‘1776’: A year that changed the world

The book “1776” is published at a fortuitous time for the national morale. It speaks of a year in our history that at times looked terribly dark, but ended almost unbelievably bright. It is a tale of intrepid leaders and gallant followers, of noble goals and vast dreams.

In its pages no suspicion of general misconduct darkens the reputation of the colonial army. It may have been clumsy and certainly was untrained, but it never, in McCullough’s smooth and reassuring narrative, was less than good in intention and honest in purpose.

Commanded by the incomparable George Washington, its principal officers were, except for the traitor-to-be Benedict Arnold, honorable men, and some of them, like Nathaniel Greene and Henry Knox, worthy to be called true heroes of the emerging republic.

The familiar stirring words of Tom Paine ring through McCullough’s pages: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

McCullough writes of the miserable conditions in which the soldiers lived. They were dirty and their camps stank of excrement. Many soldiers were faithless; when their enlistment terms expired, off they went. Yet others stayed on, even though Congress had not supplied Washington with the money to pay them their low wages.

It was all for what was then commonly called “the Glorious Cause.” McCullough makes clear that the patriots really did believe the cause was just that.

By focusing on just one year (with a bit of stretching on both ends), McCullough jumps into the middle of things, then out. He assumes (perhaps recklessly) that the reader knows enough of the complex causes of the revolution and its complicated outcome so that the author can focus on the narrative in that easy style that launched him into the popular-history business with his well-crafted “The Great Bridge,” about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and “The Path Between the Seas,” on the planning and construction of the Panama Canal.

At the beginning of this book McCullough turns his eyes to London. His George III is a much milder and more likable fellow than appears in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and even the despised Lord North, George’s prime minister, is treated gently.

But McCullough sees the revolution from the American point of view. The London government’s British opponents come off particularly well. John Wilkes, lord mayor of London, declared that the war with “our brethren” in America was “unjust ... fatal and ruinous to our country.” Young British parliamentarian Charles James Fox called for a change of government, calling the conflict “silly,” from which “we are likely to derive nothing but poverty, disgrace, defeat and ruin.”

McCullough sees his chosen year through the actions of the armies. He handles the set pieces well: the retrieval of the big guns from Fort Ticonderoga in the dead of winter; their placement on Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston; the British evacuation of Boston; the movement of the armies to New York; Washington’s withdrawal in the Battle of Brooklyn Heights; his retreat across New Jersey pursued by the British and their Hessian mercenaries; Washington pulling triumph from disaster by crossing the icy Delaware and walloping the British on Christmas night at Trenton and at Princeton just after the dawn of the next year.

Of the year 1776, McCullough writes: “Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning -- how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities of strengths of individual character, had made the difference -- the outcome seemed little short of a miracle.”

But the leading thinkers of the 18th century Enlightenment were set on banishing miracles from human affairs. It is enough to say that, in 1776, Americans, in a fortunate combination of luck, pluck and remarkable leadership, made the year most memorable for the new country and indeed all humankind.

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Anthony Day, former editorial page editor of The Times, is a regular contributor to Book Review.