HENRY BRINK: Well, good evening. I am Henry Brink. I'm a senior at
Hillsdale College. I'm an English major. And I'm most recently
from St. Paul, Minnesota. And it is my pleasure to
introduce Mr. Nathaniel Philbrick this evening. Nathaniel Philbrick is an
author and a research fellow at the Nantucket
Historical Association. He earned his BA from
Brown University and his MA from Duke University. Mr. Philbrick is the
recipient of numerous awards, including the Samuel Eliot
Morison Award from the USS Constitution Museum, the William
Bradford award from Pilgrim Society, and a
Lifetime Achievement Award from the New England
Historic Genealogical Society. He's the author
of numerous books, including In the Heart of the
Sea, which won a National Book Award for nonfiction and
was the basis of the 2015 movie of the same name, The
Last Stand, Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle
of Little Bighorn, and most recently, In
the Hurricane's Eye, the Genius of George Washington
and the Victory at Yorktown. So would you please help me
in welcoming Mr. Nathaniel Philbrick? [APPLAUSE] NATHANIEL PHILBRICK:
Well, thank you. It is a great
delight to be here. Last time I was here, I was
speaking about George Armstrong Custer. So we're now going to
change venues a little bit and go with George Washington. And I have to say, it was
after finishing The Last Stand, my book about Custer, that
I was searching for topics. And you know, most
of my books tend to focus on
communities of people. Whether it's the 20 crew
members of the whale ship Essex that have just been
rammed by a whale and thrown into a
survival situation, or 102 pilgrims about
to find themselves on a coast about which they know
nothing in the fall of 1620, or Custer's regiment, bound
for the Little Bighorn, where there is a Lakota
village of unimaginable size, I'm interested in what
happens to communities under terrific stress. And I live on Nantucket Island. It's a community with
a year-round population of about 15,000. And our daughter, when she was-- I was a stay-at-home
dad growing up. And we lived briefly in historic
Boston, the historic core, which is the North End. And I remember
pushing the stroller through the North End
of Boston, imagining what Boston was like in
the time of the Revolution. And Boston, now, looks
entirely different from what it did then. Back then, it was a
1.1 square mile island, dominated by three hills
of almost mountainous size, with a population
of 15,000 connected by a thin neck of land to
the mainland at Roxbury. And I began to think, after
moving to Nantucket, 15,000-- I know what it's like to live
in a community of 15,000. You go to the grocery store. You don't know everyone by
name, but you recognize them. It's a personal. When you get to a stop sign
and someone blows you off, you don't say
anything because that could be your kid's teacher or
your dental hygienist, which is really-- you don't
want to-- anyway, so it's a personal way
of looking at things. And so what would
have been like to be in Boston as the pressures
of a revolution mounted? And so that led to my
writing Bunker Hill. And that battle is the
obvious sort of plot point that everything leads to. But I found myself
unexpectedly taken with a gentleman who arrives
just a few weeks later, George Washington. Now, I had grown up with George
Washington, like all of us do, with George staring
at me from the $1 bill. And you know, this is the
guy of a statue, you know? I, at that point, thought,
what could be more boring than George Washington? But the George Washington
I was introduced to in Boston in the summer of
1775 was anything but boring and very different from
what he would become-- the defensive-minded
general that would hold a nation together. He was wild-eyed. He was a lot like George Custer. This was George in his
early 40s, red-haired. He didn't like
the New Englanders he had inherited in
the provincial army. You know, New England
has a tradition. We have it on Nantucket, the
tradition of the town meeting. And this is democracy
at its bare-knuckled best, where, you
have a town meeting, and you basically fight
it out on the town floor, and somehow, you
come to a decision. So these were people-- these were young
men who had grown up in these kinds of
situations where they always had a say in what was
happening to them. And so when Washington
would deliver them an order, they would say,
whoa, wait a minute. If we decide we
want to do this, we will be very happy to
fulfill your order. And this just drove
Washington crazy. He was used to a
hierarchical society. And so Washington saw
this group of militiamen and just wanted to
get it over with. Here, the British
were in Boston. They were besieged by
the provincial army. And this was a group of
professional soldiers. He had these militiamen, no
money, not enough gunpowder. There was no way he could
see fighting a long war. He wanted to get it over with. He wanted to attack
Boston, take it by storm, burn it down, if necessary, and
just get this thing over with. Three times he would bring that
proposal to his council of war. Three times it would be
voted down unanimously. And ultimately, they would go
with a much more conservative plan of bringing his young,
soon-to-be head of artillery, Henry Knox, the bookseller who
had learned everything he knew about military
through those books-- God bless, booksellers-- and
would bring down the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga. A few of them would then end
up on Dorchester Heights, giving them a commanding
