BOOK REVIEW: ‘The British are Coming’ by Rick Atkinson

OPINION:

THE BRITISH ARE COMING: THE WAR FOR AMERICA, LEXINGTON TO PRINCETON, 1775-1777

By Rick Atkinson

Henry Holt and Co., $40, 800 pages

Paul Revere probably never yelled “The British are coming.” He is quoted by a participant in the first day of the American Revolution as warning that “the regulars are coming” on his famous ride. This is only one of many surprising revelations in Rick Atkinson’s well-researched and eminently readable new book “The British are Coming.” Mr. Atkinson gives adequate evidence of the fact that many Americans still strongly believed that they were British subjects in April of 1775. All that would change during the period covered in this book (1775-77).

With the exception of the Civil War, no American conflict has been more divisive than our Revolution. Vietnam doesn’t even come close. This book is the first in a planned trilogy on the Revolutionary War following on the author’s highly regarded Liberation trilogy on World War II in Europe.

In researching his World War II work, Mr. Atkinson had several advantages over this latest effort. While he was writing those initial books, many of the participants were still alive to be interviewed, and all sides had compiled scholarly chronicles of the war in Europe while it was still being fought. This was not the case during the Revolution. To get firsthand non-fiction accounts, the author had to rely on letters and journals of the participants as well as memoirs mostly written years after the fact. Despite that, Mr. Atkinson’s historical account reads as smoothly as the military fiction of Jeff Shaara, who often imagines what key historical figures are thinking based on his research. Mr. Atkinson uses extensive historical research to reveal what the characters actually said about their actions.

Not surprisingly, the most compelling character in the book is George Washington. Although not a first-rate tactician, Washington has deservedly gone down in history as one of the great military strategists. Rome’s Fabius Maximus became famous for winning by avoiding battles against Hannibal, and Vietnam’s Giap won even though losing most of his. Washington wisely avoided most battles that he knew he couldn’t win, and lost most of the ones he fought; however, he made the most politically of the ones he did win.

When Washington, a Virginia aristocrat, took over the Continental Army in the summer of 1775, it was with great trepidation. What he found was more of an armed mob than a fighting force. It was composed of uncouth Northern farmers and shopkeepers who were equally suspicious of this large and aloof Southerner. Washington’s real genius was in keeping his ill-fed, seldom paid and often unshod army, and he labored under near impossible conditions. Mr. Atkinson describes these travails in excruciating detail. Washington’s story is one of the great leadership case studies in history.

Today, Benedict Arnold’s name is a synonym for treachery, but there was a time early in the Revolution when he was a hero celebrated for his military skills and battlefield courage in a way that might have made him one of the nation’s great military heroes. In this book, Mr. Atkinson helps us to discover the Arnold that many modern Americans never knew existed. Arnold’s eventual treachery is the stuff of a future volume.

This is a military history and the antics of the Continental Congress in handling — or mishandling — of the war are a mere supporting narrative. Suffice to say that the Continental Congress of the Revolution would make today’s legislative body in Washington look positively brilliant by comparison. King George III, his parliament and prime minister, Lord North, get more coverage but fare even worse. Their miscalculation of the will of the colonists drove their American cousins from identifying as loyal, if disaffected, British subjects in April 1775 to self-identification as Americans by July 4, 1776.

Not all the Americans in this book are heroes, and many of the British actors were true patriots who wanted to keep their American cousins in the empire even if it meant overcoming the folly of their government’s shortsighted policies. William Pitt, the Howe brothers and Adam Smith loyally supported their king while deeply conflicted about the wisdom of his policies.

For too many Americans, our view of our nation’s history is largely unknown because of high school history teachers too absorbed with memorizing dates and facts to make the past come alive. Those of us fortunate enough to have teaching mentors who cared were lucky. For the unlucky rest, there is Rick Atkinson. He makes learning about the past fun and enjoyable. Most readers will await the next volumes even while knowing the ending.

• Gary Anderson is a frequent book reviewer for The Washington Times.