know, everybody likes a clean can, clean lines, you know what i mean. yes, i think a good line to end on is pregnancy is a spectrum. just gender, right. well, thank you both. i believe that both amanda and colleen will be signing, but yes, they'll be signing it line five and line six in the rec center following this. well, thank you much for coming. it is my pleasure. this afternoon to introduce both the interviewer and author. indeed, it's my honor to stand on the same with the two of them, both of whom a deep and abiding appreciation, history and how it speaks to us, both individually and broadly as a

society james percoco who is a history teacher and in many ways reflects all aspects of that title. in his 33 years. he has been inducted into, the national teachers hall fame, recognized as of the year in virginia and referred to by david mccullough, a pulitzer prize winning author biographer who i've certainly read his books as well, a national treasure and dogged by your horror as america's history teacher and for that, some very high honors. but there's more for this history teacher. it's not a matter of throwing a blizzard of facts and dates and students, but sometimes hear when they talk about history instead of a personal recognition of the importance of those who stood us and how they us today in part by the lessons

they may teach us, he will take students to historic sites and push them to see for themselves. more importantly, ask questions for themselves. the titles of, the three books he's written will demonstrate my a passion for past summers with lincoln looking for the man in the monuments and divided we stand teaching about conflict in u.s. history and rick acton's atkinson is also multiple pulitzer prize winning author. he has in writing seven sets of history each with multiple volumes taken, a similar approach as james percoco in showing importance and relevancy of those who have stood, worked and fought before us is direct, detailed and personal style of writing, which i certainly appreciate gives us not only names, but delves into the personalities with.

a background reflecting for the reader motives and concerns much more than the dates and, isolated facts, but also very relatable to the lives we live today. one of his pulitzer prizes resulted from his liberty trilogy focusing on the liberation of europe during world war two. he also won the 1982 pulitzer prize for national reporting the 1999 pulitzer prize awarded to the washington post for public service based on his reporting about big issue for our society now police shootings and the 2003 pulitzer prize for his narrative history about the revolutionary war i'm going to talk about today similarly weaves historical with reflections of personality and character and that's especially reflected in the book we'll hear about today just published. and when i say just published,

it was at the end of april, fate of the day. the for america for ticonderoga to charleston. 1777 to 1780. i think all us are looking forward to hearing more from these persons who do so much make history come alive. without further ado, i will get off the stage and it is my pleasure to introduce james percoco who will interview rick atkinson about the of the day and the course of the revolution honoring war. thank you all again for here. and don't forget my lots and lots of books. thank. good afternoon, rick. good to see you. good to see you, jim. thank you for being here thank you neighbors for being here. i live in the district, so i am your neighbor. yes. yes so i'm familiar with all your all your books. and the one question i want to ask you to start is how did you

choose the title for this particular book? yeah well, the title for volume one of the revolution is the british are coming and i have to tell you that paul revere never said that. what he is quoted as saying as he rides of boston to warn the countryside is, the regulars are coming out, meaning the regular british army coming out of boston. they're headed toward concord. they know that they're rebel munitions there. i use that title as a as a title because it really is a metaphor for what that book is about, what the war is about. early on, the british are coming. they're coming with the greatest navy the world has seen. they're coming with a large professional army, more than half of which will, up in america. and they're coming to kill your men, rape women and burn your towns. it's a dire thing. so the second volume, the fate

of the day, is a phrase that you hear in the 18th century. occasionally and i quoted a couple of times in the course of the book and it implies a certain contingency events that may be may or may not be beyond a human agency. so, for example, i quote alexander hamilton. alexander hamilton, who is an aide to general washington at the battle, monmouth, which is in late june of 1778. it's the last big of the revolution in the north, and things have going badly for the home team early on. washington arrives in the nick of time and of saves the day and hamilton writes i never saw the general to such advantage with his ardor and his his timely intervention. he helped save the fate of the day. so that's where that phrase

