Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence

By Jack Kelly

Band of Giants brings to life the founders who fought for our independence in the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are known to all; men like Morgan, Greene, and Wayne are less familiar. Yet the dreams of the politicians and theorists only became real because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. We know Fort Knox, but what about Henry Knox, the burly Boston bookseller who took over the American artillery at the age of 25? Eighteen counties in the United States commemorate Richard Montgomery, but do we know that this revered martyr launched a full-scale invasion of Canada? The soldiers of the American Revolution were a diverse lot: merchants and mechanics, farmers and fishermen, paragons and drunkards. Most were ardent amateurs. Even George Washington, assigned to take over the army around Boston in 1775, consulted books on military tactics. Here, Jack Kelly vividly captures the fraught condition of the war—the bitterly divided populace, the lack of supplies, the repeated setbacks on the battlefield, and the appalling physical hardships. That these inexperienced warriors could take on and defeat the superpower of the day was one of the remarkable feats in world history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781137474568

Jack Kelly

JACK KELLY is a journalist, novelist, and historian, whose books include Band of Giants, which received the DAR's History Award Medal. He has contributed to national periodicals including The Wall Street Journal and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. He has appeared on The History Channel and interviewed on National Public Radio. He grew up in a town in the canal corridor adjacent to Palmyra, Joseph Smith's home. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

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Band of Giants

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Band of Giants

The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence

Jack Kelly

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In Memory of

Edmund Kelly,

Continental Army 1782–83

and his descendant

William H. Kelly, my father,

United States Army 1941–45

. . . behold an inspired yeomanry, all sinew and soul.

—Thomas Dawes, March 1781

One

Knowledge of the Military Art

1754

Silence. Rain spat cold on the napes of forty armed Virginians groping through a Night as dark as Pitch. They found the camp of their Indian ally Tanaghrisson and his braves. The two groups of men could smell each other: the rancid odor of the greased natives, the fetor of the unwashed white men. Tanaghrisson told their leader that the French raiding party was camped in a nearby hollow. He would take them there. Would show them.

They padded on through the soggy forest one after another, in the Indian Manner. The rain ceased, the mist brightened. A summer day was percolating into the Ohio Country, then a vast wilderness, now western Pennsylvania. On that breathless late-May morning in 1754, each man listened to his own anxious heartbeat.

Their commander, a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant colonel named George Washington, crept with Tanaghrisson to the edge of a low cliff and peered into the hollow where about thirty-five French soldiers and Canadian militiamen were waking. Washington listened to the murmur of foreign tongues, breathed the incense of smoky fires. The enemy had posted no sentries and had chosen a poor defensive position. Washington lacked formal military training, but he recognized that high ground and surprise afforded him a masterful advantage.

The Virginian had orders to enforce the sovereignty of His Britannic Majesty, King George II. In that endless western forest, Washington relied on the guidance of Tanaghrisson, known as the Half King. It was Tanaghrisson, a man in his fifties, who had alerted him to the danger, who waited silently beside him, watching.

At six foot three, Washington stood eight inches taller than the average man of his day. Gilbert Stuart, the portrait artist who would become most intimate with Washington’s face, would see in his features the strongest and most ungovernable passions. If let loose from his exacting will, Stuart speculated, those passions would make Washington the fiercest man among the savage tribes.

¹

Born to a prosperous tidewater planter family, Washington had lost his father to fever when he was eleven. The death meant that George, unlike his older brothers, had missed the chance for a classical European education. Instead, he had learned the craft of surveying. Long trips to delineate claims on behalf of the powerful Fairfax family had hardened his already vigorous constitution and solidified valuable social connections. He had come to know the backcountry and had developed an eye for the lay of the land, a boon to a military mind.

Now, cotton-mouthed with excitement, the young officer directed his men with hand signals and whispers. The Indians circled to the downhill side, ready to block the Frenchmen’s escape. Washington’s lieutenant Adam Stephen shifted half of the Virginians into positions along the top of the fifteen-foot-high ridge. Washington led the others down the slope to the right. He was about to plunge into his first battle.

Each soldier became acutely aware of the heft of his loaded musket and of the vulnerability of his own precious flesh. Fear and excitement crowded the men’s minds. A Frenchman, suddenly alert to the danger, grabbed his musket and fired. Washington rose to his full height. Fire! The crash of his men’s volley shattered the quiet. Time galloped. The startled Frenchmen scrambled. Some fell. Some lifted their firelocks to shoot back. No man could reload quickly enough.

The milky gunpowder smoke smeared the air with a sulfurous haze and the taste of burnt metal. Washington stood exposed on the right, sword in hand, shouting orders to his men. An officer must post himself in the thickest of the fighting—throughout his military career, Washington would never shirk the danger of combat. He heard the thud of a bullet tear into the torso of the man beside him. A leaden musket ball three-quarters of an inch across could penetrate six inches of pine. Its effect on flesh from short range was murderous. The Virginian fell heavily to the ground, blood gushing.

The enemy were running, intent on escape. Faces painted with yellow, black, and red stripes suddenly leered through the leaves in front of them. The Frenchmen came sprinting back, throwing down their weapons, begging for mercy.

Washington’s initial taste of combat, lasting less than fifteen minutes, had ended in the savor of victory. Still sizzling with adrenaline, he would write to his eighteen-year-old brother Jack, I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.² What happened next was not charming, and Washington would write of it to no one.

As the Indians pushed forward, Washington ordered his men, giddy with the thrill of their first fight, to close ranks around the French prisoners. The frightened captives cringed at the Indian war whoops. Their ten wounded comrades sobbed as pain lit their flesh. In the confusion, Washington’s interpreter was conveying the words of a man who said he was Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers, sieur de Jumonville, the commander of this small battalion. The British officer, Jumonville insisted, had made a mistake. The French soldiers were not a war party, merely an escort. He was an envoy sent to deliver a message from His Most Christian Majesty Louis XV, le roi. He produced a document that established his authority and contained a proclamation.

