The Fate of the Day

The second volume of Rick Atkinson's Revolution Trilogy chronicles the American War of Independence from 1777 to 1780, a period in which the conflict expanded from a colonial insurrection into a global struggle involving France, Spain, and Britain. The narrative opens in early 1777 at Versailles, where King Louis XVI and his foreign minister, Charles Gravier, the Comte de Vergennes, weighed the risks of supporting the American rebels against Britain, France's hereditary enemy. Vergennes argued that weakening Britain through covert aid would restore French prestige in Europe. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin, the senior American diplomat in Paris, orchestrated clandestine arms shipments, privateer raids on British shipping, and a propaganda campaign while pressing Versailles for a formal alliance. The 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette, one of the wealthiest men in France, defied his king and family to sail for America with a secret major general's commission, driven by glory and a desire to avenge his father's death at British hands.

In the summer of 1777, Lieutenant General John Burgoyne led 8,000 British and German troops south from Canada through New York, aiming to sever New England from the other colonies by reaching Albany. He captured Fort Ticonderoga when the undermanned American garrison evacuated in chaos, but his advance bogged down as Major General Philip Schuyler's forces destroyed bridges, felled trees, and stripped the countryside of provisions. Two diversionary thrusts ended in disaster: Brigadier General Barry St. Leger's siege of Fort Stanwix collapsed after Continental Major General Benedict Arnold employed a ruse to panic the British-allied Indigenous forces into retreat, and a foraging expedition near Bennington, Vermont, was annihilated by militia under Brigadier General John Stark.

Meanwhile, General Sir William Howe, the British commander in chief, sailed from New York with 18,000 troops for the Chesapeake Bay, intending to capture Philadelphia. Commander in Chief George Washington marched his Continental Army south to intercept Howe, with Lafayette joining his staff as a volunteer major general. At the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, Howe executed a flanking march that caught Washington off guard, routing the American right wing and inflicting more than 1,100 casualties; Lafayette was wounded in his first battle. The British occupied Philadelphia on September 26, though Congress had already fled to York, Pennsylvania. Washington struck back on October 4 at Germantown, but initial success dissolved in fog and confusion, and the assault collapsed with over 1,000 casualties. The aggressiveness of the attack, however, impressed European observers and helped build momentum for the French alliance.

The decisive moment of 1777 came at Saratoga in northern New York. Major General Horatio Gates, who had replaced Schuyler as commander of the Northern Army, positioned 13,000 troops in fortifications on Bemus Heights designed by the Polish engineer Colonel Thaddeus Kościuszko. At the Battle of Freeman's Farm on September 19, Arnold fed regiments into a fierce six-hour fight that cost the British over 560 casualties, including devastating losses among officers targeted by Colonel Daniel Morgan's riflemen. When Burgoyne attempted another reconnaissance in force on October 7, the Americans overwhelmed his detachment from three sides, killing Brigadier General Simon Fraser and wounding Arnold, who led a reckless charge into an enemy redoubt. Surrounded and running low on supplies, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army of nearly 6,000 men on October 17, the greatest American victory of the war.

General William Howe and his brother Admiral Richard Howe then spent nearly two months struggling to open the Delaware River to supply occupied Philadelphia. A Hessian assault on Fort Mercer failed catastrophically, and the 64-gun warship Augusta ran aground and exploded. Washington led his exhausted army into winter quarters at Valley Forge on December 19, where roughly 2,000 soldiers died over six months from disease, exposure, and malnutrition.

News of Saratoga reached Paris in December, galvanizing the French government. Franklin and the other American commissioners signed twin treaties with France on February 6, 1778: a commercial agreement recognizing American independence and a secret military alliance. In London, Prime Minister Lord North proposed sweeping conciliatory measures, offering to repeal coercive acts passed since 1763, but the overture came too late. Clinton replaced Howe as British commander in chief and received orders to evacuate Philadelphia and consolidate at New York. The Earl of Carlisle's British government peace commission arrived in America but was contemptuously rejected by Congress, which had already ratified the French alliance.

At Valley Forge, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian volunteer whose credentials had been embellished by Franklin, transformed the army through systematic drill in close-order maneuvers and bayonet tactics. Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene gradually stabilized the supply system. Clinton evacuated Philadelphia on June 18 and marched through New Jersey toward New York. At the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, Continental Army Major General Charles Lee's advance against the British rear guard stalled in confusion before Washington personally rallied the army. The fierce battle, fought in extreme heat exceeding 96 degrees, ended in a tactical draw.

Vice Admiral d'Estaing's French fleet of 12 ships of the line arrived off Sandy Hook in July but could not enter New York Harbor. D'Estaing sailed to Newport, Rhode Island, to support Major General John Sullivan's siege of the British garrison, but a devastating storm scattered both navies. D'Estaing departed for Boston to repair his ships, dooming the operation and straining Franco-American relations.

Britain shifted strategy southward, betting on loyalist support to hold territory. Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell captured Savannah in December 1778, but that support proved disappointing. On the western frontier, Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark captured the British outpost at Vincennes on the Wabash River, ending British control along the Mississippi. Washington dispatched Sullivan with 4,500 Continentals on a punitive expedition against British-allied Iroquois nations in western New York, retaliating for devastating frontier raids at Wyoming and Cherry Valley in 1778. Sullivan's forces destroyed 40 villages and vast food stores but failed to capture Fort Niagara, ensuring that retaliatory raids continued.

Spain entered the war in June 1779, and a combined Franco-Spanish armada of 66 ships of the line entered the English Channel in August, threatening invasion, but disease and logistical failures forced a retreat without a landing. Brigadier General Anthony Wayne led a midnight bayonet assault on the British fortification at Stony Point, New York, in July, capturing the garrison and demonstrating the Continental Army's improved discipline. Captain John Paul Jones, commanding the converted merchantman Bonhomme Richard, captured the British frigate Serapis in a legendary moonlit battle off Flamborough Head on September 23. D'Estaing returned from the Caribbean to attack Savannah, but a frontal assault on October 9 produced over 750 allied casualties, including the mortally wounded Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski, and the siege was abandoned.

The brutal winter of 1779 to 1780 brought record cold to the army's encampment at Morristown, New Jersey, where Continental currency had collapsed to one-fortieth of its face value. Arnold, court-martialed on minor charges and reprimanded by Washington, had secretly opened treasonous correspondence with the British through British Major John André. Clinton sailed from New York with 9,000 troops for Charleston, South Carolina. After storms scattered the fleet, he methodically besieged the city while South Carolina's refusal to arm enslaved people, despite Congressional authorization, deprived the defenders of potential reinforcements. Continental Army General Benjamin Lincoln, commanding the Charleston defenses, surrendered on May 12, 1780, with over 5,600 prisoners, the worst American military disaster of the war. British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's subsequent destruction of Colonel Abraham Buford's Virginians at the Waxhaws produced allegations of massacre that became a rallying cry for southern resistance.

In London, anti-Catholic riots organized by Lord George Gordon, a Member of Parliament, in June 1780 produced the most violent urban unrest in British history before King George ordered the army to restore order. Yet Lafayette arrived at Washington's camp on May 10 with news that Louis XVI had agreed to send 6,000 French troops and a fleet under the Comte de Rochambeau. Washington began planning joint operations, declaring the moment "the most important America has ever seen" (618). The narrative closes with the American cause at its lowest ebb, sustained by the promise of French reinforcements and what Franklin described as a nation like "a field of young Indian corn" that, after a violent storm, would "recover fresh verdure" and "shoot up with double vigor."