Howard Fast - The Unvanquished

THE UNVANQUISHED

Paul Finkelman
Series Editor

FREEDOM ROAD
Howard Fast
Introduction by Eric Foner

JOHN RANDOLPH
Henry Adams
Introduction by Robert McColley

THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON
Mason L. Weems
Introduction by Peter S. Onuf

GETTYSBURG
Edited by Earl Schenk Miers and Richard A. Brown
Foreword by James I. Robertson, Jr.

CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER
William Wells Brown
Introduction by Joan E. Cashin

AN ENQUIRY INTO THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES, AND LITERATURE OF NEGROES
Henri Grgoire
Introduction by Graham Russell Hodges

JOHN BROWN
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
Introduction by John David Smith

HOWARD FAST THE UNVANQUISHED

A new edition with an introduction

by HOWARD B. ROCK

First published 1997 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Copyright 1942 Howard Fast. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fast, Howard, 1914
The unvanquished / Howard Fast. A new edition with an introduction by Howard B. Rock.
p. cm. (American history through literature)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-56324-594-9 (hc : alk. paper).
ISBN 1-56324-595-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783Fiction.
2. Washington, George, 17321799Fiction.
3. GeneralsUnited StatesFiction.
I. Title.
II. Series.
PS3511.A784U7
1997
813.52dc21
97-12876
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563245954 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563245947 (hbk)

N ovelists, poets, and essayists often use history to illuminate their understanding of human interaction. At times these works also illuminate our history. They also help us better understand how people in different times and places thought about their own world. Popular novels are themselves artifacts of history.

This series is designed to bring back into print works of literaturein the broadest sense of the termthat illuminate our understanding of U.S. history. Each book is introduced by a major scholar who places the book in a context and also offers some guidance to reading the book as history. The editor will show us where the author of the book has been in error, as well as where the author is accurate. Each reprinted work also includes a few documents to illustrate the historical setting of the work itself.

Books in this series will primarily fall into three categories. First, we will reprint works of historical fictionbooks that are essentially works of history in a fictional setting. Rather than simply fiction about the past, each will be first-rate history presented through the voices of fictional characters, or through fictional presentations of real characters in ways that do not distort the historical record. Second, we will reprint works of fiction, poetry, and other forms of literature that are primary sources of the era in which they were written. Finally, we will republish nonfiction such as autobiographies, reminiscences, essays, and journalistic exposs, and even works of history that also fall into the general category of literature.

Paul Finkelman

The Unvanquished was published in 1942, during a bleak period for the United States and its citizens. The previous year had ended with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americas declaration of war against Japan, Hitlers declaration of war against the United States, and the United States declaration of war against Germany. Japan advanced into Singapore and the Philippines, and, despite the Battle of Midway, Americans were barely hanging on in the Pacific. In Europe, Axis forces were dominant. From France to the Urals, the Nazis and Italians held sway. With the invasion of 1941, the eastern Soviet Union was occupied, and Nazi troops were encamped outside Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. From the Allied viewpoint, the viewpoint of the worlds democracies, the very survival of Western civilization was at risk.

Howard Fast, one of Americas most distinguished historical novelists, sought to find an event and time in American history that most closely matched this era (he does not use parallel, for, as he notes, there are no parallels in history). For that he chose the darkest hour of the American Revolution, a time when the newly formed, poorly organized, and largely undisciplined American army, a force including a few professional soldiers, militia who possessed only rudimentary military skills from Sunday town-square drilling, and recruits who had enlisted for brief periods and were set to return home at any time, stood against the strongest military force in the world. In 1776 the British were thirteen years beyond their remarkable defeat of the forces of France and Spain in the French and Indian War in America (the Seven Years War in Europe). This triumph shattered the balance of power and saw England emerge as the dominant force in Europe, much as the Axis powers were to do in the 1940s. How could a collection of thirteen colonies stand up to the worlds superpowers, when each of the colonies identified more with its own particular history from Massachusetts Puritan heritage to Virginias cavalier identity to New Yorks Dutch and polyglot beginnings to Pennsylvanias Quaker rootsthan with a new entity called the United States?

Where, indeed, did the United States exist? There were only two recognizable components. The first was the Continental Congress, its legislature often bogged down and indecisive, moving about to avoid either disease or the British. The other was the Continental Army. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, the army was the United States. If it had disappeared, there would have been little left of a national entity or identity.

In 1942 the key to an American victory was to hang on until either the enemy weakened or the Allies position strengthened. The second option was a realistic possibility, because in World War II the Americans were capable of creating an enormous war machine. In 1776, however, that choice was not available. But time was on the side of the Americans in 1776, not because they could win battles and destroy the opposition, but because the opposition, also the freest and most democratic country in Europe, could not sustain a costly war indefinitely. Still, in 1942 it was not yet known that the Americans would produce their great war machine, so the situations then and in 1776 appeared very much alike. This was the Allies weakest moment, and so, like Washington, their objective was to remain alive to fight another day.