His words clouded Washington’s mind. Violating the customs of diplomacy could stain a man’s honor. Worse, his blunder could spark a war. Britain and France had managed six years of uneasy peace since the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. This incident might threaten the delicate equilibrium.

One of Jumonville’s aides began to read the proclamation in French. The decree claimed the Ohio region for France based on the explorations of La Salle in the 1680s. Washington was chagrined by his own ignorance of French, the language of European culture and diplomacy. Tanaghrisson, an overseer of the interests of the Iroquois federation in the region, knew French well and keenly understood the situation. Discord between his British allies and the encroaching French was what he wanted, was why he had brought the Virginians to this glen. He approached Jumonville and said in French, You are not yet dead, my father.

Mon pére. He jerked his tomahawk high and brought it down on Jumonville’s skull. Another blow struck off the nobleman’s cranium. The Half King returned his bloody weapon to his belt and plunged his hand into the pulp of Jumonville’s head. He tore out the man’s brain and mashed it between his palms.

A minute earlier, Washington had been concerned about diplomatic protocol. Now he faced responsibility for the murder of a royal envoy. Savagery was staring him in the face. Tanaghrisson’s braves leapt onto the wounded Frenchmen, slit their scalps, and peeled their hair away. They decapitated one of the enemy soldiers and raised his head on a pole. They danced, sang. Licks of blood splashed onto the green shoots of the springtime forest.

Red is a startling color in a world of greens and browns. Before marching, Washington had hoped to outfit himself and his company with scarlet uniforms. To Indians, Washington wrote, the color red is compared to Blood and is look’d upon as the distinguishing marks of Warriours and great Men. He added, It is the nature of Indians to be struck with, and taken by show.

³

Now it was the young commander who was being struck by show, who was getting an eyeful of the bloody hue. The intimacy of the violence hurled him across the gap that separates the fighting man from the farmer, the surveyor, or the drawing-room gentleman. The rush of uncontrollable events, the impinging chaos, and the shame at witnessing the butchering of one’s own species were his sudden initiation into the cold-minded fraternity of the warrior.

* * *

The Virginians hurried their surviving twenty-one French prisoners back to their own camp in a clearing called the Great Meadow. The drama was playing out sixty miles southeast of the Forks of the Ohio, the site of present-day Pittsburgh, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers merge to form the Ohio River. The French had recently ousted the British from this strategic spot and had begun to construct Fort Duquesne.

Robert Dinwiddie, the beefy lieutenant governor of Virginia, had sent Washington and 160 militiamen marching through miles of gloomy, cantankerous forest to defend the critical Forks. Virginia authorities asserted that their territory extended westward to the Mississippi. They were growing increasingly aware of the value of this frontier land and were determined to ward off French domination of the Ohio country.

Following the violence at what would be known as Jumonville Glen, Washington was by turns cocky and nervous. One minute, the young soldier proclaimed that he had the resolution to Face what any Man durst. The next, he was writing to Dinwiddie that he wished himself under the Command off an experienced Officer.

⁴

He soon learned that the colonel who was to follow him with reinforcements had fallen from his horse and died. This left Washington commander in chief of the Ohio Country and commandant of the makeshift stockade he called Fort Necessity. By July 3, a French attack was imminent. Jumonville’s brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers, was leading a force of French soldiers and Indians to avenge the atrocity. Washington’s men waited in the shallow trenches they had dug in the boggy Great Meadow.

The French and their Indian allies dispersed along the tree line. Favored by greater numbers, high ground, cover, and mobility, they began to fire at Washington’s troops. Fighting in a driving rain storm, they quickly got the better of the inexperienced Virginians. By the time night came on, more than a hundred of Washington’s soldiers lay dead or wounded. Others broke into the rum supply and got drunk. Then a small miracle—the cautious Villiers, fearing British reinforcements, offered Washington a chance to surrender. He had little choice but to comply. The next morning, July 4, Washington and his remaining men slunk away from the Ohio Country on parole, leaving behind a brief victory and an inglorious defeat.

Washington could not imagine how far the ripples from these bursts of violence would travel. He could not know that Jumonville’s death was the first casualty of the Seven Years’ War, a global conflagration that would kill one and a half million. As Horace Walpole, the British man of letters, put it, The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.

⁵

* * *

His Excellency Major General Edward Braddock came to America to finish the fight with the French that Washington had started. The short, fat, gray-haired general wore a scarlet uniform faced with yellow silk, his shoulders draped in gold braid. He brought an ornate carriage unsuited to the awful roads of America. He brought not one but three suits of polished armor. He brought a dream that he would conquer whole nations.

Braddock drank, swore, and lacked the manners expected of a gentleman. Yet Crown officials saw fit to make him commander in chief of all British forces in America. They gave him two regular army regiments of about five hundred men each and a wealth of heavy artillery. This was the first substantial force of redcoats most provincials had laid eyes on—rough men in fancy clothes, armed with glittering muskets, shining bayonets, and a cocksure disdain for their enemies.

Braddock had never led troops in combat. Although the son of a general, he had risen through the ranks with difficulty. He was hardly a diplomat. Benjamin Franklin saw in him a haughty and Imperious Temper. Braddock might do for a European war, Franklin later observed, but he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops, and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.

⁶

It was only natural that George Washington should apply for a position with Braddock. Here was his opportunity to go to school with a major general of the most powerful army in the world. The young Virginian wrote, I wish for nothing more earnestly, than to attain a small degree of knowledge in the Military Art.

