After the Declaration of Independence

My big summer book is “The British Are Coming” by Rick Atkinson.

The level of detail is stunning.

One little example:

George Washington’s Surgeon General was suspected of being a spy for the British as the Revolutionary Army was surrounding Boston.

Although admitting he wrote an encoded letter to British forces, he talked his way out of it and ended up being shipped to London because absolute proof could not be found of his guilt.

Atkinson notes that 150 years later such evidence was discovered.


Comments

After the Declaration of Independence — 9 Comments

  1. An even better example of an American on the payroll of a foreign government is this:

    https://www.amazon.com/Artist-Treason-Extraordinary-General-Wilkinson/dp/0802777716

    Almost every library in the county has a copy.

    James Wilkinson. An incompetent, financially careless, egotistical liar and traitor who almost became our first Commander In Chief; who clumsily attempted to carry out his Spanish handler’s instructions, all while being suspected by 4 Presidential administrations, and narrowly avoiding indictment. One of his failed missions was to provide the Lewis and Clark expedition’s location to Spain, so that Spanish troops could locate and kill them all.

    Sounds vaguely familiar.

  2. Sure I agree with Lovaas, that President Keep Your Own Doctor should never have Dumbo Cash Dropped, billions of dollars to religious psychos with nuke programs.

    But hey, here we are.

  3. British did indeed come to America. Last June to Chicago. The Rolling Stones.

  4. Thanks Cal!

    Wall St Journal printed a review last week and then your post reminded me.

    Picked it up Saturday.

    I’m about 100 pages in and enjoying it.

    Good detail, well sourced and so far non partisan non political as history should be.

    Times change, people don’t, freedom isn’t and was not free.

    From the Big Govt types, rural Americans still are an unruly ungrateful bunch, they need to pay their taxes and bow or be met by a point of a gun.

  5. There is a part about how the British Governor of Virginia outraged slaveholders like Washington, Jefferson and other notable Foundning Fathers by announcing any slave who was willing to fight for the British would be granted freedom.

  6. I saw about the slaves, legal and common practice of British territories and Colonies at the time in order to acquire and send back the maximum booty from her Majestic’s far flung properties. But most telling was this quote about Washington’s motivation “British tax policies jeopardized his commercial ambitions and offended his moral equilibrium; the royal governor in Virginia had threatened, through a technicality, to annul land grants issued 20 years earlier, which would have stripped Washington of 23 thousand acres. Yet just as clearly he saw the glory of the American cause: a continental empire to be built upon republican ideals, buttressed with American mettle, ambition and genius. He also knew that it could all end badly….” page 119

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