The Long Retreat: The Calamitous American Defense of New Jersey, 1776

Rating:
Summary: Illuminating a dark period of the American Revolution
Review: Arthur Lefkowitz has produced a fascinating, well researched and accessible narrative of the events relating to the retreat of George Washington from New York and across central New Jersey, to the relative safety of the western (Pennsylvania) shore of the Delaware River. These events of the fall of 1776 represented a critical period in the American Revolution, with the continental army demoralized and in disarray; had the British aggressively pressed their advantage, they could have destroyed the army, possibly providing a decisive end to the Revolution. Their failure to overtake and destroy Washington is, from our perspective, a remarkable (and fortunate) occurrence. Mr. Lefkowitz provides not only a continuous narrative of the action and the decisions of the major players, but clearly defines a number of issues for which historians have sought understanding. As a skilled narrator, Lefkowitz weaves various strands so that one can appreciate his evaluation of such issues as the character and education under fire of George Washington during this period, and Washington's ultimate ability to cross the Delaware back into New Jersey on Christmas Eve and to attack the British forces in Trenton and then Princeton. In addition, he provides sketches of major characters and, to the extent possible, minor characters whose letters or journal entries helped provide the primary documents for our understanding. As a resident of central New Jersey, I was struck by the brief and vivid description of various locales, the state of the rural and town economies and people, and his excellent ability to succinctly create a context, both in time and place. Lefkowitz is careful to maintain the narrative flow, placing considerable information - usually quite interesting in its own right - in easily accessed (bottom of each page) footnotes. If I have a quibble, it is that additional maps would have been useful, particularly to those not intimately familiar with New Jersey geography. While, as (merely) an educated layperson, I cannot critically judge the details of Mr. Lefkowitz' scholarship, I found the book fascinating and enlightening - all in just over 150 pages.