the the chance to explore what happened in the year 1776 was for me one of the most interesting experiences of my entire writing life and not the least of the thrills of that work was to work with the collection that was inside the Longfellow house letters diaries materials of all kinds the people who lived in that house generation after generation virtually saved everything almost nothing was thrown away thousands many thousands of letters diaries and the rest and during the time that the house was occupied by Washington and his command staff his military family as he called them the the records were very clearly kept about everything that went on there and particularly the purchases of all kinds of things and from that one can draw a great many conclusions about the way of life that transpired Washington occupied the youth Longfellow house which is I hope you all know is on Brattle Street in Cambridge which was then called the Kings Highway it wasn't known as Brattle Street everybody calls it Locke the Longfellow house and that will probably always be but nonetheless it really ought to be known to among all of us who care about history and all we hope will care about it in coming in the among the new generations of Americans it really should be known as Washington's headquarters one of the most important historic sites in America and has been preserved as this one has and this building by the way this old South Church was one of the very first buildings to be preserved because of its historic importance its historic importance is very great indeed but its historic importance also includes that the idea of historic preservation in effect began here there was to be torn down taken away all kinds of things were planned they were gonna waste it up at one point and put offices underneath it I mean and a group of people got together and said no this building should be safe so when you think of Monticello Mount Vernon all the historic buildings that we are blessed with in this country remember it began that idea the preservation ethic began here the Longfellow house was Washington's headquarters for eight and a half months from the time he first took command on July 3rd the summer of 1775 until April 1st when he rode away to follow the army which he had ordered to New York and I thought I would just begin this evening by reading you what I've written about that house in the book 1776 which is in many ways a distillation of much that I found and was helped with by the staff of the Longfellow house among their wonderful collection on first arriving in Cambridge Washington had been offered the home of the president of Harvard Samuel Langdon a building that also still stands for his residence but finding a too cramped for his needs and those of his staff his military family the general moved a few days later to one of the largest most elegant houses in town a grey collaborate Georgian mansion half a mile from the College on the Kings Highway three stories tall with an unobstructed view of the Charles River it belonged to a wealthy loyalist john vessel who fearing for his life and the lives of his family had abandoned the place fine furnishings and all to take refuge in Boston for Washington who had a fondness for handsome architecture and river views the house suited perfectly and would serve as his command headquarters all through the siege with his offices his office established in a drawing-room off the front hall the house became a hive of activity with people coming and going at all hours it was there that Washington conferred with his highest-ranking officers convened his councils of war and with staff help coped with the numberless problems of Organization issued orders and labored over correspondence paperwork without end letters to Congress appeals to the governors of New Providence states and the legislature of Massachusetts thereto he received or entertained local dignitaries and politicians and their wives always in elegant fashion as was both his pleasure and part of the role he felt he must play as with everything connected with that role his uniform the house his horses and equipment the military dress and bearing of his staff appearances were of great importance a leader must look and act the part to judge by surviving household accounts Virginia hospitality more than lived up to its reputation at Cambridge purchases included quantities of beef lamb roasting pig wild ducks geese turtle and a variety of fresh fish of which Washington was especially fond plums peaches barrels of cider brandy and rum by the gallon and limes by the hundreds these defend off scurvy one entry accounts for payment to a man named Simon Lovett for carting a load of liquor from Beverly the domestic staff included a steward two cooks one of whom was French a kitchen maid a washer woman eight others whose duties were not specified and included several slaves plus a personal tailor for the commander one giles alexander washington's body servant a black slave named william our billy lee was his steady companion riding with washington on his rounds of the defenses Billy Lee became a familiar figure a large spyglass in a leather case slung over one shoulder as apparent to all his excellently excellency was in the prime of life a strapping man of commanding presence he stood six feet two inches tall and weighed perhaps a hundred and ninety pounds his hair was reddish-brown his eyes gray blue and the bridge of his prominent nose unusually wide the face was largely unlined but freckled and sun beaten and slightly scarred by smallpox a few defective teeth were apparent when he smiled he carried himself like a soldier and sat a horse like the perfect Virginia gentleman it was the look and bearing of a man accustomed to respect and to being obeyed he was not austere there was no hint of arrogance amiable and modest were words frequently used to describe him and there was a softness in his eyes that people remembered yet he had a certain distance in manner that set him off off from or above others be easy but not too familiar he advised his officers lest you subject yourself to a one of that respect which is necessary to support a proper command it was a philosophy unfamiliar to most Yankees who saw nothing inappropriate about a captain's shaving one of his soldiers or rough-hewn general putnam standing in line with for his rations along with everyone else nor was it Evi easy for putnam and the others of the older officers to change their ways on one occasion surveying the work on defenses by horseback Putnam paused to ask a soldier to throw a large rock in the path up onto the parapet sir I am a corporal the soldier protested oh I ask your pardon sir said the general who dismounted and threw the rock himself to the delight of all present the Philadelphia physician and Patriot Benjamin Rush a staunch admirer observed that Washington has so much marshal dignity in his development that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people this is not a king in Europe there is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress elephant Dyer who had