How George Washington Defeated the British Empire

No reason not to begin.

Tom Ricks is the military historian of The New York Times.

He has written also for The New York Times Book Review, then a visiting fellow

in history at Bowdoin College. And before he became a full time author,

he covered military affairs for The Washington Post and The Wall

Street Journal for 25 years and received two Pulitzer Prize.

I want to say just one book, one word about the most

famous book. This is Fiasco. And once you began reading it,

you will read every word on every page and it will just keep keep turning.

The book has much new to contribute to our understanding of the failures of both the civilian

and military leadership to take even a minimally adequate long

view. But the heart of the book Fiasco, a story that’s never

been told before, is that of a military occupation whose leaders

failed to see a blooming insurgency for what it was,

and as a result led their soldiers into such a way that the insurgency became

inevitable. We also want to recognize at some point Mary Kay

Ricks. And we want to have her speak on the her book on the

is a superb book, Tom.

What’s he asking about?

It’s about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It covers 2003 through

two thousand five. Really?

John McCain once told me that he lost weight reading this book

because he said he’d read four pages and throw it down to say son of a [INAUDIBLE].

An account and he had a temper to calm down. He had to go out, walk around the block and he’s scream

out of walking around the block about 40 times in the course of reading the book.

Thank you for coming out today. Such a beautiful day. Can you all hear me in the cheap seats?

OK. Good.

I’m going to talk today about my current book project, which is rather removed from Fiasco

in some ways, but is actually very similar in some ways because it’s about American leadership,

about American generalship and about strategic thinking.

The name of the book is First Principles How the Founding Fathers were influenced

by ancient Greek and Rome and how that shaped our nation. In particular, it’s

about the first four presents. What they learned,

how they learned, who they learned it from, how they applied, what they learned in

designing for bringing the country independence and defining it. Of those four,

George Washington is the anomaly. And

I’ll talk about why. But what’s striking about him is, in a nutshell,

while he was the least educated of the first four presidents, he was the most Roman of the first four

presidents. This book began for

me. It’s called First Principles, it’ll be out in November. It began for me on Wednesday

morning after the presidential election in November 2016. I woke up, looked at the

headlines, thought, oh my God. I never expected this. I mean, I really you know,

I’ve never pretended to be a political reporter. And when I heard political reporters talk about

military affairs, I wondered if I started as stupid when I talked about political affairs. So

I avoided talking about political affairs. But I had assumed that Hillary Clinton

knows she ran on an atrociously bad campaign, an arrogant, hubristic campaign.

I assume she would win as she did. So I went down to my library and I thought,

OK, let’s get back to fundamentals. And I took down off the shelf Aristotle’s politics.

And I began reading Aristotle and other Greeks. And I especially

wanted to see, because I believe now that we live in an oligarchy in this country,

it’s a dollar oligarchy with democratic dressing, which Aristotle discusses.

Sometimes the more stable sort of oligarchy has the trappings

of democratic representation, partly to draw off steam. And that

intrigued me. That led me to months and months of reading

Greeks and Romans. And then I wouldn’t read what these young early Americans

read about the Greeks and Romans. I went through the syllabi of the colleges they went to and really

steep myself and what they read, how they thought about it and what really

made this an adventure for me. Is something you couldn’t do. Twenty years ago, all the words

of the founders. The everybody involved in the founding of George Washington.

Abigail Adams. It’s all online. It’s all searchable.

So you can. You know, you we were all taught in high school. Oh, John Locke, whoever

he was, he was a big influence. You can go through and actually say, well, actually

they refer in all their writings six thousand times to John Locke, but 12000 times

to you and Montesquieu. Why is that? And so you can actually

say, well, actually, Professor reading Carl Becker’s book, the one that really put Locke

on a platform, that’s not the case. That Montesquieu stands much

more largely in the forefront than locked us in the considerations, especially around the time the Constitution.

But I’m going to talk today about the anomaly. George Washington, the most noble Roman

though, the Mall. And that’s I speak here. Keep in mind the same among American historians.

The more you know about Jefferson, the sketchier he begins to look, the

more you know about George Washington, the more you admire the man. And for me, this

is still true. I actually came away having finished writing this book. I actually sent him the edited

version where the editor has gone over the first draft. So I’ve done the edit now of his working

with his comments on Saturday and 10 days ago. I came away

with a really elevated appreciation of George Washington and I think you’ll see

that come out in this talk. George Washington was called

at various times the American. Fabius discussed that reference to a early Roman general,

the American Kaito, the American Cincinnatus, and to his everlasting credit,

the one Roman. He was never compared to. Was Julius Caesar.

