Rating: 
Summary: An American Way of War
Review: "Washington's Crossing" is an outstanding work of military history, destined to be a classic on the War of Independence. The book might have been more aptly named "An American Way of War." With the Battle of Trenton and the winter campaign of 1776-77, David Hackett Fischer posits that Washington established an enduring precedent for American war-fighting that survives today. This style, for example, places an exceptionally high premium on bold, decisive action and lightning (by 18th Century standards) movement; also, the preservation of individual life is an absolute imperative. (Manpower preservation being both a moral judgment and a practical battlefield necessity for the Americans.)The stark differences in British and American approaches are graphically illuminated in the respective councils of war on the evening of January 2, 1777. In the Britsh council, Lord Cornwallis dictated the course of action ("more a ruler than a leader," in the author's words), reflecting the heirarchical nature of his society. The input of subordinates was not solicited, and Cornwallis rejected summarily suggestions (prescient in hindsight) to launch an immediate night attack. In contrast, Washington's war council was more open and pluralistic, with alternate viewpoints -- even those of civilians -- actively encouraged and considered. From this diversity of opinion a brilliant plan was conceived to slip around the entrenched British forces under the cover of darkness, and boldly attack their rear at Princeton. The American plan, Hackett Fischer observes, was born of an open, less stratified society, with expanding notions of liberty and freedom -- ideals that George Washington embraced. This book is very well written, with a crisp narrative pace and excellent character development. The author provides sufficient (though not overwhelming) historical context so that readers without much Revolutionary War background -- me included -- will find it most enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: A Vivid Account of Critical American History
Review: As 1776 drew to a close, the Revolutionary War in America was in dire straits. Having landed over 30,000 British and Hessian troops on American soil, it appeared the King would successfully quell the rebellion. British forces had expelled the Colonial Army from New York and across New Jersey and the Delaware River. Meanwhile they had regained Rhode Island. Their strategy of retaking and pacifying one colony at a time seemed to be working. If the British could wrangle a major defeat of Washington and the Continental Army an end to the Revolution was certain. Even so, many thought that unless Washington acted quickly, the Red Coats would simply win by default, whether or not General Washington were captured.
But then the British forces made a fatal miscalculation. Abiding by the long established rules of "civility" in warfare, they wintered over, awaiting fairer battle weather in the spring of 1777.
Fisher tells the fascinating and dramatic story of the events of the 1776 winter campaign that turned the tide from an inevitable British victory to an inevitable American victory. Washington's Crossing in the pre-dawn hours on the day after Christmas of 1776 back into New Jersey was a tremendous ordeal for his troops which were ill-shod, ill-clothed and weary. But the story of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton are more than a blow-by-blow record of struggle and heroism. These battles had great meaning for the participants, the people of that generation as well as every generation down to Americans today.
The reader is treated to an exciting account of an historical event coupled with a fascinating analysis of its importance in nearly 400 pages of pointed prose. The extensive appendices serve not only to back David Hackett Fischer's cogent analysis, but also adds interesting perspectives on historiography, art and statistics.
No doubt that "Washington's Crossing" benefits from voluminous sources that describe every facet of the battles, from the perspective of command and control down to acts of individual heroism and what the individual soldiers were doing and thinking. This is a fun and informative read any lover of American history will not want to miss.
Monty Rainey
Junto Society
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing is a fascinating, well-researched account of the American Revolutionary War, which uses as its focal point Washington's crossing of the Delaware in late December 1776. Fischer essentially posits that the crossing was important, because it was the turning point in the Revolutionary War, the moment when the Americans realized that victory could be had. Fischer's portrait of Washington is compelling. The man was inspiring, a true moral leader, someone who recognized the worldwide importance of what he and his fellow warriors were setting out to accomplish. I confess, I do not read much history particularly military history. I imagine I would read more if the books were more like this one. I recommend this book for anyone, even those who generally shy away from history books. Washington's Crossing is a compelling, fascinating and entertaining read. Well done.
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Summary: Not just a battle book
Review: Having researched the Revolutionary period recently, I became increasingly curious about Washington among the founding fathers. This book not only relates the exciting battles of Trenton and Princeton, but does so as a multi-perspective portrait of the various elements of the British army and political environment. The description of the first battle of Trenton - an attack by the desperate American forces facing an unexpected sleet storm - is mesmerizing. Fischer's set of perspectives that only makes more vivid the central events and the central figure, George Washington. It only adds to the reputation of a man who, with less education, understood most deeply the requirements of a leader in this unique situation, and adapted to a new strategy of guerilla warfare that made what seemed an impossible victory possible. It is downright inspiring.