hardly joined in the unanimous decision to make Washington the commander-in-chief judged him to be no harum-scarum fellow John Adams who had put Washington's name in nomination for the command described him in a letter to his wife Abigail as amiable and brave this appointment wrote Adams will have great effect in cementing and securing the union of these colonies and and he prophesized that Washington would Washington would become one of the most important characters in the world after meeting the general for herself for the first time as a guest at one of his social occasions at Cambridge Abigail wrote to tell her husband he had hardly said enough for the general washington's effect on the troops and young officers was striking joy was visible on every countenance according to Nathaniel Greene and it seemed as if the spirit of conquest read through the whole army I hope we shall be taught to copy his example and to perfect the love of Liberty and this time of public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life and support ourselves selves with manly fortitude amidst all the dangers and hardships that attend a state of war now if you could go and sit on the front porch at the Longfellow house and just have a chance to see the various ghosts of the great figures from that time who would came and went from that house they would include not only John Adams and Abigail Adams that Ben Benjamin Franklin and John Trumbull the painter or Elbridge Gerry or Henry Knox or Nathaniel Greene but Joseph Reid and Thomas Mifflin all of whom were to pray play crucial roles in the poor that was about to unfold at the time that Washington took command in July of 1775 just as at Lexington and Concord and bunk you know the American patriots those who were carrying on the fight were not fighting for independence they were fighting for their rights as Freeborn Englishmen this is very important to understand it is not until 1776 not until afterward of the Kings speech before Parliament in which he declared the Americans in rebellion and their leaders and the leaders of the Patriot cause as traitors whose intent he said secret intent was independence it was not until after the text of that speech arrived here in Boston on the first day of the new year of 1776 that the idea of Independence began to be spoken of openly and began to gather force largely because of a pamphlet called common sense now very famous but anonymously written at the time that published a time it was published by Thomas Paine now Washington was not chosen by the Congress Adams did not put his name into nomination because of his military genius Washington has served admirably gallantly as an officer in the British Army during the French and Indian War but as of the time he took command of the Continental forces here in 75 he had never commanded an army in battle before in his life and he was all of 43 years old he was new to the command of that at that level as was everybody else new to this whole business of fighting a war Henry Knox was a Boston bookseller big 25 year old garrulous fat clever amiable and well-read Boston bookseller who's who's a knowledge of the military consisted entirely of what he'd read and books Nathaniel Greene had been made a major-general the age of 33 Nathaniel Greene from Rhode Island all that he knew of the military was what he had read in books George Washington having spent not very much time here and dealt with this problem of New England officers who who saw no harm in mixing with their troops and New England troops who saw no reason to do anything they were ordered to do unless they voted on it George Washington had decided that these New Englanders were about the worst people he'd ever met in his life he thought the New England News were dirty avaricious and they had this strange notion that they could decide things for themselves the fact that he picks out within a matter of weeks green of Rhode Island and Henry Knox of Boston as the two best officers he has the two he can most count on isn't itself a mark of one of his most extraordinary and important traits he could spot talent with a very clear eye and one of the reasons that Congress had picked him was that he had this quality to inspire people of limited or seemingly non-existent former experience George Washington had been chosen by Congress not because he was a military of Jamis because the Congress knew the man as a fellow member of Congress they knew what kind of a fellow he was they knew his character they knew his integrity and they were banking on that and it was one of the most important and best decisions any Congress of the United States ever made they had picked exactly the right man now he had a lot to learn and he was going to make dreadful mistakes in 1776 mistakes so serious that I firmly believe that had there been a prayer covering the war then had it been on the nightly news Washington would have been out of there before he even finished out the year his command would not have lasted a year and with some good reason these were very very serious errors however he was a person who never failed to learn from his own mistakes which is another salient quality of the man he had great courage moral courage and physical courage and he never ever forgot what the war was about what the great glorious cause of America was about as they called it furthermore he he was as is suggested in what Athenian Greene wrote that I just read he seemed to immediately take his place as a unifying figure and interestingly the fact that he had a reputation as the richest man in the country which he was not he wasn't even one of the ten richest men in the country he was very wealthy but the fact that he had a reputation of being very real wealthy made these New Englanders admire him all the more because the attitude was among the people who were were gonna march with him that if this man who has so much is willing to risk at all who were we to hold back there was a treatise of the time by Marshall de sacks a great European General on the essence of leadership and it began by saying first a leader must have courage second a leader must be intelligent and 30 must have good health Washington had all three he was very intelligent he had not much attea not had much education nor had Nathaniel Greene nor had Henry Knox and they all have that in common and and all of them had lost their father early in their and it had to be go to work to help support the family Henry Knox went to work at nine years old a green went to went to work probably about 1215 years old Washington became a surveyor at 16 to help support his mother they had that in common they were not learning men they were not intellectuals like Adams or Jefferson or Hamilton nor was Washington a great spellbinding orator like his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry what he was importantly was a leader men would follow him and his time would tell and would follow him through hell and he would not give up would not quit had he quit had he been killed had he been captured I think the war would have been over the revolution