User Reviews

After George Washington was appointed commander of the revolutionary forces by the Continental Congress, he inherited a ragtag and ill-equipped group of un-trained colonists. Benjamin Franklin inspects the ragged troops and the poor supplies, but the coffers of the Congress are empty.

Washington instinctively realizes that he must impose discipline. He even initiates a spy ring. Henry Knox was a bookseller turned general. Knox oversees the transportation of canon captured at Fort Ticonderoga, moving 43 of them laboriously to Boston.

Clearly, the amateur army of the colonists is a mismatch against the trained and fully equipped redcoats. Washington's daring strategy is to play poker with the Brits. He sets up canon atop Dorchester Heights where he can shell Boston. Washington does not disclose to the troops that they are desperately short of powder. At a camp in Cambridge, Martha prays for George's success. After Generals Gage and Howe notice the canons, they decide to turn tail.

Washington was known as the "father" of his country because he was uniting the colonies in the war cause, not because he was the first president. His first military victory outside of Trenton will come 20 years to the day when was rejected as an officer in the British army.

I thought this episode on George Washington would have been broader in scope. Instead it focused on a very brief period during 1775/1776, right after Washington was named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. The perspective offered in the story regarding Washington's almost insurmountable problem is what makes it fascinating. Distressed by the severe lack of discipline he encountered, and the frightening shortage of military supplies, the newly installed general began to have serious doubts about his effectiveness as a leader of men. For Washington, each day offered another opportunity for on the job training.

As for the British stationed in the vicinity of Boston, there was a general disregard for the Colonial Army and no observance of a code of conduct for Colonial officers captured in battle. General Thomas Gage treated them as miserably as he would a front line soldier. Knowing that his colonial forces were greatly outnumbered by a superior fighting force, Washington dispatched Colonel Henry Knox to the site of a recent military victory at Fort Ticonderoga, New York. Knox's mission was to bring back captured British cannon and gunpowder to supplement Washington's dwindling supplies. The success of Knox's mission allowed Washington to station the cannons on the high ground surrounding Boston Bay at Dorchester Heights, thereby outwitting British General Howe, stationed in the Bay aboard ship. Finding himself at a tactical disadvantage, Howe began to dissolve his troops from the Boston area.

Even though this episode presents an exceptionally narrow look at George Washington's role in the early days of the Revolution, it does correctly position him for the role of Father of the Country, not as the First President, but as a visionary who united the Colonies in their quest for freedom and liberty. Overcoming his initial insecurities as Commander, Washington used exceptional cunning and deliberate subterfuge to outmaneuver his British counterparts on the road to victory for a new America.