist Curwen recorded The King’s procession departed St James’s at two o’clock, proceeding at walking speed By tradition, two Horse Grenadiers with swords drawn rode in the lead to clear the way, followed by gleaming coaches filled with nobility, then a clattering of Horse Guards, the Yeomen of the Guard in red and gold livery, and a rank of footmen, also in red and gold Finally came the King in his colossal golden chariot pulled by eight magnificent cream- colored horses (Hanoverian Creams), a single postilion riding the left lead horse, and six footmen at the side No mortal on earth rode in such style as their King, the English knew Twenty-four feet in length and thirteen feet high, the royal coach weighed nearly four tons, enough to make the ground tremble when under way George III had had it built years before, insisting that it be “superb.” Three gilded cherubs on top—symbols of England, Scotland, and Ireland—held high a gilded crown, while over the heavy spoked wheels, front and back, loomed four gilded sea gods, formidable reminders that Britannia ruled the waves Allegorical scenes on the door panels celebrated the nation’s heritage, and windows were of sufficient size to provide a full view of the crowned sovereign within It was as though the very grandeur, wealth, and weight of the British Empire were rolling past—an empire that by now included Canada, that reached from the seaboard of Massachusetts and Virginia to the Mississippi and beyond, from the Caribbean to the shores of Bengal London, its population at nearly a million souls, was the largest city in Europe and widely considered the capital of the world *** GEORGE III had been twenty-two when, in 1760, he succeeded to the throne, and to a remarkable degree he remained a man of simple tastes and few pretensions He liked plain food and drank but little, and wine only Defying fashion, he refused to wear a wig That the palace at St James’s had become a bit dowdy bothered him not at all He rather liked it that way Socially awkward at Court occasions—many found him disappointingly dull—he preferred puttering about his farms at Windsor dressed in farmer’s clothes And in notable contrast to much of fashionable society and the Court, where mistresses and infidelities were not only an accepted part of life, but often flaunted, the King remained steadfastly faithful to his very plain Queen, the German princess Charlotte Sophia of MecklenburgStrelitz, with whom by now he had produced ten children (Ultimately there would be fifteen.) Gossips claimed Farmer George’s chief pleasures were a leg of mutton and his plain little wife But this was hardly fair Nor was he the unattractive, dim-witted man critics claimed then and afterward Tall and rather handsome, with clear blue eyes and a generally cheerful expression, George III had a genuine love of music and played both the violin and piano (His favorite composer was Handel, but he adored also the music of Bach and in 1764 had taken tremendous delight in hearing the boy Mozart perform on the organ.) He loved architecture and did quite beautiful architectural drawings of his own With a good eye for art, he had begun early to assemble his own collection, which by now included works by the contemporary Italian painter Canaletto, as well as watercolors and drawings by such old masters as Poussin and Raphael He avidly collected books, to the point where he had assembled one of the finest libraries in the world He adored clocks, ship models, took One of the most revealing of the many diaries kept by American soldiers in 1776 was that of Lieutenant Jabez Fitch, a Connecticut farmer who recorded his experiences through one ordeal after another, including his time as a prisoner of war The page at left, from August 28, records how, unexpectedly, the British general James Grant gave the famished prisoners “two quarters of mutton well cooked,” and, from August 29, that the prisoners are to be put aboard a ship Captured Americans by the thousands were crowded aboard rotting British prison ships anchored in New York Harbor, where they were to perish by the thousands, mostly from disease Grossly fat and contemptuous of Americans, the British general James Grant was also capable of small kindnesses to prisoners like Jabez Fitch (see diary at left) and wrote particularly vivid letters describing the campaign of 1776 from the British point of view British troops commanded by General Cornwallis scaled the Hudson River Palisades November 20, 1776, in a watercolor attributed to Lord Rawdon In fact, this daring British move on New Jersey took place in the dead of night, not in daylight as shown Charles Cornwallis by Thomas Gainsborough The most popular British general serving in America, Cornwallis had shown himself to be enterprising and aggressive On November 25, 1776, with 10,000 men, he set off across New Jersey determined, he said, to catch Washington as a hunter bags a fox The one looming uncertainty was the whereabouts of Charles Lee, the eccentric British general turned American patriot who was thought to be a more adroit and dangerous foe than Washington a caricature of Lee with one of his numerous dogs A war of words came to a crescendo during the long retreat of Washington’s battered army across New Jersey A Proclamation issued by Admiral Lord Richard Howe on November 30, 1776, offered pardon to all Americans who would take an allegiance to the King, and throngs in New Jersey flocked