would have failed and time and again in 1776 chance luck the hand of God whatever one wishes to call it intervened in such a way that the outcome almost seems miraculous the more one studies the course of the war the details of the war who did what when the more one comes to conclusion how in the world did it ever come out the way it did the genius the genius of this army at this stage was that they knew how to do things they didn't know how to drill very well they didn't then we had a march in place or march and step they weren't very good they weren't soldiers they were they were farmers in from the field but they knew how to do things how to work how to build fortifications this whole city was surrounded by enormous fortifications the remnants of which are mostly all gone entirely gone and they but they built those fortifications on in almost no time Henry Knox the 25 year old Boston bookseller comes to Jordan went to George Washington the commander-in-chief and said I have an idea my idea is that we should go up to Ticonderoga and get the guns that are up there the big cannon and mortars and bring them back here to Boston and put them up on Dorchester Heights Washington not only liked the idea which was audacious in the extreme it wasn't it was impossible he not only liked the idea he liked this 25 year old bookseller and he said okay great idea you do it you can spend a thousand dollars and you can take one man with you Knox picked his 19 year old brother neither of whom had ever been out of Boston and they did it they hauled more than 50 cannon all the way down from Ticonderoga all the way down to Albany down the Hudson Valley across the Hudson River over the Berkshire Mountains all the way to Boston in the midst of winter now there were no roads no Massachusetts Turnpike it's almost like something out of the mythology but they did it and if you don't know how they did it you've got to read my book now the point of the story is twofold first of all it showed that they could pull off these feats Pike they he hired Teamsters and he he took the problem and made the problem the solution to the problem the problem was it was winter the solution of the problem is Harlem on giant sleds but it isn't just that that this very junior officer can get an idea all the way up to the to the top command but the idea can go up to the top command so there's opportunity for talent and there's opportunity for ideas to great themes in American history that wouldn't have happened in the British Army we had very few advantages over the British Army but that was one of them and this capacity to do things they got those guns up on top of Ticonderoga pond top of Dorchester Heights the guns from Ticonderoga in one night phenomenal thousands of men nearly a thousand dachshund moving at night in absolute silence which is very hard to do with all that massive throng of animals one night British soldiers the British Admirals here in the harbor woke up the next morning looked up in there on top of type of Dorchester Heights where the guns looking down on them and Dorchester Heights by the way is twice as high as Bunker Hill it's the highest was the highest promontory anywhere around Boston Harbor and the British realized they had to leave they had to get out of Boston but what's so interesting is the General Howe who was the Critias commander here said those fellows did in one night what my army couldn't do in 3 months it was the first time that the British realized they were up against an enemy a force that were remarkably good at some things and they better not just take it for granted that they were ignorant rabble in arms who couldn't surprise them now the evacuation of Boston on March 17th 1776 was one of the most important events in our story as a nation it wasn't just that the the British forces here and the British ships here sailed away but over a thousand loyalists Tories from Boston and the vicinity of Boston also sailed away and their story is one that deserves more attention than it's received in my view they were a very interesting group of people and they they saw themselves as the true Patriots they were loyal to their country they were Englishmen English women loyal to their king and they were going away from their homes here they had never been away from this was all they knew there is an impression and an erroneous impression that there was they were all the upper crust the elite the professional people and the successful merchants and the like many of them were but by no means were they all in fact that element was in the minority they came from everything every walk of life every level of society men women children over a thousand and they and they and they're not only sailing away from their homes they don't know where they're headed and they're going to be packed onto troop ships which are already packed as it is and it's going to be miserable which it was in other words they were desperate this was an exodus and their story is a sad one to a large extent because where they went never worked out very well and particularly for those who went to Britain if you want to read a pretty good account of that read the old Kenneth Oliver Wis well alright Rob Kenneth Roberts thank you blank spot Kenneth Roberts it's a very good novel and it portrays the point of view of the loyalists I think in a very compelling way and it's based on sound research one of the pleasures of the work in this portion of the story was to try and dig into the loyalist material and it's it's very it's all much of it as heart-rending many of them came back and john adams by the way was one of the people who urged everyone to let them come back and not to abuse them or scorn them to the point that they were picked on when they came back because his point was we need them we need everybody we can get it who's willing to work and who has talent or craft or something to contribute this after the war was over now Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene these two men that added that Washington picked at the start turned out to be the only general officers in the American army who went the entire distance of the whole war they in Washington three men so Washington during his time here in that house on Brattle I saw that made those decisions which were and have huge long-lasting effect and Nathaniel Greene who was a Quaker and who had a limp from a childhood injury and a cast in one eye all reasons that he would never even qualify for service as an officer ordinarily and no experience turned out to be the best general we had he was the military genius not Washington Washington's Washington's importance was of another comment when they marched to Washington there was marched in New York under Washington from here they then encountered what was to be the first great defeat of the war in the first great battle of the war at Brooklyn where more than somewhere between forty and fifty thousand troops were involved on the two sides and the and the the distance over which this battle was fought was about six miles if you've ever been to Gettysburg for example you