Nebraska by Willa Cather in The Nation September 5, 1923

As soon as I received the list of the published articles and books that were lifted from copyright protection, I noticed this article "Nebraska" by Willa Cather was among those now available in the public domain.  Although it was difficult for me to find the original article, an electronic services college librarian in Tennessee and a friend was able to find a PDF, in The Nation archives.  

Unfortunately, regardless of how many "work arounds" I tried, the PDF was beautifully readable, but I was unable to print the text.  So, I decided, "Why not transcribe it?"

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

And so, here, in all of the beautiful prose composed by Willa Cather, is "Nebraska".  Her essay transcends time and I thank her for this excellent commentary:

The Nation September 5, 1923 Vol. 117, No 3035  page 236

These United States- XXXVII*

NEBRASKA - The End of the First Cycle

By Willa Sibert Cather

The state of Nebraska is part of the great plain which stretches west of the Missouri River, gradually rising until it reaches the Rocky Mountains. The character of all this country between the river and the mountains is essentially the same throughout its extent; a rolling, alluvial plain, growing gradually more sandy toward the west, until it breaks into the white sand-hills of western Nebraska and Kansas and eastern Colorado.  From east to west this plain measures something over five hundred miles; in appearance, it resembles the wheat lands of Russia, which fed the continent of Europe for so many years.  Like Little Russia it is watered by slow-flowing, muddy rivers, which run full in the spring, often cutting into the farm lands along their banks; but by midsummer they lie low and shrunken, their current split by glistening white sand-bars half overgrown with scrub willows.

            The climate, with its extremes of temperature, gives to this plateau the variety which, to the casual eye at least, it lacks.  There we have short, bitter winters; windy, flower-laden springs; long hot summers; triumphant autumns that last until Christmas- a season of perpetual sunlight, blazing blue skies, and frosty nights.  In this newest part of the New World autumn is the season of beauty and sentiment, as spring is in the Old World.

            Nebraska is a newer state than Kansas. It was a State before there were people in it.  Its social history falls easily within a period of sixty years, and the first stable settlement of white men were made within the memory of old folk now living.  The earliest of these settlements - Bellevue, Omaha, Brownville, Nebraska City - were founded along the Missouri River, which was at that time a pathway for small steamers.  In 1855-60 these four towns were straggling groups of log houses, hidden away along the wooded river banks.

            Before 1860 civilization did no more than nibble at the eastern edge of the Sate, along the river bluffs.  Lincoln, the present capital, was open prairie; and the whole of the great plain to thw westward was still a sunny wilderness where the tall red grass and the buffalo and the Indian hunter were undisturbed.  Fremont, with Kit Carson, the famous scout, had gone across Nebraska in 1842, exploring the valley of the Platte.  In the days of the Mormon persecution, fifteen thousand Mormons camped for two years, 1845-46, six miles north of Omaha, while their exploring parties went farther, west, searching for fertile land outside of government jurisdiction.  In 1847, the entire Mormon sect, under the leadership of Brigham Young, went with their wagons through Nebraska and on to that desert beside the salty sea which they have made so fruitful.

            In forty-nine and the early fifties, gold hunters, bound for California crossed the State in thousands, always following the old Indian trail along the Platte valley. The State was a highway for dreamers and adventurers; men who were in quest of gold or grace, freedom or romance.  With all these people the road led out, but never back again.    

            While Nebraska was a camping-ground for seekers out ward bound, the wooden settlements along the Missouri were growing into something permanent. The settlers broke the ground and began to plant the fine orchards which have ever since been the pride of Otoe and Nemaha counties.  It was at Brownville that the first telegraph wire was brought across the Missouri River. When I was a child I heard ex-Governor Furness relate how he stood with other pioneers in the log cabin where the Morse instrument has been installed, and how, when it began to click, the men took off their hats as if they were in church.  The first message flashed across the river into Nebraska was not a market report, but a line of poetry: "Westward the course of empire takes its way." The Old West was like that.

            The first back-and-forth travel through the State was by way of the Overland Mail, a monthly passenger-and-mail-stage service across the plains from Independence to the newly founded colony at Salt Lake- a distance of twelve hundred miles.