to British camps to sign their names By contrast, Thomas Paine’sThe American Crisis, which appeared on December 23, was a powerful summons to American patriotism second only to hisCommon Sense Page one with its immortal opening lines is shown at left The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, New Jersey, 26 December 1776by John Trumbull Though the ceremony portrayed in Trumbull’s great, stylized painting, with the mortally wounded Hessian commander, Colonel Johann Rall, surrendering before George Washington, never happened, and no one after the battle looked so costume-perfect, the principals are all readily indentifiable (see key below), and the high drama of Trumbull’s scene was considered in the eighteenth century entirely suitable for the American triumph at Trenton, one of the turning points of the war A rapid sketch by John Trumbull, one of several preliminary studies, shows General Hugh Mercer being bayonetted in the fury of the Battle of Princeton KEY Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall Colonel William Stevens Smith, aide-de-camp to Major General Sullivan Colonel Robert Hanson Harrison, Military Secretary to Washington Captain Tench Tilghman, Military Secretary to Washington General George Washington Major General John Sullivan Major General Nathanael Greene Captain William Washington Brigadier General Henry Knox Washington at the Battle of Princeton by Charles Willson Peale Painted in 1779, this full-length portrait became immediately popular, and Peale produced a number of replicas, one of which was ordered as a present for the King of France The sash Washington wears is the light blue insignia he chose as commander-in-chief beginning with the summer of 1775 Nassau Hall at Princeton is shown on the distant horizon on the left As the war continued after 1776, Nathanael Greene wrote prophetically of Washington’s singular place in history as the “deliverer of his country.” Also By David McCullough Contents - Prev / Next Also by David McCullough John Adams Truman Brave Companions Mornings on Horseback The Path Between the Seas The Great Bridge The Johnstown Flood Copyright Contents - Prev / Next SIMON&SCHUSTER Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2005 by David McCullough All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form SIMON&SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc Designed by Amy Hill Endpapers:(Front) View of Boston Harbor;(back) the Royal Navy in New York Harbor; both by British Captain Archibald Robertson Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCullough, David G 1776 / David McCullough p cm Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index United States–History—Revolution, 1775–1783 I Title: Seventeen seventy-six II Title E208.M396 2005 973.3—dc22 2005042505 ISBN: 0-7432-8770-3 Picture Credits The maps at the end of the color insert are courtesy of the Library of Congress Other illustrations are courtesy of the following: American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 28, p 199 Author’s collection: iv Boston Gazette: British Museum, London, England: 19 The Brooklyn Historical Society: 14 Clements Library, University of Michigan: 1, 5, 18, 35, 36 Emmett Collection, New York Public Library/Art Resource: Frick Art Reference Library, New York: Independence National Historical Park: 10, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30 John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island: 23 Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia: 12 Massachusetts Historical Society: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles Allen Munn, 1924: Morristown, New Jersey, National Historical Park: 32 National Portrait Gallery, London, England: 20, 38 Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland: 33 Collection of the New-York Historical Society: New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY: front and back endpapers, 4, 11, 15, 16, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bequest of Mrs Sarah Harrison, the Joseph Harrison, Jr., Collection: 21; and Gift of Maria McKean Allen and Phebe Warren Downes, through the bequest of their mother, Elizabeth Wharton McKean: 44 Pennsylvania Museum of Art: 29 Pierpont Morgan Library, New York: 45 Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections: 43 R W Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana: 13 The Royal Collection, © 2004, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: 17 Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, lent by the Putnam Phalanx: 26 Winterthur Museum, p Yale University Art Gallery: 16, 31, 42 Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com Scan and Proof Notes Contents - Prev [ [ [ [ [ [ Release Notes ] Released as V.1.0 10/11/2005 ] HTML, RTF, RB formats ] Scanned and proofed annon ] Annotations removed ] If errors found, correct and increase version by 01 and re-release ] [LM] .. .David McCullough For Rosalee Barnes McCullough Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages —General George... Section I Section II Section III Other Acknowledgments Bibliography Photographs & Maps Also By David McCullough Copyright Scan and Proof Notes Part I The Siege The reflection upon my situation and... wrapped in sleep Few people know the predicament we are in —General George Washington January 14, 1776 Chapter One SovereignDuty Contents - Prev / Next God save Great George our King, Long live