♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: I'm pleased to be in conversation today with Rick Atkinson, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

Uh, we're gonna talk about his second volume of the trilogy on the Revolutionary War he's writing, "The Fate of the Day."

Um, we're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at New York Historical.

Rick, thank you very much for being here.

ATKINSON: David, thank you.

I, uh, appreciate being here and thank you for doing the heavy lifting.

RUBENSTEIN: So let me ask you, uh, having, how many years have you now spent studying the Revolutionary War?

ATKINSON: Uh, I started working on this trilogy after the final volume of my World War II trilogy was published in 2013, so I'm in year 12.

RUBENSTEIN: 12?

Okay.

Now, after 12 years of research and writing, we'll go into it.

Um, are you more amazed that the Americans won the war or that the British actually decided to fight the war that long?

ATKINSON: Uh, uh, both, I think, uh, the fact that the British waged war against their own people for eight years across 3,000 miles of open ocean in the age of sail still gob-smacks me.

The fact that, uh, we, the Americans, won, uh, is, uh, a miracle.

And, uh, you know, we're fighting a large professional army with, uh, great capabilities for expeditionary warfare.

We're fighting the greatest navy the world has ever seen.

Uh, we're fighting, uh, uh, an empire that has great resources for waging war.

It all seems uphill, and it is uphill.

RUBENSTEIN: So, the person most responsible for our winning that war, who was it?

ATKINSON: Uh, it's George Washington.

There's no question about it.

He's proverbially the indispensable man.

Uh, he's got a lot of defects, but he's got many attributes that make him worthy of being claimed to this day, the father of our country.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about the Revolutionary War.

Um, what difference did it make if we won or we didn't?

Because if we had lost the war, um, we'd be, you know, maybe a member of the Commonwealth.

Would our country really be all that different if we hadn't won the war?

ATKINSON: I think quite a lot different.

First of all, by the time, uh, the war ends in 1783, uh, a lot of blood has been shed, they're, bad feelings are, uh, rampant.

Uh, even if the British managed to succeed in killing Washington or destroying the army, uh, they're gonna require a very large occupation force.

It's already cost them a lot of money, the equivalent of $25 billion in, in today's currency.

Uh, uh, I think the bad blood is so, uh, thick and deep at that point that, um, there's never gonna be a rapprochement.

No one has the idea of a Commonwealth at that time, it seems like a fairly obvious concept.

But, no one has the wit to propose it.

So, uh, that's not in the cards.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

The British came here to defend their empire in, in the, in the colonies against the war that we call the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War.

After that war was over, uh, they began taxing us for the first time.

Why did they not tax us in the previous 30 years or 40 years of our country's or the colonies' existence?

And why did they tax us, um, at a relatively modest rate?

And why were we so upset about it?

ATKINSON: Uh, after the Seven Years' War ends in 1763, Britain has its first empire.

They have defeated France and Spain, and they have won overwhelmingly, uh, uh, extraordinary power throughout the world.

They've gained Canada, half billion fertile acres west of the Appalachians, more rich sugar islands in the West Indies, where the real money is, parts of India.

Uh, and they've spent a lot of money winning all of this, uh, and they're deeply in debt.

And they think it's only fair at this point that particularly since the French threat out of Canada, which has always been a threat to New England, has been eradicated, and the Royal Navy is providing protection to American shipping along the Eastern seaboard, that we should pay something.

Now, the something is very, very modest.

The average American, uh, taxpayer is paying about 1/50 of what his counterpart in England's paying, uh, but we have no voice in it.

And that's the problem.

And there are a sequence of, um, efforts by the British with the Stamp Act and other things to extract a little more money.

Those are repealed when there's great objection to it in New York and other places.

Uh, uh, you know, and over a 10-year period, grievances build up on both sides.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, the war really breaks out, and the British send over some troops because they think the colonies in Massachusetts are not being very cooperative.

What happens in Concord and Lexington that became famous, and the shot heard around the world?

ATKINSON: Yeah.

The, the, the troops are sent actually to, uh, patrol the frontier, to try to keep the Native American tribes and the settlers who are pushing westward from going to war with each other, because the British know that's gonna be a problem for them.

And then when the, uh, the acting up begins in earnest in, uh, in Massachusetts, particularly in Boston, uh, some of those regiments are moved to Boston.

And, uh, and there's a fracas that we call the Boston Massacre.

And then there's, uh, the fracas that we call the Boston Tea Party.

