From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. The glorious ideals and ideals of the declaration of independence, which we celebrate, as we should, every fourth of july, and as we know, our secular faith, would have been nothing more than a declaration, words on paper, if it were not for the people doing the hard slogging and the fighting, against all odds, suffering terribly. One of the reasons i wanted to write a book was a line Abigail Adams wrote to her husband about this time. She said, future generations who will reap the blessings will scarcely know the hardships and sufferings we have endured on their behalf. We do not sufficiently know. I knew she wrote that. When i read that, it reminded me that these people knew they were making history. Absolutely. Absolutely. They knew they were being called upon to play a part in one of the great historical dramas of all time, and they would be judged by how they played their parts, each individually. Henry knox was one of the most admirable people in the whole world. Aid to George Washington. Commander of artillery. A former boston bookseller who knew nothing more about the military then he read in books. 25 years old. He writes the very day the text of the independence declaration arrives from philadelphia, he writes, as we play our parts, history will judge us ill or favorably. The future will judge us. They know they are part of history. I think that is extremely important to understand, as you pointed out. That kind of sense of responsibility, a duty they did not have much cause to have hope when you consider the odds against them. No real army. No navy. No money. No gunpowder. Washington had never commanded an army in battle in his life for he was given the role of commander in chief. Speaking of knowing his role in history, George Washington, who we get to know here, was carried forward because he understood what he had to do, even though he did not have a great strategy, even though he was, as you say, not a great general by any definition other than that he was a great leader. That is the key to washington. He is not an intellectual like john adams or jefferson. He is not a great orator like patrick henry. He is not a brilliant napoleonic figure. He is a leader. People will follow him. And he has absolute integrity. And he will not give up. And he never forgets what it is about, what the war is for. Again and again, you have people saying, they are not going to quit because i am not going to leave this good man. At one point it was down to 3000 troops. That is all he had left. Hundreds, thousands had either quit, gone home when their enlistments expired, deserted, went over to the enemy because they were given pardons. Absolutely. People in new jersey, when washington and the army were retreating across new jersey, when the general lord howe offered pardons for anybody who would sign the loyalty oath, people in new jersey came by the thousands to sign as quickly as they could. If there had been daily polls taken and printed in the newspapers, it would have disintegrated immediately. People would realize this does not even have a chance. You thought of this story midway through the john adams book. What caused you to think about it . The letter from abigail . It was when i was writing the chapter dealing with the summer after the declaration of independence was signed. And the whole more effort is starting to fall apart. And then came the battle of brooklyn, the escape from brooklyn, the miraculous night escape by washington. When you are writing a biography, you cannot stray from your subject very much. Elizabeth longford, who wrote the great biography of queen victoria, said you cannot leave your subject for more than five pages. I badly wanted to write about the escape from brooklyn. You cannot do it here, but you can do it in the next book. So i began, which surprises some people, with george iii going before parliament in the october of 1775, to declare the american colonies are in rebellion, that their leaders, these rabblerousers he calls them the unhappy americans. They are traitors. He says so. He, the king, and the british power, british army, british empire, are going to bring these people to heel. They are going to crush the rebellion. It is when that speech reaches boston, on the first day of the new year, because of the great delay of crossing the ocean, the first day of 1776, that people in the army under washington, people everywhere, realize this is not going to be a short, unpleasant business, which will end with reconciliation, and we better be fighting for independence. They do not say it right away, although some are writing, like another aid to George Washington. Who knew no more of the military when he joined up, and when he was made a general at the age of 43 who knew no more of the military than what he had read in books. But we have to remember that was the age they felt if you want to learn how to do something or know something was a close study of books, urges the whole idea of the enlightenment. They all had about the equivalent of what we would say a fifth grade education. Everything i know about this is because of your book. These guys are new englanders. George washington is a very patrician virginian. And arguably dislikes new englanders. He looks down on them. He thinks they are dirty and unruly. They have this unfortunate idea they would like to decide things for themselves, which you cannot have an army. He overcomes that bias, which is a real inner struggle. He has to, because it is all he has got, a new england army. He has some people from the middle colonies that join. He takes command at age 43. Had never commanded an army in battle before in his life. He says to congress, i am not the man for this job. He also knew he was better than anybody else they could pick. They choose him not because he is a great general. They know he fought in the french and indian war and had a distinguished record. They pick him because they know him as a person, and they know him as a politician. He is a political general, and that is sometimes used in a dismissive or a less than complementary way. We should thank god that he was a political general, because he never forgets who is boss. Congress is boss. You have washington at 40 three. He goes to the Constitutional Convention in a uniform, even though he is saying, i am not the man. He is certainly available. You