view over Boston. And General Howe, who was
then the head of the-- leading the British
army, realized, we got to get out of here. And thus would come the
evacuation of Boston in March of that year. And I just had to follow George. What was going to-- how would
he become the Washington who would be capable of
holding the country together through eight years of war and
establishing the presidency? How would he-- So that led me to my next
book about the Revolution, Valiant Ambition, in
which I paired Washington with Benedict Arnold. We have people of
different arcs. The book begins in
the summer of 1776. By now, the British
have left Boston, but the empire is
about to strike back. And it's New York which
is in their sights. And a huge fleet arrives
in New York, of ultimately, 40,000 soldiers and sailors,
and a fleet of 400 vessels. This is more people than
in all of Philadelphia, the largest urban center in
North America at that time. And there is
Washington, dug into New York and the high
ground in Brooklyn. He's completely
out-generalled in what will be called the
Battle of Long Island. But what he is brilliant
at is retreats, which he'll be doing a
lot of in the years ahead. The nighttime retreat
across the East River is one of the more amazing
logistical feats in which he delivers his army to
the island of Manhattan, under the noses of the
British, who are completely unaware that this is happening. He then is forced to
retreat all the way to-- ultimately, across New
Jersey to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. And it's really bad. He's lost most of his
army to desertion. And then will come
the famous Battle of Trenton, in which he turns
it round on Christmas Day, which is an incredible feat. And it's Washington at his best. It's Washington at the lowest. But what Washington
had an ability to do is Washington had a-- and I speak of him--
he had a true genius. He wasn't a genius
like, let's say, Founding Fathers Thomas
Jefferson and Hamilton. He was not a jittery, brilliant
person, eloquent, and a mind that could go anywhere. He had the ability to dial
out the static of life. And believe me, as Washington
retreated across New Jersey to the other side of
the Delaware River, there was a lot of
static out there, a lot of people, a
lot of naysayers. He had the ability
to say, OK, what is the most important
thing for me to do now? And so there on the
Delaware, he realized, we've got to have some kind
of comeback strategy here. If we're going to do it,
we have to shock them. It's the only way we
can turn this around. He succeeds in doing that. It's one of the most amazing
comebacks in military history. But what I began to
realize with Washington, his genius was also, and
primarily so, political. He was very good at
working with others, listening to different
sides, subtly moving people in directions that,
from his point of view, were the right way to go. And when it came to
fighting this revolution, he had to deal with Congress. This was-- you know, we
were creating a republic. And the great
danger when it came to revolutions and
republics that all of them would end with a military coup. The civil government in
the wake of a revolution is inefficient, frustrating. The military,
whether it's Caesar, whether it's
Cromwell in England, or in the future, Napoleon,
someone takes control, and the dream ends. And this is what the Continental
Congress was fearful of. So they kept Washington
on a very tight leash. And one of the paradoxes is that
the more successful Washington got, the more
untrustworthy congressmen became, particularly those
in the South, where the-- excuse me, those in New England,
where the Revolution had begun. And then the
following year, would come the Battle of
Saratoga, in which, largely, through the
heroics of Benedict Arnold, America would score a great
victory, with Horatio Gates as the commanding officer. Meanwhile, Washington
lost a series of battles, the Battle of
Brandywine and Germantown, allowing the British William
Howe to move into Philadelphia. This got the politicians to
wondering whether Washington was the right person. His army is dug in to a Valley
Forge, that terrible winter. And there is an
attempt to replace Washington with Horatio Gates. It's unsuccessful, largely
because of Washington's political brilliance. He was one of these people,
he was not necessarily the greatest military
strategist in the world, but he was terrific at
working with people, at seeing the big
side of things. And his integrity was
never, never doubted. He succeeds in getting through
that terrible winter at Valley Forge. And from then on, particularly
with a stellar performance at the Battle of
Monmouth, he's in. He is the unquestioned face of
not only the Continental Army, but he is becoming
the face of America, and absolutely
essential to all this. One of his best generals,
Benedict Arnold, moves in the other direction. He is denied a promotion by
the Continental Congress, which were the ones
doling out the promotions to major general. He ultimately decides that it-- while Washington's destiny
to hold the country together, it's his destiny to try to
tear that country apart. And he unsuccessfully attempts
to surrender West Point, where there are 3,000 soldiers
and all sorts of armaments and ammunition. He unsuccessfully-- he
attempts to surrender that to the British. That happens in the
late summer of 1780. That is foiled, but America
is at an absolute low point. You know, we Americans
went into this revolution because we did not want to
