Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-361) and index.
Contents:
Preface : The abandoned canvas -- "Cousin America" : 1775 -- The secretary for America : 1775-1776 -- "A most unaccountable madness" : January 1776-June 1776 -- A most precarious independence : July 1776-December 1776 -- The best laid schemes : January 1777-July 1777 -- Saratoga trumps Philadelphia : July 1977-December -- Except in Parliament : January 17778-June 1778 -- The French connection : June 1778-December 1778 -- The war on trial : January 1779-June 1779 -- Moderately feeding the war : June 1779-December -- The time of the tumults : January 1780-June 1780 -- A dearth of heroes : June 1780-December 1780 -- Marching about the country : January 1781-July 1781 -- "The world turn'd upside down" : July 1781-December 1781 --The failure of fire and sword : January 1782-January 1784.
Summary:
A dual-sided history of the Revolutionary War examines the conflict from both the colonial and British sides, documenting the nearly violent political disagreements in Parliament, as well as the American-sympathetic pacifist media criticism of King George III that may have played a major role in the war's outcome. For generations, Americans have been taught to view the Revolutionary War as a heroic tale of resistance, exclusively from the perspective of the Continental army and the Founding Fathers. Now, in Iron Tears, master historian Stanley Weintraub offers the first account that examines the war from three divergent and distinct vantage points: the battlefields; the American leadership under George Washington; and -- most originally -- that of England, embroiled in controversy over the war. Colonial America was England's Vietnam. Weintraub's multifaceted analysis will forever change and expand our view of the struggle. Although Washington's army, with France's help, won the war, it is equally significant -- both then and now -- that Britain lost it. The British found themselves overwhelmed by the geographic and time constraints that prevented their military from holding on to the eighteen-hundred-mile length of the thirteen colonies, from across three thousand miles of ocean during the cumbersome era of water travel. Many in London realized that American independence was only a matter of time. Yet the British were enveloped in a fantasy world of self-delusion as the war trudged along. The unyielding George III, who ultimately threatened abdication; his lethargic prime minister, Lord North; the First Lord of the Admiralty, the corrupt Earl of Sandwich, better remembered for his paired slices of bread; and the Secretary for America, Lord George Germain, an arrogant ex-general court-martialed for cowardice in an earlier war, formed a quartet that played out of tune. As opposition to and frustration with the failing war gradually increased in parliament, in the press, and in the afflicted mercantile sector, so did pacifist sentiment for and sympathy with their American cousins. Iron Tears renders an unprecedented account of the fight for American independence through British eyes, while dramatically narrating the battles that were waged across the Atlantic from Lexington to Yorktown and beyond. As the general, whom the British snobbishly and demeaningly referred to as "Mr. Washington," rallied to keep his ragged and overmatched Continentals together and create a nation, "iron tears" fell from redcoat muskets and cannons, as well as from the demoralized eyes of the defeated British.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.