Angels in the Whirlwind by Benson Bobrick

In his introduction, the author explains that he has written this book not due to any lack of excellent materials on the American Revolution but, rather, because he wanted to tell the story of the War from his perspective. Perhaps more serious students of the American Revolution would find this book to be a reprise of familiar material.  I did not. 

More serious students of the American Revolution, I imagine, would be familiar with the campaign against the Iroquois nation in the Wyoming Valley of northern Pennsylvania or the Battle of Freeman’s Farm.  They might know the location of Kings Mountain or Flamborough Head. I had never heard of any of these.  Nor did I know that the American Revolution was perceived less as a revolution and more as a civil war among colonial Americans. Not everyone approved the separation from Britain, of course, but I was surprised to learn that loyalists comprised maybe 30% of the colonial population.  The problem of what to do with the loyalists persisted after the conclusion of the war.  

These same serious students will know that the delegates to the Continental Congress deliberated as to whether a statement of independence should be issued before or after the colonies were formed into a confederation, that the mid-Atlantic states were holdouts in going for independence with New York being last to get on board, that it was Richard Henry Lee’s resolutions that articulated the colonies’ reasons for breaking ties with the mother country. 

What Jefferson was called upon to do was write up Lee’s resolutions in a more elegant fashion.  The reader is given insight into how the sensitive Jefferson squirmed here and there as his essay was slashed and re-hashed by his compatriots. Benjamin Franklin reassured Jefferson that there was no shame in having one’s work cut down to size, but, perhaps regrettably, Jefferson’s mention of the problem of slavery was edited out of the final document. 

Again, from my perspective, General Washington is covered from a slightly different angle by Mr. Bobrick.  To my surprise but not surprisingly, the admired and respected Washington had his share of detractors. Bobrick describes the Conway Cabal, the coup that tried to unseat Washington.  Charles Lee of Virginia, in outright defiance of Washington’s orders at the Battle of Monmouth, emerged as a particularly vocal critic of Washington.   Bobrick gives a more comprehensive picture of the virtuous Washington whom he also acknowledges as a fine military strategist.  General Washington was frequently exasperated and angered by both his soldiers and his circumstances, but as Bobrick describes, Washington emerged from every situation as decisive, principled and steadfast in his commitment to the patriot cause. 

Some of the most colorful figures of the American Revolution had to be our country’s naval commanders.  The chapter entitled Flamborough Head (located in British Isles) read like an adventure-on-the high-seas tale.  John Paul Jones (“I have not yet begun to fight!”) comes to life as a singularly dashing man of great derring-do.  Then there’s Nathaniel Fanning who, having just dodged four British ships in the English Channel, saw ahead of him the “entire English Channel fleet.” Fanning, who happened to be sailing an English-built ship, ran up an English flag and proceeded to plow straight through the fleet while announcing to all that he was sailing “His Majesty’s cutter Surprize.”   Clever Yankee! 

‎Major Patrick Ferguson also deserves a special mention. ‎‎ ‎‎He was a British sharpshooter, inventor of the “deadly accurate” breech loading rifle which could fire “seven times a minute.” All Americans, were we all to know the story, would surely be grateful to him for not picking off General Washington early in the War. In September of 1777, as British and patriot troops gathered at Brandywine Creek –just a few miles down the road from my hometown of Kennett Square---Washington and an aide rode out on reconnaissance. ‎‎ ‎‎Hiding amongst the trees was Ferguson along with three other sharpshooters who saw the two riders but didn’t know who they were. ‎‎ ‎‎Rather than fire, Ferguson thought to capture them. ‎‎ ‎‎He shouted for them to stop, but the aide and Washington took off through the woods. ‎‎ ‎ 

Later, when Ferguson understood that it was none other than General Washington whom he had shouted at, he is reported to have said, “I could have lodged half a dozen balls in or about him before he was out of my reach.  But it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual who was acquitting himself coolly of his duty, and so I left him alone.”   A decent Brit if ever there was one.   Ferguson, too, acquitted himself coolly of his duty throughout the war.  At the battle of Kings Mountain (North Carolina), he met his end.  Ferguson rode to the very front of the lines to shore up his failing troops and was shot repeatedly, both arms broken and his clothes in tatters.  I admit to a fleeting sense of injustice at the death of an “enemy,” an honorable sort of man who had so considerately spared our own leader.  

Not all the British were gentlemen.  As fighting moved southward toward the end of the war, British General Cornwallis took it upon himself to plunder and vandalize Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia estate. Cornwallis then conducted biological warfare by intentionally exposing Jefferson’s slaves to smallpox.  Cornwallis’s little experiment was to see whether he could spread the disease to infect American troops.  Inexcusable treatment of one's fellow man, but likely not atypical behavior of the age.   

