Independence day

AS VINTAGE years go, 1776 turned out to be a corker. But it very nearly wasn't, as David McCullough shows in his new portrait of an historical hinge.

The year had begun well for the rebels. In March, under General George Washington, they forced the British to evacuate nearly 9,000 royal troops from Boston. But then in July, in the largest projection of seaborne power yet attempted by a European state, more than 100 ships carrying 23,000 British regulars and 10,000 German mercenaries sailed into New York harbour. The result was predictable.

The British began by pummelling the rebel forces on Long Island and Manhattan. Washington showed his determination by recommending that New York be burned down to deny it to the enemy. Congress demurred, demonstrating at this early stage—even before there ever was a United States—that civilian control should prevail over military voices.

As Washington's army fled across New Jersey, death, capture and desertion reduced his force by 90%. After the retreat across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, a successful British assault on Philadelphia, the home of the Congress, seemed inevitable. Congress fled to Baltimore. Meanwhile, New Jersey residents began shifting allegiance, with many, including one who had so recently signed the Declaration of Independence, accepting the British offer of a full pardon. The rebellion looked as though it might be snuffed out—with little more historical impact than the rising of the Scots under Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745.

Then, on Christmas Day, in weather so cold that two of his men froze to death, Washington re-crossed the Delaware River, beating the Hessians (who, contrary to myth, were not drunk but fought like the professionals they were) at Trenton, New Jersey. Victories followed at a second battle of Trenton and at Princeton. The war would continue.

Mr McCullough, a popular two-time winner of the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award, tells the tale of the reverses of 1776 with all the panache of his earlier books on Harry Truman and on the building of the Panama Canal. His hero is Washington who, when he arrived in New England, found the Yankees “exceedingly dirty and nasty” with an “unaccountable kind of stupidity in the lower class” which “prevails but too generally among the officers.” Washington learned his lesson well. Colonel Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller, became one of his closest advisers, performing magnificently as artillery commander and later serving Washington as the president's first secretary of war.

Although “1776” is a fine book, it is, in almost every respect, inferior to David Hackett Fischer's “Washington Crossing”, which was published last year and which has just earned the Pulitzer prize for history. Mr Fischer, a professor of history at Brandeis University, is Mr McCullough's equal as a writer but superior in capturing the full historical picture. He fully demonstrates something Mr McCullough ignores: notably the impact of British atrocities—rape, execution and pillage—on the people of New Jersey. The stress caused by the guerrilla warfare in which the locals engaged was a key factor in the subsequent British defeat.

Under the laws of war, a captured soldier could be executed. British soldiers were not committing war crimes when they dashed out the brains of Virginia infantry who had attempted to surrender.

Washington's policy was different and of topical interest. In America's time of extreme peril, he ordered a colonel to protect hundreds of prisoners taken after Princeton: “Treat them with humanity and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.” At the end of the war, 23% of the German mercenaries chose to remain in America and others later emigrated with their families. Going beyond the legal minimum can pay off.