⁷

To take advantage of Washington’s familiarity with the terrain, Braddock allowed him to join the army as a volunteer and attached him to his staff, or military family. The provincial colonel would serve as aide-de-camp reporting directly to the commander. Washington hoped the resulting connections with top British officers might pay off in a commission from the king as a regular officer himself. First he had to learn.

He began by acquainting himself with the sometimes prickly intricacies of military logistics. In essence, Braddock would have to transport a small city into the wilderness, including a blacksmith’s forge to facilitate repairs. The general scoured Virginia and Maryland for wagons but came up short. Fuming, Braddock demanded that the governors of all the colonies meet him in Annapolis, where he treated them, an observer noted, as if they had been infinitely his Inferiors. This was unprecedented. Each colony had always dealt individually with London—Americans had never thought of themselves as united. Braddock browbeat the governors for failing to support the expedition. He saw the necessity of laying a tax on all His Majesty’s domains in America, one of the earliest suggestions to tax the colonies. He threatened to quarter troops in colonial homes.

⁸

Washington also learned about discipline and drill. At Jumonville Glen and Fort Necessity, he had seen how easily undisciplined troops could turn into a mob. In professional armies, the threat of punishment was the prime motivator of men who had been pressed into service by force or economic necessity. Braddock was hard. He ordered a public reading of the Articles of War, which prescribed the severest punishments for a wide variety of offenses. Any soldier who shall Desert tho he Return Again shall be Hanged without Mercy. Lacerating strokes with the cat-o-nine-tails were the standard punishment for misbehavior. For example, the theft of a keg of beer earned a soldier nine hundred hard lashes.

Americans did not take well to military discipline. Among the most recalcitrant were the civilian laborers, most of them cocky backwoodsmen. To the British, these provincials appeared barely more civilized than the natives. You see, sir, a British officer wrote home, what a wild set of Creatures our English Men grow into when they lose Society.

⁹

Among the wildest were the teamsters Braddock hired to drive his many wagons westward. They included a twenty-year-old named Daniel Morgan. A Virginian like Washington, Morgan hailed from the opposite end of the social spectrum. He had strolled into the frontier village of Winchester two years earlier as a footloose teenager and found work at a saw mill, then as a wagon driver. Like Washington, he was a strongly built man, more than six feet tall. He loved handling horses, moving from place to place, gambling, wrestling, hunting, and drinking. He had saved enough to buy his own wagon and team. The Braddock expedition promised him welcome cash and a tempting dose of adventure.

At one point during the expedition, Morgan quarreled with a British officer and knocked the man down. A quick drumhead court-martial sentenced the teamster to five hundred lashes. Morgan was tied to a tree and whipped. In his telling, the number was 499 because the drummer miscounted and Morgan did not think it worthwhile to tell him of his mistake, and let it go so! He would bear the scars throughout his life.

¹⁰

The severity of discipline grew out of a concept of war that viewed soldiers as cogs in a machine. The self-willed warrior of the Middle Ages, the knight, had little place in modern fighting. Disciplined troops who followed orders were essential.

Washington learned that the principal actor in battle was not the soldier but the officer, who, by moving units of men as one, amplified and directed the power of their violence. Musket fire, inaccurate at a distance, was most effective delivered in massed volleys. Lines of men standing shoulder to shoulder two or three deep could load and fire in unison and with great speed. Initiative and individual action were counterproductive. Efficiency required drill, an exercise in obedience. As they marched, wheeled, handled their weapons, the men came to resemble a single mechanical mass, their movements automatic, their response to bellowed orders or drumbeats instantaneous.

American militiamen had practiced only a weak semblance of these drills on muster days. Braddock assigned a lieutenant to exercise the provincial troops, long, lank, yellow-faced Virginians, who at best are a half-starved, ragged dirty Set. In the short time available, the men barely learned the rudiments.

The British soldiers were receiving an education of their own. The intimacy of slavery in Virginia surprised them. How it strikes the Mind on the first Arrival, an officer observed, to have all these black Faces with grim Looks round you. Then, when the army finally marched to Fort Cumberland, a primitive stockade at the limit of settled territory in western Maryland, the soldiers first encountered America’s indigenous people. The customs and manners of these natives, one of Braddock’s men said, are hardly to be described.

¹¹

They paint themselves in an odd manner, he went on. And the men have the outer rim of their ears cut, which only hangs by a bit top and bottom, and have a tuft of hair left at the top of their heads, which is dressed with feathers. . . . They dance and make a most horrible noise.

¹²

Braddock’s attitude toward America’s natives grew out of his own profound ignorance. Franklin had warned the general that his army, stretched out along a thin line, would be vulnerable to ambuscades of Indians.

These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, Braddock replied, but upon the King’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.

¹³

Indians lacked discipline, organization, and the other accouterments of civilization. Braddock assumed they must therefore lack power. A group of chiefs offered their aid to the expedition as scouts and warriors. Braddock was ready to accept, but when the Indians asked for guarantees respecting their own claims to the Ohio Country, he was typically blunt: No Savage Should Inherit the Land. Most of the Indians departed for good.

¹⁴

* * *

Studying bad maps back in London, British officials believed that the trek from Fort Cumberland, Braddock’s base, to Fort Duquesne, the French bastion at the Forks of the Ohio, was about 15 miles. The actual distance was 120 miles over mountainous, forested terrain that no English bureaucrat could imagine. In Europe, carriages traveled decent roads and primeval forests had vanished long ago. Braddock’s would be the first wheeled vehicles to roll over the Appalachian Mountains.

