The 8th Annual Conference of the American Revolution, presented by America's History LLC http://americashistoryllc.com and hosted by Bruce and Lynne Venter, was held in Williamsburg, VA from March 22 - 24, 2019. John Grady of our Round Table attended and made the following summaries of some of the lectures presented at the conference. More summaries will be published in the upcoming weeks.
Note: Several officers and the webmaster of our ARRT attended the Conference and all pronounced it to be "Excellent".
"The British Are
Coming" -- Rick Atkinson
After a naval review at Portsmouth in 1773, an idea of
global grandeur spread across England that "the sun never sets on the
British empire," and it proved to be a basic misconception when it came to
subduing the North American colonies that were soon in revolt.
Rick Atkinson, whose first volume of a projected trilogy on
the American Revolution due out in May, said at the opening session of the 8th
Annual Conference on the revolution in Williamsburg "this nation was born
bickering."
The first volume covers the war from "the initial
revolutionary ardor of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill" that petered out with
defeat and then stalemate -- a time that saw "relatively few
enlistments" -- rose again with
American victories at Trenton and Princeton.
Over the long haul of six years of war to Yorktown and
another two years of frontier fighting before a peace treaty acknowledging
independence and a definition of borders, most Americans remained loyal to the
Patriot cause during the 3,089 days of the Revolution.
In answer to a question following the presentation as to why
the American prevailed, Atkinson said, "will is the essence of victory or
defeat. It is the secret ingredient of
war." Earlier, he quoted Nathaniel Greene, in a letter to his wife as the
struggle wore on, "Be of good cheer" to keep her spirits up. The will
to fight on remained.
To Atkinson, the Revolution
"was an improvised struggle that eventually led to an American
victory" over a British king and parliament that had prevailed over the
French the decade before in a global war.
The powers in London had underestimated "the difficulty
of waging expeditionary war in the 18th century," remembering their triumphs
with colonial and allied help in Canada and India against the French. And as all commanders discover, including
today's, "logistics is always hard in war." For example, the
Americans in the siege lines surrounding Boston in the winter of 1775 needed 10,000
cords of wood to survive, denuding the close-by woods. Thousands of pounds of
meat and bushels of salt were needed daily by the Americans and the British just
to take care of their horses.
Although the Americans had advantages in geography, they
lacked foundries to make weapons in any quantity, especially big guns. These would have to come from outside,
France. With the victory at Saratoga,
Versailles -- the new ally -- stepped up the arms shipments, which had been
done covertly before, to harass their longtime British enemy and gain a measure
of revenge for its earlier defeat.
In response to several questions on slavery and George
Washington, Atkinson said, "There's no point in sugarcoating the
pill. Slavery is an abomination. Washington was morally compromised."
The flip side of that coin is: "We wouldn't be here
without him."
-- John Grady
-- John Grady
"The Road to
Charleston" -- John "Jack" Buchanan
"The key to success was control of the Back
Country" where two-thirds of the whites lived in the Revolutionary South, the
author of the highly-acclaimed "Road to Guilford Courthouse" and
recently-released "Road to Charleston" said at the conference.
John "Jack"Buchanan, noting that the 1778 battle
of Monmouth Courthouse was the last major one of the war in the North, said
from early on the king. the parliament and the Whitehall ministry
"believed Loyalists outnumbered Patriots" in the southern colonies
and would rally to the cause of putting down the rebellion. They were grossly wrong. Using South Carolina
as an example, he estimated with the exceptions of the regions around
Orangeburg and 96, "at least two-thirds of the white population were
rebels."
Later in answer to a question, Buchanan said, "In South
Carolina, Lord Cornwallis expected 6,000 Loyalists" to join him, but he
"received about 1,000."
Although that Patriot support was the case and they
"waged a sweeping guerrilla war against the British" in South
Carolina and Georgia, particularly, they "could not drive" the
combined regular and Loyalist forces "from
the Back Country."
But what they did "bought the necessary time" for
Nathaniel Greene, "one of the most cerebral of Washington's lieutenants
and a hard man." What he discovered
in the South was "a war within a war -- civil war -- terror, especially
vicious in the South."
In short, the Revolution there was "a back woods
version of omerta" that Greene used to the Americans' advantage.