All of these things cumulatively, first of all, they anger the king and the parliament, George III says in 1774, "Blows must decide."

And at that point, the decision's made by, uh, the London government, "We're gonna do what we need to do to, to crack down on these guys."

And the decision is, uh, sent to, uh, General Gage, who's the commander in chief for the British and Boston, uh, marched to Concord, collect the munitions that they knew, having good intelligence, were hidden there, and, uh, arrest some of the rascals.

Uh, Gage is not gonna arrest the rascals because he knows he'll be chasing 'em all over New England.

So he sends a detachment trying to creep outta Boston in the middle of the night, everyone in Boston knows they're creeping out, uh, and they encounter militia on Lexington Green.

Shots are fired, no one knows who fired the first shot.

Eight Americans are dead, 10 others are wounded.

They go onto Concord, and Concord is ready for 'em.

And, and that's, the war really begins in earnest then.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, um, when the war is moving forward, we've had Lexington and Concord, uh, First Continental Congress is called.

ATKINSON: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: They basically say, "We're British citizens.

We wanna figure out how to stay part of the British Empire."

So they want to, uh, send entreaties to the king and the parliament.

Who should they have been, uh, seeking to get support from?

ATKINSON: Well, it's a constitutional monarchy, so the king under reforms that have been adopted in the 17th century, is obliged to attend to Parliament, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.

He's obliged to attend to his cabinet, his ministers.

And, uh, because he's no, no nitwit, uh, he's been king since 1760, George is also very attuned to public opinion.

The phrase doesn't exist at the time, but he knows what it is.

So, it's the king, it's Lord North, who's the prime minister, uh, uh, and, and it's Parliament.

RUBENSTEIN: What would you say is the estimate, uh, of what percentage of American people at that time were loyalists, what per-percentage of people really wanted to have some kind of breakaway?

ATKINSON: Well, that evolved over time.

Uh, John Adams, long after the war, said, "1/3, 1/3, 1/3."

1/3 were loyalists, 1/3 just were trying to stay outta the way, and 1/3 were, were patriots.

ATKINSON: Uh, we know now, modern scholarship shows that of the 2 million white Americans, this is exclusive of the 500,000 enslaved Blacks, of the 2 million white Americans, probably about 20% are committed loyalists supporting the Crown in some meaningful way.

Never enough to, uh, to swing things.

They never control any of the 13 states.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, the First Continental Congress, they write entreaties to the king, nothing comes back favorably.

Um, and as a result, they don't get very far.

Then the Second Continental Congress starts.

At the Second Continental Congress, who shows up in a military uniform?

ATKINSON: Well, only one guy, his name's Washington.

He shows up, uh, in uniform because it's a reminder to his fellow delegates that he has five years in military experience as a militia colonel from Virginia, always under superior British control during the French and Indian War.

He's been outta uniform for 16 years, but you know, he looks the part, he's almost 6'3", he commands any room he comes into, he looks fantastic on a horse.

ATKINSON: Uh, Jefferson says he is the greatest horseman of his age.

And he's the natural, uh, choice.

Uh, Hancock kind of has images of himself as a field marshal, but that's never gonna happen.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So he gets to be the in charge of the military.

Um, and how big a military do they have, 20,000 people?

ATKINSON: No, uh, the army that Washington commands when he shows up in Cambridge, outside of Boston, in early July 1775, is basically New England militia.

And they're being, you know, incorporated into this new entity called the Continental Army.

Um, uh, uh, Washington rarely has even 20,000 men throughout the whole war.

And at times, the Continental Army is as few as 3,000 men.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, to go through quickly the first volume, um, Washington goes to Boston.

And what happens in the Boston, uh, uh, area?

ATKINSON: By the time he gets there, Lexington and Concord have happened, Bunker Hill has happened.

Uh, Bunker Hill is a victory tactical for the British.

They, uh, retrieve about one square mile of rebel-held territory, uh, at a cost of 1,000 casualties, 226 British dead.

Uh, Washington shows up shortly after that, and his task is to take this, you know, rather inchoate concept of a continental army, uh, men who have very little training other than as, uh, weekend militia, uh, soldiers, and make it into an army.

Now, the British are in Boston.

They're not besieged, because they control the, the seas, they control the Boston Harbor.

But Washington's task is to finally evict them from Boston, which he does in March of 1776.

Uh, he sends Henry Knox, this overweight Boston bookseller, to retrieve cannon from Fort Ticonderoga that had been abandoned there by the British.

