A good book.

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Poet's Coroner

Mr. Peperium

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I was in Europe many years ago with Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway had just written his first novel and Gertrude Stein and I read it and we said it was a good novel but not a great one and it needed some work, but it could be a fine book. And we laughed about it and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.

-Woody Allen, Standup Comic, 1964-1968

 

I want to stop the blog for a moment and pay tribute to the St Louis Public Library.

Whenever Amazon tries to temp me into splurging on the latest new book covering the Colonial, Revolutionary and Young Republic eras of our history, I have no further to go than the St Louis Public Library website. Because I know the book will be there. And I know that, after a short wait (the main branch is undergoing renovation, so reserved books are picked up at a small “express” location), I will be able to judge the new effort myself. All with no financial risk beyond a possible miniscule fine if I don’t watch my due dates.

So when Amazon suggested War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier by John F. Ross, reserving a copy was the work of a moment. Rogers and his rangers have been lurking around the edges of my reading for years; a book that put them in the spotlight was just what I had been looking for.

And the story, as promised, is epic. Like Washington, Rogers had to overcome the prejudices of British military establishment. Like Israel Putnam, he grappled with Indians and wild animals. Unlike either, Rogers created an entirely new way of making war that fitted perfectly with the New England wilderness he was born into. Fusing Old World discipline with New World tactics, channeling the chronic individualism and pugnacity of young Scots-Irishmen like himself, Rogers basically invented modern special ops. And he did it in the vast, unforgiving wilderness on either side of the Lake Champlain/Richelieu River corridor that had, by the time he arrived, been a warpath for over a century, aimed directly at the most isolated settlements of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

Rogers’ achievement was to make that warpath run in the opposite direction. The French and Indians had ruled the woods since the 16^th Century. That this alliance proved so enduring should not surprise. Coureurs des bois trapping furs posed far less of a threat to indigenous peoples than sturdy English yeomen clearing forest. The French lived among the Indians, learned their languages and customs, and intermarried. The British grabbed land, fenced off fields and built towns that had a habit of growing into cities. As Ross deftly observes of one French installation, they “built Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit to dominate the river, not the cultures who lived there.” We meet the occasional Englishman like William Johnson who took the French cultural approach. But, as Ross writes, only Rogers emulated his enemy’s tactics. “Throughout the war the only British soldier thinking in the French frame of mind was Rogers, the consummate hunter and lifelong careful student of his prey, whose success lay in providing a mode of warfare that outmatched the other side in its strongest suit.”

So far so good. Ross is the exponent of a way of writing history that I admire very much. Like Noel Mostert, author of A Line Upon the Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793-1815, who has sailed many if not all the waters he writes about, Ross has a vast knowledge of the geology and topography of the country Rogers marched, sailed, paddled and fought in. He explains in clinical detail the physical and psychological effects of hypothermia and starvation, as well as the stress of combat. Obviously, he was tramped the same trails and camped in the same woods, and he has a gift for making readers feel like they have, too.

And yet somehow, like Woody and Gertrude, I have to say this is a good book. Not a great book. And it needs work. I only hope that, after all that hiking, snowshoeing and mountain climbing, John Ross doesn’t punch me in the mouth.

No, it’s not the predictable elitist guilt over Indians. In fact I was pleasantly surprised that Ross refers to the Ottawa, Iroquois and other nations as “Indians” rather than the more fashionable and cumbersome “Native Americans”. Still, he can’t resist the gratuitous swipe. Discussing a particularly ingenious Indian torture that caused much comment in the newspapers of the day, he writes, “the European mind consistently misinterpreted many Indian acts, missing the complexities of carefully enacted ritual and other behaviors, either misunderstanding or choosing not to comprehend a worldview so remote from their own, a culture whose God sent his son to a torturous death.” Such passages leave us wondering if Ross is misunderstanding or choosing not to comprehend the complexities of his own culture.

But that sort of thing, though predictable, happens far less often than I expected. What really impedes the reader is exemplified in the same passage just quoted above. Read it again. Or perhaps it tripped you up the first time. It certainly did me. That bit about “a culture whose God sent his son to a tortuous death”. Grammatically, doesn’t that phrase refer to the “worldview” of the Indians? Even if it really is grammatically correct, it still sounds, (at least to me) as if it refers to the Indians and not to European culture.