The expedition started on June 7, 1755, with 2,500 men, far fewer than the 15,000-man amalgam of regulars, provincials, and Indians the plan had called for. The six-mile-long cavalcade would have to climb and descend seven steep mountain ridges before reaching the Forks. Coming down the very first of these heights, three wagons broke away from their drivers and careened downhill, killing the horses and smashing the wagons to pieces. The very Face of the Country, an officer commented, is enough to strike a Damp in the most resolute Mind.

¹⁵

As they pushed into the wilderness, Washington complained in a letter that the march must be regulated by the slow movements of the Train [of artillery and baggage] which I am sorry to say will be tedious, very tedious indeed, as I long predicted, tho’ few believed. At times, the expedition became so strung out that the rear guard lagged two days’ march behind the van.

¹⁶

Though frustrated at the pace, the young Washington enjoyed Braddock’s congenial mess. The general served good wine to his military family, who passed mild summer evenings telling war stories. Washington had a chance to mix with officers like the urbane Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage, second son of a viscount. Honest Tom, then thirty-five, was not given to the usual officers’ vices of drinking, gambling, and whoring.

Washington met Charles Lee, an English lieutenant of his own age. The well-educated Lee was a thinker in a profession where deep reflection was not the norm. He loved Shakespeare—Washington was likewise a devotee of the theater. Lee had ordered a copy of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian Wars in the original Greek to read on the expedition. A great talker, he might have quoted that historian’s remark: Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.

Washington also had the chance to know Horatio Gates. The twenty-eight-year-old captain had been born to an English housekeeper. His mother’s friend was a maid in the household of the aristocratic Walpole family. As a result, Gates had become the godson and namesake of Horace Walpole. His upper-class connections had helped the young man obtain an officer’s commission. Under Braddock, he led a provincial company from New York. He was destined, like some of the others on the expedition, to play a significant role in a war that none of them could yet imagine.

On June 17, heeding the advice of Washington, who urged it in the warmest terms I was master of, Braddock divided his force. A Falstaffian colonel, Thomas Dunbar, would manage the bulk of the supplies and guns in the rear division. Braddock, freed from encumbrances, would surge ahead with a compact but lethal flying column.

Daniel Morgan remained with the supply force, which dropped farther and farther behind. Six days later, Washington, too, was forced to join this contingent. Dysentery, dreaded by soldiers as the bloody flux, had caught up with him. Overcome with violent diarrhea and fever, he could no longer ride but lay in the bed of a jolting wagon. The expedition proceeded into a vast pine forest known as the Shades of Death. A nineteenth-century historian said it was like the dark nave of some endless, dream-born cathedral.¹⁷ The profound silence went on forever. A feverish Washington caught glimpses of the sky through the black tangle of branches overhead.

On July 8, the main army camped a day’s march from Fort Duquesne. Washington came up from Dunbar’s supply train, which now lagged thirty-six miles behind. Still weak and suffering an excruciating case of piles, he needed the aid of a cushion to bear sitting on a horse. He was not about to miss the final thrust of the historic expedition.

To reach Fort Duquesne, Braddock had to cross the Monongahela River. Aware that fording would leave his force vulnerable, he ordered Lieutenant Colonel Gage to cross at four o’clock on the warm morning of July 9, 1755, and to secure the high ground on the opposite bank. Gage led an elite force consisting of grenadiers, the tall shock troops of the army, and light infantrymen, its most capable fighters. Braddock then ordered his men to march over the river in the greatest order, with their bayonets fixed, Colors flying, and Drums and Fifes beating and playing. It was an exercise in intimidation. Over the haughty beat of forty large drums, scores of fifers pierced the forest’s stillness with the lilt of The Grenadiers’ March.

Perhaps overly impressed with his own display, Braddock directed Gage’s advance guard to give up the high ground and to form a column ahead of the army. Minutes later, Gage’s men spotted an enemy force. A small group of French regulars and Canadian militiamen, accompanied by six hundred Indians, had sallied from Fort Duquesne. When they engaged, the two bodies of soldiers stood only two hundred yards from each other in the sweltering forest.

Gage ordered his troops to form a line and fire. One of their first volleys struck the enemy commander, killing him. The French regulars and Indians immediately spread out to seek cover. Their return fire and the unnerving shrieking of the Indians shocked the grenadiers. This was the first taste of combat for many of the redcoats. They ignored Gage’s order to fix bayonets and attack up a slope. Visible terror and confusion, one observer noted, appeared amongst the men.

The French and Indians fired at the massed troops. The noise was unimaginable. Men groped through smoke, their ears numb. The big guns, which the British had brought across the ocean and manhandled through the wilderness, proved impotent. The Indians, one man saw, kept an uncessant fire on the Guns, cutting down the gunners before they could load their pieces.

Washington accompanied Braddock into the smoke-clogged chaos, riding forward on horse-back, tho’ very weak and low. He noted the irretrievable disorder in the vanguard and the unusual hallooing and whooping of the enemy. The yell of the Indians is fresh in my ear, a veteran later wrote, and the terrific sound will haunt me till the hour of my dissolution.

¹⁸

Washington saw the weakness of an entire system of warfare exposed in an instant. Men trained to act on command as a single unit could not suddenly adopt new tactics. They did not take cover, did not respond to the evolving attack with fluid maneuvering of their own. They fired in volleys as they had been trained to do, even when no target was in sight.

Officers dropped like leaves in Autumn. Thomas Gage was wounded. Horatio Gates was shot in the breast and arm. Before the battle was over, almost every British field officer would be killed or wounded.

The battle began at one in the afternoon. By four, the British were nearly surrounded. Colonel Dunbar was too far behind to send help. Washington, in spite of his weakness, remained in the thick of the action. Bullets pierced his clothes; two horses were shot from under him.