Although Tom Payne came pretty close once, George Washington

was an unusual man in many ways. But among his peers, he was unusual in a way that deeply

embarrassed him alone among the first war presidents. He was not

a learned man. He knew it. He writes early in the revolution

to an aide de camp, I am conscious of a defective education.

So, too, were his peers. He did not have a class of education. He did not

have a good education of any kind. He did not speak any language besides English. He

never in his life traveled to Europe, and he was not well read, even in his own

language. One evening in Philadelphia in 1791, over several drinks,

Vise President John Adams debated with a fellow Massachusetts and

talked Timothy Pickering about Washington’s education.

Pickering, who would become postmaster general that year, argued that Washington

was fundamentally illiterate. Could hardly write, he said.

Adams disagreed. He wrote some very good letters during the war. Adams said

no. Pickering said those were written by his aides, especially that guy named Alexander Hamilton.

But this is important, Adams concluded in recalling this argument with Pickering

that Washington, whether or not he was educated, was a very thoughtful

man. Likewise, Jefferson. Concluded that

Washington was not that bright, but he was slow and steady with straw judgment.

Now, remember here, neither Adams nor Washington knew a damn thing about military

affairs. Adams thought he did. Jefferson knew he didn’t.

So they never really understood Washington. They never understood that as a young man,

he had been fast to act. Perhaps slow to think, but fast act,

learning to think slowly and act quickly is a military virtue. One

that he learned with some pain and difficulty watching people

die and bleed around him. There’s a problem here that a story

is, I think, have with George Washington. Historians, like other researchers

and academics, are fond of words. And I say this as someone

who is grown up all my life, been intoxicated by words. I remember still when I was

which I still have. He just somehow knew I was into words.

Washington was not. Washington was a man of deeds, not words. This is sometimes

hard for scholars to grasp alone among the first four presidents. He did

not leave any autobiographical material. Now he made sure that a biography

that was written of him was closely edited. But he would not stoop to write

a memoir to explain himself. That was beneath him. So he was not a man of

words. And he wanted his deeds to speak for themselves.

So what did George Washington learn? What made him so smart? How was he able?

To defeat the British Empire. Remember when he takes over the U.S.

Army? He’s the first soldier in the Army. It doesn’t exist

the day he was named to it, the George Washington, that’s about 200 yards over there. Portrayed

when he was appointed general by Congress in 1775.

He. Did not know strategy.

But he have learned a lot about other things early in his life. What is key,

I think, to understanding George Washington is he was born in defeat. The French

and Indian War, he suffered a couple of defeats, personal and rather catastrophic

for the British of whom he was apart. He learned a lot from defeat

early in his life. Now, I think this was key to how he would approach the leading

the Revolutionary Army. Twenty years later, during the French and Indian War, which he helped

start, Washington was part of the British force. First, it fought a sensitive

Pennsylvania, just southeast of Pittsburgh, about 50 miles. He

surrendered a small party in 1754 the following year. He

was part of the largest European military operation ever seen in North America. General

Braddock’s expedition from what is now Washington, D.C., up towards what is now Pittsburgh.

The British force was about 1200 soldiers a few miles southeast

of Pittsburgh. What is now Pittsburgh, the British force was ambushed by 700 Native Americans,

First Peoples as the term I would prefer. Three hundred Frenchmen. Washington

believed the French were poor fighters. He learned that he was wrong on

that day. The British force, 1200, two thirds

were killed or wounded. This is far beyond decimation.

This is devastation. It was an astonishing defeat. Washington

had 20 years to think about that battle before he became a general in America’s

first soldier. Looking over his experience of the French and Indian War,

I think he probably distilled them into some general lessons along these lines.

I see five lessons. Know who you are fighting. Study the terrain and make it

your friend. Be ready to change your views if circumstances change.

Be ready to abandon assumptions. Listen to dissent and know how to weigh alternatives.

Think slowly. Act quickly. That is, be prudent in your consideration.