know the enormous scale of that battle well the Battle of Brooklyn was much on the same scale but we don't know that we know since that today because it's all built over with the great city but in Brooklyn everywhere you walk you're walking on historic ground just as that's true here in the in Boston and it's true in New York this all been so built over and sub bands and they're building such as this one have not been preserved as they have here in Boston we are very fortunate we are rich in historic sites in Boston in a way that no other city in the country is in New York by the time they got to New York Washington had an army of approximately 20,000 now only about two-thirds of them were fit for duty the rest were sick had been true here there were about 14,000 in the siege of Boston before the British left in the Battle of Brooklyn we over a thousand of our men were taken prisoner including three generals somewhere between four and five hundred men were killed the British out smarter this outflanked us have fought us outnumbered us made us look like fools the commander who had never commanded an army in battle before didn't know how to do it Washington he just didn't know how to command an army on a big scale that's a whole different thing and most of his prior experience in the military had been in wilderness fighting which is intact which is a very different kind of warfare after the battle was over the American army was forced up onto Brooklyn Heights with the East River on their back behind them and they had come across the East River from New York 19,000 men and the general Washington and they were trapped if the British could bring their fleet up into the East River their warships and they had over 400 warships and New York buy them and an army of 32,000 of the best troops in the world 32,000 men was more than the entire population of the city Philadelphia which was the largest city in the country we had no Navy we had no money it wasn't a bank in the country in 1776 and we had almost no troops of who'd had any training whatsoever some of our soldiers were hard to believe some of our soldiers were armed with Spears that's all they had and most of them really didn't know what they were doing they were green farm boys off of that farms in Connecticut and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who would by then come in to join the army and they were trapped on Brooklyn Heights the only escape was back across the East River which Washington decided had to be done at night now I retreat and organized retreat in in in the face of an overwhelming foe is one of the most difficult of all military maneuvers even for trained experienced troops and Washington was going to take these men back across the river in a makeshift Armada of little boats that were all rounded up exactly the way the votes were rounded up in England to get the men off of Dunkirk this was the Dunkirk of the American Revolution and the only reason that the British weren't able to stop it is because the north wind was blowing there was a nor'easter and they couldn't bring their ships up into the East River as the wind had been in another direction on the nights of August 27th 28th and 29th of 1776 that would have been it the whole army would have been in the bag which is exactly what we would do ironically near the end of the war when we caught Cornwallis and his troops on the Virginia Peninsula we and the army under Rochambeau the French army which by the way was larger than Washington's army at Yorktown and the French fleet arrived off of the peninsula and the whole British Army was caught they couldn't escape very same thing was about to happen in Brooklyn and it would have ended the war right then in the summer of 76 in other words about a month after the Declaration of Independence had been voted this written signed and voted through Washington to set decision was fine but that when they went down to the river to start the Exodus the wind that was keeping the British from bringing their ships up in to the river had made the river so rough and by the way it isn't really a river it's a tidal straight it's very rough very difficult to navigate under the best of circumstances still and this always sailboats let's remember that same wind and made the river so rough that they couldn't get they couldn't start the Exodus they couldn't start crossing and all of a sudden the wind dropped the river got calm and and the retreat across the river began now that sudden calming that what too many people was the intervention of the Lord in the fate of the United States of America the hand of God this was in everything very much of what of what was written at the time said it at the time and countless from countless pulpits like this one all over New England and elsewhere in the thirteen colonies and it worked they made it they evacuated 19,000 men cannon horses everything at night no running lights and they did it without the loss of a single man those boats were so loaded down that the gunnels were only maybe three inches above the water utterly incredible the British woke up the next morning and to their total astonishment the American army that they thought they had captured had vanished and and Washington was a hero having just lost this huge battle this brilliantly executed retreat seemed to almost overshadow the despair and the discouragement in the eyes of the public not necessarily with the army of what had happened at Brooklyn but it's tremendously important to understand that it wasn't just circumstance or the hand of God because they the the escape couldn't have been possible without this again this skill these Americans had to do jobs it was managed by a man named John Glover Colonel John Glover from Marblehead marble Glover's Marblehead Mariners fishermen sailors who knew how to handle those boats so the combination of of character if you will competence and chance circumstances made it come off one defeat then followed another very rapidly the invasion of the British Invasion of island of Manhattan at Kips Bay was a fiasco again green troops under Washington dropped their guns their knapsacks their hats anything that weight anything to run as fast as they could to get away from me in oncoming enemy Manhattan was taken over by the British in less than 24 hours then there was a terrible defeat when the surrender of Fort Washington which was our great bastion on the highest point of Manhattan Manhattan up at the very northern end right where the George Washington Bridge is and it was believed by a Nathaniel Greene that that fort could hold out it was supposed to keep the British from bringing their ships up the Hudson but had been proven already by the British they could go up the Hudson whether that fort was firing at them or not so there was really no sense to hold the fort any longer but both Washington and Greene in effect abdicated the decision and just let the fort stay there and the fort had was taken very rapidly by both British and Hessian forces and if you go there today and you see where those Hessians came up the rocks with a rock face of