Scars of independence America's violent birth

Review by Choice Review

About much more than the brutalization of soldiers and noncombatants, this well-written history of America's first civil war runs from the 1770 Boston Massacre through the 1780s following the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Anglo-American conflict. Involved were patriots seeking separation, loyalists wanting to remain with the British Empire, Native Americans who feared American independence, German mercenaries hired by Great Britain to support British troops, and slaves and noncombatants on the patriot and loyalist sides. Because both sides needed civilian support, British and American officers worked to limit plundering, which involved murder, rape, and flogging as well as the destruction and/or theft of property. Yet violence continued, with each side emphasizing the abuse perpetrated by the other. Once Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, it became obvious the US would become an independent nation, which raised the issue of reintegrating the loyalists. Though many fled and never returned, others came back, and, with the loyalists who had remained, strengthened their local and national economies. Patriots and American histories whitewashed their reputation on the American side of the pond; loyalists continue to be honored across the Atlantic. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Duncan R. Jamieson, Ashland University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by New York Times Review

HE CALLS ME BY LIGHTNING: The Life of Caliph Washington and the Forgotten Saga of Jim Crow, Southern Justice, and the Death Penalty, by S. Jonathan Bass. (Liveright, $26.95.) A young black man wrongly accused of killing a policeman in Alabama in 1957 faced a 44-year legal battle; his painstakingly documented story illuminates the racial justice system. RISING STAR: The Making of Barack Obama, by David J. Garrow. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $45.) This long, deeply reported but gratuitously snarly biography argues that the young president-to-be subordinated everything, including love, to a politically expedient journey-to-blackness narrative. THE GOLDEN LEGEND, by Nadeem Aslam. (Knopf, $27.95.) In Aslam's powerful and engrossing fifth novel, set in an imaginary Pakistani city ruled by mob violence, sectarianism and intolerance, the principal characters become hunted fugitives. Their integrity and courage nevertheless provide hope. THE UNRULY CITY: Paris, London and New York in the Age of Revolution, by Mike Rapport. (Basic Books, $32.) What accounts for differing degrees of upheaval when societies are in crisis? A historian's examination of the 18th-century revolutions in urban Britain, America and France is both readable and scholarly. MEN WITHOUT WOMEN: Stories, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen. (Knopf, $25.95.) In this slim (seven stories) but beguilingly irresistible book, Murakami whips up a melancholy soufflé about wounded men who can't hold on to the women they love. SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE: America's Violent Birth, by Holger Hoock. (Crown, $30.) This important and revelatory book adopts violence as its central analytical and narrative focus, forcing readers to confront the visceral realities of a conflict too often bathed in warm, nostalgic light. The Revolution in this telling is a war like any other. CALIFORNIA DREAMIN': Cass Elliot Before the Mamas and the Papas, by Pénélope Bagieu. (First Second, $24.99.) Bagieu uses the entire range of her medium, graphite, to show - in drawings both exuberant and sad - how a Baltimore girl named Ellen Cohen became Mama Cass. FIRST LOVE, by Gwendoline Riley. (Melville House, paper, $16.99.) A 30-something writer falls in love with and marries a man who says he doesn't "have a nice bone in my body." This dark, funny novel displays its author's mastery of scrupulous psychological detail and ear for the ways love inverts itself into cruelty. THE LONG DROP, by Denise Mina. (Little, Brown, $26.) In a departure from her usual series, Mina's new novel is based on a real crime spree that horrified Glasgow in the late 1950s. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 8, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

As many historians have acknowledged, America's struggle for independence was a mixture of noble and enduring ideals, heroic sacrifices, and the violence, brutality, and betrayals that accompany warfare. So Hoock is hardly reinventing the wheel in emphasizing the violent aspects of the American Revolution. Still, this litany and the accompanying descriptions of the outrages and injustices that patriots and Tories inflicted on each other make for engrossing and disturbing reading. There are repeated instances of mob violence, most notably at the so-called Boston Massacre. Both the British and the Americans mistreated and sometimes executed prisoners of war. The war pitted American loyalists and rebels against each other, especially in the South, where many took the opportunity to settle personal scores. African Americans, both enslaved and free, were exploited and betrayed by both sides. George Washington's pacification of Indian tribes sympathetic to the British along the western frontier included massive destruction of villages and outright murder. This is difficult but necessary reading, a book that reminds us that victory in our Glorious Cause came at a terrible cost.