comes from. okay. okay. well, i remember the last time i saw you speak when you finished your liberation trilogy of world war two, one of the biggest questions you had from multiple people is, what's your next project? and i know there was a lot of discussion about do the war in the pacific and you clearly were not interested in doing so. what drew from dealing with nazi germany eisenhower or bradley patton, montgomery and all those guys. so cornwallis, washington, knox and hamilton, what did what brought you into from the 20th century in the 18 century. yeah you're right jim when i finished the third volume of the liberation trilogy and even before i finished it was published in 2013, i was thinking about what to do next. and the obvious thing would have been to pivot the pacific and do for that theater what i had done for the mediterranean and, the

european theaters in world war two. i didn't have the heart for it. frankly, i'm a european first. i was born in germany. i lived in germany. i, i. my head pivots to europe. i, i didn't have the same imaginative in by the pacific war and, you know, i thought about the, the advice that jack london offered long ago. he said an author ought not wait for inspiration to appear, but should lay it out after it with a club. so i took my club and having written about wars in the 20th and 21st centuries, i've written about five american wars, eight books. now, i was interested in the origins of that army that i've been writing so long, the army that we saw in world war two, certainly the army that i wrote about in iraq, the army i wrote about vietnam. and i also and i think it's true

that going back to and plugging into my native interest in the american revolution, which i know you share from the time i was a kid that it would tell us something about who we are, where we came from, what our forebears believed, and what they were willing to die for. it's the most profound question any people ask themselves, and i think that studying the revolution, you can draw some answers to those basic. okay. all right. well, thanks. so my next question is, i know that after george washington, you have great reverence for nathaniel green. before we get to green, i want to ask you about henry knox and your recollections of him and something i've come to feel about knox over the years of reading about the american revolution. yeah. henry knox. one of the things george washington has going him for one thing, he's not a particularly

good tactician. he's got feet of clay like all of us. the man who proverbially could never tell a lie sure could prevaricate, particularly when he was writing to congress about yet another battlefield setback. but he's got a number of attributes that are really singular, and one of them is a good eye for a subordinate talent. and so when he takes command of the continental army in july of 1775 in cambridge the british are or less surrounded. they're in boston and the the the new continental is around boston he sees this overweight 25 year old boston bookseller named henry knox and somehow intuits that this guy's going to be the father of american artillery he's got a genius for gunnery he's a commander he's got a set of skills at washington appreciates right away he wins washington's undying gratitude when as the siege of boston goes on through

the of 7576. the americans are trying to figure out a way to force the british out of boston where they are really entrenched. and washington tells knox i know that there are more than 50 big guns that the british have abandoned at fort ticonderoga when that fort had been captured in the early of the war. fort ticonderoga several hundred miles away. go see if he can bring them back. it's the middle of the winter. knox sets for ticonderoga, finds 50 some guns that he thinks are serviceable, brings them back by boat and sled across the snow shows up at washington's in cambridge says boss i'm back the guns are parked right outside town and washington state says you are my man and that begins a relationship or in in a

relationship that is going to last for a long time henry knox is going be the first secretary of war when washington becomes president. he's a fantastic character. he he you, he and washington and a couple other generals late in the war get on scales. i mean, the scales where you weigh yourself at west point henry at that point weighs 280 and is going to keep weight. he marries a woman named lucy fluker. she's also from boston as he is. her parents are loyalists and the british evacuate boston in march of 1776, her parents leave with the british she never sees them again. this is quite common the revolution because it becomes a civil it's tragic. she never sees her family again. her brother is a british families are split just like they were in the civil war. but knox and washington are really welded together for the

rest of washington's life. all right. well, i guess of the things that occurred to me as i read book and thought about knox is that after the war, he did not treat some of the continental soldiers very well, and particularly i'm speaking to joseph plumb martin and what happened, his property in, maine. can you address that at all? no, it's after the war. i mean, know about it. and joseph plumb martin, it's one of the few really vibrant that come down to us from the war he's a young soldier and he seems to be everywhere. he's kind of a zelig character. and he writes very vividly the things that he sees experiences. it's one of the voices that most tells us about what soldiering is like. but after war, you know, i lose of him. so i, i you know, that's not

something i'm concerned with. okay as to the veracity of joseph martin. where do you hold that in terms of the reliability of the the actual reality of what he writes about? yeah. i mean, a good question, jim. you know, i'm always skeptical of people who write about things that decades after they happen memories are fallible and egos are not, you know, ego egos can can alter reality in a way that the writer may even fully appreciate. i'm like, i am with all accounts. i am i look at it askance. i see whether there are ways to square what someone has written with accounts. i use martin's account, but i think somewhat sparingly.