Knox brings them back, he goes to Washington, says, "Boss, I got 50 cannon out here for you."

Washington says, "You are my man."

ATKINSON: Uh, and so those cannon are used.

The British wake up one morning, they're on Dorchester Heights, the high ground, the British leave that week.

And then the whole action's gonna shift here to New York.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, where does he come in New York, what part of New York does Washington go to?

ATKINSON: Manhattan.

He establishes the headquarters here.

He, uh, begins to fortify Manhattan and, uh and Long Island, Brooklyn.

Uh he, he knows it's very difficult, if you don't control the waterways around Manhattan, it's hard to defend.

RUBENSTEIN: But it didn't work out?

ATKINSON: It didn't work out at all.

The British show up eventually, the Battle of Long Island, uh, in, in August of 1776 is, uh, the largest battle of the revolution, just in terms of the number of men involved.

Washington is out-generaled.

He doesn't go out and do reconnaissance of the ground himself, he doesn't understand the Gowanus Heights, he gets outflanked, wakes up in the morning, the British are behind him.

That's never good.

ATKINSON: Uh, and he retreats back into Brooklyn.

And it's only, and this is Washington's luck, it's the trait that Napoleon most cherished in his generals, luck, uh, in the fog, at night, across the East River, the army slips away into Manhattan and lives to fight another day.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, but they're in Manhattan... ATKINSON: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: ...but not for that long, because they have to get outta Manhattan at some point, right?

ATKINSON: They do.

The, the British then land at Kips Bay, uh, and, uh, basically overrun Lower Manhattan at that time without much difficulty, they're gonna spread North.

Uh, Washington has one last outpost at Fort Washington beyond Harlem.

Um, again, he reads the ground wrong.

3,000 men at Fort Washington, he thinks it's impregnable.

It's high ground, they've got fortifications.

Uh, it falls in a day.

Uh, 3,000 men are killed or captured.

Uh, it's a disaster.

And ultimately, there, there's gonna be fighting around White Plains, but Washington is gonna retreat across New Jersey, across the Delaware River with the British right behind him, chasing him.

This is when the army's down to 3,000 men.

He crosses the Delaware into Pennsylvania.

It's, uh, December 1776, he writes to his brother, "I think the game is pretty near up," RUBENSTEIN: Then he has a couple re-reversals that do things pretty well for the Americans.

What is that, in Trenton and Princeton?

ATKINSON: Out of desperation, and he is desperate, he con-conceives this plan, famously crosses the Delaware eastbound into New Jersey on Christmas night, 1776, because there's a, a German garrison there, the Hessians.

And he surprises it.

They are not drunk, as in American mythology.... and the, uh, commander is not a, a drunk misfit, Colonel Rall, but they are surprised.

They destroy the garrison.

The Americans destroy the garrison.

Uh, Washington goes back into Pennsylvania.

And then, this is really, uh, tactical genius, he does it again, he crosses Pennsylvania again.

He baits the British into attacking him in Trenton, he's well entrenched in Trenton.

And during the night, he escapes.

Instead of going south or back into Pennsylvania, he goes to Princeton, because that's where the British rear guard garrison is, and he destroys that.

And then he slips away to, to North Jersey.

Morristown's good ground, it's easy to defend, and that's where they'll go to winter quarters.

RUBENSTEIN: So, the beginning of the second volume of the trilogy, what happens there?

ATKINSON: It doesn't start in New Jersey, it starts where it ought to start, Versailles.

And it starts because, uh, I introduce, uh, King Louis XVI and his, uh, uh, beautiful spendthrift Austrian wife, Marie Antoinette, uh, known around the French Court as "Madame Déficit" uh, uh, because the game for the Americans at this point, this is, uh, spring of 1777, is to persuade Roman Catholic absolute monarchy in France to come in full bore, both feet, on behalf of Protestant wannabe Republicans bent on armed insurrection against their lawful monarch.

It's a heavy lift diplomatically.

And the guy responsible for that is Benjamin Franklin.

He has been sent to France in December of 1776 as our first, and as it turns out, our greatest diplomat, uh, to persuade the French that this is, in fact indeed in their best interest.

RUBENSTEIN: So is Benjamin Franklin appalled by the lifestyle he sees in France?

ATKINSON: Well, Benjamin Franklin is, by far and away, the most famous American in the world as a consequence of his scientific, uh, discoveries about electricity and his inventions.

1740s, 1750s, he received a doctorate from Oxford, he's Dr.

Franklin.

Uh, he arrives in Paris, and everyone knows him.

