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If THE GLORIOUS CAUSE has one virtue, if it does anything well at all, it describes the grand strategy of the English and American generals in the Revolutionary War. A map of the major battles does little to reveal exactly what the people who were in charge at the time were thinking. Why did the British spend so much time and energy in capturing New York? Why then move across New Jersey to Philadelphia, with Washington's army nipping at their heels all the way? If Valley Forge was such a horrible place for winter quarters, why did Washington choose it? Why did Cornwallis allow himself to be bottled up at Yorktown?
The reader with a passing interest in these tactical mysteries will find the answers in THE GLORIOUS CAUSE, but little else. Jeff Shaara is a writer with limited talent, but the one thing he does quite well is describing the movements of armies on the march. Washington's evacuation from New York is lovingly described, as is the assault on Trenton and a score of lesser conflicts. (The battle of Saratoga, for some incomprehensible reason, is given comparatively short shrift.) In terms of strict military history, in terms of analyzing the battles and leaders of the war, Shaara does a good, workmanlike job here.
But any novel about the Revolutionary War must, inescapably, be about more than the armies and the bloodshed and the strategy. More than anything else, a book like THE GLORIOUS CAUSE ought to be about, well, the glory of the cause and the brave men and women who fought for American liberty. Shaara, however, shortchanges the reader by removing the battles from the cause, by turning most of his fascinating real-life characters into little more than boxes and arrows on a map.
Shaara fails primarily because he chooses many of the wrong characters. We hear little, if anything, about Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, John Paul Jones, Francis Marion, Samuel Adams, or even Benedict Arnold or King George. There is little attention paid to the ideas and ideals that drew men to the battlefields and that in turn inspired a revolution in liberty across the globe that continues to this day. The characters that are presented are not done so with skill or style or anything else to make them memorable. For example, Shaara focuses a lot of attention on Nathaniel Greene, a Rhode Island general who spends an inordinate amount of the novel as the army's quartermaster.
The only truly memorable character in THE GLORIOUS CAUSE turns out to be, surprisingly, General Cornwallis. The English general is best known for his surrender at Yorktown; he seldom appears elsewhere in accounts of the war. Shaara rescues Cornwallis from the ash heap of history and makes him a likable, almost sympathetic, character, struggling against incompetent and vain commanding officers.
However, the true hero of THE GLORIOUS CAUSE is not its pleasant enemy but its righteous hero: General George Washington of Virginia. Shaara's characterization of Washington is the book's largest and most unforgivable flaw. Shaara never presents Washington as anything but a bloodless icon, the man on the dollar bill with the wooden teeth. What we find out about his character --- arguably the Continental Army's most important asset --- is done through inference and anecdote. Washington is a cold and remote figure to too many Americans; Shaara's work does little or nothing to change that.
THE GLORIOUS CAUSE succeeds only in its mastery of the fine points of military maneuver and the explication of high strategy. In the more important area of characterization and inspiration, it fails badly. It is a rich and detailed piece of work, but hardly revolutionary.
--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds
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