The book is organized into two sections, the War in the North and the War in the South. For the most part the author follows events and battles chronologically. There were no pictures in this book.  There were only two maps which, though inconveniently placed, I finally used to full advantage and found immensely helpful.  These maps showed the geographic location of the battles discussed and were numbered to correspond to a key which gave the date and a few particulars of the battle.  

At first, I thought this book was just another survey history of the American Revolution.  I quickly came to understand, however, that there is no end to the topics a historian can unearth and artfully weave into the warp and woof of his account of history.   Mr. Bobrick wanted to write about the war from his perspective and he certainly did so, devoting himself to a thorough and engaging analysis of America’s war for independence from Britain.   

 

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Meriwether Lewis is the central figure in this book which gives a full account of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806.  Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose doesn’t skimp on details or personal opinions and has plenty of maps.  Overall, it is a very readable and probably very accurate book though maybe not the best book on the subject.  

Meriwether Lewis was born in 1774 to “one of the distinguished families of Virginia.”  His father died when Lewis was five years old and his mother, a respected and capable woman, remarried a man named Marks.  Lewis maintained ties with all family members although he was out of the house at a fairly young age.  From Ambrose’s choppy description, one gets the picture of Lewis as a restless sort, almost a loner, though maybe just an independent, adventurous type. 

Lewis joined the military and worked his way up through the ranks.  Through his military connections and knowledge of the West, Meriwether Lewis came to Jefferson’s attention and when Jefferson became President, he selected Lewis to be his personal secretary (an “Aid de camp” in Jefferson’s own words).  The fellow Virginians became friends and colleagues.  When President Jefferson finally put into action his plan for exploring the continent west of the Mississippi, he was confident that Meriwether Lewis was his man. 

Lewis was educated but he became much the scholar under Jefferson’s tutelage.  As preparation for the western expedition, Lewis also met with various educated cognoscenti of the day to study astronomy, geography, mineralogy and even pharmaceuticals.  He learned the use of scientific and navigational instruments and mastered botany to the degree that he was able to give detailed descriptions of plants using technical terms.  This complete man was already a skilled horseman, hiker, woodsman, shooter and hunter. 

The main points of the expedition are well-known.  President Thomas Jefferson was keen on exploring the continent beyond the Mississippi and was already making plans for exploration before he purchased the Louisiana tract from the French.  He knew of the potential wealth of the fur trade, the importance of the United States dominating the continent and the value of an all-water route from the Mississippi to the Pacific.  Jefferson was also interested in the geography and flora and fauna of the region, a more personal interest perhaps. 

Lewis and Clark’s party, called the Corps of Discovery, was considered an infantry division of the U.S. military.  Roughly 25 men departed from St. Charles (near St. Louis, MO) in May of 1804 and headed up the Missouri River.  They spent that winter at Fort Mandan and in April of 1805, their real work began.  Just shy of the mouth of the Yellowstone River, Lewis and Clark led their men into territory unknown to the white man.  With that, they unlocked the West for their growing nation and their countrymen.  Although Lewis and Clark found no all-water route to the Pacific, they charted and documented countless features of a huge expanse of land that was or would become the United States. 

After a sojourn at Fort Clatsop on the Columbia River (in the same area where the Astorians would set up camp some 7 years later) the expedition party made its way back east taking a slightly different route.  Lewis headed north to Blackfeet Indian country to explore the Marias River.  Clark took his portion of the party and explored parts of the Yellowstone River.  No lives were lost on this expedition (with the exception of one Sgt. Floyd who was laid to rest before leaving St. Charles).  Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis and the known U.S. to great fanfare and acclaim.  

We meet some old friends in this book.  First, Sacagawea, the famed female Shoshone Indian who accompanies Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back, appears in a rather diminished role in Ambrose’s account. I suspect this is an accurate depiction.   Sacagawea is the pregnant teenage wife of Toussaint Charbonneau when the Lewis and Clark party meet up with her.  She had been captured by the Hidatsa Indians along with several other Shoshone teenage girls and it was as a prisoner of the Hidatsa that Charbonneau, a French-speaking Canadian hunter, took her (along with the other girls) for his bride.  

Technically, it was Charbonneau who was hired on as an interpreter though Sacagawea’s Shoshone roots were important; Lewis knew they would have to procure horses from the Shoshone once they crossed the Continental Divide.  But Sacagawea’s translation process was a cumbersome one.  She began in Hidatsa, Charbonneau then translated from Hidatsa to French and a third party, sometimes one Rene Jessaume who was said to speak French badly, took the whole matter from French to English.  Charbonneau, Sacagawea and their little Jean Baptiste were additional mouths to feed and while Sacagawea could gather roots and berries and cook, so could everyone else.  As for Charbonneau, frankly, he seemed a bit of a lay-about.  

