Book Review: Rick Atkinson's Spectacular "The Fate of the Day"

I was just a young pup—cocky and ambitious. I had graduated from law school, passed the bar, and thought I was bulletproof. So I jumped headfirst into the real estate development business.

The man who owned the firm was Alexander Hamilton. No, not the first secretary of the Treasury. This was Alexander Hamilton IV, known to everyone as Alec—one of the most lovable and colorful men one could hope to meet.

Big Al was fun and easygoing, twenty-five years older than I and, like me, a St. Anthony Hall fraternity brother at the University of Virginia. My God, did we have fun. We worked hard, but we also laughed constantly and played tricks on one another. It was as though we were still twenty years old and living in Charlottesville.

One day, Al asked me to come to his office. He was stern and a little miffed, which was unusual. He was almost always affable—with a capital A.

I will never forget what he said:

“You are really smart, but you don’t know what you don’t know.”

At the time, I was not even sure what his point was. Al was afraid I was taking risks and jumping into deals without the seasoned judgment that only comes from experience. I see that clearly now. He was looking out for me, trying to protect me.

As the decades have rolled by, I am now a devoted disciple of Big Al’s wisdom. No matter how smart you are, there is no better teacher than experience. Without it, you don’t know diddly squat.

Understanding history and possessing practical knowledge of the real world are essential to sound decision-making, especially in matters of public policy.

I recently read Rick Atkinson’s second volume in his trilogy on the Revolutionary War, The Fate of the Day. Those familiar with my writing probably know that few things piss me off more than the snot-nosed arrogance and historical illiteracy of the woke left: the frumpy, unhinged liberal white women; the shabby, unkempt barista youth, always quick to complain but seemingly never inclined to take a shower or wear an ironed shirt; the thoroughly indoctrinated Ivy Leaguers, full of hubris and oblivious to the fact that they have been radicalized and taught nonsense; and the great blob of collectivist groupthinkers who possess no original thoughts but desperately need a purpose, so they join the United Club of Useful Idiots.

To quote Big Al: “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW!”

I dislike this crowd with the passionate fury of a vengeful God obliterating Sodom and Gomorrah. Zap. Bam. Boom. Nothing left but smoke and dust.

Y’all suck.

You have ignited my wrath because you possess the ability to destroy the greatest civilization mankind has ever produced. Just as infuriating is your staggering lack of appreciation—not only for your country, but for the extraordinary blessing of having been born into the most fortunate generation in human history.

Atkinson is a superb writer. History is more than facts and dates. It is also the study of personalities, motives, ambitions, virtues, weaknesses, and choices. This is where Atkinson shines.

Through personal vignettes, letters home, official reports, diary entries, and contemporary testimony, he gives us intimate insight into the character of those who made history. We see their courage and vanity, their virtue and frailty, their selflessness and ambition.

To understand history is to understand the endless complexity of human nature. Those with practical experience in the real world tend to recognize that complexity. The blue-haired baristas and angry AWFULs, by contrast, wallow in ideological certainty while knowing nothing.

The book opens with British General John Burgoyne’s invasion from Canada and the eventual surrender of his army in October 1777. It concludes with the British capture of Charleston in 1780.

I have lost count of the number of books I have read about these campaigns and battles. Yet this particular journey awakened me to the extraordinary brutality of the Revolutionary War.

It was not merely a war for independence. It was a civil war—a fratricidal struggle.

The British viewed the Americans as traitors to the Crown, much as Americans today might despise a fellow citizen who took up arms for the Taliban. It was also an American-against-American war: brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor. A substantial portion of the Crown’s forces consisted of American Loyalists.

Many eighteenth-century European wars were fought according to recognizable rules and conventions, almost like contests between sovereign states under Marquis of Queensberry-style rules. Think of one kingdom against another on pay-per-view.

The Revolutionary War was quite different.

The Royal Navy burned coastal towns. Troops bayoneted civilians. Indians allied with the British took scalps, including those of women and children. Homes and crops were destroyed. American prisoners died by the thousands in filthy prison ships. British and German troops looted, burned, and, at times, raped.

What particularly raises my ire about woke idiocy is the lack of appreciation for colonial hardship, especially the suffering endured by American patriots.

Not one barista, member of the Democratic Socialists of America, or Antifa foot soldier would last an hour on a colonial farm, much less in the Continental Army.

The soldiers froze and starved. Many had no shoes. They suffered from dysentery, typhus, smallpox, typhoid fever, scurvy, pneumonia, and infected wounds. After battles, surgeons went to work amputating limbs to the point of there being great heaps of severed arms and legs rotting in the sun.

Yet they kept going.

Despite the brutality and hardship, there was remarkably little self-pity. Certainly, there were moments of near mutiny over the lack of food, pay, and clothing. But that is a far cry from some transgender freak shooting up an elementary school because somebody called “it” the wrong pronoun.

Diary entries and letters home described terrible suffering, but many soldiers seemed satisfied (even with a leg or arm missing) by the simple conviction that they had done their duty.

Discipline was harsh. I cannot help but admire Washington, a learned and devout Christian who understood that he would have no army without strict order, and thus he had men hanged or outright shot for violations of military order. That’s a real man with manly responsibilities.

Then there were the militias—ordinary men like you and me who left their wives, children, farms, and businesses to fight when called, then returned to the plow when their service ended.

And let us not forget the women who carried on without their husbands. They maintained farms, raised children, managed households, endured scarcity, and waited for men who  never returned.

These were a different breed of people. They deserve our recognition, gratitude, and respect.

Atkinson takes us inside the Continental Congress, the British Crown and ministries, and the royal court at Versailles. Mature people are not “mad at history” the way so many of our purple headed warriors are today.

My ancestors were patriots, and I am proud of them. But I am not angry at the British, the Hessian soldiers, or the American Loyalists. I understand why events unfolded as they did.

I have enormous respect for the traditions, discipline, and military skill of the eighteenth-century British Army and Royal Navy.  I know several Virginia families descended from Hessians who were not given a ride home after Yorktown. Imagine living in a world in which you could be conscripted into an army by the hereditary noble of a German principality and then transported across an ocean to fight in someone else’s war. Yet, today the perpetually aggrieved become apoplectic if a realtor uses the terms “master” bedroom.

The war was not a simple story of virtuous patriots and wicked British soldiers or Loyalists. There was considerable nobility among the British, many of whom were themselves divided over whether the war should be fought.

Many Americans were indifferent. Some supported whichever side appeared to be winning. There were shirkers and deserters, fraudsters and crooks, among both sides.

The American officer corps was hardly free of vanity or self-interest. Officers quarreled over rank, recognition, and status. Some carried grudges for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps 200,000 to 250,000 Americans picked up a musket at some point during the war. What amazes me, however, is how few Continental Army soldiers remained in service from the beginning of the conflict to its end.

Their number was tiny.

Washington was the indispensable man of the Revolution and, in my judgment, our greatest American. But the small number of soldiers who stood with him through year after year of hunger, disease, defeat, cold, desertion, expiring enlistments, and political neglect formed the glue that held the army together.

They marched with him, suffered with him, and refused to quit.

We cannot show those men enough gratitude, and frankly neither should the rest of the world. For the ideals of the American Revolution  liberated many a man in many a far-off country…..