Fischer writes with dramatic insight, with a wide-ranging respectful empathy for all sides in this pivotal conflict, and with a main focus upon the great man in its midst.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good Narrative of a Pivotal Encounter
Review: I found that this book is a very good, though somewhat incomplete, narrative of the 1776 New Jersey campaign. The most helpful thing I did before reading this book was to read Thomas Fleming's "1776 Year of Illusions". Fischer's book struck me as being almost two books in one. The first recounts the events from the end of the siege of Boston through the 1776 battles for New York. The prose, while servicable, is not compelling and the narrative goes by in very large blocks. This first part deeply disappointed me. For this part, Fleming's book was invaluable. He put the events of 1776 in a larger political context so that what was happening made more sense. In Fischer's book, Germain and North are merely mentioned. Fleming fully realizes these two crucial figures. Fleming also puts Washington's campaign in perspective with other military activities, admittedly outside of Fischer's purview. However, once the action moves to New Jersey, Fischer settles in and appears to be more interested in what is going on. The prose improves greatly and the details are put forward. I like the idea (as noted in another review) that Fischer usually lets the reader know what the controversies are and how he sorted them out. The details are fascinating and Fischer has a number of contributions to the story. However, Fischer, to me, never really gives life to Washington. While I do not think he is a cardboard figure in this book, he is rather distant. Nor does Fischer, as another reviewer noted, effectively chronicle Washington's evolution as a leader. There are other areas where the incompleteness interferes with understanding what is happening such as with Charles Lee. This is where the Fleming book was so helpful. I found Fleming's prose to be very compelling. In his book Washington becomes almost human. His evolution as a leader is clearly shown. The effect of what Fleming calls "Bunker Hillism" is clearly traced. Fischer has the same concept but it is, to me, unfocused. I also believe that Fleming makes the ties between the political and military arenas clearer. Of course, Fleming by covering all of the events of 1776 does not have the detailed focus that Fischer has. Further Fleming's book, from 1976, does not have the sources from after that date that Fischer has. These sources certainly seem to have made an impact on our understanding of the events. In summary I find that Fischer's book is indespensible for its details and its conclusions about the 1776 - early 1777 New Jersey campaigns. Fischer also has really wonderful material on the legacy of the events and how they have been treated over the years. But for a fuller view of where these events fit in the overall conflict, and for some points that Fischer seems to be incomplete about, I would recommend this book in tandem with other sources.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable!
Review: I primarily read fiction but loved this! The book was enthusiastically recommended to me by a bookseller in Manchester, VT, and I wasn't disappointed. I particularly enjoyed reading about George Washington's leadership style and about the battles which took place in late 1776/early 1777.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring history with lessons for today
Review: Most Americans can recall the image of Washington crossing the Delaware from the famous 19th century painting. Fewer (myself included prior to this book), however, know the true significance of the Battle of Trenton. In Washington's Crossing, historian David Hackett Fischer places the Battle of Trenton in its historical context. The result is a fascinating history that is a work of masterful storytelling.
One of the things that I really like about this book is that it is so complete and well organized. Fischer begins by discussing the three armies that were in the American colonies in 1776: the English regulars, the Hessian mercenaries, and the American patriots. The cultural and military differences between these forces are not only interesting but they were to have a major impact on the way the war was waged. Next, the fall of New York, with its dire implications for the American cause, is described. Even though we all know how the story eventually ends, Fischer was able to get me on the edge of my chair as if I was reading a thriller. The effects of the works of Thomas Paine, the British campaign through New Jersey, the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, and the Forage War of 1777 comprise the remainder of the body of the book. Throughout, Fischer introduces people and events often forgotten by the average history textbook. As a former art history student, I remember scoffing about Washington standing up in the boat. As Fischer explains, all the soldiers crossing the Delaware that day had to stand because the water covered the bottom of the boats! That is just one of the many instances where history comes to life in this remarkable book.
Fischer wraps up his book with a conclusion that brings all of the threads together. Washington's crossing is proved to be an historical turning-point, not just an iconic painting. One of the most powerful ideas I was left with was the American "policy of humanity". As conceived by these men of the Enlightenment, patriots treated their British and Hessian prisoners as if they deserved the same rights that the Americans were fighting for. I found that incredibly inspiring and applicable to modern day events.
You will also be left with awe for Washington and the Americans of the time. I have never been a hero-worshipper of Washington's, but you have to have enormous respect for a man who created victory out of seemingly inevitable defeat.