Don’t exhaust yourself and your force by constant movement. But when you do decide, act

with great vigor. Most importantly, George Washington

saw that he himself could recover from stinging defeat. It perhaps

at the key goal of a general might be not to win a battle, but to keep his

force alive. This was a crucial lesson also for

command have his own self. He had a volcanic temper and he had to learn to control

himself, and that would lead and turn to his ability to command

others out of this. I would say Washington became what we today would call

a critical thinker. You see this in his letters, his wartime letters, especially

more than almost all his peers. He was able to study your situation, evaluate

its facts, decide which of those facts were important. Develop

a course of action in response to them. Toward a desired outcome and

verbalize the orders that needed to be issued on that last thing, he needed some help from Hamilton

and others. Verbalization. But. But. But.

I’m sorry if that’s me. No, the brakes on my Subaru are being

fixed and they promised to call me.

But these lessons were all tactical.

He still had to learn strategy. Tactical is actual fighting control of a force

in the battlefield, in combat. Movement of troops and so on. Strategy is a whole

other thing. I don’t think strategy has taught well in this country. I would define strategy

in a nutshell as asking questions. Who are we? What are we trying to do and how are we going to do it?

But it begins with understanding who you are. He did

not know a lot about strategy going into his second war when he was appointed

general, as we as portrayed in that statue in 1775

and 1776. He had a lot to learn. He had a

disastrous 1776 and he was very lucky he didn’t have a draft or 1775.

He got out of it, not through his own actions. He suffered a terrible

series of setbacks in 76, the summer and fall of 76. He basically

got kicked off a Long Island, kicked across Manhattan and then kicked across New Jersey. Chased

across New Jersey. Yet.

If the best measure of a general. Is the ability to grasp

the nature of a war that he or she faces. And then to make adjustments,

I have to conclude that George Washington was among the greatest, perhaps the greatest this

country ever had. This is not perceived or talked today,

often because he scored few victories in the entire revolution. But that misses the point.

This was not a war that would be won by battles. It was a different sort of conflict.

It was not a set piece. Great battle confrontation on the fields of Europe.

It was a new kind of war. It was indeed a revolutionary war. It was a war for

the people. So coming

to understand this, he would say it was about keeping his army intact and winning the support

of the American people. In this way, he slowly became a Fabian. That,

of course, is a reference to Fabius, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal by refusing

to fight him. And to a team B.C. Hannibal led a force of Carthaginians

and Spaniards across what is now France and into what is now Italy. He then chased

the Roman army around for 15 years around the Italian peninsula. But he never achieved

a decisive victory. Eventually, he got back in the sailboats and went

home to Carthage. His most successful opponent in this was

Fabius becoming a Fabian was hardly a natural step

for Washington to take. He comes into the war a very conventional thinker, much like

his British opponents. Officers he had studied and learned under during the French and Indian

War. He was a naturally aggressive man. He was inclined to be impatient.

This is not the recipe for a Fabian type of general. When you’re fighting

a Fabian war, you avoid battle. You wear out your enemy. You deprive your enemy

of supplies. You attack his forage parties. You work for the support of

civilians. Nope. Civilians will deny support to your enemy. There were three

stages in the evolution of George Washington in 75 and 76, he was a conventional

thinker. Like I said, resembling his British opponents, he

was inclined to take the offensive even when he did not have the troops to do it. He was contemptuous

of a lot of his own soldiers. The militiamen, part time soldiers. Well, we today call the

National Guard and to a degree, the Reserve. Taking the offensive,

not understanding his troops or the nature of the war, he suffered the series of defeats around

New York City. So he steps back and says, I know what I’ll do. I’m going to move to a war

of post. Now, again, even some very famous historians have screwed this up.

Joseph Ellis, most notably a war of post is not a Fabian strategy.

A war post is I’m going to pull back into defensive positions, forts and make the

enemy come fight me. Aha, says Washington. Maybe my the militia men run away on

the battlefield, but if they’re sitting behind walls, maybe they won’t.

It was specifically not a Fabian strategy because it was focused on battles, but

focused on fighting them defensively. It failed even more miserably than the offensive

approach. Washington to its

credit. Study this and learn from it. He came

to understand that winning battles is not the same thing as winning wars.