Facing major logistics challenges, Greene's regular forces
had to be supplied from the north [meaning horses, wagons, covering long
distances over poor roads and subject to hijackings and predatory militias]."
But once established, Greene "operated in tandem with
partisans," like Francis Marion and Andrew Pickens in disrupting
Cornwallis' operations. These partisans
successfully "took out the lines of supply" that the British and
their organized Loyalist forces needed when they were on the move, steadily
weakening their combined strength and making them increasingly vulnerable to
more attack. Replacements were almost out of the question.
Throughout the campaign, "Greene never lost sight of [the
importance of] political" leadership.
He was committed to "civilian control of the military;" and
where he could he worked to establish civilian governments.
When "mediation" is suggested as a good way to end
conflict, what it could mean "forces in control of territory remain in
place," leaving the political issues unsettled. Buchanan said "the best criterion of
victory is to be found in results."
The results in the South lead to victory at York and on Dec.
14, 1782, the last British troops evacuated Charleston; and "many
Loyalists left with them."
-- John Grady
-- John Grady
"Revolution, Madness
and Dr. Benjamin Rush" -- Stephen Fried
Dr. Benjamin Rush's experiences as a physician
in private practice and military service,
anti-slavery polemicist, activist for independence and mental health
advocate, "covered the entire Revolution," his most recent biographer
Steven Fried said at the conference.
Rush, who
eventually educated 3,000 doctors in the United States and pioneered mental
health care, "was younger than the other founders" as he rose to
local prominence and suspicion; and at the beginning of the crisis, being
unmarried, he did not have to fear for his family's safety for staking out
controversial views on a range of subjects.
Fried added, "He talked a lot" and "he
wrote a lot." Rush's written legacy
includes an autobiography, two extensive volumes of correspondence with leading
Revolutionary and Early Republic figures and busy common place books.
He also was conveniently the man on the spot. He lived in
Philadelphia, was present when Benjamin Franklin returned from Great Britain angry
over his treatment in parliament and the cockpit; and conveniently available to
serve in the Continental Congress, meeting secretly near his office.
After the war, Rush played
the mediator's role in re-igniting the relationship between John Adams and
Thomas Jefferson, whose correspondence shed much light on the founders'
thinking on independence, the war, the proper form of the republic, et al.
But more to the point of his credentials as an important
figure of his time, Fried said "Rush was a facile political writer,"
including writing a pamphlet in 1773 denouncing slavery and whites' prejudice
against free blacks. "He lost
almost half of his business overnight" as a result.
But that skill with
the pen led to his work with Thomas Paine, who had arrived in the city in late
1774 and was writing for and editing the "Pennsylvania Magazine shortly
thereafter, on arguably the most
important political pamphlet of the time, "Common Sense." It was published
in early January 1776, months before the Declaration but months after
Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill and Ticonderoga.
Fried added later that when at 30, Rush married Julia
Stockton, almost 17, the daughter of a fellow signer of the Declaration of
Independence, Richard Stockton, and Annis Boudinot Stockton, a poet, he was
entering a family known for its scholarly interests and strong women. "He believed in equal rights to women."
As to how he became a delegate to the second Continental
Congress, the one that voted for independence, it was relatively simple. He was a resident of the city and a known
political activist. Rush replaced lawyer John Dickinson in the Pennsylvania delegation.
Dickinson, tagged as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his petitions
for negotiations with the British and his editing of Jefferson's 1775
declaration on taking up arms, could not take the formal step to break from
Great Britain, but he was not a Loyalist. In the Revolution, Dickinson returned
to the congress and was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1782.
As a physician, who learned as an apprentice, Rush was
something of an anomaly in the medical profession of his time because he
treated poor patients. Likewise, something of an exception to members of the
congress, he left office to care for the American troops at Trenton and
Princeton and later served as the surgeon general of the Middle Department.
But Rush's propensity to "talk a lot" led to his
falling out with George Washington when he and others publicly questioned the
general's military leadership in the war.
Yet that same "talk a lot" and "write a
lot" kept him in contact with many of the leading political figures of his
time and his wide interests led him to write and meet men and women whose talents and skills were
as broad as his.
After the war, his conviction that mental illness could be
diagnosed and required medical treatment
led him on a crusade to push Pennsylvania Hospital to build a wing for these
patients' care, including his son. For this work, he is known as the
"Father of Psychiatry."
-- John Grady
