the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt four)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

The British had disappeared. It eventually developed that they had gone to their base at Halifax on Nova Scotia to refit their hysterically loaded ships. But no one doubted that their eventual destination was New York, a city that could have been created by Providence as the stronghold and jumping-off place for a naval power. Manhattan Island was bordered by important rivers. The East River, connecting with Long Island Sound, led to New England. The Hudson was navigable to oceangoing vessels so far north that it could be used to cut the well-settled part of the colonies in half. And the harbor was large enough for any fleet.

Washington reached New York on April 13, 1776, to discover that every advantage the geography there offered a naval power was also a bayonet aimed at such an army as his. Manhattan Island was too long to be defended completely with the forces he had, and so narrow that an army in the little city at the tip might be trapped by a quick march to the opposite shore of soldiers landed from boats above the town. Military strategy clearly indicated that the city should be abandoned to the enemy—or better yet, burned—while a defense line was set up further north on the Hudson, where accommodating highlands dominated the river. But Washington agreed with Congress that in the current political situation, when public opinion had not coalesced in opposition to Great Britain, the effect on morale of abandoning—not to speak of burning—a major city would be disastrous. And so Washington decided to occupy New York as best he could.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt three)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

And so, as the year approached its end, Washington was faced with the necessity of recruiting his army anew. Most of the common soldiers felt that they had done their stint: let others take their places. And efforts to reorganize the haphazardly raised regiments into a force more uniform and efficient disarranged the officer corps. Although no man’s commission was as old as a year, and the differences might be no more than a day—or even a few minutes—officers got into the most acrimonious hassles concerning which had the right to a higher rank because he was the senior. “Such a dearth of public spirit and want of virtue,” Washington cried out, “such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages … such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen.” If only he could justify it “to posterity and my conscience,” Washington would, he explained, abandon settled America to the British and inhabit the wilderness in a wigwam.

On New Year’s Eve so many of the troops went home that all the blockading defenses could not be manned. Although Washington did his best to cover up, the weakness was too widespread to escape the eyes of spies. It seemed certain that the British would attack. He arranged with his officers on what hills far behind the lines the fleeing remnant of his army would reassemble. But the British did not attack. They hoped the rebels would realize how ridiculous they seemed and give up. When Washington celebrated the dawn of 1776 by raising the newly designed American flag, some Britons assumed that it was a flag of surrender.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt two)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

His most extensive adventure grew out of his personal efforts as a lobbyist. He secured confirmation of a confused promise of land made by Dinwiddie to those who had early enlisted in the Virginia Regiment. The area involved was so large it could only be found in the outer wilderness. Washington traveled in the autumn of 1770 again to the Forks of the Ohio—where he had previously seen emptiness there was now a settlement of some twenty cabins called Pittsburgh—and then drifted down the river for eleven days. His objective was the confluence of the Ohio with the Great Kanawha, where he had heard that the land was fine. This journey deep into the almost unexplored wilderness was in some ways a replay of the embassy northward which had opened his public career. There was danger—reports of Indian hostilities and ticklish meetings with braves in war or perhaps hunting dress; there was hardship—snow fell—but this time the impediments were not truly lethal. They added spice to lyricism.

Keeping notes of the appearance of the shores along which they passed, Washington saw an identity of beauty and utility: the taller the trees and the fairer the meadows, the more fertile the land. Deer, buffalo, and wild turkeys abounded. Eventually Washington found and marked out a paradise of rich meadows, towering vegetation, mill sites, vast reaches, boundless skies, where he eventually secured title to thirty thousand acres, most of the tracts “beautifully bordered” by the rivers.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt one)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Yet the Fairfax connection boasted a physical giant who, even if he had never crossed the Alleghenies, had surveyed in the semi-wild Shenandoah Valley. Furthermore, although only twenty-one, George Washington carried the manifest air of one born to command. He was assigned two interpreters: a Dutchman, Jacob van Braam, whose knowledge of French was testified to by the badness of his English; and a fur trader, Christopher Gist, who was to prove less conversant with Indian tongues than he should have been. Add four backwoodsmen of low degree who acted as “servitors,” some riding horses, and a flock of pack horses, and you had the expedition which in October, 1753, already fighting through heavy snow, descended from the mountains into the wild Ohio Valley. The French wilderness masters, so numerous and so familiar with Indian trails and embassies, would have regarded this tiny, amateur force as comic. Yet the tenderfoot who led it was no ordinary man.

Washington soon dashed ahead of his party to where the Monongahela joined the Allegheny to form the lordly Ohio. Although “the Forks of the Ohio” (now Pittsburgh) was the strategic position that controlled thousands of miles of wilderness, he found there no signs of humanity except empty trails. For two days he explored by himself through the tangled forest, seeking, despite his military ignorance, the best location for a fort. His judgment was confirmed by both the French and the English, who were in succession to erect major works at the spot he chose.

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt thirteen)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and there’s no way, absolutely no way, that Bagger and Arno enter this hornet’s nest and aren’t pulled like pork, and so, by silent accord, they enter anyway, no weapons to speak of but the ferocity of their cries, Bagger’s the fermata of the final hymn echoing through his father’s church, Arno’s the high-pitched yap of apelings as they sling themselves through jungle eaves, élan, boys, élan,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt twelve)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and she peeks at Bagger, and though he’s never sired a child, not to his knowledge anyhow, he knows what he’s feeling is what any father feels when the mother, holding her baby for the first time, locks eyes with him over the child’s head, that boil of pride and fear, but also melancholy, it’s a farewell of sorts when a father meets the child who, as of this moment, will begin to replace him,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt eleven)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and when Bagger hears war screaming louder than before, he knows the earth above them has finished falling, and how about that, they didn’t get buried after all, he shakes soil off his back, the dugout behind him now a dirt hill topped with that most routine of Great War accessories, the dead horse,