            When silver ore was discovered in the mountains of Colorado near Cherry Creek- afterward Camp Denver and later the city of Denver- a picturesque form of commerce developed across the great plain of Nebraska: the transporting of food and merchandise from the Missouri to the Colorado mining camps, and on to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake. One of the largest freighting companies, operating out of Nebraska City, in the six summer months of  1869, carried nearly three million pounds of freight across Nebraska employing 515 wagons, 5687 oxen and 600 drivers. 

        

            The freighting began in the early spring, usually about the middle of April, and continued all summer and through the long, warm autumns. The oxen made from ten to twenty miles a day. I have heard the old freighters say that, after embarking on their six-hundred mile trail, they lost count of the days of the week and the days of the month..  While they were out in that sea of waving grass, one day was like another, and, if one can trust the memory of these old men, all days were glorious.  The buffalo trails still ran north and south then; deep, dusty paths the bison wore when, single file, they came north in the spring for the summer grass, and went south again in the autumn. Along these trails were the buffalo "wallows" - shallow depressions where the rain water gathered where it ran off the tough prairie sod. These wallow the big beasts wore deeper and packed hard when they rolled about and bathed in the pools, so that they held water like a cement bottom. The freighters lived on game and shot the buffalo for their hides. The grass was full of quail and prairie chicken, and flocks of wild ducks swam about on the lagoons. These lagoons have long since disappeared, but they were beautiful things in their time; long stretches where the rain water gathered and lay clear on a grassy bottom without mud. From the lagoons the first settles hauled water to their homesteads, before they had dug their wells.  The freighters could recognize the lagoons from afar by the clouds of golden coreopsis which grew up out of the water and waved delicately above the surface. Among the pioneers the coreopsis was known simply as "the lagoon flower".

            As the railroads came in, the freighting business died out. Many a freight-driver settled down upon some spot he had come to like on his journeys to and fro, homestead it, and wandered no more. The Union Pacific, the first transcontinental railroad, was completed in 1869. The Burlington entered Nebraska in the same year, at Platsmouth, and began construction westward. It finally reached Denver by an indirect route and went on extending and ramifying through the State. With the railroads came the home-seeking people from overseas.

            When the first courageous settlers came straggling out through the waste with their oxen and covered wagons, they found open range all the way from Lincoln to Denver; a continuous, undulating  plateau, covered with long, red shaggy grass. The prairie was green only where it had been burned off in the spring by the new settlers or by the Indians, and toward autumn even the new grass became a coppery grown. This sod, which had never been broken by the plow, was so tough and strong with the knotted grass roots of many years, that the home seekers were able to peel it off the earth like peat, cut it up into bricks, and make of it warm, comfortable, durable houses. Some of these sod houses lingered on until the open range was gone and the grass was gone, and the whole face of the country had been changed.

            Even as late as of 1885 the central part of the State, and everything to the westward, was, in the main, raw prairie. The cultivated fields and broken land seemed mere scratches in the brown, running steppe that never stopped until it broke against the foothills of the Rockies.  The dugouts and the farm-houses were three or four miles apart, and the only means of communication was the heavy farm wagon drawn by heavy work horses. The early population of Nebraska was largely transatlantic.  The county in which I grew up, in the south-central part of the State, was typical. On Sunday we could drive to a Norwegian church and listen to a sermon in that language, or to a Danish or a Swedish church. We could go to the French Catholic settlement in the next county and hear a sermon in French or into the Bohemian township and hear one in Czech, or we could go to church with the German Lutherans. There were , of course American congregations also.