pay taxes to Great Britain. We apparently did not want
to pay the taxes required to support Washington's army. It was withering on the vine. Recruitment levels in the
states were miserable. There just was nothing going on. But there was good news. In 1778, after that great
victory at Saratoga, France had decided to enter
the revolution on our side. And this is terrific
because France had what the American army did
not have, an effective navy. Up until this point,
Great Britain's navy, the most powerful in the
world, had a stranglehold on the Eastern Seaboard. They could move
troops at will by sea, with relatively
lightning speed, enabling them to take Charleston,
to move up and down. Washington knew the
only way that they had a shot at a victory
that would potentially end this thing in
a favorable way was with the help
of the French navy. Now, previously, France
had been humiliated by the British in
the Seven Years War, or the French
and Indian War. They had lost Canada. Their ally, Spain, had
lost Florida, New Orleans. But after that,
France had launched into a program that they
called [FRENCH],, revenge. And they realized,
how are we going to regain the status we had
before the Seven Years War? And that was by
retooling their navy. They created a naval academy
at Brest, which still exists. A professor there was
hugely helpful to me in writing my book, In
the Hurricane's Eye. They analyzed naval
warfare analytically, applying the ideals of that time
to analyze what was going on, and came up with tactical guides
that were way beyond anything the British had. In fact, the British
were using those guys to help develop
their own tactics. They also were retooling their
navy, building better ships than the British had. By this time, it had been
developed that the best ship of the line-- and a ship of the-- it was
called a ship of the line because the way two fleets
would attack each other was they'd create
a line of battle, and the two fleets would come
to within firing distance, sometimes only a
pistol shot away, and blast away at each
other until one side began to give way. And it was realized that a 74-- this is a ship with 74 guns-- was the optimal size
for a ship of the line. And these were-- You know, I think
we have a tendency to think of square-rigged
ships as kind of quaint forms of
transportation from the past. But a 74 was the
most sophisticated technological creation
of the 18th century. Between 500 and 750 men aboard. It took 2,000 oak
trees to build one. That's 73 acres of forest. If one of these sailed into a
harbor on the American coast, they would take
over because they had as many cannons
as Washington's army at the beginning of the army. And so Washington
needed the French navy. And this is where
his genius comes in. As soon as France entered,
he realized what he needed, more than anything
else, was for France to establish naval
superiority somewhere on the Atlantic coast, where he
could coordinate with his army and win that victory
that would end the war. But he quickly realized this
was going to be difficult. Because what had happened
with the entry of France and then their ally, Spain,
was that a colonial rebellion became a world war. Now, you had England
fighting France and Spain. The war moved as far as India. But the real center of wealth
in the world at this time was the Caribbean, the sugar
islands of the West Indies, Jamaica, French Haiti. For the Spaniards, it was Cuba. Most of their income was
coming from these islands. And so once France and
Spain entered the war, the ships come in, but they
all go down to the Caribbean and fight it out, trading
islands back and forth, much to the frustration
of Washington, who stuck outside New York, where
now, General Sir Henry Clinton is dug in with 10,000 soldiers. Washington is on the Hudson,
sort of glaring at him, for two years. The war has basically
in the Northeast has turned into a stalemate. Washington complains
in a letter, "this war drags on like
a cart with no wheels." What is positively
happening is happen-- what is happening
is in the South. And it's not good for America. The British take Charleston. And then Lord Cornwallis
meets the hero of Saratoga, Horatio Gates,
at Camden, South Carolina. And Horatio Gates is
completely annihilated. He literally runs
from the battlefield. And the American
army is scattered. Washington decides to send the
general who has become really his most trustworthy
general, Nathanael Greene, raised a Quaker in Rhode Island. On Nantucket, we love our
Quakers with a vengeance. And Greene would
make his way south. So that was happening. But what Washington
desperately wanted was finally to get something
happening with the navy. And then, in the fall of
1780, this is almost a year precisely before it would
be the victory at Yorktown, something happens in the
Caribbean-- three hurricanes in the span of a month. The first hurricane would
destroy much of Cuba, and Jamaica, and a good
portion of the fleets of both of France and
England, and along with Spain. But it would be--
the second hurricane is now known as the
Great Storm of 1780. Winds that have been estimated
had to be 200 miles an hour. Because what happened was
the trees on these islands were power-washed of their
bark, you know, just stripped, every structure annihilated. 22,000 people would die in the
Caribbean in that one storm. And then, just a few weeks
later, as the Spanish navy has just departed Cuba
with 5,000 soldiers, a fleet of 40 ships, what's
known as Solano's Hurricane hits. That's the admiral in