the north side of Washington Heights it's hard to believe anybody could have gone up there even without someone shooting at them it was a phenomenal accomplishment and never ever underestimate the skill and the courage of those British and Hessian troops in the Revolutionary War they were they were remarkable soldiers 3,000 Americans were taken prisoner many of them to face the hideous experience of being imprisoned on the rotting British prison ships in the New York Harbor where almost all of them died there is a crypt in Brooklyn today with the remains of somewhere between 8 and 10,000 unknown American soldiers and sailors forgotten forgotten the horror of those British prison ships is almost beyond belief but then let me the size that life then was very hard for everybody in peacetime as well as in war and what those soldiers went through particularly the American soldiers who had no uniforms had no proper shoes had no training had no winter clothing with winter coming on in the fall when Washington began his long retreat across New Jersey trying to get away from the oncoming British army about a full quarter of them were sick sick with epidemic dysentery or camp fever as it was called smallpox typhus typhoid many of them were dying all the time every day John Adams once said that more soldiers died of dirty frying pans and of bullets or cannon fire and they were deserting by the hundreds by the thousands and if their enlistments were up as was the case for 2,000 of them in December as the retreat neared the Delaware River those men would simply pick up pick up what they had and go off home no shame no regrets they were going home their enlistments were up so that after those 2,000 left Washington was left with an army of 3,000 men that's all now keep in mind that all the noble ideas and ideals of the Declaration of Independence all men are created equal the pursuit of happiness life liberty and the pursuit of happiness all of that would have been only words on paper had it not been for those people who kept up the fight the cause with Washington we owe them everything and don't picture any of them in uniforms they're in rags Washington had a complete beautiful uniform some of his officers had the makings of a uniform mostly this pieces of this and that leftover from the French and Indian War the men are in rags many of them have no shoes their feet are wrapped in rags the stories of the troops leaving bloody footprints in the snow is not just a story it's the truth 3,000 men so all that was left they got to the Delaware River and the idea was to go across the river put the river between them and the oncoming British Army once they crossed destroy all the remaining boats on the eastern side of the river so the British would be stalled until they could build new boats for themselves or haul boats overland from New York the morning they after the night they crossed they crossed again because of John Glover and his Marblehead men they crossed by building enormous bonfires on the knee on the Pennsylvania side and lit up everything and one man who watched it all said it looked like hell with these flames and the Bendis desperate men coming across in the boats the next morning a militia unit from Philadelphia had come out to see what help they could be and among them was Charles Wilson Peale the great American painter who kept a diary and he walked among these ragamuffins these scarecrow troops and he said he'd never seen a more miserable group of human beings in his life he couldn't believe it and he stopped to look at one man in particular and he said that this was the boat the most wretched case of a human being he'd ever laid eyes on and he described how the man's filthy hair was all down over his shoulders and he was naked except for a what they called a blanket coat and his legs and arms were so dirty he couldn't tell whether he was white or black and what color and his face was all covered with sores and he stood studying him and it was several minutes before he realized the man was his own brother now in a way they were all our brothers and we ought to we have to remember them that way feel what they went through there's an awful tendency to think of those people of the 18th century is like figures in a costume pageant because that's the way they're so often portrayed and there's an awful tendency to see them as sort of elder statesmen but they weren't then they were young the officers were young the men were young Israel Trask a little boy from from this state this colony was 10 years old John Greenwood from Boston a pfeiffer boy was 16 his accounts of what happens his memoir are among the most vivid we have they were they were all shapes and sizes and they all looked like what we would call homeless people only much much worse than that well it gave Washington a chance to take stock and his officers to take stock and the British of course were taking stock and they all came to the contained conclusion all but Washington that the war was over and we had lost and no one could possibly blame him for thinking that the Washington saw it differently and he did what you sometimes have to do when all hope is gone he decided to attack they marched north to macaques Ferry on the western shore of the Delaware in Pennsylvania and Christmas night again in the midst of the northeastern Stone they crossed the Delaware famously and yes there were great cakes of ice in the river and it was bitterly cold howling winds sleet snow rain everything but it wasn't the crossing that was so difficult and it was extremely difficult as the march south and again the crossing was managed by John Glover from Marblehead and if you go over to Commonwealth Avenue there's a statue of John Glover there among all the other statues in Commonwealth Avenue John Glover spent a lot of time in the in the what we call the Longfellow house and it was there that John Glover pledged his allegiance to Washington and that Washington again as his he had seen the ability of Knox and Greene saw the ability of John Glover so they crossed the Delaware Christmas night and then they started the march south nine miles now they'd had to march almost five or six miles to get to the crossing then they had to make the crossing and then they can march nine miles again they have no winter clothing many of them have no shoes heaven knows what the windchill factor was but we do know the two of them froze to death on the March they arrived to Trenton the next morning in and they charged out of a blizzard out of a snow squall headlong into the Hessian outpost at Trenton and a fierce house-to-house battle took place Street the street savage fighting and it was all over in about 40 minutes now this wasn't a huge battle it wasn't like the Battle of Brooklyn or other battles that would follow later in the war but it had immense importance psychologically because it transformed the morale of much of the country finally we had shown we could beat them at their own profession soldiering fighting we weren't just building fortifications we weren't just hauling cannon for across the mountains