            There is a Prague in Nebraska as well as in Bohemia. Many of our Czech immigrants were people of very superior type.  The political emigration resulting from the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 was distinctly different from the emigration resulting from economic causes, and brought to the United States brilliant young men both from Germany and Bohemia.  In Nebraska our Czech settlements were large and very prosperous.  I have walked about the streets of Wilbur, the county seat of Saline County, for a whole day without hearing a word of English spoken. In Wilber, in the old days, behind the big, friendly brick saloon- it was not a "saloon," properly speaking, but a beer garden, where the farmers ate their lunch when they came to town- there was a pleasant little theater where the boys and girls were trained to give the masterpieces of Czech drama in the Czech language.  "Americanization" has doubtless done away with all this. Our lawmakers have a rooted conviction that a boy can be a better American if he speaks only one language than if he speaks two. I could name a dozen Bohemian towns in Nebraska where one used to be able to go into a bakery and buy better pastry than is to had anywhere except in the best pastry shop of Prague or Vienna.  The American lard pie never corrupted the Czech. 

            Cultivated, restless young men from Europe made incongrous figures among the hard-handed breakers of the soil. Frederick Amiel's nephew lived for many years and finally died among the Nebraska farmers.  Amiel's letter to his kinsman were published in the Atlantic Monthly of March 1921, under the title, "Amiel in Nebraska."  Camille Saint- Saens's cousin lived just over the line in Kansas. Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian writer was a "hired hand" on a Dakota farm to the north of us.  Colonies of European people, Slavonic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Latin, spread across our bronze prairies like the daubs of color on a painter's palette. They brought with them something that this neutral new world needed even more than immigrants needed land. 

            Unfortunately, their American neighbors were seldom open-minded enough to understand the Europeans, or to profit by their older traditions.  Our settlers from New-England, cautious and convinced of their own superiority, kept themselves insulated as much as possible from foreign influences.  The incomers from the South, from Missouri, Kentucky, the two Virginians were provincial and utterly without curiosity.  They were kind neighbors - lent a hand to help a Swede when he was sick or in trouble. But I am quite sure that Knut Hamsun might have worked a year for any one of our Southern farmers, and his employer would never have discovered that there was anything unusual about the Norwegian.  A New England settler might have noticed that his chore-boy had a kind of intelligence, but he would have distrusted and stonily disregarded it.  If the daughter of a shiftless West Virginia mountaineer married the nephew of a professor at the University of Upala, the native family felt disgraced by such an alliance.

            Nevertheless, the thrift and intelligence of its preponderant European population have been potent factors in bringing about the present prosperity of the State.  The census of 1910 showed that there were then 228,648 foreign-born and native-born Germans living in Nebraska; 103, 503 Scandinavians; 50,680 Czechs.  The total foreign population of the State was then 900,571, while the entire population was 1,192,214. That is, in round numbers, there were about nine hundred thousand foreign Americans in the State, to  three hundred thousand native stock.  With such a majority of foreign stock, nine to three, it would be absurd to say that the influence of the European does not cross the boundary of his own acres, and has had nothing to do with shaping the social ideals of the commonwealth.

            When I stop at one of the graveyards in our own county and see on the headstones the names of fine old men I used to know: "Eric  Ericson, born Bergen Norway....died...Nebraska." "Anton Pucelik, born Prague, Bohemia......died, Nebraska," I have always the hope that something went into the ground with those pioneers that will one day come out again.  Something that will come out, not only in sturdy traits of character, but in  elasticity of mind, in an honest attitude toward the realities of life, in certain qualities of feeling and imagination.  Some years ago a professor at the University of Nebraska happened to tell me about a boy in one of his Greek classes who had a very unusual taste for the classics- intuitions and perceptions in literature. This puzzled him, he said, as the boy's parents had no interest in such things. I knew what the professor did not: that though this boy had an American name, his grandfather was a Norwegian, a musician of high attainment, a fellow student and lifelong friend of Edvard Grieg.  It is in the great cosmopolitan country known as the Middle West, that we may hope to see the hard molds of American provincialism broken up; that we may hope to find young talent which will challenge the pale proprieties, the insincere, conventional optimism of our art and thought.

