The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom [Hardcover]

Bruce Chadwick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2005

This is the first book that offers a you-are-there look at the American Revolution through the eyes of the enlisted men. Through searing portraits of individual soldiers, Bruce Chadwick, author of George Washington's War, brings alive what it was like to serve then in the American army.

With interlocking stories of ordinary Americans, he evokes what it meant to face brutal winters, starvation, terrible homesickness and to go into battle against the much-vaunted British regulars and their deadly Hessian mercenaries.

The reader lives through the experiences of those terrible and heroic times when a fifteen-year-old fifer survived the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Private Josiah Atkins escaped unscathed from the bloody battles in New York and when a doctor and a minister shared the misery of the wounded and dying. These intertwining stories are drawn from their letters and never-before-quoted journals found in the libraries belonging to the camps where Washington quartered his troops during those desperate years.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this novelistic treatment of the Revolutionary War, Chadwick (George Washington's War, Brother Against Brother) uses the experiences of eight men to give the reader a "bottom up" look at the war. Drawing on their letters and diaries, he follows them through their years in and out of the war, from the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 to the American victory at Yorktown in 1781. Although the horrors of battle are a main focus of their writings, everyday activities and concerns-romance, food, clothing, leisure and friendship-reveal much about these early Americans' lives. Readers will find little academic analysis of the subjects; except for a few expansive chapter introductions, Chadwick keeps standard history writing to a minimum. Instead, he focuses on these men's day-to-day and writes in lively prose, although some accounts push the limits of reconstruction and read like fiction. Readers unfamiliar with the history of the revolutionary war may find themselves lost in the rapid shuffling between campaigns, battles and locations, but the stories of individual soldiers, doctors and ministers are strong enough to carry casual readers as well as those accustomed to academic histories.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

What was it like to be an American soldier at the battles of Bunker Hill, Quebec, Saratoga, and Monmouth? Historian Chadwick's well-crafted narrative of the Continental Army tells the tale through several journals and memoirs. History readers wanting a break from reading generals' biographies will be interested in meeting Chadwick's enlisted men, beginning with fifer John Greenwood, a Johnny Tremain-like 15-year-old who was present at Bunker Hill, much to his mother's distress. Another teenager, Jeremiah Greenman, marched in the disastrous 1775-76 invasion of Canada led by then-hero Benedict Arnold. The smallpox-ravaged survivors of that campaign retreated to the Lake Champlain-Lake George area to have their souls saved by Reverend Ammi Robbins, and their bodies salved by Dr. Lewis Beebe. The latter two exemplify the author's emphasis on the civilian support that sustained the Continental Army, which was not a static organization but one that men were continually joining and leaving. Chadwick makes palpable the day-to-day hardships and intermittent distractions of army life during the Revolutionary War. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.; 1ST edition (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402205066
• ISBN-13: 978-1402205064
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,208,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will all elitist reviewers please stand up., November 28, 2005

By 

L. Schofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom (Hardcover)

Are these reviewers for real? Undeserving nobodies and too many african-americans? Please. A book long overdue and an enjoyable read. A tribute to the 243,000 ordinary nobodies,(black and white) who fought at some period in the Revolution,risked it all and paid high prices.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable to read, but not really much new information..., April 21, 2006

By 

Terry Crock (Massillon, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom (Hardcover)

This is a generally well-written and enjoyable to read book, but it doesn't quit live up to its sub-title: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom. The book is foremost a retelling of the Battles of the Revolution. It does present viewpoints from the soldiers and others who fought, but I didn't really find a great deal that hasn't been written before, although the portion devoted to Blacks in the Revolution was interesting. Interesting also is how many soldiers died from poor conditions and disease. But I didn't come away feeling that I really got to know the "Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom." As I said before, the book is mainly a retelling of the story of the battles of the War and secondly, a telling of the battles from the perspective of the common soldier.
For those who haven't read a great deal on the Revolutionary War, this would be a good book to start with. It is enjoyable, easy to read, presents an overview of the history of the War, and gives a perspective on the War from both the commanders and the common soldier. However, if the reader is one who has read a great deal on the Revolutionary War, there isn't really a great deal that is new here. It is a good book, but not one I would put on my top-ten list of Revolutionary War books.
The one thing I found irritating about the book is that several times it left some loose ends dangling. For example, one point in the book tells of George Washington's sometimes leniency toward those who were being disciplined. The author goes on to tell of a group of men sentenced to death for desertion and re-enlisting in order to collect another sign-on bonus. Washington, however decides the punishment is too harsh and so asks "...their officers if there was some mitigating circumstance that he could use...to spare them." Then the author states that Washington pardons them all. Okay, but what did the officers present to Washington to enable him to pardon them? I don't know and apparently neither did the author because we are never told in the book. This same lack of relevant information appears several times in the book.
If it were me and I really wanted to look at the war from a soldiers viewpoint, I would read a book such as "Private Yankee Doodle" by J.P. Martin. Martin's story has been described as "One of the best first-hand accounts of war as seen by a private soldier ever written." In my opinion, the Martin book is much better at describing the life of the soldier in the Revolutionary War. "The First American Army" does, in fact, use the Martin book as source of information.
All in all, "The First American Army" is an enjoyable to read book that presents a decent view of the War from the viewpoint or the soldier. It isn't a great book however. And it doesn't present a great deal of new information. This book would probably be more enjoyed by those with only a general knowledge of the War, not by those who already have read a great deal on the subject. To sum up, this is a good, enjoyable to read book that gives an overview of the battles of the Revolution while at the same time giving us some insight into the lives of the common soldier.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A View of Washington's Army from the Bottom, November 16, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom (Hardcover)

Having spent my time in the Army as a low level grunt I was fascinated to see this story of the view from the bottom of Washington's Army. The eight men whose diaries and letters Dr. Chadwick used as the main basis of the story were not exceptional men, they were just ordinary men in extraordinary times. And they happened to be on the winning side so that their story gets told.

Surprisingly the book makes the life of the grunt surprisingly like that of our own: talking with friends, drinking, playing cards -- bored most of the, time scared the rest -- and it's always too hot, or too cold; too wet or too dusty. It takes some effort to remember things like the quality of medical care, where things like germs, drugs, anesthesia hadn't been discovered/invented yet.

Dr. Chadwick has done a supurb job of research in an area previously ignored. There are many books talking about Washington, the various battles, and so on. This book covers new ground and is great reading.