The closing line of the book says it all: "The story of Washington's Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit - and so are we."
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, perceptive history at its best
Review: On a number of occasions I have recommended David Hackett Fischer's "Paul Revere's Ride" as one of the finest American history books I have ever read, a display of deep research, perceptive analysis, and a highly compelling prose narrative. With "Washington's Crossing" Fischer has matched his earlier book. Just as the title incident in "Paul Revere's Ride" served to signify Fischer's broader study of the earliest days of the American Revolution and the battles at Lexington and Concord, here Emmanuel Leutze's 1851 painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is the emblem chosen to represent the most crucial days at the end of 1776 when that Revolution seemed on the edge of collapse, but George Washington and his army in battles at Trenton and Princeton and in the little-known actions afterwards reversed the course of the war and set the British on the path to ultimate defeat. Although most Americans probably have at least a passing familiarity with Washington's surprise victory over the Hessians at Trenton on the day after Christmas, 1776, Fischer's account highlights an equally crucial, yet barely remembered, battle at Trenton a week later when the American forces withstood a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis's forces, setting the stage for a daring overnight march by Washington around the British army to win another victory at Princeton. Over the next several weeks, the British and Hessian occupation of central New Jersey collapsed as the Americans, heartened by the events at Trenton and Princeton, struck repeatedly and successfully at detachments of foragers who discovered that the supposedly pacified countryside was suddenly hostile territory. Within a few months British generals who had believed the rebellion almost crushed found that the path to victory had vanished in the snow and mud. Fischer presents vivid portraits of the generals and common soldiers on both sides of the conflict, while dispelling old myths. The Hessians at Trenton were not awakened from drunken sleep after Christmas carousing. The American army, although sometimes short of clothing and food, was well-armed and typically enjoyed a battlefield superiority in artillery. Washington comes across as a far more complex and flexible character than he is usually depicted (in a lengthy appended essay, Fischer surveys more than two centuries of artistic representations of Washington and the victories at Trenton and Princeton), but the real heroes of Fischer's narrative are the ordinary soldiers of the Continental Army and the local militias. He argues persuasively that these men were genuinely motivated by their ideals of liberty (although a New Englander of Glover's Marblehead Regiment might differ from a Pennsylvanian frontiersman or a Virginian planter as to exactly what constituted liberty and a proper society) and it is they, not just the generals riding boldly across painted canvases, who deserve much of the credit for maintaining the Revolution and seizing the initiative to take the war to the British and Hessian garrisons and thus reverse the course of events. And Fischer highlights a consequence of the American commitment to the ideals of liberty: while Hessians and even British troops were regularly offered to take no prisoners, the Americans in general during these campaigns treated their prisoners with compassion and even generosity because of their belief that it was the right thing to do. In his closing, Fischer writes: "The most remarkable fact about American soldiers and civilians in the New Jersey campaign is that they ... found a way to defeat a formidable enemy, not merely once at Trenton but many times in twelve weeks of continued combat. They reversed the momentum of the war. They improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition. And they chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution. They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. Much recent historical writing has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn't so, and never was. The story of Washington's Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit - and so are we."
Rating:
Summary: 2500 Change the Course of History
Review: Six months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost.
The British routed the Americans at New York, occupied the three colonies and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. George Washington's army, having lost 90 per cent of his troops, was in shambles.
On Christmas Eve, Washington rallied his men, crossed the Delaware in a howling nor'easter and attached the British mercenaries at Trenton. The army representing the young country killed or captured almost 1,000 of the enemy. During the next 12 weeks, Washington struck the British again and again, shaking them badly. Traumatized, the British hold on New Jersey was broker; their strategy discredited.
This is a great book. Painstakingly researched, well-written, it casts new light on one of our country's most crucial periods of history.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, academic, and READABLE!
Review: The Publishers Weekly blurb succinctly captures the basics of the book and Fischer's important contributions to better understanding the importance of the Crossing, the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, and the guerilla war in Jersey. More importantly, Fischer points out Washington's excellent military leadership. General Washington has taken a lot of heat for supposedly not measuring up to other military greats; but he better appreciated the "big picture" of winning the war, even if he lost his fair share of battles. More civilian and military leaders today should better appreciate what made Washington's war-leadership successful.
Fischer also fully discusses the Hessians' contributions to the war; they are often underappreciated components of the British forces.
Finally, his bibliographic essay and appendixes are fantastic for those wanting to quickly find important little tidbits about Washington, the Revolution, or the specific battles of Trenton and Princeton.
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