VALIANT AMBITION: GEORGE WASHINGTON, BENEDICT ARNOLD AND THE FATE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Published 2016 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House.  427 pages.  ISBN: 9780525426783 (hardcover); 9780698153233 (ebook)

It is rare to find a book equally devoted to two men of completely different temperaments and ambitions who occupied the world stage at the same time.  One of these is revered as the father of his country while the other remains its best-known traitor.  While many books have been written about both men, Nathaniel Philbrick has managed to achieve the near impossible: He has revealed the real George Washington, warts and all, while at the same time making it crystal clear that, despite his many failings, he remains the key figure of the American Revolution without whom the war would never have been won.  At the same time, he has managed to reveal a more human side to Benedict Arnold; while there is no excusing his defection to the British, one can almost sympathize with the circumstances that led him to betray his country.  Almost, but not quite.

At the time of his appointment, Washington famously declared himself unfit for the task before him.  The first couple of years seemed to verify his self-evaluation: He was completely outgeneralled in one conflict after another and had many detractors both in the Continental Congress and within his own army.  Benedict Arnold also had many very vocal detractors.  The difference between the two men is simply that Washington was able to rise above the criticism and eventually lead his army to victory while Arnold was unable to rise above his own self-interests; his eventual defection, as Philbrick makes clear, was done largely for economic reasons.  Arnold simply did not see any future for himself in a country run by incompetents in Congress who refused to reimburse him for his financial losses.

Washington is a hero of almost mythical status in the United States.  I for one have had enormous difficulty in coming to terms with this extremely complex man.  Philbrick has cleared away much of the fog surrounding Washington.  He informs us that the same Continental Congress that was able to agree on the Declaration of Independence soon split into factional disputes, with virtually every delegate putting the interests of his home state before the national interest.  Washington seems to have been about the only individual able to envision a bigger and greater goal of a unified country taking its place among the great countries of the world.  Despite Congress’s incompetence and unwillingness to recognize that, for this to happen, the war first had to be won, and the army needed their undivided attention and support.  Washington weathered one storm after another and never lost sight of his greater vision.  This is his greatness.

Philbrick is a gifted writer who has authored many outstanding books.  He engages the reader from the first page and the intensity never wavers.  He provides us with a brief background of both of the main characters which enables us to see how their respective developments would affect their conduct during the war.  He then leads us through the war itself and explains how Arnold, despite overwhelming evidence of his superior generalship, was constantly at loggerheads with his superiors (except Washington who constantly intervened in his behalf) and with Congress who repeatedly advanced lesser individuals to higher ranks.  Arnold’s bravery and leadership were second to none during the war and he suffered injuries to his leg that crippled him for life.  While none of this excuses his defection, it does explain his increasing frustration with the war effort.

Along the way we meet many other fascinating individuals.  One of these is Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  His friend John Jay (one of the authors of the Federalist Papers) encouraged him to write his memoirs, which he did.  However, by 1816 Thomson recognized that a national mythology had arisen about the war and its leaders; recognizing this led him to destroy his manuscript as he did not feel it appropriate to knock our national heroes off their pedestals.  We are left to wonder how our interpretation of our founding fathers, to say nothing of our national character, would have been altered had Thomson’s manuscript survived.

Another interesting figure is Joseph Plumb Martin, who joined the army at age fifteen in 1775 and remained for the duration of the war.  This fact alone makes him almost unique among Revolutionary War soldiers.  Unlike Thomson, Martin wrote his memoirs and (anonymously) published them.  Historians have utilized them since they were first published and they remain in print today.  These are invaluable since they are among the few surviving accounts by a “common” soldier in the war.  As Philbrick demonstrates, Martin was a ubiquitous character who always seemed to be present at critical structures and seems to have had a near photographic memory for details.  Surviving until 1850, Martin was among the very few participants in the war who lived long enough to have his photograph taken.

A quote from the epilogue is in order here: “The United States had been created through an act of disloyalty.  No matter how eloquently the Declaration of Independence had attempted to justify the American rebellion, a residual guilt hovered over the circumstances of the country’s founding.  Arnold changed all that…By turning traitor, Arnold had alerted the American people to how close they had all come to betraying the Revolution by putting their own interests ahead of their newborn country’s.”  In this way, Arnold ironically served to unite the country in a way he was never able to do on the battlefield.

This is one of those all too rare examples of a history book that can be enjoyed by laypersons as well as studied by serious scholars.  Philbrick has produced an American classic that should be read by anyone interested in understanding the real nature of our country’s founding.