charge of the Spanish fleet. Wipes out that fleet. And the wreckage is forced to
flee back to Cuba before they can attack
British-held Pensacola, because that's
Spain's real goal. And then this is the
message that gets delivered to France for the first time. They realize, next
summer and fall, we don't want to leave our
fleet in the Caribbean. We've got to move them north. We have to do as Washington's
requesting and come north. This is the beginning
of the year of Yorktown, and it starts with a hurricane. Next thing that happens
is Benedict Arnold, Britain's newest
brigadier general, is sent by Clinton
to the Chesapeake. Benedict Arnold quickly
proves he might be the best general on both sides. He speeds up the
James River, soon has the wartime
capital of Richmond, which had been moved that far
inland under the assumption that it would be too far
away for an enemy to attack. Benedict Arnold strikes
with lightning speed. Governor Thomas Jefferson
is forced to flee. It's in flames. This obviously
angers Washington, who sends down the young
French general, who's become a kind of
surrogate son, Lafayette, to do battle as best he
can with Benedict Arnold. In the meantime,
Nathanael Greene has been doing everything he
can to consolidate his army. And he and Lord
Cornwallis have it out after what's known
as the Race to the Dan, across the breadth
of North Carolina. Well, at that point,
Greene doesn't have the soldiers to
face the 2,000 crack troops under Lord Cornwallis. He gets over the
Virginia border, is able to swell his army with
militiaman, dives back south. And they meet in the Battle
of Guilford Courthouse. Greene does not win
because Lord Cornwallis has the field at the end. But he has eviscerated
Cornwallis's army, that's lost half their
best officers and men. Cornwallis retreats to
Wilmington to refit, to retool. But being someone
who is aggressive, he decides, rather than
retreat to Charleston and consolidate the
forces in South Carolina, to move into Virginia, where
he replaces Benedict Arnold. And he and Lafayette
battle it out in a fascinating
cat-and-mouse game. Meanwhile, Washington is in
talks with French General Rochambeau, who is stationed
in Newport with 5,000 soldiers. Washington is desperate for news
about where is the French navy. Are you going to help me? Unfortunately, Rochambeau
has been instructed by France not to inform Washington of the
whereabouts of the French navy. Their fear is that
the American war effort is about to collapse. They realize that recruitment
levels are not happening. It looks like it's all
just going to fall apart. And in case that
happens, the fleet that leaves Brest that winter
under Admiral de Grasse has been instructed to
then sail to Newport, evacuate Rochambeau's army,
and abandon North America. Can you imagine
if that happened? So they don't want Washington to
know quite where de Grasse is. Washington and Rochambeau have
a meeting and Wethersfield, Connecticut to discuss strategy. Washington feels
what they should do is attack the British
dug into New York. It's the only place where there
are enough soldiers, where there could be a victory
big enough to end the war. The French, however, are fearful
of entering New York Harbor. They like the Chesapeake. Rochambeau tells
George Washington, OK, we'll do what you say-- because
Washington is the nominal head of the allied force-- but secretly informs Admiral
de Grasse, who, by this time, has left Brest and
is in the Caribbean, that when you come north, you
should go to the Chesapeake. It's not until June
that Washington reads in the newspaper
of de Grasse's activities in the West Indies. He confronts Rochambeau. So what's going on here? Oh, yes, we've been talking. Don't worry. Things will work out. It's August 14 when Washington--
by this time, Rochambeau's army has moved from
Newport to New York, combined with Washington's
army on the Hudson. Washington gets a letter
from de Grasse informing him that de Grasse is sailing not
for New York, as he thought was agreed upon, but
for the Chesapeake. There's two
congressional delegates who are there with Washington
when he gets this letter. Apparently, he was very angry. They go to prepare
for breakfast. They meet up with
him for breakfast. And he's completely calmed down. And this is Washington. Today, we try to fulfill our
destinies as a personality. You know, what is
our inner core? Let's become that. Washington knew his inner core. His inner core was that of
someone with anger management issues, and he
spent his whole life trying to control
that anger management. He very famously studied
the rules of civility. He was under incredible
amounts of self-control. But every now and then, he
just couldn't take it anymore. He would vent it, but
then always subsume those emotions to do the
best thing for his country. He calms down, and he says to
the congressional delegates, well, the plan has changed. We are now going
to march from New York 500 miles to Williamsburg. And his New
Englanders do not want to march in August into the
killing heat of the South. He says, we're
going to need help. Do your best to help us. And then this is
Washington at his best. He's in a situation he
didn't want to be in, but he's going to do the
best to make it work. And this is where he
enlisted the same skills he showed during that retreat
across the East River. He does an amazing job of
fooling General Clinton in New York, convincing him that
the allied forces are going to attack New
York via Staten Island. Letters are leaked,
are supposedly stolen that Clinton gets