The line wavered. Civilian wagon drivers, smelling disaster, cut loose the draft horses and fled. A musket ball pierced Braddock’s shoulder and lodged in his lung. At around five o’clock on that suffocating afternoon, as if by beat of Drumm, the whole army turned and ran, every one trying who should be first.

Washington helped the fallen general into a wagon and off the field. Indians chased down the vanquished, catching some as they tried to recross the river. They dyed ye stream with their blood, scalping and cutting them. A bonanza of booty distracted the French and Indians, who fell to plundering. The defeated raced on, pursued by their own fears.

That July afternoon, George Washington saw war stripped of all its masks. There was no glory, no dignity, and little honor in the spectacle. The aftermath of the battle stunned him. The shocking Scenes which presented themselves in this Night’s March, he wrote, are not to be described. The dead, the dying, the groans, lamentations, and crys . . . were enough to pierce a heart.

¹⁹

The soldiers taken prisoner lived through a few hours of mind-scalding terror, imagining what was to come. Then it came. That night outside Fort Duquesne, the Indians lashed them to stakes, prodded them with red-hot irons, tore their flesh, and finally burned them alive, their screams evaporating in the darkness.

As the survivors reached the supply train, General Braddock’s condition worsened. He murmured, Who would have thought it? The disaster along the Monongahela was the worst defeat that had ever befallen British forces. Fourteen hundred soldiers had taken part, and more than eight hundred had been killed or wounded.

In the second contingent, Colonel Dunbar still had enough men and heavy guns to attack and conquer Fort Duquesne. But as one observer noted, the Terror of the Indian remaining so strongly in the men’s minds, he did not make the attempt. General Braddock, before he died, ordered the precious supplies, gathered and transported at such expense, more critical now than ever for the defense of the frontier, to be destroyed. His object was a faster retreat, although no force was pursuing. Even as the citizens of Philadelphia were raising funds for a victory celebration, Daniel Morgan and the other teamsters were scattering gunpowder and flour and burying the remaining cannon.

Before the expedition returned, Washington had Braddock’s body interred not far from the glen where Jumonville had died a year earlier. When the troops reached Philadelphia, Dunbar demanded winter quarters for his troops, inviting the colonists’ derision: it was still July.

Washington was quick to criticize the behavior of the British soldiers. He wrote to Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie, The Virginia companies behav’d like Men and died like Soldiers. The regulars, he declared, broke and ran as Sheep before Hounds. The most enduring legacy of Braddock’s defeat was the tarnish it left on the British army’s reputation for invincibility. This whole transaction gave us the first suspicion, Benjamin Franklin noted, that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regular troops had not been well founded.

²⁰

Braddock came in for his share of the blame. But Washington, who would remain an admirer of his mentor, simply called him brave even to a fault.

The defeat affected all of the country’s inhabitants. Virginians feared that this demonstration of British impotence might incite a slave rebellion. The negro slaves have been very audacious on the news of the defeat on the Ohio, Dinwiddie noted. In Philadelphia, nervous inhabitants turned on the Irish, who as Catholics were suspected of sympathizing with the French.

²¹

It was not slaves or immigrants whom the Americans had to fear, but the continent’s indigenous people. The defeat on the Monongahela touched off a series of violent Indian attacks on frontier settlements, atrocities known as the Outrages. Thousands of pioneers were pushed eastward by the Indians whom they had earlier dispossessed. The frontier regions of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia lost as much as half their population in the three years after the Braddock catastrophe.

George Washington remained at the head of the Virginia Regiment during the first years of what Americans called the French and Indian War. After early defeats, the British rallied. In 1758, Washington joined General John Forbes on a second expedition to the Ohio Country. That force overwhelmed the French and took Fort Duquesne without a major battle. General James Wolff led British forces in the conquest of Quebec a year later. Having utterly vanquished the French in North America, King George III, who had assumed the British throne in 1760, emerged from the conflict with the most extensive empire of the age.

Washington showed little enthusiasm for the war he had inadvertently started. Elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses in July 1758, he resigned his militia commission at the end of that year and took no further part in the struggle. He married Virginia’s wealthiest widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, in January 1759 and joined the colony’s elite.

One of Washington’s principal virtues was his ability to learn, and Braddock had been his most important teacher. The Virginian did not take a simple lesson from his experiences in the 1750s. He remained convinced of the efficacy of formal European fighting methods when properly employed, but he saw the need for flexibility and adaptation. Braddock’s misfortune showed that the forests of America were not the plains of Europe. Irregular fighting and the use of special forces could be valuable supplements to traditional tactics. It was a matter of balance, and a tendency to weigh and balance was a prominent feature of Washington’s mind.

From Braddock, Washington took his concept of how an army should be constituted and managed. In the egalitarian climate that would sweep America during the Revolutionary era, rigid hierarchy, taut discipline, and punishment by flogging would all come into question. But Washington would insist that discipline is the soul of an army.

Washington learned that a defeat, even a ruinous one like the cataclysm at the Monongahela, could be overcome. Perhaps the most important lesson he took from Braddock was a basic one: how to sustain an army in the field. In war, logistics could often be more critical than any single victory.

Like Braddock, Washington would favor the offensive. Like Braddock, he would scorn Indians as allies, maintain a military family of close aides, and pay close attention to such mundane issues as his troops’ hygiene and pay. Like Braddock, he would adopt the honorific Excellency.

He would not, like his mentor, emulate the studied decadence of the British officer class. He would discourage exorbitant drinking, gaming, and womanizing in the Continental Army, setting a tone that fit his own personality. A contemporary described him as Discreet and Virtuous, no harum Starum ranting Swearing fellow, but Sober, steady and Calm.