okay. okay. now, since i'm a place based learning guy and like to take kids. in this second volume, which was your favorite to visit and why? oh, well, there's a of them and i go to almost all of them i think because i did for world war two to, you know, north africa and anzio and, you know, all those battlefields in western europe. because i think that, you need to see the ground as you well know. and, you know, the fact that you do this with kids is fantastic. i think that particularly as i amateur, i need to understand the in ways that i cannot simply from a map you know i'm particularly partial to saratoga two battles of saratoga september in october 1777 that really device a decisive in war i'm really taken with germantown germantown is as you know then

was a village just north of philadelphia. washington has had its -- handed them at brandywine. again, not showing himself to be a particularly tactician. he's been outflanked at long island in august 1776, nearly loses the army, the british get behind him. same thing at brandywine. he doesn't go out and do reconnaissance himself of the of the land. the guy used to be a surveyor. you would think that he knows land and the importance of the topography. he doesn't go and look at it himself and again gets outflanked at brandywine and nearly loses the army. he's he's inherently aggressive and so despite this defeat right away he decides he's going to take it to the british again. the british are in germantown. they have a captured philadelphia and washington concocts a very complex overly complex plan to have four

columns of continental, reinforced by some attack, germantown at dawn, similar. it works sort of initially the british are surprised general howe, who is the british commander in chief, is caught surprise. the british are falling back through germantown. everything is going really well and there's a big mansion. the biggest, biggest mansion in town. it's called the chu house because it's owned by a guy named benjamin chu. he had been on the pennsylvania supreme court before the war at this moment in october. 77. he's in jail because he's a loyalist. the chu house. and this is knox and washington coming together again to knock not good effect. the chu house is a fortress and it's still standing it's one of the reasons why german town i think such an interesting that you don't need much imagination

to imagine the british doing what they do which to barricade themselves in the house converting it into a there's about 100 of them it's not a big contingent but they're ready die in the chu house and the american forces are swarming it and knocks and washington have a conversation. and the conversation goes like this. henry knox, who's learning is mostly book learning, says it would be improper to leave a citadel in your rear washington thinks about it and the aides are listening, including hamilton and john laurens. they're listening and they're saying. no, no, no, no. just isolate it and on. you've got him on the run. washington listens to knox. they stop and the hammer the chu house a it with infantry they attack it with artillery. the british hold out the house is complete wrecked, but it absolute totally stops the

moment of the attack. the british gather themselves, they have time to do it and they counterattack and they drive, the americans back out and they rout. so victory gives way to defeat. it's another loss and it's another opportunity for washington to prevaricate in report to congress. so i think germantown, when you go there and you go through the chu house and you can bullet marks in the outside walls, this this local schist to kind of granite. and you, you know, can see it'd be very tough to overpower the entrenched enemy in that house. and that's what's on the cover of book, correct? it is, yes. it's a painting in 19th century painting of of the attack on the chu house. also, the house is also called clifton. okay. all right. so if we could return to saratoga, i know that of your favorite. i don't know if that's the right

word characters. is the german rosedale and and his wife who was with him. could you tell us a little bit about him and the role his wife played in that in the story. yeah, she's she's fantastic. jim, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about her so the british have allies. they're mercenaries, they're german, we call them hessians of whether they're from hessle or other german princely states. and the commander of the german forces who attacking out of canada, lake champlain in the spring of 1777, under the command of general john burgoyne, he's the british commander, the german commander is a major general name. the egis and rizzuto has a lot of combat experience is a very capable officer. burgoyne relies on him.