            The rapid industrial development of Nebraska, which began in the latter eighties, was arrested in the years 1893-97 by a succession of crop failures and by the financial depression which spread over the whole country at that time - the depression which produced the People's Party and the Free Silver agitation. These years of trial as everyone now realizes, had a salutary effect upon the new State.  They winnowed out the settlers with  a purpose from the drifting malcontents who are ever seeking a land where man does not live by the sweat of his brow.  The slack farmer moved on. Superfluous banks failed, and money lenders who drove hard bargains with desperate men, came to grief.  The strongest stock survived, and within ten years those who had weathered the storm came into their reward. What that reward is, you can see for yourself if you motor through the State from Omaha to the  Colorado line. The country has no secrets; it is open as an honest human face.       

            The old isolated farms have come together. They rub shoulders. The whole Sate is a farm. Now it is the pasture lands that look little and lonely, crowded in among so much wheat and corn.  It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every farmer owns an automobile.  I believe the last estimate showed that there is one motor car for every six inhabitants in Nebraska. The great grain fields are plowed by tractors. The old farm houses are rapidly being replaced by more cheerful dwellings, with bathrooms and hard wood floors, heated by furnaces or hot-water plants.  Many of them are lighted by electricity, and every farm house has its telephone. The country towns are clean and well kept. On Saturday night the main street is a long black line of parked motor cars; the farmers have brought their families to town to see the moving-picture show.  When the school bell rings on Monday morning, crowds of happy looking children well nourished- for the most part well mannered, too, - flock along the shady streets.  They wear cheerful, modern clothes, and the girls, like the boys, are elastic and vigorous in their movements. These thousands and thousands of children- in the little towns and in the country schools- these, of course, ten years from now, will be the State.

            In this time of prosperity any farmer boy who wishes to study at the State University can do so. A New York lawyer who went out to Lincoln to assist in training the university students for military service in war time exclaimed when he came back:  "What splendid young men! I would not have believed that any school in the world could get together  so many boys physically fit, and so few unfit."

            Of course, there is the other side of the medal, stamped with the ugly crest of materialism, which has set its seal upon all of our most productive commonwealths.  Too much prosperity, too many moving-picture shows, too much gaudy fiction have colored the taste and manners of so many of these Nebraskans of the future.  There, as elsewhere, one finds the frenzy to be showy; farmers boys who wish to be spenders before they are earners, girls who try to look like the heroines of the cinema screen; a coming generation which tries to cheat its aesthetic sense by buying things instead of making anything.  There is even danger that that fine institution, the University of Nebraska, may become a gigantic trade school. The men who control its destiny, the regents and the lawmakers, wish their  sons and daughters to study machines, mercantile processes, "the principles of business"; everything that has to do with the game of getting on in the world - and nothing else.  The classics, the humanities, are having their dark hour. They are in eclipse.  Studies that develop taste and enrich personality are not encouraged. But the "Classics" have a way of revenging themselves. One may venture to hope that children , or the grandchildren, of a generation that goes to a university to select only the most utilitarian subjects in the course of study - among them , salesmanship and dressmaking - will revolt against all of the heaped-up machine-made materialism about them. They will go back to the old sources of culture and wisdom-  not as a duty, but with burning desire.

            In Nebraska, as in so many other States, we must face the fact that the splendid story of the pioneers is finished, and that no new story worthy to take its place has yet begun.  The generation that subdued the wild land and broke up the virgin prairie is passing, but it is still there, a group of rugged figures in the background which inspire respect, compel admiration.  With these old men and women the attainment of material prosperity was a moral victory, because it was wrung from hard conditions, was the result of a struggle that tested character.  They can look out over those broad stretches of fertility and say: "We made this, with our backs and hands." The sons, the generation now in middle life, were reared amid hardships, and it is perhaps natural that they should be very much interested in material comfort, in buying  whatever is expensive and ugly. Their fathers came into a wilderness and had to make everything, had to be as ingenious as shipwrecked sailors. The generation  now in the driver's seat hates to make anything, wants to live and die in an automobile, scudding past those acres where the old men used to follow the long corn-rows up and down. They want to buy everything ready-made; cloths, food, education, music, pleasure. Will the third generation - the full-blooded, joyous one just coming over the hill- will it be fooled?  Will it believe that to live easily is to live happily? 