²²

Washington’s behavior during the battle on the Monongahela overshadowed and erased the stain of his failure at Fort Necessity. Although a disaster for Braddock and the British, the campaign

Reviews for Band of Giants

[phillies-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Band of Giants is about the soldiers that fought the Revolutionary War. It covers the military events leading up to the war, and you view the entire war through the eyes of the generals and common soldiers. We usually think of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other political characters when we think of the Revolutionary War but in this book they are only lightly touched as the focus is on the fighting man. Of course George Washington plays a major role and the book begins with his role in the French and Indian War and how his experiences influenced his later leadership. Most people know that the common soldier was lacking in food, uniforms, and gunpowder and was subject to much disease. However Kelly points out that they were also looked down on as the lower end of society and did not receive much in the way of respect or compensation. It is also stressed that this was an amateur army lead by very young leaders. There are many fascinating stories in the book such as the role of Gorge Rogers Clark in the battles in the West. Clark was the older brother of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame. Many other heroes are covered including Knox, Greene, Wayne, Morgan, Gates, von Steuben and others. Benedict Arnold's role and reasons for becoming a traitor are laid out. The book ends with Lafayette's return to the US in 1824 and Kelly uses Lafayette's tour of the 24 states to wonderfully tie the up the stories of these great men.I highly recommend this book to all who have an interest in American History.

[drlord_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book went way beyond expectations. Having never read anything previously by Jack Kelly, I was interested to get the opportunity to read this book. Having an interest in the American Revolution, I had previously read books like 1776 and Nathan Philbricks book on Bunker Hill. I had also read original texts being curious about first hand accounts. This book went way beyond anything I had previously read having introduced characters I had never head of before. Soldiers like Daniel Morgan and Anthony Wayne as well as others, brought the realism from the foot soldier right to me. I was immersed in this book and at times had difficulty putting it down. Absolutely one of my Revolutionary War favorites.

[gerrysbookshelf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Band of Giants tells the story of the American Revolution through the lives of its citizen soldiers and officers.This chronicle of the Revolutionary War is more than a listing of dates, battles and outcomes. It is a history of young men of various backgrounds, most with little or no military training. Their talents and perseverance, along with Washington's genius, resulted in a victory over an experienced and formidable foe.Most of these men were very colorful characters, but the steadfast Henry Knox impressed me the most. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in early American history.

[charlessvec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An easy read, having several short stories worked well. I'm a history buff, with interests in the American Revolution and the Civil War, and really enjoyed reading this book. Highly recommended.

[bap1012 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent review of the American Revolutionary War and the "giants" who got us there. There are many books on the Civil War and the World Wars but it seems our Revolutionary War has been less endearing to military fans. This book gave insight to each major battle as well as other small ones and was filled with clear, distinct, even disturbing images about the men and women who fought the battle for us. The grit, determination, and persistence shown by these patriots is inspiring. I've been looking for a good book on this war and time period. I was so excited to receive it as a LibraryThing selection but even more excited to find it was a fantastic read.

[torrey23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be a good, concise history of the Revolutionary War. Kelly does a great job of explaining the major parts of the war, and the principal actors of those incidents. This is as good of a short history of the war as I have read. I would highly recommend it. The only issue I had with the book was Kelly's obvious love for Horatio Gates. All of his miscues, missteps, and errors were downplayed as being correct, yet misunderstood, moves. I would disagree with him in this area.

[cmbohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So glad I read this one! I have read quite a few books on the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, but I keep learning something new. It seems that many books on the war focus solely on George Washington, as though he won the war single-handedly. Yes, he was an exceptional general, but I liked that this book also focused on the other leaders, men like Henry Knox, Benedict Arnold, and my distant cousin, Nathanael Greene. I didn't know much at all about the war in Canada, so I was glad to see that was covered. It's not a very long book, but it was well worth reading. I got this free in return for a (belated) review.

[linda.marsheells · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received this book from the publisher Palgrave/Macmillan, which had no influence on whether or not i liked the book....Yep, It's a history book,and it's anything but typical. Not a bunch of names dates and places where you try and connect the dots, not at all.INSTEAD, Kelly has made those names become actual relateable people. People with faults and strengths. Dates that we're all familiar with become times with meaning. And places? His words made it possible to envision a lot of what took place in those towns.The pages of THIS history book actually do turn quickly. It is so very readable. You learn what the men of the revolution were probably thinking and feeling, their backgrounds and personal lives. You learn tidbits like what an abatisis is- a precursor to barbed wire, made of sharpened wood....or that Brooklyn is Dutch for broken land, or marsh- Breukelen.Washington and his leaders got groups of militia men from various areas, the troops had "very little discipline, order or government",with one thing in common.... patriotic perserverance. And with this ragtag army he accomplished what many scoffed at, and WE are here, an independent country because of those men.

[ddjtj1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As the title states, BAND OF GIANTS:THE AMATEUR SOLDIERS WHO WON AMERICA'S INDEPENDENCE BY JACK KELLY is about some of the unsung heroes of our nations fight for independence. These men were not all wealthy soldiers. These men were farmers,merchants, woodsmen and just plain people who,when the call to arms came,they fought and died for our cause. They endured everything from dysentery to small pox, freezing cold to famine but they continued to fight.Jack Kelly puts the reader into the battles . This is a no holds barred look at the fight for independence. Frankly, I'm not really sure how we won but we did and Jack Kelly spells it out in BAND OF GIANTS:THE AMATEUR SOLDIERS WHO WON AMERICA'S INDEPENDENCE. When the 4th of July comes along I will definately be remembering this book.

[lwhitmill_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In order for a history book to be “5 Star” it needs to offer information and entertainment. Without entertainment you simply have a regurgitation of facts. “Band of Giants” offers the facts, some new to me, in an entertaining style. Well written, informative, and entertaining all wrapped one book.

