One soldier, Nathanael Greene, comes from a working-class Rhode Island family. The American military at the time of the Revolutionary War is relatively meritocratic, meaning that even soldiers from modest backgrounds can rise in the ranks.

While Washington hasn’t had military experience in years, he’s extremely charismatic, and almost everyone who meets him personally feels a strong desire to earn his respect. He has distinguished himself fighting in the backwoods during the French and Indian War in the 1750s and 1760s. He comes from a wealthy family in Virginia, where he runs a plantation. Washington himself isn’t a particularly experienced military commander. His troops, who hail from many different American colonies, are disorganized and inexperienced, and their morale is low. George Washington, the leader of the American troops, knows that he’s facing a potential crisis. In doing so, they ensure that the Revolutionary War will be a long, bloody conflict.Īround the same time, the American army is assembled outside of the city of Boston. George’s policies prove controversial in the Houses of Parliament, but in the end the Members of Parliament approve George’s plan.

American “rebels” have fired on British soldiers at Lexington and Concord, and King George III of England proposes sending thousands of additional troops, including German mercenaries known as Hessians, to America to quell the uprising. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough’s 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.In October of 1775, the Revolutionary War is just beginning. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence-when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.īased on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. America’s beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation’s birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war against her rebellious colonial subjects and that placed America’s survival in the hands of George Washington.

1776 by david mccullough