Thoughts About 1776

I finished reading 1776 last night -- and we won. I wasn't so sure, as I read the book: the soldiers were ragtag; the planning was indecisive, and the opponent was well trained.

My biggest surprise was meeting the real George Washington: a man whose noble carriage would have soldiers follow him to the gates of Hades with the Virginian who thought New Englanders were white trash.

The big turning point was the crossing of the Delaware, and that was a "Hail Mary" as much as anything. Reading about this year also reminded me of the Iraqi insurgents. Up against a much-better trained U.S. Army, they have the same ragtag quality as our forefathers ...

Memorable Worship

One of the books I've been reading is David McCullough’s 1776. This weekend, I read this memorable paragraph. For context, it’s about one of George Washington’s young officers. He and the rest of the Continental Army had just arrived in New York City after leaving Boston, from which they’d driven British:

With twenty or more churches of differing denominations to choose from (something unknown in Massachusetts), the lieutenant attended as many as possible — and "English" church (most likely Trinity Church on Broadway, which was Church of England), a Congregational meeting, a high Dutch church (probably Old Dutch Church on Garden Street), where only Dutch was spoken, and the city’s one synagogue, Shearith Israel, on Mill Street. He liked the Dutch church best, he decided, preferring the priest’s manifest piety to the "pomp" of the English church, though he understood not a wood of the Dutch sermon. On a later Sunday he and a friend attended a Quaker meeting, but after sitting through two hours during which not a word was said, they happily repaired to a nearby tavern.