of Western Massachusetts we weren't just navigating small boats loaded down with soldiers and equipment across the turbulent East River we were fighting them on their ground their terms and we won and a few days later we turned and again attacked at night surprise attack and we won again a small engagement at Princeton but I want to tell you a little bit about what to me is one of the most vivid and important scenes of all which I find very moving and which i think is begin as clear a sign as I know of this special extraordinary not special extraordinary gift that George Washington had for inspiring other people on December 31st 1776 the enlistments of all his arming were up in other words every single one of the soldiers under his command could go home and has had been shown early when 2,000 of the enlistments came up they would go home they felt they'd done enough they had renewed at home their families were desperate many of them Washington called them all out into formation not not all the whole army but a major part of the army on the shores of the Delaware River and they were standing there in front of him and he rode out on the in his beautiful uniform this office same idea about the house on Brattle Street the Longfellow house that was a vestige of his leadership so it had to look right he had to look right his horse had to look right he came out on a magnificent horse in a magnificent uniform standing in front of these ragged desperate hungry men rabble in arms as the British called him and he said if you stay with me one more month I'll give you a bonus of $10 now that was a huge amount of money to those men who were being paid about $6 a month and who were not being paid very regularly and whose families needed the money their families at home were often in desperate financial straits often starving so the drums rolled and he said those who will stay with me step forward nobody moved not a single soldier step forward Washington turned and rode away from them and then he stopped he had his back to them and there's great silence and then he turned and he wrote back to them again and as one of his soldiers in the ranks wrote down he addressed them in the most affectionate manner unquote my brave fellows you have done all I asked you to do and more than to be reasonably expected but your country is at stake your wives your houses and all that you hold dear you've warned yourself out with fatigues and hardships but we know not how to spare you if you will consent to stay one month longer you will render that service to the cause of Liberty and to your country which you can probably never do any other circumstance again the drums sounded and this time the men began stepping forward as Nathaniel Greene wrote God Almighty inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew keep in mind these are the month mostly all these same New England troops who had been through hell since signing up back here in 1775 they knew what he was asking them to do they knew how rough it would be how much worse it could get but they signed on again now what does that tell us it emphasizes it seems to me among other things that this was a man who wouldn't quit if his first speech to them didn't work he'd take a little pause and he'd speak to him again second time second time it does work the first time he is appealing to their practical needs this isn't some way for buying them he knows they need money he has no authority to say that they will get be given a bonus he just takes upon it himself as he said in explanation to one of the members of Congress I thought at no time to stand on trifles what does he do the second time the second time he's appealing to their patriotism to their love of country to their homes their wives as he said everything's a thing you hold dear but there's something very interesting in the last sentence of what he says to them he's perceived this by saying you have warned yourselves out with fatigues and hardships but we know not how to spare you another way we can't make it any better but then and then he says if you will consent to stay one month longer we'll render that service to the cause of liberty which is first enter your country second which you can probably never do under any other circumstance in other words this is a great chance for you to do something that you'll never have opportunity to do again and that nobody else will have now there is a slightly familiar ring about that Washington loved the theater Washington when he got came to New York one time prior well prior to taking command at Boston went to the theater seven times he particularly adored the most popular play of the time Cato we know he had seen Hamlet how much of Shakespeare he had read or seen we don't know he also always talked about how the leader had to play the role the part he was and we are cast in these roles we are on the stage of history John Adams said he was the greatest actor of his day and they did not mean that in a disparaging way what he was saying is that he had been cast by history in this role and he would play it better than any man of his time could what does that speech he made just gave sound like it sounds very like the speech of Henry the fifth in Shakespeare's play Henry the fifth that famous famous speech in which he says we few we happy few this band of brothers and gentlemen in England now Abed shall think themselves accurs'd that they were not here same idea now I can't say that that's where he was drawing his remarks from but there is a remarkable parallel let us remember please the Revolutionary War was the most important war we ever fought him that it gave us the country we have the revolution was the most important passage in the American experience and 1776 was the most important year in the most important war in our history except for the Vietnam War it was the longest war in our history eight and a half years and except for the Civil War on a per capita basis it was the bloodiest war in our history most Americans have no idea of what I've just said the number of Americans killed was 25,000 approximately it doesn't sound like much to us because we've been so bludgeoned so numbed with the hideous statistics of war in our time in the 20th and 21st centuries the 25,000 people was 1% of the population population of the country was about two million five hundred thousand if we were fighting the Revolutionary War today and our losses were comparable on the basis of population more than three million of us would die in the Revolutionary War Abigail Adams once said that future generations who will reap the blessings will be seldom now it's wondrous and we should be in amazement that the likes of Jefferson John Adams Alexander Hamilton Benjamin Franklin Madison would all have arisen out of this tiny population in what was a very modest little country at that point but we ought also never to forget the people who served in the fight Nathanael Greene Henry Knox little-little John Greenwood people whose names aren't household words or text history textbook names people like jay-bez or Joseph Hodgkins switch who