have that contradiction. Yes and no. He is being honest. He is ready to serve. He has his uniform. He is reminding them that he is a military man at heart. But he is very genuine. Look, i am not the ideal fellow for this job. He makes some very bad mistakes in judgment. He was outfoxed, outflanked, outnumbered, made to look pretty inept at the battle of brooklyn. He was so indecisive at the time of the siege of Fort Washington that he really cost that bastion they thought was impregnable, along with troops. These were terrible, very serious. And yet he did not quit. He did not succumb to his own sense of defeat and failure. And the people who followed him, with only a few exceptions, were determined to stay with him, as was congress. It is said about him that he had this special quality, and that you could not quite put your finger on it, but you knew from the people who saw him up close that he had it, almost like an xfactor. He was a commanding figure. Tall . 62. Probably weighed 190, 200 pounds. Perfect physical condition. He was a young man, only 43, but they were all young man. Adams was 40. Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the declaration of independence. We forget this. Franklin is the only one who had the age. He was old enough to have been their father. But we see them as the whitehaired founding fathers. Patriarchs. Elder statesman. At this point, they are not. It is a Young Americans cause. They were not in the majority. Ever, the people who were for the revolution, were never in the majority. They were maybe a third. No one knows what the proportions really were. There were not polls or surveys taken. But at least as many people were against the war as were for it. And they knew what would probably happen to them, the leaders, if they lost. Off with their heads. They would be all hung at the crack of dawn. Talk about the war for a second. 1775, they go to boston. They win some victories in 1776. No victories . Didnt they surround them in boston . They drove the british out of boston. Impossible for the british to remain in boston. This incredible feat of ingenuity and doing the impossible, hauling the cannon did that give them confidence . Probably too much confidence. After all, they had driven the british and this is the biggest superpower in the world. And they took them on and drove them out of boston. They were jubilant. They were a victorious team. They marched to new york, the field of battle, for the first time. They suddenly have a name. They are called the continental army. They have a flag to march under. They are going to be joined in new york by the people from new jersey, new yorkers, pennsylvanians. More than it was in boston, truly a continental army. And what happened . They got sick in great numbers. Epidemic dysentery, smallpox. Did not understand the rules of hygiene. Washington divided his army, taking half over to brooklyn. A mistake . It was a mistake to try to defend new york. It was indefensible because they had no seapower, no navy. The british came in with a fleet of 400 ships. If the british had gone up the hudson, could it have been over . It could have been. When washington fought the battle of brooklyn with about 9000 troops, it was sadly defeated. 300 americans killed. Over a thousand taken prisoner, including three generals. There were pockets of valorous performance on the part of some of our troops. The miracle is they did not lose the war. At that point, the army was in effect in the midst of a real trap. All the british had to do was bring their fleet up the east river, but the wind was in the wrong direction. The other direction, i think it would have all been over. Washington and half of his army would have been trapped. No United States of america, just because of the wind. History would have changed. The next day, after the defeat, the battle of long island, they decide they have to escape. The night of august 29, they organize a retreat back across the east river, by rounding up every boat they can get their hands on, on the east river, the hudson, new jersey. Brought them all over, and they took that army off of brooklyn in the night, 9000 men, cannon, equipment, forces, everything, without the loss of a single man. An organized retreat in the face of an overwhelming army is difficult to bring off successfully. Amateur, undisciplined troops, green troops, people who had never marched with a rifle or musket before, they pulled this off and it worked. It was as miraculous as the wind being in their favor. They are facing the largest Expeditionary Force ever mounted. Who had just defeated them in a humongous battle, a huge battle, the largest in america up to that point. And the people who saved the army were marblehead, massachusetts mariners, under a little general named john glover. You have a combination of luck or circumstance, the hand of god, as many said, with the wind being exactly what they needed. You also had the skill, the ability of those mariners to pull that off. The boats were so loaded down, water was only inches below the gunwales. Ability of those mariners to if the enemy had any idea they were trying to evacuate, they could have descended on the army and annihilated them, truly, right there. When they get across, most of them, morning is coming. A lot of them are still back on the brooklyn side. It is going to be light, and that will be curtains for them. In comes a providential fog that covers all of brooklyn. But it does not happen on the new york side. If you were writing a book and you had that happen, you would that is too much of a perfect weather. That is not real. At this time, as they are retreating, what was the mood of washington . Dolorous. One of abject discouragement. He was exhausted. He had not slept for three nights or more. They all were exhausted. And he i am sure he realized that he played his hand wrong, that he misjudged the whole situation. He never covered what was called the jamaica pass. There is a pass through the roof ridge that runs along long island. They had nobody posted there to stop the british. The british sent 10,000 men on a nine mile march through the night, and around, and they completely outflanked us. It was a perfect military maneuver, perfectly performed by the british, just as they are landing on long island. Everything was done just right. If general howe had attacked that bridge he had them on the run and