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this detailed account of the American Revolution, Hoock (Empires of the Imagination), professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, recovers the central role of violence in shaping the revolutionary experience. Arguing that existing historical narratives elide the conflict's pervasive emotional, physical, and psychological traumas, Hoock attends to the violent acts and rhetoric that affected communities on both sides of the war, taking care to discuss the revolution's effects on white women, Native Americans, and enslaved people as well as the white men in power. In each chapter, he examines a related set of violent stories, including British attacks on American soldiers, the torture and oppression of loyalists, sexual assaults against women, and military genocide against Native Americans. Hoock does not shy away from graphic depictions of violence; his history seethes with descriptions of people being beaten, wounded, tarred and feathered, and worse. The gruesome accuracy of these scenes reflects both Hoock's painstaking archival work and his commitment to calling this past to account, but some readers may find it challenging to engage fully with the book's catalogue of suffering. Nonetheless, Hoock strikes an effective balance between description and broader historical analysis, crafting a gripping narrative that holds appeal for general audiences and historians alike. Agent: Susan Rabiner, Susan Rabiner Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Hoock presents the American Revolution/War of Independence as America's First Civil War, describing in great detail numerous accounts of violence of Tories against Patriots and vice versa. He especially goes into detail about how prisoners of war were handled, or, rather, mishandled, by both sides. Scott Brick's clear diction and resonant baritone are splendid in reading these numerous accounts of rape, pillage, lynching, murder, and general inhumanity of humans to one another. He is very measured and disciplined in his delivery and pacing. His overall tone is understated, effecting dis-passion. VERDICT All libraries should consider. ["Hoock has written a history of violence in the Revolutionary War that is as fascinating as it is enlightening": LJ 3/1/17 starred review of the Crown hc.]-Michael T. Fein, Central Virginia Community Coll., Lynchburg © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The American Revolution was no festive musical.German-born historian Hoock (British History/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, 2010, etc.) asserts that this is "the first book on the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War to adopt violence as its central analytical and narrative focus." Over time, he writes, the Revolution's pervasive violence and terror have "yielded to a strangely bloodless narrative of the war that mirrors the image of a tame and largely nonviolent Revolution." In fact, he claims in this fresh approach to a well-trod subject, "to understand the Revolution and the warthe very birth of the nationwe must write the violence, in all its forms, back into the story." This he certainly does, examining both physical and psychological violence inflicted by all participantsBritish, German and colonial military forces, Patriot and Loyalist partisans and civilians, Native Americans, and free and enslaved blackson each other throughout the conflict. The catalog of misery includes battlefield atrocities, rape and plunder of civilians, inhumane imprisonment, lynchings and expulsions, and the scorched-earth destruction of crops, plantations, and entire towns. Hoock suggests that the conflict is best understood as America's first civil war rather than as a colonial uprising. He also considers at length the struggles by civil and military leaders of both sides to determine what levels of violence would be efficacious in achieving their objectives and acceptable under contemporary ethical standards, issues of continuing relevance today. Deeply researched and buttressed by extensive useful endnotes, this is history that will appeal to both scholars and general readers. The author presents his grim narrative in language that is vivid without becoming lurid. In urging an acceptance of historical accuracy over our foundational myths, he hopes to direct us toward "an approach to global leadershipmore restrained, finely calibrated, and generously spirited." An accomplished, powerful presentation of the American Revolution as it was, rather than as we might wish to remember it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter Six Slaughterhouses The George Washington of American legend is the humanitarian who, in a young lady's widely published acrostic, "Intent on virtue, and her cause so fair, / Now treats his captive with a parent's care!" From the very start of the conflict, Washington had been adamant that his army's conduct towards prisoners of war align with European customs. The honor of the American nation, as well as Washington's own obligations as a gentleman officer and wartime leader, was at stake. It was, after all, for a place among the world's civilized nations that Amer­ica was vying. For leaders like Washington, treating prisoners of war adequately was a genuine moral concern that also made sound strategic sense. Washington had a personal