Summary Of 1776 By David Mccullough's 1776

I had an opportunity to read a fascinating book called 1776 by David McCullough; which is his tenth Book he has written on the subject. In this endearing novel he describes several significant issues that George Washington had to overcome to secure his ultimate victory in 1783. The book also describes the first year of the American Revolution, especially the triumph of Boston and the failure at New York and the successful attack on Trenton. The author details the challenges of creating and maintaining an army and then developing and drilling the militia that will be disciplined in the field of battle. I will focus on three areas that were major issues that General George Washington faced while leading the continental army during the year …show more content…
Then there was the fact that George Washington and his officers were not well trained and made several bad military decisions, such as the Boston encampment. The 2nd major issue included a lack of supplies, specifically gunpowder, which was only less than ten thousand pounds, and a number of times the Continental Army went into battle with only enough powder to shoot two rounds. The third obstacle that Washington had to deal with was the fact that the army were made up all different sorts of men, farmers, skilled artisan and shoemakers as well as the geographical issues such as the difference between the North and the South, the settlements and the frontier. The first issue that I found the most compelling was that the army was not welled trained on how to wage a war. The army was made up of men who volunteered and did not want to or willing to be trained and the fact that many of his troops would just walk off to tend to their harvest or work on their trade or simply left because of the harsh weather, to make matter worse many of the troops would just walk off with their musket dispute having a lack of supply of them. This further complicated any military action that Washington wanted to …show more content…
Many of the men had been in small skirmishes however, never had participated in a large scale battle. Each soldier had no clue of what they were supposed to do and how to proceed in an engagement; many would just use their firearms when they pleased. The army had not participated in a standard set of drills to develop this discipline and order. The author continues to writes about the how this lack of military experience caused the many problems that General George Washington faces outside of Boston and then a year later at New York. One example of this is when the army was outside of Boston, Washington was unfamiliar with the layout of the land; it was very different from any of his prior military experience. In fact he did not have a trained military engineer among any of his troops. The army had no idea how to set up an encampment, many were made up sailcloth or board, the side of Boston he set up his camp made it easy for the British to bottle up the Americans. Then there was the issue of weather, the time of year that he started the Boston campaign few ships with supplies could aid in effort, the lakes were frozen