the that he's got are pretty capable so they have down they captured fort ticonderoga where those henry knox cannons had come from. they root the american garrison there and their objective is to get into the hudson valley go south to least albany and perhaps all the way new york city so that they can the new england states away the mid-atlantic states. this is their strategy. and it's not a bad strategy. there are problems with it we can talk about in a minute, but so rehearsal is coming down and they get into the hudson valley and they're moving south and they're heading toward saratoga which is north of albany and rehearsals wife shows up. frederica, and not only the she show up she's got her three daughters they're three daughters all of them are five and under she has made the trans-atlantic voyage from

germany, first to england and then to canada. and she's following the army and trail. it's a little unusual. it's not unknown. and is going to be with him and be with the army, you know, in the rear of the army, within guns, shot noise through the of saratoga. saratoga, of course, is a major defeat for. the british and germans in that army, 8000 men who've come out of canada by the time we get to the first week of october, when when they surrender all 8000 of them are dead or captured, including for our readers. all the daughters and her husband. and they're going to end up and she writes about it. you know, i wish there were ten of her because she's a vivid writer and she's a very character. and they're going to end eventually. this captured army in charlottesville. they are marched from boston to charlottesville in the winter.

the following to keep them out of reach of british raiders. so that they can't free these of war. she becomes friends with jefferson in charlottesville. jefferson, of course. is that monticello? he sells, ah, a piano because she she likes sing italian arias. so she accompany herself on the piano. the last thing i'll say about her is that she's eventually exchanged and she's freed from the camp and charlotte's will, and she's reunited with her husband is also exchange in new york. she's going to have one more daughter before they go back to germany a fourth daughter. so she's there with four daughters in the middle of, the war, and they name the daughter america. oh, okay. interesting. very interesting. so if we could go back to saratoga for a brief moment, how crucial is the engagement at bennington and or and or hobbiton depending on where you look at it too that the eventual american victory at saratoga.

yeah i think they're both pretty important jim hobbiton occurs right after the evacuation of the citadel at ticonderoga. it's a bloody nasty battle it lasts for several hours in the morning it's in july of 1777. the americans are eventually fall back. there's a lot of casualties, both sides. it's a miserable place. it's in the middle of nowhere. if you're wounded your chances of ultimately survival are very low. but the americans have fought with some valor. it's surprising as the british and the germans, there's a large german contingent, their readers who shows up with the reinforcements. he's he's the commander, senior commander for the the crown forces fighting there. and he's surprised it's you know, he he writes at one point they've got more spirit than i

thought they would have. nevertheless, it's skirmish and it's a bloody skirmish. but then bennington as the father the british and german gets away from montreal which is where they've started, the longer their supply lines get and the more their supplies, there's a, you know, they've got a lot of horses. the horses need fodder. they've got army feed, they need gunpowder. they need all the things that an army needs. and they're finding a lot difficulty gathering it. the countryside they had expected lots of loyalists to rally to them, sell them grain that they can into bread and so on. it doesn't work out that way. every time they venture outside of their line, they're in danger of being ambushed. there's a lot of skirmishing around the lines. so general burgoyne orders a raid on bennington. bennington is on the vermont

side of vermont is not a state yet it it it's disputed between massachusetts new york but it's believed that there are lots of horses. they need horses and that there supplies there that they can get. well, this largely german force that's sent to bennington is ambushed the american commander is a guy named john stark and you don't want to mess with him because he is a tough son of a -- he's been at bunker hill and he is a battlefield commander and he places his forces in a place where the the these raiders cannot get through. they never get out of new york. they never get to bennington. it's called the battle of bennington, because there is also bennington on the new york side. and it's a catastrophe that detachment is basically obliterate by stark's men.

this is bad for the british because they really need the supplies that they thought they could get. this foraging expedition. and now they're recognizing that first of all, their forces are being whittled away, death by death casualty, by casualty and stuck. and they realize that they're not going to get to albany at all, probably the winter's coming. so i think it's really important to what happens ultimately. okay. and then in terms of the grand strategy of burgoyne coming down from canada, howe moving the hudson valley from new york and, then st leger coming across the mohawk valley. that doesn't seem to ever materialize. and do historians know why really? why that never happens. i this is how that lacking of due diligence to carry out his orders. so what what is your thesis on on that particular aspect to the

of that campaign which seems be really important the overall story true. yes. right. i think i know what happens so you have 8000 men coming down. out of canada, the main british army is in new york under general howe. and the obvious thing would be for how to move up hudson valley and meet this force, the canada army coming down at albany or someplace like that, how initially is thinking about this? and then he says, no, i'm not going to do that. i'm to go to philadelphia. i'm going the other direction he submits this is his plan to his masters in london, particularly the general lord george germaine. he had been a british general. now he's the secretary. he's the robert mcnamara of the war for, the british. and it's strategic, thickly incomprehensible.