Just to let you know I’m not making this stuff up here’s another example:

Nearly ten miles from Sandusky some Huron sachems and envoys sent by Croghan from Fort Pitt presented themselves…

George Croghan was a deputy superintendant of Indian affairs at Fort Pitt. He had sent envoys ahead of Rogers to prepare a Huron greeting for him at Detroit. Yet the sentence implies that the Huron sachems and the envoys were both sent by Croghan from Fort Pitt—which is not the case. What about a judicious “along with the”, used something like this:

Nearly ten miles from Sandusky some Huron sachems, along with the envoys sent by Croghan from Fort Pitt, presented themselves…

Unfortunately, like exposed tree roots on a forest path, these sorts of glitches interrupt the narrative far too often.

Finally, like jagged millennia-old alluvial rocks hidden cunningly beneath the roiling, storm-tossed visage of some wanton wilderness cataract, crouching, patiently waiting, ready to tear the bottom of the boat out from under the unsuspecting reader, there are Ross’ disconcerting excursions into prose that tends somewhat decidedly to the mauve.

For example.

To aid him in the description of just such a wanton watercourse, Ross quotes what he refers to as “The overwrought words of the nineteenth-century Kingston poet Charles Sanger”:

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Again the troubled deep heaps surge on surge,

And howling billows sweep the water dark,

Stunning the ear with their stentorian dirge,

That loudens as they strike the rocks resisting verge.

 

Perhaps Ross thought he was on solid ground denigrating a nineteenth-century poet. Nineteenth-century-poets, especially North American ones who don’t have the good fortune of being Poe, Dickinson or Whitman, are easy pickings. Their stuff is ipso facto “overwrought” because they’re, well, nineteenth-century. And this one has the added baggage of being, well, Canadian, right?

Actually, the four lines above show a solid technical skill. Internal rhyme, onomatopoeia, a deft trochee that stuns us at the beginning of the third line, and the use of a concluding hexameter to drive home the relentlessness of the water’s thunder, all work effectively. I even like the new coinage, “loudens”. Is the passage energetic? Yes. But then, Sanger is describing something energetic. I suppose to our staid, early 21^st-century tastes, formed in the more rigorous poetic school of Eminem and Snoop Dog, the passage could seem a tad excessive. But what renders Ross’ “overwrought” comment such a cringe-maker is his next observation:

With its immense sweep and the ledges of murderous white water, the St. Lawrence embodied the uncontrollable wildness of the continent of unimaginable proportions.

The reader wants to put his hand on the author’s shoulder and advise him to look after that log in his own eye. In Ross’ effusion it’s hard not to hear a faint echo of Conrad’s “implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention”. Which, of course, makes the whole thing all the more silly.

Still, the story itself propels the book along. And Ross isn’t all bad. He just isn’t all good, either. And I admit I am enjoying the book immensely. And best of all, I’m not out of pocket $30.00 plus tax. Thank you, St. Louis Public Library.

Now, when is that renovation going to be finished?

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Comments

[Robbo]

Thankee, Mr. P.

Curiously enough, this very morning I arrived with Rogers again at Ft. Detroit in Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac. Fortunately, bad grammar was not among our travelling companions.

Have you a copy of Rogers' own journal? I have never sat down and slogged all the way through mine, but instead read select passages as a companion to Parkman's footnotes.

[Mr. P]

Thank you, Robbo.

Over a series of lunch breaks I read Parkman's Conspiracy back when I was at J. Walter Thompson. My office overlooked Hart Plaza, the site of Fort Detroit.

The Journal? These days I don't go in much for reading primary sources; it's too much like work. I prefer to have someone else sort through the sources, assemble a readable narrative, and then let me take it out of the library and savage it on a blog.

Speaking of primary sources, early on in Ross' book we read that Rogers served with a Lieutenant Grant--direct ancestor of Ulysses. This Grant dies early on (and offstage), but it prompted me to go back and re-read the opening pages of Grant's Personal Memoirs, right from the first edition Mrs. P bought me for our first Christmas. That first sentence always gets me: "My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral." I was wondering if he would mention his ancestor's service with Rogers, but he doesn't.

I still have about 125 pages to go. Unfortunately, judging from the chapter titles, the story gets grimmer and grimmer...

[Old Dominion Tory]

If you're still keen on the overall topic after reading this book, Mr. Peperium, then I heartily recommend "White Savage," a biography of Sir William Johnson.

