1776 review
On the 3-hour flight over from Seattle to Denver, I finished 1776 and it gave me goosebumps. By the end, I was humming I’m proud to be an American and ready to dump my tea into the harbor. If you’re unfamiliar, 1776 is the year the United States of America declared independence from the tyrannical British Empire, waging a full-out war to support the claim, and it’s also the page-turning story of said events by the all-star writer David MC. A quick aside on the author, Mr. McCullough owns a monopoly on the historical, old-man genre so naturally when I picked up the book, I started experiencing back pain. It wasn’t until I put the book down that the back pain lifted. But if that’s the price for 5-star non-fiction, sign me up and get off my lawn!
Spoiler of the ending of the story, the ragtag scrap of revolutionaries win. The odds of an American victory hung so low that I literally asked Maddie, “We won the Revolutionary War, right?” Despite knowing the outcome, the book had me genuinely questioning my historical knowledge. David MC painted a grim, down-and-out picture where anything beside a British victory would have been a miracle. The Washington-led melting pot of troops were out-gunned, out-positioned, underpaid, undermanned, less experienced, and less equipped. Our only advantages were the number of diseased soldiers and the number of 15-year-old soldiers. My personal opinion, exploding diarrhea 15-year-olds have never been on the winning side of anything. Essentially it was a sickly David versus a newly detailed Darth Vader.
But, what we lacked in shave-able men, we made up for in - here comes the general - Washington. The mythos of a man (despite his many tactical mistakes, which have been obscured in the annals of history, and maybe you wouldn’t know about unless you read an old-man history book) led the coin-hungry troops (many of whom fought for the salary, another surprising insight) to a come-from-behind win.
That last sentence was ill-advised because there’s a long separation between the subject and the verb. A good writer would have noticed; a great writer would have corrected. I’m aiming to be just a good writer, so I thought it worthwhile to point out to at least keep my street cred.
Anyways, the greatest of the story lies in the ending. After all his military blunders, Washington decides to prioritize his career over his family by working on Christmas. The lazy British never saw the surprise attack coming and the rest is history. While the Crossing of the Delaware didn’t win the war, it turned the tide of battle, proving that we wouldn’t go quietly into the night, that we wouldn’t go out with at least a few below-the-belt punches. In the times that try men’s souls, we fought for our freedom, because give me liberty or give me death! The inspiring end of the book left me feeling all raw raw patriotism. If you don’t have the time to read the book yourself, here’s an 8-minute recap of the war (George Washington in the yellow and black uniform).
