Author and columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a terrific piece in the Wall Street Journal recently about the importance of knowing history. She was reviewing a collection of essays, interviews and speeches by the late historian David McCullough called History Matters (pre-orders available here).
Noonan made an interesting observation about our understanding of history. She writes, “You can’t be dreamy about the past and say, ‘It was nice then.’ It was never nice, it was made by human beings. You can’t say, ‘People were better then.’ They weren’t.”
It’s true, we do tend to romanticize the past. We like our heroes strong and resolute, our villains dastardly. On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I realized how strong a gravitational pull nostalgia exerts. Like most Americans, I delight in the stories and characters of our founding. Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Betsy Ross stitching the first American flag. General Washington leading the Continental Army into battle against the Redcoats.
The problem with nostalgia is that it oversimplifies. It amplifies the “dreamy” and glosses over the unsavory bits. To really honor and learn from the American story (or any historical account for that matter) requires more than sentimentality. We need the unvarnished version. Which is what makes Rick Atkinson’s book The British are Coming such an irresistible read.
Beyond Nostalgia
The British are Coming cuts through the nostalgia to look closely at the harsh realities of America’s revolution and its bid for independence. Atkinson recounts many of the familiar stories, but he explores them from multiple viewpoints. We meet British and American military leaders. Citizen militias and professional soldiers. Patriotic activists and staunch loyalists. Politicians, lawyers, landowners, artisans, merchants, and more.
Atkinson does not hold back on the intrigue or grisly details of war. He drops us into lice-infested military barracks, sometimes overrun with the scourge of smallpox. We hear the cries and moans of soldiers lying on the blood-soaked battlefields of Lexington and Bunker Hill. We share humiliation after strategic failures and retreat; exhilaration at a surprise attack successfully executed.
In this first volume of The Revolution Trilogy (volume two arrived on bookshelves last spring), Atkinson narrows his focus to the early war years, 1775 to 1777. He examines key themes, such as economics and the logistics of war; imperial overreach and miscalculation; the tension between hubris and strategic brilliance exhibited by American generals; the importance of character and virtue among 18th century leaders.
A particularly striking theme throughout The British are Coming is the emergence of the American identity. In a nostalgic view of America’s founding, we might take comfort believing in the idea of a brave and cohesive citizenry united in the cause of independence. The reality, as Atkinson unpacks, was far more complex.
American Identity
Atkinson begins his narrative when America could be best described as a loose collection of colonies, each with its own sensibilities and priorities. There was no distinct American identity prior to 1775. It emerged only as the revolution unfolded. Atkinson reminds us of circumstances that contributed to that development.
Politically
On the political front, individual colonies were subjects of the Crown; there was no singular American government. In 1774 and 1775, that arrangement began to shift as individual colonies sent delegates to the first and second Continental Congresses. The colonists began acting like a unified nation in 1775 with the creation of the Continental Army, Marines, and Navy, as well as a unified postal service.
INTERNATIONALLY
Many armchair historians might argue that the individual most responsible for burnishing a new American identity was not a colonist at all but Britain’s King George III. The Sovereign provided the common ground for colonist rebellion. Years of taxation without representation were followed by Parliament’s enactment in 1774 of the Coercive Acts (better described in America as the Intolerable Acts). Then in August 1775, George III issued a proclamation “for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition,” a move that hardened American attitudes and resolve toward the cause of independence.
CULTURALLY
Rebellion created uncertainty throughout the colonies, especially in the early war years. Loyalists lived next door to patriots, so as opinions and allegiances became increasingly polarized, suspicions among neighbors grew. Civil liberty for loyalists became an increasingly rare commodity. Atkinson writes that “loyalists could be barred from traveling, running a tavern, or operating a ferry…Loyalist teachers, lawyers, doctors, and apothecaries had trouble keeping their jobs or their clients.” It seems, to approach a homogeneous, American identity would require a certain degree of “conformity, censorship, and zealotry.”
MILITARILY
On the battlefield, General Washington set about disciplining a ragtag collection of unruly soldiers and boisterous militia. The Continental Congress charged him with defending a nation that was not yet a nation. Yet, as Atkinson writes, the Continental Army under Washington’s leadership “would become both the fulcrum on which the fate of the nation balanced and the unifying element in the American body politic, a tie that bound together disparate interests of a republic struggling to be born.”
Indeed, Washington himself, in his farewell orders to the Continental Army in November 1783, would reflect, “Who, that was not a witness, could imagine that…men who came from the different parts of the continent, strongly disposed…to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of brothers.”
Approaching 250
As America prepares to mark its semiquincentennial, there is good reason to wonder if we remain a united people held together by common purpose. We are a polarized nation at present. Then again, didn’t our founding father’s warn of faction? Practically every generation since George Washington has wrestled with its own version of division. In the 21st century, our effort to understand and define our national identity continues. What does it mean to be an American as we approach the tender age of 250?
Returning to Peggy Noonan’s column as she channels the wisdom of David McCoullough helps with the answer. “To live in an era of momentous change and huge transitions is to experience great pressure,” she writes. “Knowing history, reading it, imparts ‘a sense of navigation,’ a new realization of what we’ve been through and are made of…You don’t want to live in the past, but you do want to bring the best of the past into the present.”
Of course, Thomas Jefferson provided the complete answer long ago. True then and true today even if we have yet to approach its perfection: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
REFLECTION 250: How do you understand your identity as an American? Which do you think would be easier: to be an American in 1775 or 2025?
Turn the Page
The next book on the Countdown America 250 reading list is The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America by Kostya Kennedy.
This article is part of Writing for the Public Square’s Countdown America 250 series celebrating the semiquincentennial of America’s founding. For more Founding Fun Facts, patriotic trivia and news-you-can-use to get involved with the Semiquincentennial, visit the Writing for the Public Square Facebook page today!