By Kevin Seabrooke
Pulitzer prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson’s second volume of his Revolution Trilogy, covering the middle years of the Revolution. His first volume, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (2019) received rave reviews. The New York Times lauded Atkinson’s “vast, brilliantly illuminated world contained within its nearly 800 pages.” Beginning with the American debacle at the second encounter with the British at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 where a woefully outnumbered Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair faced the Hobson’s choice of saving his reputation or saving his army. He chose the latter and fled south. St. Clair was later court-martial for that decision, but was acquitted and supported by General Washington, though the incident kept him from ever commanding a strategic location.
The touches of humanity extracted from journals, letters and historical records are extraordinary. Atkinson describes British Gen. John Burgoyne as “exuded the high-spirited complacency obligatory at the beginning of every military calamity,” though he did concede that “extraordinary physical difficulties” lay before his expedition. There’s also artillery commander Maj. Gen. William Phillips, who placed guns on top of the “inaccessible” 840-foot Mount Defiance (known then as Sugar Loaf), thus forcing St. Clair’s flight, who famously said, “where a goat can go, a man can go, and where a man can go, he can drag a gun.” Atkinson’s richness of detail and the cinematic scope of his prose in this truly epic retelling of the saga that led to the creation of these United States makes The Fate of the Day and the previous volume a must-read for every American, not just the dedicated history buff.
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 (Rick Atkinson, Crown Publishing, New York, NY, 2025, 880 pp., extensive maps & illustrations, notes, index, bibliography $42 HC)
Join The Conversation
Comments
View All Comments