that reinforce all this. Washington's not even
telling Rochambeau everything he's thinking of doing because
he knows secrecy is paramount. They begin to
march the soldiers. And by this time--
one of the reasons Washington did
not want to attack the Chesapeake was that
Lord Cornwallis was moving around Virginia. He wasn't staying
in any one place. And if the large allied
force moved down there, he would just move into
South Carolina and escape. And in August,
that's what they all assumed Cornwallis would
do-- once it became obvious that they were headed
down, he'd just move into North Carolina and
eventually South Carolina. And there would--
he would escape. But for reasons that are
still not clear, by this time, Cornwallis is dug into a town
at the end of the point formed by the James and York Rivers-- Yorktown. He's digging in to form
a potential naval base. Suddenly, he's
got-- there he is. 7,000 British and
German soldiers. That's a big army. Things are beginning
to fall into place. As Washington would later write,
it hit him like a ray of light. If I can get this army
down there in time, we just might pull it off. But he had to get the
French navy there. He had to get de Grasse. They cross the Hudson, all
the time thinking Clinton is going to attack them. Clinton's convinced they're
going to attack them via Staten Island. They march toward Staten Island. And then they veer to the
south and head for Philadelphia as fast as they can. They're in Philadelphia
when Clinton realizes, whoa, they're not going after me,
they're going after Cornwallis. Washington has still heard
no news from de Grasse. Where is he? By this time, he should
be in the Chesapeake. He's made his way to
Elkton, Head of Elk, they called it, the northern
tip of the Chesapeake, where they're going
to begin transporting a good portion of the two armies
by boats down the Chesapeake towards Yorktown. He still has heard
nothing from de Grasse. A messenger approaches
with an express. de Grasse has sailed
into the Chesapeake with 28 ships of the line. It's happened. This has happened. It's there. Washington is so ecstatic,
he turns his horse around, rides as fast as he can
to Chester, Pennsylvania-- if you go there now,
there's a gambling casino. It's where William Penn
first stopped on his arrival to what would
become Pennsylvania. And because he knows
Rochambeau and his entourage has been sailing
down the Delaware, inspecting forts along the way. The French are approaching
the dock at Chester. And they see someone, a tall
man in regimentals, with a hat in one hand, a handkerchief in
the other, jumping up and down and going like this. And they say, who could that be? You know, it couldn't
be Washington. He'd never do anything--
it's George Washington. He is so excited that,
finally, this plan that no one could have
ever really put together is happening. Rochambeau disembarks. They hug. And Washington was not a hugger. They move on. It's now a race. We've got to get down there
as quickly as possible. They make it to Mount Vernon. Washington has not
been home in six years. Four grandchildren have been
born while he's been away. Can you imagine the
emotions of that? They spread out the maps on the
dining room table, strategize. They leave. They're just a little ways
down the road when Washington gets another message. A large British naval force has
just approached the Chesapeake. The French have sailed out. This was four days
ago, and nothing has been heard from them since. Now, in the history
of naval warfare, if two comparable fleets
of French and British met, the British always won. Now, I'm not going
to go into detail about the Battle
of the Chesapeake because that's why you
have to buy the book. [LAUGHTER] But I will say it
has been rightfully called the most
important naval battle in the history of
the world, in terms of its ultimate
consequences, because for the first and last time-- that's an exaggeration--
the French would win. They would force Admiral
Graves to sail back to New York for repairs. de Grasse returns
to the Chesapeake, just as Washington and
Rochambeau are arriving. They meet on de
Grasse's flagship as the armies come down. And the trap closes
around Lord Cornwallis, who has been assured by Clinton
in New York that, don't worry. We're going to save you. Thus begins the
siege of Yorktown. The French have-- I think this is
Rochambeau's 17th siege. I mean, these were very
common in European warfare. And so the French are
very good at this. And it's mid-October
when Lord Cornwallis is forced to surrender,
thus delivering the victory that
Washington had foreseen in his quest for
naval superiority. Now, so many times in
working on this book and studying
Washington, I wanted there to be the time
where he could go, yes, I finally did it! But within days of
this great victory, his stepson, Jacky Custis,
would die of camp fever. This meant that as the
country was celebrating, he and Martha were in
Mount Vernon in mourning. They would eventually make their
way to Philadelphia and then back to the outskirts
of New York. It would take 2 and 1/2 years
to negotiate the treaty that would finally end this war. And it was really in
the spring of 1783 that Washington would meet his
greatest challenge, I think, as general. And it would not be in warfare. By this time, his army
was in Newburgh, New York. The men hadn't been
paid for years. his officers-- up until then,
there had been mutinies, but the officers had always
been in line with Washington and controlled things. Now the officers were the ones
