A Momentous Choice Faces Us Today as in 1776
We should be under no illusions about the momentousness of the choice facing the country.
By Roger Kimball
October 31, 2020
As the historian David Hackett Fischer shows in Washington’s Crossing, his magisterial study of the opening months of the Revolutionary War, by Christmas 1776 things were looking exceedingly grim for the colonists. The British army, the mightiest in the world, had taken over three colonies, including New York, and were threatening Philadelphia, seat of the fledgling American government.
Everyone knows now that, after several more years of brutal fighting, the story had a happy ending, for the colonists and for the world. But in the winter of 1776, the war was almost lost. There is a reason that Washington’s Crossing is part of a series about “Pivotal Moments in American History.†Had the chips fallen just a little differently, had George Washington made different choices about whom to attack, and when and how, the revolution would have been suppressed in its infancy.
Fischer emphasizes the place of choice in the drama of history. His book, he says toward the end, “is mainly about contingency, in the sense of people making choices, and choices making a difference in the world.â€
It is a pregnant detail that Donald Trump kicked off the first of his four rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday with a stop at the site of Washington’s headquarters, now private property, for his fateful crossing of the Delaware River. It was, in comparison with most of Trump’s rallies, a small and subdued affair. (Though with about 500 people attending, it was huge by Joe Biden’s standards.)
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