Introduction
George Washington never suffered a truly catastrophic defeat during the revolution, although he certainly had numerous opportunities to fail in a manner that would have ended the war.
His inexperience as a field general nearly saw his army destroyed at Long Island, and it was only good fortune that saw a British relief fleet defeated off Yorktown since a second British fleet arrived shortly after Cornwallis’ surrender. And the other times he took the field to confront the main British Army, he was generally less than successful, as with Brandywine and Germantown, while some consider the battle at Monmouth to have been a draw. To be fair, he did have his share of victories such as Trenton and Princeton, but they were relatively minor actions against smaller segments of the British army.
Washington had to keep his army intact in order to keep the revolution alive. A serious defeat could have devastated the revolution that began in 1775. But would it have meant an end to the revolutionary spirit, or simply a temporary lull in the fighting?
In “Liberty,” the first British relief fleet does arrive in a timely manner off Yorktown in the Fall of 1781, does defeat the French fleet (which should have happened if only the British had been smarter). Cornwallis then goes on to rout the Americans and Washington, who had gambled all in an attempt to trap and defeat Cornwallis; thus ending a war that had gone on for years.
However, I do not believe it would have meant the end of the revolutionary spirit. Instead, I believe that numbers of hardcore revolutionaries would have migrated westward, much in the manner that the South Africans did to flee the British only twenty years later. They would have done so to keep their freedoms and to save their skins from a vengeful British government.
Yet, how far could Americans run and how far would the British, fearing a resurgence of the revolution, chase them?
I believe that the British would have recognized the presence of a “free” nation as a great threat and would have chased them hard and far to bring the rebels to heel or to destroy them.
Thus, the story of “Liberty.”
—Robert Conroy
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