well, you're going to take one army that's coming down the hudson and instead reinforcing it and keeping unity of command and force and so on. you're going to go the other way, 180 degrees the other way, and he's going to do it slowly. it's not he doesn't get philadelphia quickly, because first they go up the delaware and then he says, no, delaware. it looks too tricky. they go all the way around, come up the chesapeake bay. it's the middle of the summer. it's miserable. the prevailing sound of british army at this point is a big splash, and it's after splash as they hoist dead horses out of the holds of their ship and heave them over the side. it's very hard to move horses in the summer by by ship as it so what happens burgoyne is stuck basically at saratoga there are no coming and there are no reinforcements are going to come.

he is going to spend the winter in philadelphia very comfortably. he he wins the battle of, brandywine. he wins germantown, he takes philadelphia it's it doesn't matter. it matter. it's not really a capital city. it's not like capturing moscow and expecting the russians to surrender in. the americans are going to continue anyway. so, you know and at the same time, you mentioned the st ledger. he's been sent on an expedition down the st lawrence river as the canada army is coming down and then across lake ontario and down into the mohawk river valley. and this to attack the americans from the flanks that doesn't go well either he stopped st leger is there's a nasty battle at oriskany where there's a castle it's one of the bloodiest battles of the revolution. but that doesn't work either. so you can see the scheme coming

stitched. what should have happened is that germaine in and the king is paying attention. should refereed this and should have said we're going to do we're going to adopt a strategy that makes sense instead of this. burgoyne doing his thing and howe doing his thing, st leger doing his thing and doesn't happen. okay. and speaking of how, you know, probably many of you are familiar with william, but there's the second brother, richard, who's admiral. can you talk about their relationship and its impact on the overall gambit of the war in period that you're writing about in this book? yeah, there are actually three howe brothers, the oldest lord howe has been killed by the french in the french and war very close to ticonderoga. and he's he's considered the best young officer in the

british army at the time it's a great loss for britain not to mention for the whole family. so the second oldest brother is richard. richard is an admiral. he is the admiral in command of the fleet on the north american station. and he is extremely competent. he's one of the great fighting dogs in the history of the royal navy. and remember, at this time, the american it's the greatest navy the world's ever. so when, when, how, richard? how is his sea battles and helping to destroy what little there is the continental navy. we got a problem. we meaning the americans. he eventually he becomes decisive, partly because he feels his william, the youngest brother, is not being treated well by london. and there some truth to that. so these two brothers, william is not the right for the job, as

it turns out, he's had some in the seven years war, french and indian war, as we call it. he'd been heroic. the guy who scales the the the the cliffs on the st lawrence and appears on the plains of abraham during the famous attack on quebec. so he's been a hero early on but he's the peter principle incarnate. he's promoted beyond his natural level of competence. so we're going to both hal brothers return to london. in 1778, both of them somewhat disaffected and both them contributing to this was feeling in england that are not going well. there's a lot of bickering between generals and, admirals and the home office and so know the howard brothers are single characters in the war. they are not particularly

effective helping the british cause and that that leads me to this question. one of the things that i found really fast eating about your book is you marvelously weave between the battle field and whitehall and vici. i mean, you've it's almost as if you're reading three books in one. at some level, you're reading the military history, you're reading the machinations going on between. the king and his ministers. you're reading about franklin and and silas dean in in in in paris. how do you do that? i mean, you weave it so seamlessly. how does that as a writer, how does that happen. oh, thank you, jim and i see we've got 5 minutes left here. so now we've got 2 minutes left there. answer briefly. well, i mean, that's the narrative art that the my ambition is to the imagination of the reader doing it through

