The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival After Yorktown

by Thomas Fleming

Book Overview

On October 19, 1781, Great Britain's best army surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown. But the future of the 13 former colonies was far from clear. A 13,000 man British army still occupied New York City, and another 13,000 regulars and armed loyalists were scattered from Canada to Savannah, Georgia. Meanwhile, Congress had declined to a mere 24 members, and the national treasury was empty. The American army had not been paid for years...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061139106
• ISBN13: 9780061139109
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Perils of Peace

This is a book about extraordinary people, not only Washington and Franklin, but lesser known figures and the militia. I want to know more about poor Thomas Paine (I pity the man) and Franklin's "turncoat" son. I want to know why the militia didn't mutiny like was threatened so often. A book like this leads to other books and stimulates the mind. It is well organized into subchapters that allow the reader to digest bite size pieces. Improvements? I'd like a glossary of people. At times, it was hard to follow everything that was going on between Parliament and our ineffective Continental Congress. (Did these men actually want independence or not. I got to read more about this group.) And even though the timeline was only a couple of years, a monthly milestone chart would have helped. The book gets bogged down, I think, in the chapter that dealt with the debates in Parliament. Here is where a name chart would have been helpful to understand all the players. I haven't read a lot about this period within our history but I am glad that this is one of the first that I had read. It will lead to others.

An Amazing Story, Well Written And Researched

This excellent book deals with the immediate aftermath of the British surrender at Yorktown, up to George Washington's resigning his commission, a deliberate and gracious act that truly astounded the world. An easy read, it sometimes seems more like a fast paced mystery novel than the historical narrative that it is. We take our national existence for granted today, but it was very much in doubt back then. The story covers many things, but perhaps one of the most illuminating is the active maintenance of honor in response to repeated betrayals and spiteful destructiveness by career politicians, not to mention the fantastic folly of the main European governments. The action literally covers the globe, from the southern American states/provinces, to Western Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East, Canada and the Iberian Peninsula, the American Revolutionary War was, perhaps, the world's first World War. Highly recommended.

Eminently readable history

An extremely readable history! Thomas Fleming is an historian who has the gift of writing a narrative story that's hard to stop reading. Of course the events and characters are nothing less than fascinating, but he gives them life that can be rarely be found in fiction. His knowledge of the events following Yorktown is passed to the reader in an amazingly coherent, complete, and readable story. I wish he could write the history of everything. Okay, The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser and History of France from the Earliest Times by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot were equally readable, fascinating, and important, but I can't think of any other histories I've read recently that are (I read Fleming's Liberty! The American Revolution many years ago and also admired it greatly).

The Perils of Peace....

A most valuable book for all those who want to understand and appreciate the fragileness of our country's early days after the Declaration of Independence, during the long war, and especially from Yorktown to the Peace of Paris. The years from 1781-1783 were perilous times. The War was not really over; George III did not want to give the fledging United States independence; George Washington's Continental Army was a shambles; the "country" was bankrupt; the Continental Congress was useless. Mr. Fleming does a superb job of depicting and explaining one near tragedy after another as well as all the real tragedies that did occur in those years of 1781-1783. Was it luck, was it Providence, was it the slowness of across the Atlantic communication, was it some combination of all three and other factors that made it so fortuitous that this country survived before it was stomped to death in its infancy? If you want to know, then read this book. Excellent use of sources, easily accessible writing, very emotionally gripping, important information to have in every American's head. This book would be perfect to be read and taught in every high school in our country.

Ironies of Victory

Thomas Fleming's The Perils of Peace traces the two years of the American Revolutionary War after the great victory at Yorktown and how close our nation came to total financial as well as military collapse thanks to the self-interest and self-centered actions of Congress and the local state governments. Anyone reading this book would no longer able to say that America's victory at Yorktown sealed the independence of our nation when in ironic turnaround, the victory at Yorktown almost sealed the fate our nation in defeat. I found the book to be well written and well researched. While the subject matter isn't ground-breaking, it is an area of American history that most Americans are not very familiar with. Reading this book will bound to astound many readers. Self-centered and self-seeking Congress of our period have nothing on the Continental Congress back then. The book also gives a strong case for a strong central federal government and laid seed to why the Articles of the Confederation failed and strong Constitution was needed to run our nation. Two main founding fathers emerged from Thomas Fleming's book that saved our nation, Benjamin Franklin who kept the alliance with France going and with that, badly needed money from France that was also ironically, bankrupting that nation as well. Then we have George Washington who was still trying to win a war that everyone thought was already won. Both men struggled hard since they were the only main characters of the book who really had their eyes on the ball for the long haul. Another founding father, John Adams, suffered greatly by the author, as man who suffered mightily from his own sense of self-importance as well extreme jealousy of Franklin. The book carefully traces the military, political and financial events that made it clear that our nation was more in danger after Yorktown then before. Also clearly told were the in-fighting among the British and the in-fighting among the Americans as they slogged to the finished line with a peace treaty both sides can live with. After reading this book, the reader will muse in sheer wonderment how our nation came through this period in one piece. Any reader may also note that this period of the war really wasn't one of our finest moments in history as the fates of white loyalists and black slaves under British protection faced a harsh vendetta by the Americans. Part of this as the author notes, was due to Franklin's distaste for his son, William Franklin, a turncoat loyalist. The book come highly recommended to anyone interested in the American Revolutionary War period and who like expand their knowledge in the details of what happened between the British surrender at Yorktown and the peace treaty that granted independence to our nation.