            The wave of generous idealism of noble seriousness, which swept over the State of Nebraska in 1917 and 1918, demonstrated how fluid and flexible is any living , growing, expanding society.  If such "conversions" do not last, they at least show of what men and women are capable. Surely, the materialism and showy extravagance of this hour are a passing phase!  They will mean no more in half a century from now than will the "hard times" of twenty-five years ago- which are already forgotten.  The population is as clean and ful of vigor as the soil; there are no old grudges, no heritages of disease or hate. The belief that snug success and easy money are the real aims of human life has settled down over our prairies, but, it has not yet hardened into molds and crusts.  The people are warm, mercurial, impressionable, restless, over-fond of novelty and change. These are not the qualities which make the dull chapters of history.

The next article in the series These United States, to appear in The Nation of September 19, will be Montana: Land of the Copper Collar, by Arthur Fisher.

           

           

           

Meaningful Christmas essay

We Hardly Knew Ye: an essay about the Season, by Dorie McKeeman, of Hollis, New Hampshire.

This lovely essay was published in the AAA Northern New England Journey, January/;February 2019 edition.

In the narrative, the author McKeeman draws out the human emotions in response to the traditions, and symbols we hold dear. She describes how nature and traditions converge, while reflecting on the ritual of taking down our Christmas Trees.
We share her experience, each in our own way.

In my home, when growing up in Baltimore, this symbolism was evident to our neighborhood, as well as to those of us in the family, because our tree did not come down until after the Epiphany.  

This was because, in the Eastern Rite religious beliefs, those of my father's heritage, it was our tradition to observe the Feast of the Epiphany, by keeping up the Christmas Tree, although, most other families had taken theirs down.

Dorie McKeeman wrote:

Taking down the Christmas tree is always bittersweet.  

Behold our Christmas tree, so welcome a guest some weeks ago.  The stalwart symbol still stands tall and trimmed, releasing its fragrance of fir.  Hardy, hearty branches, like arms uplifted, refuse to droop, green needles still cling. But, the calendar has turned over its 12 days since Christmas, Epiphany - Three Kings Day - has come. The annual ritual is upon me.

And yet....

I come to the task with apology on my lips, a twinge of regret in my heart, and a final, full embrace.  Burying my face into the tinseled, twinkling boughs, I remember the rush oficy air that swirled up the stem when this vibrant visitor first arrived in our living room- such a bracing anticipation of the season! The, the colors of the day were warm, regal, and bold; crimson, violet, green, gold. Music in the air sounded - even felt- full, and round, and lush, expansive with dancing, and reverence and joy: The first noel....fa-la-la-la....and lo...ye faithful....sleigh bells...snow...O Tannenbaum...a midnight manger...holly...holy...I'll be home.

Now, across the snow-laden yard in the late afternoon's dimming light, a skimming layer of fog amplifies January's bleak palette. Naked oaks and maples in lengthening silhouette peer through our window.  Having shed their own decorations months ago, they've been savoring our cheery indoor display of colored lights, and ornaments, beads, and garland. As winter's spare watchmen, they sympathize with this cyclic undressing.  They understand what "season" means.

I hesitate, release a breath, and nod an affirmation. For its weeks as the gracious, steadfast overseer of our family's celebrations of the coming of the Light of the World, our Christmas tree accepts my respectful thanks.

Now, it is dusk. Storage boxes huddle with a knowing patience, converging at the doorway. Outside, the dispersing fog reveals the current season's stark colors: Black, scraggly branches pierce a sky of deepening midwinter blue, and dark trunks sink into a coat of white.  The view looks like the cover art on my favorite winger music, there atop our stack of holiday music CDs. Aah- what do the sages say about coincidence?  I tuck A Winter's Solstice in to play, close my eyes, and invite this haunting spell of songs to stretch and span the seasons.

For a few more moments, Christmas lingers; time holds its breath. The, music meant to greet the dawn tip-toes in and (so fitting even at twilight) the serene yet stirring strains of "New England Morning" usher me through this turning time.

Because, no matter the fervent resolutions or the partying crowds or the date on the calendar, until I honor this rite- taking down the Christmas tree- my heart does not fully embrace the new year.