Although Charbonneau and Sacagawea were interpreters, that role was more often, and apparently more capably, filled by George Drouillard, a part Shawnee independent hunter and master of Indian sign language.  He was to play a prominent role in the expedition and was recognized by Lewis as an invaluable companion.  For Drouillard, the Lewis and Clark expedition was just the beginning of his western wanderings.  Drouillard was an explorer who covered miles of western territory in the years following the Lewis and Clark expedition.  It was due to his explorations as well as those of his counterpart John Colter that Clark was eventually able to draw up a suitably reliable map of the West.  Drouillard is declared a “mountain man prototype” by Robert Utley in his wonderful book called A Life Wild and Perilous, which gives more information about Drouillard.  

Meriwether Lewis could never find his footing after this tremendous feat of adventure and leadership.  He was named governor of Upper Louisiana by Jefferson but it was a position he never filled adequately.  Neither could Lewis seem to decide among a life of politics, entrepreneurship, marriage and family or bon vivant.  He was never able to bring himself to write up his journals for publication.  He seemed to suffer mightily from the “how-do-I-ever-top-this” syndrome. For two years, out in the middle of nowhere, Lewis had on a daily basis called it as he saw it and had answered to no one. Back in civilization, he seemed unable to find a similar niche that would allow his strengths to flourish.  Just three years after the expedition, he died by his own hand from gunshot wounds in 1809 at age 35.  

Stephen Ambrose is considered a popular historian.  While there’s no shame in that, his writing often lacks heft.  He could be repetitive (same words), redundant (different words but same idea) and sometimes just too informal.  Chapter Sixteen begins like this:  “It was always cold, often brutally cold, sometimes so cold a man’s penis would freeze if he wasn’t quick about it.”  Ambrose went on to discuss Lewis’s weather diary, but Lewis didn’t write that in his diary.  In fact, I can’t imagine the well-bred Lewis writing anything like that.  Later in the book, when Lewis was shot by friendly fire, Ambrose correctly described the shot as going through Lewis’s buttocks.  That lasted for about a paragraph and thereafter when the subject arose it was Captain Meriwether Lewis who had been “shot in the ass.” Lewis is a major figure who changed the landscape of American history.  Enough about his ass already!

In addition, Ambrose often kept the content at the surface level when covering issues that touched on his main subject.  For example, Jefferson and Lewis were frequently referred to as men of the Enlightenment, but Ambrose gave no insight into what that meant. A short chapter on the subject might have helped enhance the narrative a bit.  Similarly, the historical context for the Lewis and Clark expedition could have been more thoroughly discussed.  Ambrose gives us a seven-page overview in Chapter Four entitled ‘Thomas Jefferson’s America.’  Westward expansion and Jefferson’s agricultural vision for the country were not universally popular ideas of the day.  Nor was Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory uncontroversial especially in the Federalist Northeast.  Jefferson’s various motives for sending a military unit to explore this western territory at times appeared at cross purposes one with the other.  The historical backdrop for the Lewis and Clark expedition was covered but almost as a sidebar.  More discussion would have given the book added depth.     

On an editorial note, at least a portion of Mr. Ambrose’s final chapter entitled ‘Aftermath’ would have better served the reader as a preface.  In this chapter, Ambrose gives a summary of the Lewis and Clark literature.  Throughout the text, Ambrose frequently referenced some of this literature.  The review would have been helpful as a precursor to understanding just where Ambrose’s book fits in and on which types of sources he was relying.  Ironically, he explains in this chapter that Thwaites--whom he did not frequently reference--is “an American classic” on Lewis and Clark. (Thwaites is Ruben Gold Thwaites, editor of Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1969.) 

What I did like about this book was the chapter titles.  They included the dates covered in that chapter, a very helpful feature in a book about an expedition that unfolds over a two-year period.  The maps were very good, but they were scattered throughout the text.  Essential maps should be placed on the inside front and back covers of a book so that they can be easily referenced.  Mr. Ambrose’s familiarity with the territory of the expedition gave the book some added color and personality.  Ambrose, who died in 2002, seems to have been a rugged type who enjoyed the great outdoors.  He was a part-time resident of Helena, Montana. 

While this was certainly a good book though maybe not a great one, I might hesitate just a bit before reading another of Stephen Ambrose’s books.  I would choose instead a historian who writes less for the casual reader of history and more for the history aficionado.  As for reading more about Lewis and Clark and Jefferson’s America, there should be no hesitation at all on that score.  What an exciting and defining time in American history.  My choices might be A History of the Lewis and Clark Journals by Paul Cutright,  James Ronda’s Lewis and Clark Among the Indians or maybe Donald Jackson Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains; Exploring the West from Monticello.  

A related topic, fascinating in its own right, is the story of the mountain man’s contribution to America’s westward expansion.  Men like George Drouillard were unique, self-sufficient types whose appetite for adventure, solitude, and physical challenges are undervalued in today’s soft, risk-averse age.  For this topic, do read Utley’s book cited above.  You may also wish to consult the report I wrote in 7^th grade entitled ‘Trappers, Traders and Mountain Men.’😊