is one of the most interesting of them all now we have no photographs of them we have no drawings by artists like we have the drawings of a low Homer of during the Civil War we have no recordings of their voices we have no artist's conceptions or sketches of the soldiers none all we're done after the war after the fact nope no correspondents covered the war for newspapers what we have all we have are buildings like this and longfellow house and the gym Forrest Chimel house which was Washington's headquarters in New York and Mount Vernon which in many ways is Washington's autobiography he never wrote an autobiography but he put the print of his personality all over that house and we have the letters and the Diaries and the memoirs of the kind that were stored over in the cellar of the Longfellow house for now very properly being looked after in the state of the art Bruce archival facilities that's what we have their words their account when I'm working on a book of this kind I don't think about what other scholars are going to say or what the reviewers are going to say what I think about are those people what if they could be standing behind me looking over my shoulder seeing what I'm writing what would they think would they read that that and say you got it right that's the way it was or would they shake their heads to say no there's nothing like that my friend you've no idea who knows but we should listen to them we should treasure these buildings that they built treasure the archival collections such as at the Massachusetts Historical Society in the Boston Public Library and the Boston Athenaeum these nathie and the American antiquarian Society in Worcester those voices are all all they're the real thing holding me your own hands and let's never ever please ever think of them as just characters in a costume pageant thank you thank you thank you I am I'm very happy we'll be very happy to take some questions if you have them for about 10 minutes or 15 minutes or so and then I will be signing books pardon me oh and would you please come to one of the microphones I guess this is it come to this one or show us what lung power you have in the back yes sir yeah that's a very good question the facilities for research now or so vastly different vastly improved from when I first started doing research I sometimes when I say these things that people wonder well now how old are you but but I remember when there was no Xerox machine in a library and you had to write everything down by hand which isn't a bad way to do it because when you're writing it down it's also going in here if you just quit in Xerox that nothing's going in here until you sit down and study it because of the internet because of so much that's online today including papers original manuscripts which have hitherto not been available except after the site where they're where they're kept stored people from all over people for in very distant geographical locations can tap into all kinds of resources but with the touch of the hand I mean it's it's miraculous a kid in in a little modest coal town on the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania can go into the local connect library and tap into the resources of the finest libraries in our country now it's thrilling I don't use that much because I am so often working with letters and diaries that are not online they're not available electronically you have to go to the facility or you can write to the facility and ask them to copy things for you but since so much of what I've been working with is right here and this by the way is the part of our country where the research treasures are most prevalent and the riches for the colonial and early American early federal period history of our country there's nothing like it nothing like combination of the Boston Public Library the Massachusetts Historical Society alone eclipses almost any other place you can work Boston Public Library is one of the five greatest libraries in our country and it's the only one which is purely strictly a public library because the New York Public Library is a private public library the five great libraries in the country are Library of Congress New York Public Library the Boston Public Library the Yale library and the Harvard library and and as you've just heard we have two of those five are right here so we're very fortunate as important as the research materials the primary source material that one works with is the staff of the facility that has that RIT has the responsibility for those treasures because very often a good library and a good research assistant can point out to you that there are things that you have to look about look at that you don't even know about and that's one of the joys of working at the Massachusetts Historical Society for example the staff is wonderful absolutely wonderful they are real scholars and they're there to serve you and as I tell students who want to try their hand at this kind of work never never never hold back to a librarian how much you don't know let them know what you don't know let them know what you're trying to find the first time I started doing research had been an English major in college and I started to do research in the New York Public Library at my lunch break and for my job and I went into the the a genial genealogy room which I was told was a very good place to track down people who were not well known and historically and I went up to the librarian at the desk and I said that I was trying to find out about some people in Johnstown Pennsylvania who were very involved in the disaster that took place there in 1889 and I wanted to know how how I could trace them how I could learn more about them and he said well heavy have you checked the da B and I thought I said oh of course why didn't I think of that and it went back to the table and I sat there thinking what is the DA be had no idea should have said right there what's the da B pal and it it's the dictionary of American biography which by the way is a very good way to begin to find people yes the war would have been over that they might have been enough Washington Benny captured tempest in many ways more important than the army being captured pity if Washington and the army had been captured I think it would have been over you have to remember that only about a third of the country was for the war even when things look good and things were looking very very bad in 1776 I think that what support there would have would have just evaporated Washington once speculated with Joseph Reed that if he had to he would retreat into the mountains of Virginia or western Pennsylvania and hold up there it took both the Americans and the British much of that year 1776 to figure out that it wasn't a question of taking New York or holding Boston are holding New Jersey it was the army that mattered not these not this these pieces of geography as long as that army was alive as long as Washington and the army were alive the rebellion would continue one British general saw that Henry Clinton said this is the way to win this war surround them capture