that wanted some assurance that they would be compensated
for sacrificing their lives for all of this time. But we barely had a government. The Continental Congress
was a government in name only, a window
dressing of a government. They didn't have the ability
to tax the American people directly. It wasn't going to happen. The officers put
together a proposal that they should
march on Philadelphia and demand that the Continental
Congress fulfill their wishes. This would have been
the military coup that would have destroyed the
republican experiment of the United States. Washington calls his men
together and delivers a speech to his officers. They listen to it
and are unmoved. By this time, Washington's
just turned 50. And like many people
turning 50, he's beginning to have
trouble reading. And he's just gotten his
first pair of reading glasses. But no one has seen
him wearing them. He delivers the speech. No one's excited about it. And then he says, well, I
want to read this letter from a congressional
delegate that is sympathetic to your cause. He takes out the letter. And he clearly is
having trouble to read. And then he says, excuse
me, I have not only gone gray in the service of
my country, I am going blind. He puts on those glasses
and begins to read. And there is not a
dry eye in the house. He leaves soon after. The men unanimously agree to
do whatever George Washington wants them to do. Washington saved America
in that instance. Finally, in November of 1783,
the British evacuate New York. Washington has
determined that he will surrender his military
commission to Congress. When George III hears that
this is Washington's intention, he says that if Washington does
that, he will be the greatest man in the world. And that's what Washington did. He had to go to Annapolis
because Congress had moved from
Philadelphia to Annapolis because they were fearful
their own army was going to attack them. So they had moved to Annapolis. It just shows you-- I mean-- and then it
took them two weeks to get a quorum
before Washington could surrender his commission. He does that. He was so overwhelmed
with emotion that he had to hold his shaking
right hand with his left while he delivered his speech. He then made his
way to Mount Vernon and arrived at Mount Vernon
on Christmas Eve 1783. Now, I finished In
the Hurricane's Eye on Christmas Eve. It was a very different
kind of Christmas for me. And I have to tell
you, you know, I grew up thinking that
the American Revolution was a series of battles leading to
inevitable American victory, that they were a series
of stepping stones. It wasn't like that at all. By the fall of 1780,
everything was up in the air. And as Washington
watched, it was a series of seemingly random
events, under no one's specific control, that had
to fall into place for it all to work. And as he would say in a letter,
if you do not believe in God, look what happened in
America in that year. And so I think the hurricane
is the appropriate metaphor for this war. And it was this series of
events circling around that could have gone anywhere. But always, there was
Washington, holding it together in the hurricane's eye. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER: Thank you. We now have time
for a Q&A. Please make your way to the microphone
if you have a question. Also, Mr. Philbrick will be
signing a copy of his book, In the Hurricane's Eye, the
Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown out
in the Searle Center directly following the lecture. AUDIENCE: Thank you. My wife says that
I'm naughty and I shouldn't ask this question. But I have children in the
Naperville high school, or grandchildren in
Naperville, Illinois. And I went there to a
meeting some years ago where Howard Zinn
was the speaker. Howard has now died. And he says that Washington and
Jefferson are kin to the devil. And he's a Communist. And he's written the textbook
that is the most popular across the country,
teaching our kids. I'm a member of the
Chicago Presbytery. This is the parent body for
all the Presbyterian churches in the Chicago area. And they've completed
a study on racism. And they start out by saying
that Washington, Jefferson, all these people, were racists. They're bad people. And that our big companies
were founded by racists. And so our churches are
plagued with racism. And so this has
passed the Presbytery. And all the churches
are now supposed to be dealing with this terrible
racism because of Washington and so on. Help me. What can you say to this? [LAUGHTER] NATHANIEL PHILBRICK: Well,
you know, I have to-- I think it's important
to look at the Founding Fathers in terms of the
slavery issue and all of that. And I think Washington is a
very important figure in that. Yes, he was a slave owner. But there was two-- he grew up as a slave owner. He owned slaves
even before he was-- you know, had the
ability-- as a kid. This was what he grew up in. What is remarkable
about Washington, and what I feel makes him the
only person who is deserving of the title the
Father of our Country is that it was his experience
in eight years as commander of the Continental
Army, he changed. He recognized that it was
much more than Virginia. The New Englanders he
didn't like when he first arrived in Massachusetts became
his most trusted soldiers by the time it came to
the march to Yorktown. Through Lafayette, who
was an abolitionist, he began to recognize
the evil of slavery. You know, there were two
people inhabiting him. And yet, his life was completely