they were retreating back to the fortifications of brooklyn heights. He could have ended what does that say about the british, their leadership and tenacity . It is a big puzzle that historians and military scholars have debated for 229 years. Why did he not move in for the kill . Some say he did not do it cousin had had such bloody experience at bunker hill, where the americans were in position in a high ground trench, and he was not going to attack. It had been awful. They lost a thousand men. On the other hand, he would attack a frontal position later on at Fort Washington. I think he felt, why destroy them completely, when we are going to win this . Lets pull back a little bit. Lets not just crush them, because we want them back in. They want to maintain the union. Politically, he was a whig. That does not mean he was not a tough and professional soldier. He was very smart and very courageous. The two howes were brothers . Richard was the admiral and william was the general. They were very highly placed, very influential figures in london society. They were aristocrats, as all officers were. And any picture we have of bumbling aristocratic fools in high command during our revolution is simply not so. There are many misconceptions. What about our misconceptions of george iii . He is seen as the crazy king who lost the colonies. And in fact intelligent, interesting man, very sympathetic character. A great collector of looks. A wonderful painter. He was a musician. He was a devoted father. And husband. He was intelligent. Samuel johnson thought he was charming company, and Samuel Johnson did not judge people lightly. But he saw it as his duty to crush this rebellion. George, be king. When your mother tells you, you be king. He was still pretty young. And the madness of king george, which we know about because of the play and the movie, that does not come for many years later. Long after the war. This is diaries from soldiers. That is the real story. And you like some of them. Hodgkins. Your favorite character . Ipswich shoemaker, and fitch, from connecticut. Hodgkins was a shoemaker. Had children and a wife at home, sarah, to whom he wrote regularly no matter what was happening. And they are wonderful letters. He talks about being told to march for this glorious cause. He fights on. After the escape from brooklyn, in this terribly to moralist army, he is writing to his wife, and he has just received a letter that the little boy, their youngest child, has died. He has known the little boy was sick and was very worried about him. We forget sometimes, these people are thinking about their families, their loved ones. They have been defeated. It looks like it is over. They are exhausted, filthy, dirty. He hears that this child he adores has died. And yet he picks himself up and he goes on, and he will not stop. Because they believed in their leader, they believed in their mission, they believed in the holy idea they were creating a nation . I think so. Joseph hodgkins and fitch never talk about the declaration of independence. It is interesting. I never found life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness mentioned. How about equality . Our country we are going to decide this ourself. We are going to have the society and way of life we want. We are not going to be dictated to. Is what always drives revolutions. They are not fighting because they are oppressed and poor. Americans have the highest payment, average americans, of any place in the world. But they want to shape their own destiny. Exactly. And they were proud of who they were. And they wanted to show these brits that they could fight as well as anyone. Given some experience, they are learning from experience. Washington, green. Knox, glover they are all learning as they go along. That was one of the values washington had. He could learn from experience. When he is defeated, he does not say, pity me. What can i learn from this . Experience had been his teacher all through life. His father died when he was quite young. He was on his own from age 16. These other people were, too. Fitch is keeping a diary. He kept a diary no matter what was happening, including after he was captured and taken prisoner, and put in one of those vile british prison ships in the harbor here in new york. I think he must have hid a beautiful leather diary. They are writing on scraps of paper, and i think he was hiding it on the ship, because it was against the rules. The fact that they wrote the letters, kept the diaries, is part of their great contributions to the country, because we know what it is like. He can be in their shoes and their skin, and feel what they went through, these human beings. Also, i think, what comes across is how tough they were. These were people who had been beat up by life, just by peace, by our standards. We are sort of contained in cotton, compared to how life was. They did not know how it was going to turn out. They also knew that without courage, without an understanding that life is not always a gift of a bed of roses, you are not going to make it through life, because life was hard. Any new englander, for example, knew that it is best to expect the worst. Life on a new england farm all of these people were farmers. It was a struggle. It was a battle. Many of these fellows had no shoes. Of course, in the wintertime, it was terrible. They are leaving bloody footprints in the snow from marching in their bare feet. That really happened. You also have to understand a farmer, particularly a young farm boy, went barefoot all summer long. About late may to probably october. They had tough feet. They were not like our feet. That is something that, understand, they knew how to fix a broken wagon. They knew how to pull out a stump or dig a trench. They were used to hard work. They knew how to survive outside. Back to the battle. They retreat to new jersey. Yes. Down to 3000, 2500 men. Ill clothed, ill fed, not enough cold. It is now december, novemberdecember, and things are precarious. George washington, on christmas night, decides what . All hope was gone. He says himself, the game is pretty nearly out. And sometimes when all hope is gone, the thing you do is attack. Freedom is having nothing to lose. He has wanted to attack all along, from boston on. He is constantly wanting to attack. His councils of war, again and again, are pulling him back from war, wisely. He launched a