[robynelee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book that I recommend to history geeks and teachers along with anyone who enjoys history. I received a copy but had to wait for my husband, who grabbed it first, to finish it. Not only was it enjoyable, but it offered great illustrations to share with my history students. I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The story of the American Revolution is retold strictly from the military perspective. The goal of the author is to highlight many of the lesser known commanders to show just how important they were to complete the victory. The book is not just fighting as the author recounts the personal lives of these men when warranted. I think that the sacrifices shown give ammo to the thought that THIS was indeed the "greatest generation" A must read for anyone who enjoys accurate historical writing.

[sean191 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story Jack Kelly tells is hard to beat even if you were writing fiction. But that's maybe the problem, it is such an amazing story and somehow it just lacked the excitement it should have created as I read it.Kelly does a decent job of telling the story, but maybe it's because I've read David McCullough's 1776 that I'm being hard on this. McCullough did a masterful job. Kelly, maybe because it was abbreviated in comparison to McCullough's tome seems to blow through events to quickly.And one major critique - map placement. There was at least one instance that I was reading about a general's struggle as he geared up for a battle, turned the page, was confronted with the map at the top of the page (which of course I looked at then) and saw it marked on the map, "here X was killed." I'm not so far up on my history that I would have recalled that off the top of my head. So that was some suspense quelled earlier than it needed to be.

[book58lover · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Revolutionary War is not my field of interest. That said, I think this book explains well the battles and reasons for them. I was particularly interested in the lead-up because I grew up down the road from Jumonville and visited both Fort Necessity and Braddock's Grave many times. We all knew the importance of the French & Indian War to our independence and Washington's growth as a military commander.If you are interested in military history and battles, you would be interested in this book. I found it a bit ponderous for my liking and will have difficulty finishing it. That doesn't mean it is a bad book; it just isn't to my liking.

[daddywarbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Kelly's writing is compelling, with an easy flowing narrative. However, the Advanced Reader's Edition is riddled with errors. I am surprised that it was even released in this state.There are noticeable typographic or sentence structure errors on many pages, including 68, 82, 83, 88, 90, 98, 100, 114, 148, 161, 176, and 183.Furthermore, there are several historical inaccuracies, perhaps due to the limited research evident in the author's bibliography (all fairly recent, secondary sources). Apparent errors include:p. 81 - The Hessions were not really Hessions (Brunswickers).p. 82 - The third paragraph seems to imply that the Americans were escaping to the North (with the flow of the river). They were not.p. 112 - The American troops at the Battle of Hubbardton were not all Vermonters as is implied.p. 117 - The map is distorted, not accurate.p. 128 - Refers to a feint on Washington. The City of Washington was not yet established.p. 135 - It was not just Poor's N.H. Continentals at the First Battle of Saratoga. Massachusetts Continentals were also engaged.All in all, I think that the book had much more potential than what is presented. Too bad.

[stevesmits · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book greatly exceeded my expectations. I thought it might be a narrow, possibly dry, exposition on the role of the militia in the Revolutionary War. Not at all dry, it is a very well-written history of the military events of the war. The engagement of the various militia is woven into a compelling recount of the leades and their triumphs and failures throughout the six-year campaign for independence. The book gives fascinating portrayals of figures I knew (Washington, Arnold, Greene, Gates, Knox, Steuban and Layfayette) and some I didn't. Particularly interesting among the latter is Daniel Morgan. Morgan was a rough backwoodsman from Virginia who was tactically brilliant and an aggressive leader of citizen soldiers.Antecedents to the war are told, starting with Washington's experience in the French & Indian War. The history follows the Revolutionary War campaigns from 1775 to Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown in 1781. There is not much about the political circumstances during the war other than reminders of how poorly the armies were supported by the Continental Congress.Kelly's writing is exceptionally good; the vividness and pace of the narrative make the read very enjoyable. As a one-volume overview of the war I would highly recommend this book.

[aggie52_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I consider myself smonwhat of a history buff and as a result, I have read many books about the Revolutionary War. This has provided me with a good understanding of the causes, historical progress and a general knowledge of the participants. I found this book to be well written, informative and to smoothly travel though the time period. I particularly enjoyed reading it because it provided much more information about the members of the "Band of Giants" covered in the book. I highly recommend it. This book was furnished to me by Librarything Early Review program

[azrowan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A VERY detailed look at the American Revolution and the men and women who were involved in sending the British back home. As in any war I suppose, it wasn't pretty, and the author details how difficult it was when your soldiers aren't professionals, and to make it worse, have to fight with little support from a new Congress as evidenced by numerous accounts of marches through winter conditions with no shoes and barely clothed.After finishing I have a couple of problems with the book. First off, it seems every march and battle was fought in the worst weather conditions? While I have no doubt there may have been deplorable conditions, it seems to me there may have been some embellishment at times to give the story a little more drama. I also felt there could have been a better account of the Native American plight. They played a key role for both sides, but the auhor basically portrays them as pawns with basically no reference to the fact they were more than likely being displaced by the establishment of the white mans liberty from England.If you're looking for battle history this is the book for you, but if it's an account of the story behind the battles, you may find yourself dissapointed as I was.

[queencersei · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Band of Giants covers the period of the Revolutionary War from 1754 - 1782. The novel focus' on the usual luminaries, including George Washington and Nathaniel Greene, to lesser known fighters such as Daniel Morgan. Pivotal battles and personalities are also highly featured. Serious scholars of the Revolutionary War aren't likely to learn anything new from this book. However Band of Giants is a good place to start for readers who want to brush up on their history or read about the highlights of the war that made the United States of America.