interwoven in that institution. And during the war, he wanted-- as he said, he wanted to get
rid of the institution, but he-- many of his slaves were
owned by his wife, Martha, which made it illegal
for him to do anything. So he was embedded in all that. What's remarkable
about Washington-- I think you've got to
look at people's ability to learn, and to change, and
to see things as they are. And there is no
one like Washington where you see that
arc, in which, finally, on his
deathbed-- you know, he is dying of a throat
infection in which he is basically being
strangled to death. I mean, just a
horrible way to go. He had just recently
drafted a new will in which he freed his slaves. And you know, there
he is on the bed. And he asks Martha to bring
the two drafts of his will. He has her destroy the old
one to keep the other one. And this is his dying act, which
established a precedent that was clearly seen. So I think you have to
put people in the time frame in which they lived. You know, my book about
the whale ship Essex, I've had readers
who say I could not have any sympathy for a whaler
because they killed whales. And my response to
that is if you grew up on Nantucket in the 19th
century, you would have-- if you had been a boy, you
would have been a whaler. And if you had been a
woman, you would have been economically dependent on it. It's the context. You've got to see that. And if you-- it's really
not fair to the past, and it's not fair to America. I think, ultimately, you
have to look at this country as we are now. And what's great
about America is we were born in a revolution,
and we will always be in the midst of a revolution,
as are each generation redefines the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence in terms of its own time. It's messy. It's disruptive. It's not terribly
efficient, but it's what keeps us a free nation. And you know, we are
an aspirational people. We are always
trying to be better. And that is the
essence of America. And we wouldn't
have this country if it hadn't been for
George Washington. I'm now working on a
different kind of book. I've spent the last two
years, my wife and I and our dog Dora have been
following Washington's travels as president. When he became
president, I'm the head of 13 independent states. What do I do to create
a sense of solidarity? He went on a road trip. And he didn't do it
in Air Force One. He got into a carriage. He had two secretaries and six
servants, two of them enslaved. And the first trip was-- New York was the
temporary capital. They went to 60 different
towns in New England, you know, just little towns. He made the decision
that he was not going to stay in private
homes because that would be playing favorites. He stayed in taverns. You know, taverns in 1789
were the flea-bitten Motel 6s of his day. And that's what he did. And it took him a
month to do this. He went to every town. And people who were
naysayers-- and believe me, there were naysayers-- saw him, saw his commitment to
the concept of the government. And he created that solidarity. The longest tour would be
three months down to the South. He was a southerner,
but he had barely been to North Carolina,
never south of that. He went all the way down
to Savannah, to Augusta, and back in. And so we have been
following him by car. And we just cannot believe
the stamina of this guy, the commitment of this guy. You know, Washington slept here
is kind of a historical joke. It's not a joke. I mean, the amount of work-- he slept in 283 different
places before the end of the Revolution. And then he did this. The guy was out there,
trying to make America work. And we would not
have the freedoms we have today, we would
not have the ability to have these kinds
of conversations, if it hadn't been for
George Washington. [APPLAUSE] AUDIENCE: Well, now
I have two questions. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] church. AUDIENCE: Well, now,
I have two questions. You could include-- probably, in
one of those road trips of his, he visited like
what, two synagogues and spoke to two
Jewish communities? NATHANIEL PHILBRICK: Yes. AUDIENCE: So you should
include that in that. NATHANIEL PHILBRICK:
Oh, yeah, yeah, no. It's great. OK, so he did the
New England tour. But Rhode Island-- and I went
to college in Rhode Island. And Rhode Islanders
are Rhode Islanders, with Roger Williams,
the independent man. And they hadn't ratified
the Constitution by the time Washington went
on his New England tour. So he very carefully
took-- there are three ways to get north from New Haven. You could take where I-95 goes
along the coast, which would go through to Rhode Island. Or you could take-- go the inland route to
Hartford, Springfield, and then to Boston. He went inland and never
went to Rhode Island. That put a lot of
pressure on the state, and that was absolutely
his intention. And so within a few months time,
they ratify the Constitution. That summer, in 1790-- and this is when
all sorts of stuff is happening in his government. Jefferson has just become
his secretary of state. He and Hamilton are-- their uneasy relationship
is beginning. They're trying to work out the
compromises that will create a tax structure and all that. And Washington decides it's
time to visit Rhode Island. So he and Thomas Jefferson get
on one of John Brown's packets and sail to Newport. And there, he got a
letter from a member of the Jewish congregation in
Newport, one of the oldest-- there's a little argument who's
the oldest, whether New York or Newport. But this one was really old. And Washington's
