Who Saidthe Late Success Have Turned the Scale and Now the Americans Are All Liberty Mad Again
CROSSROADS OF REVOLUTION
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Jan viii, 1984
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Section vii , Page
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Stephen W. Sears is the author of ''Landscape Turned Cerise: The Boxing of Antietam.'' THE DAY IS OURS! November 1776-January 1777: An Within View of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. By William M. Dwyer. 426 pp. New York: The Viking Press. $22.50.
IN late 1776, xviii months into the Revolutionary State of war,
the American cause was floundering. Gen. William
Howe's British regulars and German language mercenaries
had seized New York, and in November they added the insubordinate outposts on the Hudson, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, to their list of conquests. George Washington's forces were driven pell-mell through New Jersey, with what was left of them making a narrow escape beyond the Delaware River at Trenton Dec. 8. ''These are the times that try men's souls,'' Thomas Paine wrote with perfect accuracy during the demoralizing retreat.
And then came the surprising turnabout. Recrossing the Delaware in a winter storm on Christmas night, Washington overwhelmed the Hessian garrison at Trenton. Not content with that coup, he parried an enemy counterstroke at Trenton on Jan. 2, 1777, and in a great chip of maneuvering won another victory the next day at nearby Princeton. Then as now, the winter entrada of 1776-77 was seen every bit a turning point. ''The minds of the people are much altered,'' an Englishman reported from Virginia. ''A few days ago they had given upwards the cause for lost. Their tardily successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty-mad again.''
In ''The Day is Ours!'' William M. Dwyer, a columnist for The Trentonian, narrates these months of loftier Revolutionary drama from what he terms an inside perspective. He takes his championship from the exclamation of an American militia officeholder as the British boxing line collapsed in the climactic fight at Princeton. These victories and what led up to them has often been described, notably in Richard M. Ketchum's excellent ''Winter Soldiers'' (1973). What sets Mr. Dwyer'due south written report autonomously is his all-encompassing quotation of eyewitnesses. He has cast his net wide, taking advantage of newly found or long-obscure accounts published during the celebration of the Revolution'south bicentennial. We acquire exactly how it was in that momentous time from letters, diaries and recollections of officers and men on both sides and civilians caught in the centre.
This is history with the bawl on. Any reader with illusions about the American Revolution volition take them shattered. Mr. Dwyer makes information technology clear but how nasty the state of war was, for both soldiers and civilians.
Those in the tracks of the armies that winter learned soon enough to fear Washington'due south men equally well as Howe's. Although the American troops desperately needed nutrient and shelter, their plundering often went across necessity. In Princeton a supporter of independence wrote, ''The College is in a very ruinous situation, but this suffered more from the licentiousness of our own troops than from the ravages of the enemy.''
The worst despoilers, however, were the mercenaries George III had hired from German princelings to fight his war for him. Mr. Dwyer is careful to bespeak out that stories of Hessian atrocities were exaggerated by American propagandists, all the same he as well demonstrates that many charges were based on fact. He cites a witness to a company of Hessians falling on a New Jersey town like a plague of locusts, creating ''a scene of promiscuous pillage.'' And there were many documented instances of rape, committed by British soldiers likewise every bit Hessians. Mr. Dwyer suggests that these brutalities aroused equally much support for American arms equally Washington'south subsequent victories did.
In view of such conduct, information technology is no surprise to find the King's troops interim with equal brutality in combat. Still, it is shocking to read (in a British soldier's diary) that earlier the 2nd boxing at Trenton, a Hessian colonel ''went thro' the ranks and declared openly'' that whatever human being taking a prisoner would receive 50 lashes, ''signifying to them they were to kill all the Rebels they could without mercy.'' They did so, murdering men who had surrendered and bayoneting the wounded.
Mr. Dwyer's battle descriptions are less successful than the rest of his book, for he has elected the bad-mannered format of detailing the activity showtime from ane side's point of view, and so from the other'south. The narrative thus lacks the brilliant sense of immediacy that comes from interweaving the words of aggressor and defender. Withal, it is articulate enough how brilliantly Washington and his troops , against professionals reputed to be the best in the world, wrecked vi German and British regiments at a cost to themselves of less than 100 men.B
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/08/books/crossroads-of-revolution.html
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