history to reckon with. In his very first combat mission, on the Ohio frontier in 1754, he had failed to prevent his Native American allies from committing the gruesome ritualistic murder of a French envoy, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, and then massacring other French soldiers after they had surrendered to him. Washington had covered up the disaster as best he could. His official report glossed over the extreme violence, making it sound as if all French casualties had been sustained during an honest fight. But when he had to sur­render Fort Necessity to the French later that year, Washington--unable to read French--signed terms of capitulation that held him responsible for Jumonville's "assassination." When the British and American Loyalists resurrected the mur­der charges two decades later, we can only imagine how it must have nettled Washington, who guarded his honor and reputation as jealously as any gentleman officer in the British Empire. He appreciated that he must go out of his way to observe--and, cru­cially, to be seen observing--the codes of civilized warfare. Wash­ington knew that defending "the sacred Cause of my Country, of Liberty" required him and his army to embrace Enlightenment ideals and what John Adams called a "policy of humanity." Washington had absorbed the codes of war pertaining to the capture, treatment, and exchange of prisoners of war, as far as conflicts among European powers were concerned, when fighting alongside British officers in the Seven Years' War. These codes of war allowed an army to imprison any enemy soldier or officer in order to prevent him from taking up arms or as a ransom for peace terms. Captors, however, had no right over the life of a surrendered soldier: prisoners of war were not to be killed unless they made a new attempt to fight or had committed a crime warranting death. Both sides had a vested interest in the preservation, and ultimately the exchange, of expensively trained captive soldiers. In the eighteenth century, conventions of war dictated that captive soldiers were to be fed, housed, and cared for like one's own armed forces, although they were to receive clothing and payment from their own state or army (and not their captors). En­listing prisoners of war in one's own military was forbidden. Dur­ing most eighteenth-century conflicts among Western European powers, ransoms and, increasingly, agreements between belliger­ent powers, so-called cartels, regulated the imprisonment, provi­sioning, and exchange of captives. Although a state was bound to procure its own prisoners' release--a promise that was crucial to recruitment--commanders might delay exchanges in order to temporarily impose a greater economic burden on their opponents or deny them fighting strength. At war's end, ransom or compen­sation would settle mutual claims. Unlike soldiers, captured offi­cers were commonly released back home or allowed to move freely within a specified territory, on their honor and parole--from the French for "spoken word"--to abide by certain restrictions. These principles of prisoner treatment were not easy to up­hold under the conditions of war. Unequal numbers of captives, inadequate record keeping, and the sheer scale of transcontinen­tal warfare in the eighteenth century meant that exchanges were complex to organize. There was, therefore, a broad trend away from large-scale exchanges and towards holding prisoners for longer periods of time in the captors' homeland. In the American Revolutionary War, unique politico-legal circumstances further complicated matters: the British refused to designate captured rebel combatants as prisoners of war, since that would mean recognizing the United States as a sovereign state. In doing so, they rendered large-scale exchanges characteristic of wars between European nations impossible, which meant that both sides faced the challenge of keeping unusually large populations of captives. Throughout much of the war, British officers sought to arrange partial, ad hoc exchanges on the honor of the local commander and without formally invoking the king's name, so as not to com­promise the government's position. Whereas Washington was bent on a pragmatic humanitari­anism and hence willing to participate in exchanges in order to alleviate prisoner suffering, Congress wanted to use the issue of prisoners to force Britain to recognize the United States. It also wished to avoid returning too many British soldiers. It was keen not to pay for large exchanges if accounts could not be settled. And it preferred to conceal the short terms of enlistment of Ameri­can soldiers. Throughout the war, American and British leaders blamed each other for the repeated collapse of exchange negotia­tions. The numbers of prisoners exchanged through ad hoc ar­rangements, though probably totaling several thousand over the war as a whole, proved too small to relieve in a meaningful way the pressure on detention sites in most places at most times. Some British officers in America demanded that "rebel" cap­tives be treated as such, and not like prisoners from legitimate, conventional European armies. At least keeping them indefinitely, suggested the Irish-born Captain Frederick Mackenzie, "and in a state of uncertainty with respect to their fate, would certainly strike great terror into their army." He worried that the failure to implement capital punishment--"Not one rebel has suffereddeath, except