[Robbo]

"White Savage" is, indeed, a good book, although I think the author tries to play up the "Irish and Indians can relate because they're both oppressed peoples" line a bit too much, at least early on.

Yeah, Rogers goes off the deep end later in life. I recall that he spent at least some time in the service of a pasha or dey, or some such leader.

[Mr. P]

Thanks for the recommendation, ODT. Good to get together again with you two, talking about the stuff that really matters--at least to us.

Just this morning, as I sprint to the finish of War on the Run (tripping over but now ignoring those little verbal eccentricities that mar an otherwise admirable book) I'm getting the picture of a William Johnson who, allied with an equally nasty Thomas Gage, are trying to stand in the way of what Ross depicts as Roger's genuine attempts to get Britain and the Indians together for mutual economic benefits. Furs and rum and such. A different side of the Johnson I've met through Parkman and Fred Anderson. By the way--you guys know that Anderson is due out with a new installment of the Oxford History of the United States--the volume dealing with colonial history? It's co-authored and still in process, but it is one book I think will make it into the permanent collection.

Does Rogers eventually enlist under the banner of a pasha? Hmmm. John Paul Jones did much the same thing--and was much the same kind of character as Rogers.

Apropos of nothing: Another criticism I want to make of Ross is his habit of chronological confusion. A standard way of writing a chapter of history is to break in in media res as it were, at the height of a battle, the crisis of a negotiation, or some such thing like that, then backtrack to tell the tale of how the battle or negotiation got that way. Then, once your narrative has caught up with the crisis point at which you started, to take the event to it's conclusion and start a new chapter. This Ross does often, but for the life of me he doesn't do it well. I was (I am) forever backtracking, flipping pages, wondering where I got off the rails. Annoying. But as I say, the story itself is great and the book is still very good.

Rogers even writes--or rather, co-authors--a play about Pontiac that gets produced in London. It's panned by critics--Ross says that Roger's hand is only evident at the beginning and that from there it degenerates into standard melodrama, but sill--the last thing one would expect from a kid from rural--or rather, wilderness--New Hampshire.

And Robbo, according to Ross the journals rank up there with Grant's Memoirs as read-worthy, both for content and style. Maybe I will dip into them--after all, I'm sure the St. Louis Library has 'em.

[Mr. P]

Another question for the panel:

Ross dates Gage's animosity towards Rogers from the day at Carillon in the summer of 1758 when, after the death of Lord Howe, command devolved upon Gage.

Ross says that for several hours Gage was nowhere to be found--or, more precisely, he says that the record makes no mention of him. I don't remember anything like that in anything else I've read. I'm not saying it isn't so, just that I don't recall any personal failure of nerve or courage on Gage's part at Carillon--just the overall failure of the assault.

If true it makes sense. Folks always fear people who supposedly "know something" about their past and will usually try any means to discredit the source before the dreaded revelation comes to light. On the other hand, they make the mistake of assuming everyone is as petty as they are. Just because they wouldn't hesitate to spill the dirt doesn't mean others would.

I admit that some of my sympathy for Thomas Gage--born of the fact that he was dealing with an impossible colonial situation and that his American wife stayed on this side when he went home--has waned a bit.

Also, Ross' charge surprises me because Gage, being a major player in the next phase of the colonial story, is one of those characters to whom I would have payed particular attention. I'll rifle through my Anderson and Parkman in the mean time and see what I can see.

[Robbo]

See, now THIS is truly blog-worthy stuff.

Parkman includes a couple of scenes from Rogers' play about Pontiac in his appendices.

I cannot recall reading anything about Gage losing his nerve when Howe was killed. But I do recollect that there was a good deal of confusion as teh Brits moved from their landing at the foot of Lake George toward Carillon. The road was very narrow and while the regulars were making their way up it, I believe Gage was out trying to beat a path through the woods with his light infantry.

I'm also surprised about the assertion re Johnson, who always struck me as having a true gift for understanding the Indians and considerable sympathy for them. (Indeed, he kept screaming at Amherst to treat them with more respect prior to Pontiac's irruption.) It was Johnson who single-handedly kept most of the Iroquois (apart from the Senecas) from joining the rebellion.

Exciting news about Anderson's new book.