them destroy them who war will be over he was right fortunately his views did not prevail yes sir men yes nobody writes letters anymore nobody in political life would dare keep a diary anymore well it could be subpoenaed I don't know and I hear different opinions about how long email might last but because we don't write letters and don't keep Diaries future historians of in biographers in the future days we're gonna have almost nothing to work with it's ironic that we who take such pride in the Information Age may leave no records at all because so much of what we consider to be our records or our story is on his own elect electronic media many of many of which aren't going to survive are going to survive if anybody's happens to be interested in immortality start keeping a diary it's going to be the only one available it's a shame but it's a shame for two reasons first of all there will be no record for future historians no personal record the wonderful thing about the Adams papers for example is that the letters of John and Abigail Adams which number well over a thousand just the letters to each other not counting their letters to Jefferson or others at that time take us into their lives into their hearts and souls in a way that no other collection of letters does we know more about what life was like for Americans particularly in this part of the country because of the Animus papers than we do of any period as it's just a phenomenal collection it's on microfilm if if the if that microfilm of just the Adams family papers now this is several generations we're to be stretched out it would be more than five miles long it's inconceivable what's in those papers by contrast Jefferson destroyed all the papers all the letters he ever wrote to his wife and that all the letters that she ever wrote to him he simply blotted her out of history we don't even know what she looked like and that in a way is the way it's gonna be for all of us we were just going to be erased and it's very sad that's that's the first regrettable aspect of it the second regrettable aspect of it is that writing focuses the mind in a way nothing else does and and particularly I think for people in positions of high responsibilities or people who are going through a telling or traumatic experience putting your thoughts down on paper working your thoughts out on papers they used to say helps you to think just think through things now we've all had the experience of writing a letter or writing a paper or something and you suddenly have an idea that you never had until you were forced to write about it so that writing is a kind of callous static for the brain and the brain needs a workout writing is thinking that's why it's so hard and and that's why it's so important the students be asked to write a lot not just an English courses they should be asked to write in almost all course to get them into the habit of trunk of working out their thoughts on paper and again and again for example in the addams papers you see them trying to figure something out trying to see their way through a complex situation or a or a pressing and and fearful experience it's it's a shame that we write so little we should do much more of it and encourage our children to do so yes yes thank you yes it's a Nathaniel Greene died in his early 40s of disease he probably did he contracted him in Georgia the south his great contribution in the war was by inviting him when the war moves south when and and there's a gesture of appreciation he was given land there and he tried to establish himself there after the war one he can't really predict but I think Nathaniel Greene was one of the one of the upstanding figures of that day he's someone every American ought to know about probably not one American in a thousand could answer who was Nathaniel Greene and it was a loss that he died so early life is so peculiar Henry Knox was in every battle of the war he was in the thick of it cannonballs flying past his head I mean everything he ultimately died because he swallowed a chicken bone well you know Alexander the Great was done in by mosquito he died from malaria Greene didn't have a career after the war Knox did Knox became Secretary of War and was in Washington's first cabinet very very important member of Washington's cabinet yes yes they are the papers of General Grant General James grant General Grant was the kind of character that a writer dreams of he was a grossly fact incurably opinionated arrogant brilliant man who thought Americans were beneath contempt the only group that he held in almost as great scorn was for the Hessians who were his allies and he wrote marvelous letters back to London to one of his military associates there that he could about everything it's one of the greatest collections of the of the British from the British point of view of all and he was often very wrong but he was never without an opinion he's colorful and he wrote superbly so bless his heart and and the how papers General and General Howe and Admiral Howe the POW brothers those papers were destroyed in the fire so and that was a very serious loss the British officers by and large all kept journals or wrote letters some of them Illustrated Diaries they're rich a rich resource and it's of course a joy to do research in the British records because you have to go to London is a wonderful book to be written and I don't I don't know whether I will attempt it but it's a book I'd love to read about everything that was going on in London during our Revolutionary War and a lot was going on a lot in the in the political life of Britain of course but the lives of the loyalists a lot of very interesting espionage going on on all sides everybody spying on everybody it's rich material and and it's all in English yes ma'am well I have a number of ideas for the next project and yes there are several things that this book that came directly out of writing the Adams book because in writing about Adams and Jefferson and the others who were at Philadelphia in 1776 I was acutely aware of all Health's that was going on besides what was happening in 1776 that it was not only crucial to the outcome but I that I felt a strong desire to write about I think it was that escape from Brooklyn I'm more than anything else that I wanted to write about who had such a story it's such a miraculous unreal almost if you put some of this in a novel nobody would believe it you know they'd say well that sort of thing doesn't happen in real life anybody over here yes sir yes yes thank you did you hear the question he he was asking it that there's been a great reaction to my to my book here that has there been any reaction to it abroad yes I'm very pleased to say that has it has been published in in England got wonderful reviews it's doing very well and Rosalie and I had Tufts come back from Budapest and it was thrilling for us to find out that on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 that they are keenly interested in the revolution of 1776 and to have a young hungarians come up and ask me to sign my book will admit a lot thank you very much