And, uh, when his coach rides through the streets of Paris, there are throngs of people running after him.

It's like, you know, Bono or Bruce Springsteen.

He is really a rock star and so his job is to persuade the king, his foreign minister, Vergennes, who's a big actor throughout the revolution, uh, that the enthusiasm that the French people have for the American cause, which is deep and broad, there's something about what's happening in America that really appeals to them, uh, that this is a good way for France to regain what has been lost in the Seven Years' War.

RUBENSTEIN: So Franklin persuades, uh, the king to get involved?

ATKINSON: They've been involved and clandestinely providing munitions and muskets and that sort of thing.

But what Franklin wants, what Congress wants, what we need, what Washington certainly wants, is a, a bigger involvement.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, the colonies in the war, what happens in the fighting in the beginning of your second volume?

ATKINSON: Yeah, well, we start with the, the, the British have, uh, decided that they're gonna send an army out of Canada, 8,000 British and German soldiers, uh, down Lake Champlain.

They want to capture Fort Ticonderoga, which they do, they route the garrison in a day in early July 1777.

The, the American garrison there flees, and they're in the Hudson River Valley, 'cause the idea is to cleave the New England colonies from the Atlan-the mid-Atlantic colonies.

So the idea is for General Burgoyne, who's leading this expedition, to get at least to Albany, maybe all the way to New York.

Uh, the problem is that the main British army is here in New York, it's under General William Howe.

The initial idea had been for those two armies, it's very sensible actually, to meet maybe in Albany and complete this severing along the Hudson River Valley.

Howe changes his mind and decides that the war is to be won by going 180 degrees in the other direction, to go to Philadelphia.

He thinks if he can capture Philadelphia, uh, all these, uh, uh, loyalists that he believes are in Pennsylvania, will rally to the cause, uh, and that he will begin to chew up, uh, support in the mid-Atlantic colonies.

It is strategically incomprehensible, and no one in London says, "Hey, wait, wait."

Lord George Germain, he's the American secretary, he is the Robert McNamara of the war for the British, uh, doesn't say, "Hey, wait, you guys need to reconcile your plans."

He says, "Go, go for it, guys."

And so they do.

RUBENSTEIN: And what happens?

ATKINSON: Well, in the, in the case of the army, that's come out of Canada, they have initial success, uh, they cause a lot of anxiety in the Upper Hudson.

Uh, and then the farther away they get from Montreal, the thinner their supply lines get, and they're having trouble feeding their horses, they're having trouble feeding their men.

They send an expedition, mostly of Germans, to Bennington.

They don't even get out of New York, they don't get to Bennington, Vermont, uh, and they're ambushed and they're destroyed.

And then the main army comes farther south.

And at the Battles of Saratoga, two battles, September and October of 1777, it's a catastrophe for Burgoyne's army.

He ends up being surrounded, he ends up surrendering.

Uh, that 8,000-man force is no more.

Uh, and for Howe, who has gone south, and in a very languid way, has made his way up the Chesapeake in August, there are horses dying by the hundreds in the heat.

And he defeats Washington pretty handily at Brandywine.

Again, Washington doesn't look at the ground, and he gets outflanked again.

And again, he kind of wakes up, and there, the British are behind him.

Uh, and again, he narrowly saves the army.

They have another battle at Germantown, and Washington's aggressive.

That battle falls apart in the middle, what had been an American victory turns into a defeat.

The British have Philadelphia, and that's where we are.

When winter comes, the British are living very comfortably in Philadelphia in the winter of '77, '78, and the Americans are living miserably at Valley Forge, 20 miles west.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, how many troops did he have at Valley Forge?

Were they properly clothed, properly fed?

Uh, what was he doing during the entire winter?

Was he just reading books, or planning for the next war, what is he doing?

ATKINSON: Yeah, he, he was watching a lot of YouTube videos.

(audience laughter) Uh, Washington is living there with them.

He's got, he's not living in a hut where there are 16 or 17 soldiers to a hut, that they've had to build 2,000 huts, uh, he's living in a house.

It's very modest, it's very crowded, 2,000 American soldiers die of malnutrition, disease, smallpox, typhus, dysentery, typhoid.

He's trying to figure out how to feed an army that is dissolving.

This is when we're gonna have to send out one half of the army to bring back the other half.

RUBENSTEIN: So Martha Washington shows up at Valley Forge?

ATKINSON: She does.

She's with him almost every winter.