He came to understand that battlefield victories are not necessarily a measure of military

effectiveness. It also came to see that a tactical

setback, a battlefield defeat can break being bring about a strategic advantage

if it distracts the enemy. If it weakens the enemy. If it buys you time

to bring your forces together, all these things, you can lose the battle and be in an approved

strategic position. The famous saying that

illustrates this is the general who’s congratulated on winning a victory. I don’t know how many more victories like that

we can do. We can take. Benedict Arnold,

for example, on Lake Champlain in October 1776, was defeated

by the British, yet bought time and space for the Americans, very

important because in the same area, a year later, the Americans win a battle that was

very important. Saratoga Saratoga is a battlefield victory,

a tactical victory that leads to a great strategic victory, which is it brings France

openly into backing the Americans. And at that moment, as one good British historian

Piers Marchese wrote, Maxim wrote, The strategic center of the war shifted

from Philadelphia to Paris.

Even though as. Benedict Arnold was in an

innovative way. Holding off the British in upstate New York, Washington

was being chased across New Jersey. He was failing miserably in the fall

of 76. And he knew it. Some of the subordinate commanders knew it, too. And they were

telling Congress that they were saying he was the wrong man for the job. Good guy.

Just not doesn’t have what it takes. Washington

quietly began to agree. In December 17th, 76,

he wrote in a private letter to a relative that he thought and I’m quoting here, quote,

The game is pretty near up. In this low point, he was facing

the reality that he had tried to fight the British in two different ways offensive and war post

and both had failed. His army was melting away. His senior subordinates

doubted him. The people were losing heart. This is where I think

George Washington really showed himself to be a genius,

if admittedly not the sort of person we usually call genius, because he was a non-verbal genius.

Now it’s a cliche and a bad one. The generals fight the last war.

That doesn’t give them enough credit. Generals rather tend to fight the war they

would like to fight or the war. They expected to fight.

But almost always neither of those responses is adequate. The foremost task of a

general again, is to understand the nature of the war he or she faces, which generally

turns out to be a third thing. Not the one wanted, not the one expected. And this

is especially difficult in the foggy first opening year of a war. The

opening phase of a conflict when you’re not really sure what’s going on with personalities

and situations haven’t really hardened. Washington

to his everlasting credit. Tryd made mistakes, observed

reflected in Leard learned in that last word, learned, made all the

difference in early in late seventy-six and early 1777.

George Washington learned strategy. He did not

outfight the British. He thought them. During

this period, he learned how to use his soldiers. Yes. Militia men

would scatter and run in set piece battles, especially where they were hit in

the open by volleys from well-drilled British troops, sometimes

followed by a terrifying bayonet charge. Yeah,

he saw the concluding that such troops could not fight big battles was like criticizing a sore

for not being a hammer. Part of being a general is understanding the tools at hand and figuring out

how to best use them. He learned that militia men,

while they looked raggedy, while they might run in a set piece battle, were effective when

used in a manner that played to their strengths. Let them fight near their

own towns. And they were different soldiers when they were amid familiar fields and hills.

They were more resilient. They were extremely good, better than regulars and gathering intelligence.

When the situation is quiet, let them slip home, tend to their crops, play the political

role of telling the people what’s going on in policing the Tories in the town.

When you muster out the militia, all able bodied men between 18 and 40

need to be on the town green. They would ask

Brother Lewis, where were you yesterday? Muster time. Brother RICS

didn’t see you. There’s a political role here that was very important in that he came to understand.

He saw that if you encourage militias to take on isolated British patrols on turf,

they knew. They could fight excellently.

They could slip home, come back well-fed,

happier and tell you what was going on. Washington became a great consumer

of intelligence, wasn’t it? It’s especially striking about him to me is

you see in as battlefield orders to militia units. He’s not only asking them for intelligence,

he’s telling them what to do in order to generate intelligence, conduct this mission in such a way.

Let me know how the British react. He’s

sort of also a key fact of war that the war movies

are very misleading about battles only happen occasionally.

Soldiers eat every day militiamen to be most effective when

hacking away at British supply convoys and foraging parties that weren’t out looking for

cows and chickens. In fact, the New Jersey militia developed a wonderful tactic. They had their own

herd of cows and they put them out there and then they’d wait for the

British to come and try to collect the herd. Then they ambushed the British

for much of the war and most of the places at any given time.

That was the real war. Skirmishes with isolated British units. And these tactics were successful,

so successful that ultimately the British gave up on trying to forge a New Jersey

and instead shipped their supplies in from New York City, mainly stopping

a bit, growing a Long Island, and then brought in, as you see in that terrific TV series Turn,

a lot of food was brought in from Long Island and then sold and brought over

to the British forces in New Jersey. The numbers

show this. The British had 31000 effective soldiers

in New York City in September. Seventy six. By February

of seventy seven. Six months later, they had fourteen thousand.

