Your Kindle Notes For:

1776

David McCullough

Last accessed on Tuesday July 10, 2018

27 Highlight(s) | 3 Note(s)

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Yellow highlight | Location: 683 Note | Location: 683

Seeing things as they were, and not as he would wish them to be, was one of his salient strengths.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 693 Note | Location: 693

“Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 719 Note | Location: 719

“Be easy . . . but not too familiar,” he advised his officers, “lest you subject yourself to a want of that respect, which is necessary to support a proper command.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 727 Note | Location: 727

valet de chambre

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 792 Note | Location: 792

One line in particular he was to think of or quote frequently in his role now as commander-in-chief: “’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,001 Note | Location: 1,001

That such a scheme hatched by a junior officer in his twenties who had had no experience was transmitted so directly to the supreme commander, seriously considered, and acted upon, also marked an important difference between the civilian army of the Americans and that of the British. In an army where nearly everyone was new to the tasks of soldiering and fighting a war, almost anyone’s ideas deserved a hearing.

Note:Willingness to try and fail

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,052 Note | Location: 1,052

for if tyranny should prevail in this great country, we may expect liberty will expire throughout the world.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,066 Note | Location: 1,066

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair, but in the privacy of his correspondence with Joseph Reed, he began now to reveal how very low and bitter he felt, if the truth were known.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,105 Note | Location: 1,105

Joseph Reed, who had looked after the generals’ ladies during their stop in Philadelphia, offered the thought, after seeing them on their way, that they would be “not a bad supply . . . in a country where wood is scarce.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,281 Note | Location: 1,281

the desperate American need for leaders had thrust young men like Nathanael Greene into positions beyond their experience, the British military system, wherein commissions were bought and aristocrats given preference, denied many men of ability roles they should have played. Had Captain John Montresor been a major general, the outcome of the struggle might have been quite different.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,323 Note | Location: 1,323

Washington knew that congressional approval was needed and that there must be no ambiguity over whether his authority extended beyond the immediate theater of war. As he would say, he was not fond of “stretching” his powers, and such sensitivity to and respect for the political ramifications of his command were exactly what made him such an effective political general.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 1,757 Note | Location: 1,757

Just as he had shown no signs of despair when prospects looked bleak, he now showed no elation in what he wrote or in his outward manner or comments.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,023 Note | Location: 2,023

“Every brutal gratification can be so easily indulged in this place,” wrote William Tudor of Boston, Washington’s judge advocate, to his fiancée, “that the army will be debauched here in a month more than in twelve at Cambridge.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,025 Note | Location: 2,025

“these bitchfoxly, jades, hags, strums,” as wrote another officer, Colonel Loammi Baldwin, continued “their employ which is become very lucrative.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,180 Note | Location: 2,180

The ships included the Centurion and the Chatham, of 50 guns each, the 40-gun Phoenix, and the 30-gun Greyhound with General Howe on board, in addition to the 64-gun Asia. In their combined firepower these five warships alone far exceeded all the American guns now in place on shore.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,323 Note | Location: 2,323

The admiral was a renowned fighting sailor, and as the older, less self-indulgent of the brothers—and with an even darker, gloomier cast to his expression—“Black Dick,”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,357 Note | Location: 2,357

“Those who have committed no fault want no pardon,” Washington said plainly. “We are only defending what we deem our indisputable rights.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 2,551 Note | Location: 2,551

In fact, the Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world. Their material wealth was considerably less than it would become in time, still it was a great deal more than others had elsewhere. How people with so much, living on their own land, would ever choose to rebel against the ruler God had put over them and thereby bring down such devastation upon themselves was for the invaders incomprehensible.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,093 Note | Location: 3,093

“They feel severely the blow of the 27th,” he wrote to his father, “and I think I may venture to assert that they will never again stand before us in the field. Everything seems to be over with them, and I flatter myself now that this campaign will put a total end to the war.” To Lord Germain as well, he predicted, “This business is pretty near over.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,166 Note | Location: 3,166

We have thought God was for us, and had given many and signal instances of his power and mercy in our favor, and had greatly frowned upon and disappointed our enemies; and verily it has been so. But have we repented and given him the glory? Verily no. His hand seems to be turned and stretched out against us—and strong is his hand.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,189 Note | Location: 3,189

We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged. ~Colonel Henry Knox

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,255 Note | Location: 3,255

One of the most seriously ill had recovered, however, and with immediate consequences. On September 5, Nathanael Greene returned to duty and promptly submitted to Washington an emphatic, closely reasoned argument for abandoning New York at once.

Note:Yessss

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,279 Note | Location: 3,279

Washington he would later write, “Had I been left to the dictates of my own judgment, New York should have been laid in ashes.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,380 Note | Location: 3,380

“The demons of fear and disorder,” said Joseph Martin, “seemed to take full possession of all and everything that day.” All, that is, but Washington, who, in a rage, heedless of his own safety or the chance of being captured, rode to within a hundred yards of the enemy. Only with difficulty were two of his aides able to grab the bridle of his horse and get him to leave the field.

Note:Gods of fear similar to hardcore history

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,065 Note | Location: 4,065

Washington had replied that he understood but that “we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish.” It was such resolve and an acceptance of mankind and circumstances as they were, not as he wished them to be, that continued to carry Washington through. “I will not however despair,” he now wrote to Governor William Livingston.

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,121 Note | Location: 4,121

“Let them go, my dear Ewald, and stay here,” Cornwallis had said. “We do not want to lose any men. One jaeger is worth more than ten rebels.”

Note:

Yellow highlight | Location: 4,672 Note | Location: 4,672

He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments he had shown marked indecisiveness. He had made serious mistakes in judgment. But experience had been his great teacher from boyhood, and in this his greatest test, he learned steadily from experience. Above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up.

Note:

Would you like to take some notes?

You haven’t created any notes for this book yet. You can add or remove bookmarks, highlights, and notes at any location in a Kindle book.

Learn more about notes and highlights

Sorry, we''ve experienced a problem. Please try again.