[speljamr_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written by an author who's relative fought in the Revolutionary War, this book shows you the growth of the leading officers of the Revolutionary War from amateurs to the men we know defeated the British Empire. I do have to note however that the title of this book was a bit deceptive and made me believe this would have more to do with the common soldier than the officers in the army. But once I got past that I found the book to be very informative and extremely readable.The focus here is not on all the usual characters, but on many of the lesser known leaders who contributed greatly to the cause. The careers and lives of Henry Knox, Nathaniel Greene, ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne, Daniel Morgan, John Stark, Charles Lee, and others are given a closer inspection to discover exactly how diverse this cast was. This is the most important part of what can be learned from reading this book, as most modern Americans know very little about these men, where they came from, and what they became.One thing that becomes clear while reading this, America came damn close to loosing this battle. At several points the army almost fell apart completely, and a few key decisions were hesitated on. But one thing Mr. Kelly seems to neglect is the full role of the French in the final victory over the British. While He includes them, they're role seems to be portrayed as a bit less than it really was. The Marquis de Lafayette is mentioned and is used at the end of the book to wrap up a summary of all the characters the book covers, but that's about the most credit the French get. I really felt like this aspect was downplayed way too much and can be deceptive in highlighting why America managed to win the war.The book is written in a style that is immediately accessible and moves more like a novel than a history book. I do recommend this if you want to get a glimpse of some of the revolutionary war leaders in more detail than you get from your high school text book. In the end you will acquire a better understanding of the war and the people behind it.

[magicians_nephew · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Probably if you ask the man on the street about the Revolutionary War – the military part of the war – he’d tell you about the battle of Bunker Hill and shivering at Valley Forge and then suddenly the British are surrendering at Yorktown. Huh? But if you ask him how we got from there to here - how an amateur untrained rabble of farmers and laborers took on and beat the British Army – bet he wouldn’t know. So this book which goes deep down into the day to day of the war is a delightful tonic. Most people have never heard of Henry Knox the Boston bookseller who read a book and figured out how to do artillery - brilliantly. Or Nathanial Greene who led his ragtag band in the war in the south and kept Cornwallis so tangled up he lost the wagon with his cook and his wine cellar.Everyone knows that Benedict Arnold was a traitor but did you know he fought on Lake Erie and took on British ships of the line with glorified rowboats and lighters? If I had a quibble it would be on the book's tone - sometimes it seems to be a golly gee whiz book for younger readers and sometimes it seems like a thoughtful and serious book for scholars. And back and forth in between. But there are a lot of great little known stories here and Kelly tells them very well.

[coker74 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Being born and raised in South Carolina I thought I knew the battles of King’s Mountain, Cowpens, Camden, etc, pretty well, but Band of Giants helped me better understand these pivotal battles as well as the rest of the Revolutionary War. It’s a very detailed account of the men, the amateur soldiers, who won America’s independence. I think every American should read a book like Jack Kelly’s. No one in the United States should ever take for granted what we have AND how we came to have the freedoms we bask in. Band of Giants is a book I will pull out every year or so to refresh my freedom.

[mattries37315 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The soldiers of the Continental Army were not professionals when the American Revolution began in 1775, neither were their commanding officers. But as Jack Kelly writings in his book “Band of Giants”, these amateur soldiers took on and defeated the greatest army in the world to win independence for their nation.Kelly’s chronicle of the Revolutionary generation’s military journey starts in 1754 following an inexperienced George Washington as he ignites the French and Indian War and the military lessons he learned. As each significant leader is introduced within the narrative, Kelly gives the reader insight into their previous military experience or lack thereof. As the war goes on, Kelly explains how the commanders learned through failure and success that eventually resulted in the victorious siege of Yorktown.The best part of this book is that Kelly just doesn't follow Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Horatio Gates, and Benedict Arnold who always seem to be at the fore of Revolutionary history. The lives and careers of Henry Knox, Nathaniel Greene, ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne, Daniel Morgan, John Stark, Charles Lee, and many others are given their just do in the relating of events during the war.Yet there were sections of the book that seemed that Kelly let stray from the overall thrust of the book. Kelly introduced the wives and family of many of the men he follows in the book; overall this is not a bad thing since at times family situations did interfere with a commander’s duties. However at times, the details Kelly relates while interesting little facts were just that and nothing more in the overall context of the book. Another glaring error was Kelly shifting from chronicling the course of events and why the individual made the decisions he made, only to then suddenly armchair quarterback the decision before continuing on the narrative. These moments were few and far between, but left the reader scratching their head.Overall “Band of Giants” is a very readable, researched, general history of the American Revolution and the commanding officers of the Continental Army. Although author Jack Kelly does stray briefly into unrelated details and on a couple of occasions interjects his opinion, those errors cannot take away from a well written book that introduces the reader to a better understanding of the history of the American Revolution.

[ronrose1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very stirring portrayal of the people and events that won independence for the thirteen American colonies. I liked the fact that the book went into details of the personalities of both the American and British leaders. Men like Henry Knox, who taught himself the intricacies of artillery and heavy ordinance from books in his store in Boston. He went on to become one of George Washington’s most respected generals. Daniel Morgan, the rugged, rough hewn backwoodsman, and his frontier sharpshooters, would time and again leave their frontier homes to win the day for the Americans. Benedict Arnold, the obstinate, hard fighting officer who led his American troops to victory only to be overlooked repeatedly for promotions by a Congress more concerned with protocol and political maneuvering than with military ability and natural leadership. He was overlooked once too often and turned his back on the colonies betraying them to the British. The book is full of many fascinating details that bring this exciting period of our history to life. From the highest ranking generals to the lowliest private, all are represented in this entertaining book. This book was provided for review by the publisher.

[janeaustennut · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Band of Giants is a well written, informative and entertaining volume about our American History. Jack Kelly has developed great characters that offer entertaining aspects of their lives during the Revolution. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the American Revolution.