I reach up and lift the golden star from the highest bough.

Book Review from "War on the Rocks" - George Washington

https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/everything-honorable-and-glorious-george-washingtons-maritime-world/

Book Review by B. J. Armstrong

A creative perspective about America's leading General and his dicey relationship with the French Naval leaders.

George Washington portrait in the grand staircase located in the Maine State House, Augusta Maine

Everything Honorable and Glorious: George Washington's Maritime World

Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (Viking, 2018).

George Washington was supposed to be an admiral. 

Not just any admiral — he was going to be an officer in the global maritime power that dominated the world’s oceans, in the British Royal Navy. When he was 14, about the right age for a young man in the colonies to determine what he was going to do with his life, George packed his bags to head to sea. His older brother Lawrence had served as a company commander in the British infantry regiment raised in the colonies and served under the British commander of Jamaica Station, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, during the Siege of Cartagena in 1741. The regiment then fought through expeditionary operations on the coast of Cuba at Guantanamo Bay and in Panama. After the survivors returned to Virginia, Lawrence named the family estate after his favorite commander. The name stuck. As young George approached adulthood, a Royal Navy ship arrived in the Chesapeake and Lawrence used the connections from his service to obtain his younger brother an appointment as a midshipman in the Royal Navy.

Bestselling author and National Book Award recipient, Nathaniel Philbrick, shares this anecdote early in his new book In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown. 

It’s a detail of the founding father’s past of which few Americans, even few historians, are aware. Only the intercession of Mary Ball Washington, George’s mother and Lawrence’s stepmother, kept George from the high seas. A day or two before he was to head south down the Rappahannock River to rendezvous with his maritime destiny, Mary broke down in tears and begged her son not to go and to disappoint the older brother who was something of a hero to the young man. George gave in and unpacked his bags.

Philbrick’s new book, the third in his recent sequence of titles about the American Revolution, offers a view of Washington that is different from most of the histories of the American commander-in-chief. The anecdote about his appointment as a midshipman joins scenes of him piloting a schooner through a squall on the Hudson River and stories from his French counterparts about his views of the maritime world. 

As Philbrick’s narrative of the events leading to the siege at Yorktown unfolds, it becomes clear that the “genius” he’s referring to in the subtitle of the book is George Washington’s understanding of, and appreciation for, sea power. In the Hurricane’s Eye is about Washington’s realization that, as he famously wrote to his dear friend the Marquis de Lafayette, “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that with out a Decisive Naval force we can do nothing definitive. and with it every thing honourable and glorious.”

Many popular histories of the American Revolution detail the battles and politics ashore with only sparing nods to the maritime dimensions of the conflict. However, it was sea power that allowed Britain to maintain superiority throughout so much of the conflict. Time and again, when British troops found themselves in trouble, they marched to the sea where the Royal Navy supported them either with reinforcement and logistics, or by easily effecting a withdrawal. 

Even in the very beginning, at Bunker Hill, sea power allowed the British to maintain control as long as they did. Washington recognized this early on. Throughout the war, while he quibbled about supplies of cannon and pay for his troops, he saw that unless the Americans could break the stranglehold of British naval power they would never win their independence. While most American military leaders thought little of the maritime elements of the war, Philbrick shows readers how it seemed to be constantly on Washington’s mind. Despite the dominance of armies in our understanding of the Revolution, the Civil War, and even in our recognition of World War I’s centenary, understanding American military history, from its very beginning, requires a balanced appreciation of events both ashore and at sea.

The trouble with sea power in the American Revolution was that the Continental Navy experienced very little success. Even John Paul Jones’ famous victory over HMS Serapis was a strategic failure, because despite the capture of the British heavy frigate, the convoy that was the real target was able to escape. 

Because of the Continental Navy’s struggles, In the Hurricane’s Eye describes how the focus of Washington’s thinking on sea power shifted to the French Navy.