rigorous research that takes me years and doing it and and doing it in a way that you can not only see it. you can hear it and you can smell it. i think that's vitally important. i try to focus on characters who are compelling and vital to the story. so the book at versailles, as you say, and because i need you to understand that at this point spring of 1777 the game is really about the king of france, louis, the 16th and his beautiful austrian wife, maria tonet, known around the french court as madame deficit. and the the the goal of the americans is to draw this catholic absolute monarch into the war on on of protestant want to be you know, waging insurrection against their lawful monarch. that's a heavy lift diplomatic

play. and the guy doing that lifting, benjamin franklin, he's been sent to paris as our first and greatest diplomat, as it turns out. and at the same time, there's another character that you meet early on because this 19 year old spindly redhead and he's one of the richest boys in france. his name is gilbert dumont here. you know him as the marquis de lafayette. and he has decided that he's going to ignore the king's orders, not leave france. and he's bought a ship and he's going to sail to america because inflamed with the within the asm for the american cause. and he by the way, you know, only a captain in the british army, but he's been given a major general's commission. so he's going to be very important to us among other things, he's washington's conduit. the french court. so the idea to try to weave these stories together in a way that's, you know, a seamless whole while you do it really well. you do it really, really well. you for that welcome. thank you. so we ready for questions now.

okay. yes, sir. hang on a sec. until bring a microphone, okay. just in case. there we go. so i want to go back to the battle of monmouth. it's really because i was literally just there last week. i had like a personal day as a social studies and so i was just curious about decision making of george washington to attack basically on that what is it, june 28th, 1778, that is what was, because i think he was advised by john laurens and baron von steuben not to do that. well, the british have evacuated philadelphia. june 28th is one of the hottest days. the history of new jersey. and all these guys are in uniform. there are dozens die of heat stroke. that's how miserable it is on both sides. and washington sees that the british evacuation under general henry and clinton is headed

toward new york and he's uncertain whether to engage them full on. and he knows that's probably a good idea there. i think 12,000 or more british troops and germans and his strategy for the most part has been to avoid direct clashes because it keeps getting his -- to him. when he does that. but he does want a nick at their flanks and he wants to make it life even more miserable than this, you know, crushing american that they're experiencing. and so he puts together a large vanguard, thousand men under his second in command, general lee, who has just released from a british jail. he'd been captured in december, 76 and he's been exchanged and now he's in charge. well, the british again can show greater tactical gifts than the americans have at this point.

and it looks as though is 5000 man vanguard is in danger of being destroyed. lee stops his attack falls back is the right thing to do. wash ten is too far back to reinforce a timely fashion, but he finally comes up. this is when lieutenant colonel hamilton is going to talk about the fate of the day. he back and kind of stabilizes his things. and the battle is really draw. the british continue on. they're going to go to york. it's a long, bloody day. you know, i think that all in all, washington in does save the as it turns out, the british claim victory. the americans victory. you know, is a draw. the last thing should say is that monmouth, also known as freehold subsequently becomes

much more famous in the battle because it's the hometown of bruce springsteen. i have two questions. one about your current book, one about the next one, the current is why did the brits go south? they gave the northern strategy and turned south to charleston settlement. but for your next book, the amazing thing for me about, the revolution, is that the british navy lost the french one time that i know of in history, and that was at the treaty of yorktown, which was a gardener's understanding of the conflict, i think. yep, the british admiral was gone. yep, yep, yep. okay. i'm not going to talk that. that's volume three. we're not going there now. i know. but you talking about the battle of the capes and it is important, but why did the british adopt a southern strategy eventual leave?