[Old Dominion Tory]

If Ross is saying that Lord Howe was killed during the main assault on Fort Carillon on July 8, he is mistaken. Howe was killed during a skirmish with a French force near the shore of Lake George a couple of days before.
As to Gage's role in the main assault on Fort Carillon, as I recall, he commanded a regiment of light infantry that, along with Rogers' Rangers, was charged with beating back the French pickets, and he was wounded, leading his men. Perhaps the wound was severe enough to demand that he left the battlefield, and that this accounts for his alleged absence from the records (whatever records Ross is using). Whatever favorable characteristics Thomas Gage lacked, as evidenced by his conduct at Braddock's defeat and Fort Carillon, courage wasn't one of them.
Finally, Mrs. Gage did not stay in the United States after the war. She left for England some time before the evacutation of British forces in March 1776. Perhaps, the General wanted to protect her from any vicious gossip.

[Robbo]

Because, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my memory contains much which is apochryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, I went back and double-checked my comments about Rogers' later exploits. At the beginning of Chapter VI of The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Parkman gives a character sketch and brief biography of Rogers. As far as character goes, while admiring Rogers' woodcraft and his active mind, Parkman is critical of "[Rogers'] vain, restless and grasping spirit, and more than doubtful honesty." Parkman then goes on to note that Rogers was later court-martialed for surrendering Michillimackinac to the Spanish and that after that Rogers went to the Barbary States, entering the service of the Dey of Algiers, "under whose banner" he fought two battles. When he came back to America at the outbreak of the Revolution, nobody (including Washington) trusted him, believing him to be a British spy. Of course, Rogers then went and got himself a colonel's commission from the Crown and spent the war in relative obscurity, getting booted out when it was all over.

[Mr. P]

Gentlemen, there is much good stuff here to react to and comment on; as you say, Robbo, this is blog-worthy--but I gotta go to bed. ODT, I was abbreviating for the sake of time and space--Ross is clear about when Howe was killed, blaming him (not unjustly) for unnecessary exposure to hostile fire. But stay tuned, as tomorrow I will post my final say on Ross and his book. And get back to these fine observations, too.

[Old Dominion Tory]

Exciting news about Anderson's book, indeed. As with your collection, Mr. Peperium, that one will have a place in the ODT "permanent collection".
Admittedly, without reading this book, I am starting to get the idea that Ross fell into a trap that bedevils many biographers: he takes his subject's word on everything. And, perhaps, too, he is projecting on to Rogers his own thinking, his own preferences, about the relationship between the British and the Indians (much as David Hackett Fischer did with Samuel Champlain in his book "Champlain's Dream.")
From what I have read, there were few men more attuned to the delicacies of dealing with the Indians than William Johnson (*SIGH* If only he had gone into the service of France.). As to Thomas Gage, I cannot help but admire his abilities as a soldier. Yes, he was pranged by many for his peformance at Braddock's Defeat, but he demonstrated a praiseworthy intellectual flexibility in adopting the light infantry tactics. Moreover, he showed some organizational spark in raising and training his unit, too.
Perhaps, Ross believes that, if they crossed his subject (hero?), then something must be wrong with these men. I don't know, but I now have my suspicions.
I now await Mr. Peperium's final thoughts.

[Robbo]

ODT - The French didn't need Johnson. Their bench was packed with skillful diplomats, from Frontenac on down.

What makes Johnson (and a few others like George Croghan) stand out was the relative rarity of their type on the Brit side.

[Old Dominion Tory]

One more point: As to Lord Howe's death, please allow me to raise an eyebrow to Ross's assertion that Lord Howe needlessly exposed himself to enemy fire.
When all is said and done, even though he was a brigadier, on the day of the skirmish, Howe essentially was acting as a regimental officer, not a general. Furthermore, in the type of warfare in which he was engaged ("on the run," to borrow a phrase), with the size of the units involved, and in that era, front-line (literally) leadership was the norm.
Furthermore, at least as Howe's men experienced it, the battle was a "meeting engagement," one in which two forces essentially collide. Those often can get quite messy in any conditions, and, in the woods of North America, I am sure that they were exceptionally so.

[Old Dominion Tory]

Good point, Robbo, on the high level of diplomatic skills and the good number of skilled diplomats on the French side. I suppose I was just being greedy.
As you say, Johnson's abilities as a diplomat and a leader stand out among the British and the Americans of the time.