The rest were gone. No big battle that where they lost all those, they were killed,

badly wounded, captured, seriously ill or deserted. But in six months,

they’d lost half their force in the in the mid colonies.

And Washington and the staff understood what they were doing in March of 77.

A brash, young West Indian. Maybe twenty, twenty two, depending on who, whose numbers,

birthdates you believe joined Washington’s staff. This is, of course, Alexander

Hamilton. Part of Hamilton’s job was to get from Washington

what Washington was thinking and then go out to subordinate commanders, general’s regimental commanders,

and explain to them, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re doing it. Part of it’s awesome. Also, he doesn’t say it.

I think was also probably to assess, assess does this subordinate commander get it?

And he’d come back and say, the guy doesn’t get it. You need to move armor or not

use his force in that way. Hamilton wrote a beautiful letter that summarizes

American strategy and I want to read it. This is a quote from one of his

letters at the time. Alexander Hamilton writes, The liberties

of America are an infinite stake. We should not play a desperate game for it

or put it upon the issue of a single cast of the die. The loss of one

general engagement may effectively ruin us, and it would certainly be folly

to hazarded our business then to avoid a general engagement in waste.

The enemy away by constantly goading their sides in a desultory

teasing way. He could write. He may have been batshit crazy,

but he could write. As that shows

Washington. With both this point when Hamilton is writing that

an adherent and an advocate of the modified Fabian approach. And in fact, when one general

says, hey, let’s get all our forces together and really go after the British Washington chews ’em out and says

this will be a most unfortunate plan to pursue. And I really think you need to drop it like right now.

He did attack at times of opportunity or when he thought he had to. For example,

you could not let the British take Philadelphia, the American capital, without

a fight. You had to show at least you were willing to fight for it. And so he does. First of Brandywine

and then at Germantown. But in his

movements, he is a a really impressive Fabian.

He would not try to decide the war through big battles. He would keep his army intact. He would move

away from the coast as necessary. The British dominated the seas until the French come

in. But if you moved in fifty or a hundred miles inland, the British

were lost. They would have these long supply lines. So you constantly see him pull back up

into a rural retreat when he has to rally the people,

intimidate those who stay loyal to the British. And.

Time will be on your side. And it was that’s the key. George

Washington adjusted, the British did not, and that’s why

the Americans won the war. So to conclude.

In retrospect, I think it looks like. Why not be a Fabiana, just it sort of seems

like the obvious thing, there’s such a parallel here. Hannibal is

an invader from overseas who comes into Italy. He has very long lines of communication

and he has supply problems. He’s never really sure if he’s going

to have the people he needs. A lot of the mercenary forces under

Hannibal start melting away when they start getting worried about being paid.

Likewise, the British were in a similar position. They were a force from overseas. They had very long lines

of communication. They did not have many additional troops available and

it took a long time to get them there when they were needed. And in fact, this came up after

the war. The British parliament held hearings on how did we lose this thing.

They called general how to testify. House told them. And this is quoting

from his testimony. Quote, The most essential duty I had was not to wantonly

commit His Majesty’s troops where the object was inadequate. I knew well

that any considerable loss sustained by the army could not be easily

repaired. That was his point of vulnerability.

Even now, though, I think historians don’t appreciate how much Washington changed in the war.

I think part of this is his relative youth when he takes command of the nonexistent

U.S. Army in the mid in mid 1775. He’s 44

years old, relatively young for a senior commander. But what you see is he’s much

more able to change than older commanders are. There’s a famous study of generalship

in World War One that finds the same thing. There’s almost a direct relationship. The younger the

general, the more the generals able to adapt and change.

You can see this especially in the treatment of store by historians of the Battle of Monmouth in September

but they don’t write much about an event just before them, which I think is much more significant,

which is just before that battle. The British gave up the occupation of Philadelphia. They marched

out. They abandoned it. And they would shoot in New York. Think of the message that

sent they had come into the American capital taking it over. They’d actually done a political census

listing everybody’s political affiliations and loyalties, who were suspect,

who was a good torian. And then they left.

The message that said that they would abandon the capital, abandon the loyalists in the capital, told

everyone else across the colonies. Don’t count on the British to help you out when the chips are down.

A crucial mistake in a war for the people.

In sum, Washington understood his war. The British didn’t. And that made all the difference.

Thank you.