Book review:
William M. Fowler, Jr., American
Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781-1783
(New York: Walker and Company, 2011)
340 pages
American Crisis offers many
teaching moments to students of American Revolutionary history.
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| Washington enters Boston, 1783 |
The war didn’t end at Yorktown. British troops finally left New York City more
than two years later.
Some might speculate that the war effectively ended before that
dramatic capitulation at Yorktown in October 1781, because the British never
allocated the land and naval forces that were needed to force the colonials to
give up. Certainly, the hostilities did not end when Cornwallis threw in the
towel.
Fowler weaves military, political and diplomatic details together in
describing “the dangerous two years” between Yorktown and the official signing
of the peace treaty in 1783.
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| Parliament during Revolutionary War |
It’s difficult for us in modern times, so accustomed to light-speed
communications, to understand the frustration and limitations faced by military
commanders, Congress, king and Parliament in the late 18th century.
A round trip across the Atlantic could easily take two months or more.
Washington could communicate with his officers and Congress only as fast as a
horse could travel. British commanders in America were largely on their own in
making tactical and strategic decisions. Parliament, the king and American
diplomats negotiating peace had to act in perpetual ignorance of recent
military actions in North America.
The feckless sloth and impotence of the Second Continental Congress,
and (after 1781) the Congress of the Confederation, is a central theme in
Fowler’s account. American troops went unfed, unclothed and unpaid for long
months and years. The troops committed technically mutinous disobedience about
50 times, and Washington’s officers pushed close indeed to open revolt in their
largely unsuccessful efforts to get paid as the end of the war draw closer.
The principal obstacle to forthright action in the congress was its
inability to raise money: national taxes needed unanimous consent of the 13 states,
which mostly never happened, and the individual states mostly refused to pony
up funds from their own resources to support the army. Thus, “the dangerous two
years”—if the British had had the military capability to defeat Washington’s
army, likely it could have done so. Luckily for us, the king and his ministers
never beefed up their army and navy enough to win the war in North America.
In effect, Washington held them off until they gave up.
Fowler says it much better than I can.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.