in Action"--only encouraged the insurgency. Never­theless, even Mackenzie later insisted that it was "right to treat our Enemies as if they might one day become our friends. Humanity is the characteristic of the British troops, and I should be sorry they should run the risque of forfeiting what redounds so much to their honor, by one act of even necessary severity." Mackenzie advocated strategic humanitarianism in order for Britain to create the right climate for postwar reconciliation. In practice, the British could hardly treat American captives as traitors without any rights. This was, first, because officials in charge of recruiting German troops had asked the British government not to complicate their task by repeating the situation of the anti-Jacobite campaign of 1745: pris­oners then could not be exchanged, a predicament the German negotiators were now well aware of. And once the Americans had captured significant numbers of British troops, Britain had to treat American captives as de facto prisoners of war in order to protect their own from retaliation. * * * Washington set the tone early on in the Anglo-American debate about prisoners. Just weeks after taking charge of his new army at Cambridge in 1775, he complained to General Gage that "the Officers engaged in the Cause of Liberty and their Country, who by the Fortune of War have fallen into your Hands, have been thrown indiscriminately into a common Gaol appropriated for Felons--That no Consideration has been had for those of the most respectable Rank, when languishing with Wounds and Sickness. That some have been even amputated in this unworthy Situa­tion." Washington demanded that politics be set aside; instead, he asserted, "[o]bligations arising from the Rights of Humanity, & Claims of Rank, are universally binding and extensive, except in Case of Retaliation." With this caveat, Washington invoked an­other principle in the laws of war, thus putting Gage on notice that in the future his treatment of Anglo-German captives would mir­ror the treatment of American prisoners in British hands. Gage replied that, to "the Glory of Civilized Nations, humanity and War have been compatible; and Compassion to the subdued, is become almost a general system." The British, he reassured Washington, "ever preeminent in Mercy, have outgone common examples, and overlooked the Criminal in the Captive. Upon these principles your Prisoners, whose Lives by the Laws of the Land are destined to the Cord, have hitherto been treated with care and kindness, and more comfortably lodged than the King's Troops in the Hospitals." It was Britain's natural humanitarian impulse, Gage was saying, not her obligations under the laws of war, that had ensured the good treatment of rebel prisoners. If he indeed had ignored distinctions of rank, it was only because "I Acknowledge no Rank that is not derived from the King." Retaliation worked for Gage as well, he reassured Washington, especially since he also had the American Loyalists to consider: My intelligence from your Army would justify severe recrimi­nation. I understand there are of the King's faithfull Subjects, taken sometime since by the Rebels, labouring like Negro Slaves, to gain their daily Subsistence, or reduced to the Wretched Al­ternative, to perish by famine, or take Arms against their King and Country. Those who have made the Treatment of the Prison­ers in my hands, or of your other Friends in Boston, a pretence for such Measures, found Barbarity upon falsehood. But Washington was not going to be intimidated by imperious saber-rattling. He lectured Gage that he had deliberately avoided political questions, such as whether "British, or American Mercy, Fortitude, & Patience are most preeminent," or "whether our vir­tuous Citizens whom the Hand of Tyranny has forced into Arms" deserved to be hanged as rebels. As far as the Loyalists were con­cerned, however, Washington had made inquiries and reported that "[n]ot only your Officers, and Soldiers have been treated with a Tenderness due to Fellow Citizens, & Brethren; but even those execrable Parricides, whose Counsels & Aid have deluged their Country with Blood, have been protected from the Fury of a justly enraged People." Congress duly published the Washington-Gage correspondence for propagandistic effect. By this time, not only in America but in Britain, too, Washington was becoming widely recognized as an honorable gentleman officer who sought to up­hold high ethical standards.   Even as allegations of British maltreatment of American cap­tives soured relations, and perhaps especially then, Washington continued to cling to these standards: he would always try to "ren­der the situation of all prisoners in my hands as comfortable as I can, and nothing will induce me to depart from this rule, not a contrary line of conduct to those in your possession. Captivity of itself is sufficiently grievous, and it is cruel to add to its distresses." Noble ideals, captured in soaring rhetoric, found their real test in the actual treatment of prisoners under the strains and stresses of a grueling war. As Patriot soldiers learned throughout the conflict, being a rebel prisoner in British hands was a precarious and often violent experience. Excerpted from Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth by Holger Hoock All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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