because they're not having success in the north and they i've talked about the incomprehensible strategies that they have employed earlier on and it's not working for them. the british had wanted a very quick they wanted a quick war because it's expensive. they're deeply in debt from the seven years war and. they wanted to do it before the came into the war. and the spanish come under the war and dutch are going to come into the war. they don't get a quick war. and these continental enemies are going to come in on behalf of the american when this happens, it changes. it becomes a global it's not a little brush on the edge of the british empire. it's fought on four continents, in the seven seas. the british at this point are thinking, okay maybe we can try and roll up the colonies from the south. there's a belief it's wrong. there's a belief that there are many many loyalists waiting to

come when the british army shows up, there are loyalists. they're not as many as the king, his government believe. so we're going to see is the british take savannah and they're going to besiege charleston. this is the end of volume to spoiler. 5000 men in that american army in charleston are going to be trapped and killed or captured. it's a catastrophe for the americans. so it looks like this british strategy of, okay, maybe we can take back georgia because we've got savannah we've got the savannah river valley. maybe we can take back south carolina. we've got charleston, the richest city in america. and they begin to spread through south carolina. and then we can take north carolina and then virginia. it's not going to work out quite way, they think. but that also i am three.

i i'm a native of the wyoming valley in northeast pennsylvania. yeah. and as you probably we call a massacre up there. yeah. the connecticut red that was occupying what connecticut. that was part of connecticut finished a really distant second against butler's rangers and the assorted natives. you cover the frontier war, the regular war, and yeah, i do do not only there, but farther west. i write about that and i write about the penobscot in maine where these are all on the fringe of america but they're all important to the revolution. well, you're talking about the area around wilkes-barre, basically, and the subsequent a river valley up there. and it's where there are indian attacks combined with loyalists and. it's really nasty there. there are massacres, there's no

doubt about it. there's no other for it. washington spends a good part of 1779, and i write about this at length planning a punitive expedition. and he organizes an army and they are going to drive up the susquehanna into new to punish the iroquois and the american revolution becomes not only a civil war between. britain and british colonists and british and loyalists and rebels, but also among indian tribes. so the six nations, the berkeley four of them are going to align with british, basically, two of them are going to align with the and they're going to fight each other. also, it goes well for none of the indian tribes. and in this punitive expedition in the general, sullivan, who's leading the expedition with

washington's overall, they destroy 40 indian villages and they drive the indians in. it's going to be the coldest winter on record in north america. the winter of 79, 80. they drive the indians who villages have been burned back into the saint lawrence river valley. and it's going to be a terrible winter for those indian refugees. so i do write about it, i think. do we have time for? one more? yes. where are the slaves in all this? yeah where are the slaves in all this? i write about them a lot. and they ought not forgotten. they cannot be forgotten. two and a half million people in america. the war begins in 1775, 500,000 of them are blacks and they you know, they leave very footprint. it's hard to understate how the war is falling, those 500,000. but i my best and other scholars have also become to some extent

they are a pawn in the war. the british early on, the british command, governor general. the who a virgin analysis early in the war that will give emancipation to any slave who will run away from his from his masters rebel master. if you belong to a loyalist master, the deal's off. and if you are one of the 40 slaves that lord dunmore, the british governor of virginia, if you're one of his fellow slaves, no deal. but if you come and take up arms against the rebels, you will emancipated nothing. the war enrages washington more than this done more's offer. bring the slaves into what he calls his ethiopian regiment. it goes very badly for.

those slaves just as badly as does for the indians. many of them are stricken with smallpox, dysentery, typhus. they die by. the hundreds, and it doesn't work out the way dunmore has thought. there is a proposal on the other side by john laurens is a lieutenant colonel. he's been educated in switzerland and north in england and he's a he's an abolitionist and his father is the president of congress. he succeeds john hancock, his father also, henry lawrence, has been the largest slave trader america for he gets his fortune there from charleston john laws proposes that the best way to bolster the american manpower is to arm the slaves in exchange for eventual freedom at the end of the war washington really

doesn't want to hear about it and he's got to you know and finally he says oh whatever an henry laurens also says whatever and john laurens his project back to charleston he gets leave from being an aide to washington and goes back and pitches this to the south carolina assembly. this is as the the bad news is coming to charleston that they're about to be surrounded and the south carolina planter, chrissy says not only no they say hell no, never, never. and so the city falls and, you know, slavery is going to go on for another years. so, yeah, i a lot about slavery. yeah. okay. all right. well, thanks, rick, so much. this has been wonderful thank you for your questions. you you're welcome.