response, which Jefferson may have had a hand in it
because religious freedom was a big part of where
Jefferson came from, in which it is still
looked to today as one of the most eloquent
expressions of the importance of religious freedom
ever written. And it was during this trip. And so my wife and I sailed
to Newport to do this and had just the most fantastic
tour of the synagogue. And this is a living history. It's not a statue
or a museum exhibit with dust gathering around it. What Washington--
by going there, Washington created a ripple
effect which these communities are still feeling. And in a way, all
history is local. You know, Tip O'Neill used
to say that about politics. And that's what's been really
fun following Washington on this is I've contacted
archivists, librarians in each one-- all
of these towns, and looking for records
of the citizens' responses to Washington. And just about every
one of these towns has a plaque somewhere. And then somewhere in the middle
of the 19th century, someone's great-grandmother,
who was about 90, had a memory of when
Washington came to town. AUDIENCE: So my
second question was, how is Admiral de Grasse
remembered in French history? NATHANIEL PHILBRICK: Yeah, well,
Admiral de Grasse, great hero from our perspective. Unfortunately-- and
Washington and Rochambeau both complained
about it. de Grasse was a good admiral
but very impulsive, and did not always
have the best judgment. And he was lucky. He went up against a very
mediocre British admiral. It was nobody's first choice to
be meeting de Grasse in this. A few months later,
de Grasse goes up against one of the Britain's
great admirals, Admiral Rodney, in the West Indies. It's known as the
Battle of the Saints. And de Grasse's fleet would get
completely routed by Rodney. de Grasse had the
biggest flagship in all of the navies anywhere. He would be forced to surrender
his sword to Rodney, which is just absolutely humiliating. He would be a prisoner in
London for a number of months. And it was a huge
embarrassment to France. And so he is not
remembered fondly. But the one thing that was good
about that from my standpoint as a historian was that there
were court martial proceedings following that great defeat. And as a consequence,
the logbooks of many of the
captains that were at the Battle of the Chesapeake
were preserved and are still at the archives in Paris. And they were an absolute
treasure trove for me when it came to recreating
the Battle of the Chesapeake. Because you know, it's-- past accounts lean very
heavily on English accounts, I think largely because
they're in English. The fact is, the French
won and their accounts-- and boy, there's a lot of them. And so I found the-- And I'm a sailor. I grew up sailing, racing those
great magnificent yachts known as Sunfish. [LAUGHTER] I am a Sunfish North
American champion. That's no laughing matter. [WEAK APPLAUSE] [LAUGHS] But as a sailor, it
was so exciting to read these logbooks. And I worked with a
translator in Quebec, who helped me with this-- to read these accounts
of this battle. It's just a
fascinating slugfest. And for me, as a historian,
that's the juice. You're getting those sources
that haven't been used, those primary sources that
speak to you as if they were speaking to you today. SPEAKER: We have time
for one more question. AUDIENCE: Thank you. Several years ago, Dr. D.
James Kennedy in Florida spoke about George Washington. And he said that in
modern times it's been popular to
denigrate or downplay the importance of his
Christian faith in his life and in his decisions. And he went through
quite a teaching on showing the importance
of his Christian faith. Could you speak to that, please? NATHANIEL PHILBRICK: Yeah, yeah. Washington's faith is
a fascinating thing. You know, I think-- and it really ties into his
role as a battlefield commander, too. When he experienced the-- early on, when he was
representing Britain in the French and Indian War, he
was there at Braddock's defeat, where every officer on
horseback was killed or wounded except for him. And he had three bullet holes
through his uniform, one through his hat. And his best friend
and doctor, Dr. Craik, who would actually be
there by his bedside when he died, talked to
several Indian warriors that were there and told him
how everyone was aiming at George Washington and
couldn't believe they didn't kill him. And he was-- they gave him a
name of the person who cannot be killed, or words
to that effect. And I think he-- you know, that
gave him a profoundly spiritual sense of mission. You can see it in his
letters after that. He worshipped in the
Church of England, which became complicated
after the Revolution because you then had the
founding of Episcopalian faith. And that was a rough transition. And it's interesting. After the Revolution, he
would cease taking communion. He would attend
church every Sunday. But no one knows
quite what was-- had presiding over that
many men killed, you know, what was he thinking about
slave-- who knows what it was? Or maybe he was
just angry at what was happening in terms of
the new Episcopalian church. Who knows? But spirituality was
absolutely important to him. His letters, his whole
demeanor was highly spiritual. But I think, also,
ultimately, with Washington, who was an intensely private
man for someone so public, it was ultimately his own thing. And from my mind, I think that
I have all the more respect for him because of that. Well, thank you very much. SPEAKER: Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
