DATE: Sunday, August 24, 1997               TAG: 9708140593

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY JAMES E. PERSON JR. 

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

IN THE RANKS DURING THE REVOLUTION

ANGEL IN THE WHIRLWIND

The Triumph of the American Revolution

BENSON BOBRICK

Simon & Schuster. 553 pp. $30.

In Angel in the Whirlwind, historian Benson Bobrick retells the events leading up to America's War of Independence, and then the events of the war itself, taking particular care to quote judiciously from the letters and journals of the great and not-so-great who witnessed the events of the years 1775 through 1781. From Bobrick's labors there arises a fascinating story that is as intriguing and certainly more exciting than many works of fiction today.

Another book about the American Revolution? Indeed yes - and what an excellent work it is, filled with human interest, information on the hows and whys of the conflict, and out-of-the-way details that fill in the picture. All are interpreted and interwoven masterfully, providing a history that is pleasing and informative to both the lay reader and the specialist.

One of Bobrick's strengths lies in the author's capacity to humanize the many names familiar to the reader with even a passing familiarity with the time period. People like John and Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and many others, come to life as recognizable human beings, not just as names to admire on the page. In addition to the very great, there are also the portraits-in-miniature of the non-famous: the teen-age infantryman who left his family farm and signed up with the Continental Army on a dare; the American woman on the home front left to confront British foragers as best she knows, and the frustrated British infantry commander who, wishing to save the men under his command from deadly American fire, would have surrendered to the minutemen ``if only he could have found someone of rank to whom he could offer his sword.''

In such a gallery there are portrayals of heroes and villains. There is the brilliant but occasionally catty John Adams, an attorney hated by certain of his countrymen for defending in court the British soldiers who participated in the ``Boston Massacre.'' There is Benedict Arnold, a hard-fighting American general who was cursed with thin-skinned vanity, an ugly temper and a desire for riches, failings that eventually led to his selling out his country and becoming the new nation's first and most famous traitor.

There is Virginian Dan Morgan in the heat of battle, pointing out a British officer to his sharpshooters and saying, ``Do you see that gallant officer, mounted on a charger? That is General Fraser - I respect and honor him; but it is necessary that he should die.'' There is Charles, Lord Cornwallis, who deliberately delivered a slighting toast to George Washington in the latter's presence in a banquet after the British surrender at Yorktown.

Through it all, in light of his strengths and weaknesses as a military commander, Washington shines as a man of unstained character and great courage, a portrait quite consistent in its findings with Richard Brookhiser's biography, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, published a year ago.

During the war Washington was hamstrung by unkept promises by the Continental Congress, a poor supply of provisions for his troops and petty, insubordinate or traitorous conduct by certain of his generals. Yet, as Bobrick demonstrates, Washington somehow persevered. He goes so far as to write, ``George Washington gave America, by his life and example, an idea of itself which has endured as an inspiration to the people ever since. By his own conduct during the Revolution - his civility, integrity, tack and martial ardor allied to compassion and self-restraint - he showed those struggling to be free how to be worthy of their aspirations.''

Wrote John Page to Thomas Jefferson early in the war: ``We know the Race is not to the swift nor the Battle to the Strong. Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?''

The reader of Angel in the Whirlwind may well look upon Bobrick's extraordinarily well-researched and gracefully written history of the Revolutionary War and wonder about Page's question, noting what a near-disaster it was for the Continental Army throughout, what with final defeat staring the patriots in the face for much of the war. Some may well call the American victories at Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga and Yorktown the result of luck. Others may see in the war's progress and final outcome the hand of Providence, the Angel in the Whirlwind. MEMO: James E. Person Jr., a Virginia native who lives in Michigan, is

the editor of ``The Unbought Grace of Life: Essays in Honor of Russell

Kirk.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

WILLIAM B. TREGO/Valley Forge Historical Society 1883, detail

George Washington reviews the Continental Army at Valley Forge in

1777.

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