George Washington: Gentleman Warrior Paperback - 2014

Introduction:
 
During the late summer of 1777, Major Patrick Ferguson was, by common consent, the best marksman in the formidable British army bent upon breaking the back of American rebellion against King George III. Early on the morning of September 11, while observing the rebel forces arrayed in a defensive position along Brandywine Creek, southwest of the revolutionaries’ capital of Philadelphia, Ferguson identified a tempting pair of targets. Some 100 yards off, in clear sight, were two horsemen. One wore the flamboyant uniform of a French hussar officer. The other, who rode a fine bay, was far more soberly dressed in a dark coat and an unusually large and high cocked hat. Like Ferguson himself, both riders were plainly engaged in reconnoitering their enemy’s dispositions.
 
Against individual targets, 100 yards was long range for the muzzle-loading smooth bore muskets carried by most of the soldiers assembling along either side of the creek. Yet the major was not squinting down the barrel of a simple “firelock,” but over the sights of a sophisticated breech-loading rifle of his own invention. Its seven- grooved bore could spin a ball with far greater accuracy than a common musket and over a longer distance. A year before, at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, London, Ferguson had demonstrated that fact before a panel of skeptical high- ranking officers, fi ring off four shots a minute to pepper a target set 200 yards away: the riders he now contemplated were sitting ducks.
 
The dark-clad horseman was obviously a general officer, the dashing hussar his aide-de-camp. The hussar turned back, but his companion lingered. Moving out from the trees that sheltered him and a score of his corps of riflemen, Ferguson shouted a warning. The rider stopped, looked, and then calmly continued about his business. The major called again, this time drawing a bead upon the heedless horseman. The distance between them was, as Ferguson reported, one at which during even the most rapid firing he had “seldom missed a piece of paper,” and he “could have lodged a half a dozen of balls in or about him” before he could ride out of range. But something stopped him from squeezing the trigger. Ferguson was an officer and a gentleman. As he conceded with unconcealed admiration, his proposed target was conducting himself with such coolness that to have shot him in the back would have seemed an unsporting, “unpleasant” action. And so the major let him trot off unmolested.
 
Later that same day the rival armies clashed in earnest. After a stubborn fight, British discipline prevailed, pushing back the rebels and increasing the threat to Philadelphia. Ferguson, who had been badly wounded in the right hand during the fighting, spoke with a doctor busy treating the wounded of both sides. From the surgeon’s recent conversation with a group of enemy officers, it seemed that the two distinctively clad riders Ferguson had seen earlier were none other than General George Washington, the commander in chief of the revolutionaries’ Continental Army, and the French officer attending him that day. As Ferguson freely acknowledged, he was “not sorry” to have remained oblivious of their identity.
 
Had he known what the future held, both for him personally and for the cause in which he soldiered, the gallant major may have thought—and acted—differently. And if ever a single shot could have changed the course of history, an unwavering ball sped from Ferguson’s rifle would surely have done so.
 
“I am a warrior.” These were the uncompromising words that George Washington chose to describe himself in May 1779, at the height of the Revolutionary War. Washington was addressing the “Chief Men” of the Delaware nation of Indians, and his language was calculated to strike a chord with listeners who were themselves first and foremost tribal fighters—warriors in the purest sense. Yet even allowing for Washington’s deliberate use of the rhetoric and vocabulary of Indian diplomacy, his self- characterization is telling.
 
In 1779, George Washington was a warrior, “the commander in chief of all the armies in the United States of America,” as he put it. In his message, Washington made a point of distancing himself from the revolutionary movement’s political leaders while at the same time emphasizing what he shared with the Delawares: there were some matters about which he would not speak, “because they belong to Congress, and not to us warriors.”

PRAISE FOR GEORGE WASHINGTON:

“In clear prose and a compelling narrative style, Stephen Brumwell balances the popular image of Washington as a reluctant commander, statesman, and father of his country with that of an ambitious young officer in the British military tradition, whose experiences--and hard lessons—in war shaped his leadership of a nation born out of conflict.”—Colin G. Calloway, John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies, Dartmouth College

"[A] solid military biography . . . Mr. Brumwell's thesis that Washington's own 'pretension to the character of a gentleman' explains his success in the War for Independence." —Allan Pell Crawford, The Wall Street Journal

"Dynamic . . . The First Father waves from his high horse with this felicitous new assessment of his derring-do." —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Brumwell breathes new life into a younger and edgier incarnation of our first president—the feisty frontier warrior who engaged the French and their Indian allies in brutal border skirmishes, the tough mid-career officer who turned the Continental Army into the weapon that defeated the British Empire.  Even while Washington fought the redcoats, Brumwell argues, he relied on British models of military organization and gentlemanly behavior in shaping his distinctive style of leadership.”—from the 2013 The George Washington Book Prize winner citation announcement
 
“Stephen Brumwell’s book is a pleasure to read from the very first pages, when he puts you right there, literally looking down the sights of a rifle held by a British officer who’s about to decide whether to kill George Washington. . . . [Brumwell] brings the frontier military experience to life—the vermin, the floggings, the constant fear of ambush and massacre. And readers get a vivid sense of Washington himself as a creation of eighteenth-century military culture.”—Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, George Washington College
 
“George Washington: Gentleman Warrior is a wonderful read and the scholarship is deeply impressive—Stephen Brumwell was way down in the scholarly weeds sorting out things most eighteenth-century specialists don’t know much about”—James G. Basker, President, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
 
“Well-written and engaging . . . In the hands of this fine biographer, Washington emerges as a flesh and blood man, more impressive than the mythical hero could ever be.”—2013 Washington Book Prize Jury’s finalist selection citation

PRAISE FOR WHITE DEVIL:

"Excellent research and gripping prose!" —Sunday Telegraph

"A thrilling narrative…vividly written." —Times Literary Supplement

PRAISE FOR PATHS OF GLORY:

"Paths of Glory is a powerful tonic, which shows that...[Wolfe's] generalship—and not luck—won for England a continent." —Times Literary Supplement

"Every so often, books are published that combine first-rate, innovative scholarship and page-turning readability. Stephen Brumwell's revisionary retelling of the life of James Wolfe is a shining example." —Globe and Mail




From the Hardcover edition.

Dr. Stephen Brumwell is an award-winning independent historian and journalist. He attended the University of Leeds, gaining a PhD in history and British Academy funding to research eighteenth-century North America. Brumwell's widely acclaimed books include Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755 1763; White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery and Vengeance in Colonial America; and Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe. Brumwell lives and writes in Amsterdam.