She spends, uh, most of the war, in terms of the number of months, uh, with Washington in camp, usually in the winter.

RUBENSTEIN: So another person who's close to Washington is Hamilton.

ATKINSON: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, what is he doing during this period of time?

Is he advising Hamil- uh, Washington?

What does he really do?

ATKINSON: He thinks he's advising Washington.

He sees himself as field-marshal material, there's no doubt about that.

When the war begins, he's an artillery captain, and he sees some service.

He's pretty good at it.

Uh, Washington recognizes his capabilities.

One thing, he speaks French.

Washington does not speak French.

Uh, and he becomes an aide, he's Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton.

RUBENSTEIN: So you think Washington would be upset that Hamilton had a play about him that was famous and he didn't have one about him?

ATKINSON: I think Washington's pretty happy being on the dollar bill, actually.

RUBENSTEIN: What happens after Valley Forge?

ATKINSON: So when they come out of Valley Forge in the late spring of, uh, 1777, '78, they're, uh, the British are evacuating Philadelphia.

They've, they've given it up for various reasons.

And, uh, Henry Clinton, who is now the British commander in chief, is taking the army out of Philadelphia back to New York.

And Washington decides that he can't confront them directly.

He knows that that's a losing proposition, fighting this superior British army, but he wants to, uh, bleed them, nip, nip at their heels and so on.

And so they're gonna fight a battle, uh, in late June, 1778 at Monmouth.

And, uh, it starts out as a disaster.

Uh, Washington in the middle of the day, uh, when it looks pretty bleak for the Americans, kinda rides to the rescue, stabilizes things, and takes what had been, uh, imminent defeat, and turns it into certainly what the Americans claim is victory, and is, uh, probably closer to a draw.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, um, they turn things around a bit.

And, uh, at this point, do Americans think that there's a chance to win the war, or they're still just kind of in this, in a guerrilla warfare, just trying to not get clobbered themselves, but they didn't really think they could win that many battles?

ATKINSON: No, because at Valley Forge, they've gotten word that the French have indeed committed.

The French have signed two treaties, thanks to Franklin.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

ATKINSON: Uh, and the French are going to send the navy here.

And so now they're, you know, there's great hope, the British are back in New York, uh, and there's a fleet coming, French fleet.

RUBENSTEIN: I don't want to give away the final, what happened in the Revolutionary War, but, um, can you give us a little preview of what happens in the third volume of the trilogy and who, who wins the war?

ATKINSON: Yeah.

So the French, uh, role is absolutely paramount.

It's not all that useful initially 'cause the general, the admiral they send initially is unlucky.

Uh, he, he's got, uh, several defeats while he's here, including a catastrophe in Savannah.

Uh, but they're gonna stay with it, uh, again, thanks to persistence by, uh, Franklin and others.

And they're gonna send another fleet under Degrasse, and they're gonna send an army under Rochambeau.

And that army with, with Washington's army, uh, are going to recognize the opportunity to trap the British force, uh, under Cornwallis that has positioned itself badly on the Chesapeake Bay at Yorktown.

And so when the French fleet shows up and seals off the Chesapeake and drives off the Royal Navy, and Rochambeau and Washington are gonna march South very quickly from, from New York, and they're gonna trap that army.

And on October 1781, that army's gonna surrender.

It's a catastrophe.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, fighting at Yorktown ends in 1781?

ATKINSON: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Why does it take two years to get a treaty agreed to?

ATKINSON: It's partly because the king is stubborn, the king has drafted an abdication edict.

Uh, he never delivers it to Parliament, but he's gonna resign if, uh, his government doesn't, uh, resist American demands for independence.

That's how adamant he is about it.

Uh, after the war, John Adams shows up in London as our first, uh, minister, first ambassador to the Court of St.

James.

And he has a, an interview with, uh, George III, who says, "I was the last to give it up."

And that's one of the reasons.

The other reason it's very complicated, 'cause by this point, the French are in it, the Spanish are in it, the Dutch have come into it.

And so Britain has to negotiate with all these different entities, including the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So during the Revolutionary War, how many Americans died?

ATKINSON: The belief is that it's, uh, at least 25,000, maybe as many as 35,000.

It's a larger percentage of our population to die in any of our wars other than the Civil War.

RUBENSTEIN: And the British lost how many?

ATKINSON: More than 30,000 British and German troops.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, it's a great story, um, incredible, uh, amount of research you did.

Thank you for a very interesting conversation.

ATKINSON: Thank you, David.

(audience applause) (music plays through credits)