While the 1778 Treaty of Alliance sent the Comte de Rochambeau and French troops to American shores, for Washington, the French fleet was the most important part of the alliance. In this regard, Philbrick’s descriptions mirror the analysis of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who focused on the French role in his writing over a century ago. The most important naval battle of the American Revolution was the Battle of the Virginia Capes and there wasn’t a single American present. The reality of American victory in the revolution was that it depended on international partnership at sea as much as it did on the military skill and tenacity of the plucky American militiaman ashore.

The value of partnerships and alliances has been the subject of military and strategic discussions throughout history, and recent months have been no exception. We often see the Franco-American alliance through the rosy lens of Washington’s paternal relationship with the Marquis de Lafayette. But Philbrick’s narrative of Washington’s tension with Rochambeau and the various French naval commanders demonstrates that partnerships also create obstacles and frustration. The personality foibles of the individual commanders, French disdain for the amateur background of most American forces, and a notional chain of command that nobody seemed to honor all got in the way of truly coordinated efforts in the first two years of the alliance.

As the summer of 1781 approached, Washington attempted to plan a combined Franco-American attack on the British stronghold at New York. But despite Washington’s treaty-granted position as commander-in-chief of the allied forces, Rochambeau regularly cancelled meetings or refused to coordinate. When he did finally show up to a meeting, he suggested a move into the Chesapeake rather than the assault on New York Washington had been trying to plan. He gave the commander-in-chief no reason or explanation for his suggestion, but instead seemed to simply assert his better judgment as a power move.

The sticking point was that the French fleet commanded by the Comte de Barras was too small to engage the Royal Navy on its own. Instead, he required a fleet dispatched from France under the command of the Comte de Grasse. Washington understood this key maritime reality and expected the French would send more ships to the North American coast. But instead, in 1779 they sailed to the West Indies, where France had valuable colonies and its own national interests under attack. In an illustration of how alliances are built on unequal relationships and how the states that join them almost never have exactly the same objectives, the operations of the French fleet caused endless frustration for Washington.

As the French slow-rolled the Americans, waiting for de Grasse to move north from the Caribbean, they continued to advocate a southern strategy in direct conflict with Washington’s plans. Push came to a shove, and Washington finally ordered the French to join him in New York to prepare for an assault on Manhattan. 

Philbrick relates how Rochambeau’s memoirs paint Washington as stubborn and unable to see the strategic advantage of moving into the Chesapeake. Washington, on the other hand, realized that with General Charles Cornwallis and his troops ranging through the Tidewater, the arrival of a large French force would just cause him to retreat toward Charleston and escape. For almost three years, the French had failed to establish command of the sea off of the rebellious colonies, and Washington had begun to doubt whether they ever would. Both sides fumed at each other.

And then, of course, there were the lies. Rochambeau was aware of de Grasse’s activities in the Caribbean, and knew the French fleet didn’t plan to head north until late 1781, despite telling Washington that he was as in the dark as the Americans. The French general also sent word to de Grasse that he thought the Chesapeake would be a more effective destination for the fleet, directly countering the commander-in-chief’s plans.

Then everything changed. Cornwallis encamped his British force in Yorktown, Virginia, at the end of a long peninsula in order to meet up with the Royal Navy for resupply and reinforcement. De Grasse’s fleet, with financial support from the Spanish at Havana, headed north early to avoid hurricane season. In a case of what historians call contingency and the other readers would label luck or timing, Cornwallis had placed himself in a dangerous position at the same moment the French fleet was headed north toward his position. Suddenly Rochambeau’s continued focus on the Chesapeake started to make sense.
Philbrick’s claim of Washington’s genius is twofold. First, it was his understanding of the importance of the maritime elements of the conflict, and second, it was the ability to change his mind and adapt his strategy when the conditions shifted. As conditions in Virginia began to change, Washington’s opinion did as well. Philbrick explains that at the end of July, the commander-in-chief wrote to Lafayette to say it was “more than probable” that he would be headed to meet the Frenchman, who was already chasing Cornwallis. 

The rest, as they say, and as Philbrick deftly describes through the book, is history. A history of partnership, but also one of lies, distrust, competing national priorities, and sometimes caustic personal relationships. In short, a history of the reality of the oft-lauded panacea of maritime partnerships and alliances.

