THE RANK AND FILE ARMY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION- A CAUTIONARY TALE
BOOK REVIEW
THE PROUD AND THE FREE, HOWARD FAST, WEIDERFIELD AND NICHOLSON, 2003
The Proud and the Free is one of a series of several books that the novelist Howard Fast has written on aspects of the American Revolution. The subject of this volume is a novelistic reenactment, using the narrative devise of reminiscences of a participant looking back from old age , of the famous mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line troops in 1781. The causes of the mutiny by battle-hardened soldiers who had faced and overcome five long years of hardship during the independence struggle and had become fed up over were, in short, the horrible working conditions and the indecisiveness of the Continental Congress and their own regimental military leadership. As always Mr. Fast takes a close look at the class divide-here between the rank and file mutinous soldiers forced out into the hard-bitten winter camps and the colonial gentry who drove them much in the manner of the British overlords they were trying to drive out. The mutiny was defeated after a short period under threat of annihilation from other, superior Continental Army forces.
That defeat brings us to the central question of what those mutinous forces could reasonable do in these circumstances of an unfinished revolutionary struggle. The mutinous regiments, negating the arguments of the necessity for stern and unreasonable authority from the colonial upper class military leadership, were more than capable of keeping order and discipline under the authority of their own elected leadership (The Committee of Sergeants). The real problem was the limited number of options the Line had to stay together as a disciplined force. These were troops committed to the revolution, its success and ultimate victorious conclusion. As the story makes clear they had nowhere to go but home or back to the front. Nobody said every just political action, and this mutiny was a just action, has the right ending. Here there could be no way to succeed as an independent force short of turning into rank and file Benedict Arnolds. They said, no thanks. I agree.
BOOK REVIEW
THE PROUD AND THE FREE, HOWARD FAST, WEIDERFIELD AND NICHOLSON, 2003
The Proud and the Free is one of a series of several books that the novelist Howard Fast has written on aspects of the American Revolution. The subject of this volume is a novelistic reenactment, using the narrative devise of reminiscences of a participant looking back from old age , of the famous mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line troops in 1781. The causes of the mutiny by battle-hardened soldiers who had faced and overcome five long years of hardship during the independence struggle and had become fed up over were, in short, the horrible working conditions and the indecisiveness of the Continental Congress and their own regimental military leadership. As always Mr. Fast takes a close look at the class divide-here between the rank and file mutinous soldiers forced out into the hard-bitten winter camps and the colonial gentry who drove them much in the manner of the British overlords they were trying to drive out. The mutiny was defeated after a short period under threat of annihilation from other, superior Continental Army forces.
That defeat brings us to the central question of what those mutinous forces could reasonable do in these circumstances of an unfinished revolutionary struggle. The mutinous regiments, negating the arguments of the necessity for stern and unreasonable authority from the colonial upper class military leadership, were more than capable of keeping order and discipline under the authority of their own elected leadership (The Committee of Sergeants). The real problem was the limited number of options the Line had to stay together as a disciplined force. These were troops committed to the revolution, its success and ultimate victorious conclusion. As the story makes clear they had nowhere to go but home or back to the front. Nobody said every just political action, and this mutiny was a just action, has the right ending. Here there could be no way to succeed as an independent force short of turning into rank and file Benedict Arnolds. They said, no thanks. I agree.
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