Operations in the southern Chesapeake, with the arrival of the combined land force and the French naval force, also demonstrated the complicated joint nature of American success in the War for Independence. 

Even once the Americans and French got on the same page regarding the overall importance of the Yorktown campaign, fissures developed — not along national lines this time, but between the ground forces and de Grasse’s naval considerations. Anchored at Lynnhaven, just inside the Chesapeake Bay, de Grasse was expecting the arrival of the British Fleet from New York. 

From a naval perspective, he should have been preparing his crews for battle and organizing how his ships would leave the anchorage for a fight. Instead, he was fending off the continuous demand from the ground commanders to land the 3,000 troops and artillery that he was carrying aboard his fleet. Even though Cornwallis was already cornered and could not escape, Rochambeau, Washington, and particularly Lafayette were impatient to begin the battle. But they wanted de Grasse’s maritime reinforcements before they engaged.

De Grasse gave in, ordering his crews to prepare for the long trip up the James River to land near the gathered Franco-American army. His junior officers, who in a fleet engagement would command the gun batteries of his ships of the line, instead manned the boats to command the landing operations. His experienced non-commissioned officers took up their positions as coxswains of the boats rather than readying their warships for battle. The landing force departed for their rendezvous with Washington’s troops, leaving the fleet undermanned and without many of its experienced leaders.

They nearly missed the arrival of the British fleet entirely. With all of their attention focused on preparing for the landing and the complicated embarkation of 3,000 troops and cannon, the French had few ships scouting beyond the mouth of the Chesapeake. Once they spotted the enemy, the French decks were still cluttered with the equipment of amphibious operations and not cleared for battle. Without much of a plan to speak of, de Grasse ordered his captains to head for the British as fast as they could. A mad race began as anchor cables were cut and the shorthanded crews who were left scrambled to put their ships in order.

Philbrick’s narrative of the Battle of the Chesapeake is clear and exciting, helped by several good charts to help readers envision the opposing fleets. It demonstrates that the French strategic victory over the British was the result of a tactical draw. 

It was a victory only because it led the British to turn around and head back for New York rather than relieve Cornwallis. It was as much the result of luck and daring as it was skill or combat superiority, and it was not decisive as a naval battle even though we often look back on it as key to the campaign which would lead to American independence. Indeed, despite how we celebrate Yorktown today, the war continued to drag on even after Cornwallis surrendered. But if de Grasse had ignored the land component commanders and prepared for the fight instead of splitting his force, the result might have been the real destruction of British maritime power on the American coast. The British people were already restless for peace and King George III was facing calls for negotiations from Parliament. Destruction of the British fleet might have brought the British directly to the negotiating table and secured independence even earlier.

Clear, vivid, and often revealing, In the Hurricane’s Eye returns the maritime elements of American victory in the Revolution to center stage. His ability to find instructive quotations from the primary sources and the small details that introduce verisimilitude has been well-established in his writing on American history, and this new book does not disappoint. Scholars of the American Revolution may quibble about some elements of his interpretation, or lament the “sources” discussion at the back of the book rather than the use of notes, but the book is a brisk and engaging read that offers a great deal to both military historians and general readers.

Today, we hear of the rise of great power competition and the challenge of navigating a multipolar world as if they are new. But, the very rise of the United States was a product of great power competition. While Americans focus on their own small portion of the conflict, the war for American independence became a global war between Britain, France, and Spain. And the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Quasi War, Barbary Wars, and War of 1812, which followed in the succeeding decades, were also shaped by the United States defending its interests amid great power competition. Balancing joint concepts of military power to maximize capability and the likelihood of success, and managing difficulties inherent to alliances and partnerships were just as vital at America’s founding and for the early republic as they are in the contemporary world. 

As Philbrick told a group of Naval Academy Midshipmen when he visited Annapolis, Americans can glean great wisdom from their nation’s maritime past if they are willing to do the work of studying it in depth, seeing it as more than a talking point or a fun bedtime story of adventure on the sea.

BJ Armstrong is a Senior Editor with War on the Rocks and holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. His third book, Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy, is forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in April.