The Proud and the Free

Good historical fiction about little-know events by Fast. The story of the Pennsylvania Line mutiny is one we never learned in school. The later events in York, Pennsylvania, are even more shocking. No wonder he was called "Mad Anthony" Wayne.

THE RANK AND FILE ARMY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION- A CAUTIONARY TALE The Proud and the Free is one of a series of several books that the novelist Howard Fast has written on aspects of the American Revolution. The subject of this volume is a novelistic reenactment, using the reminiscences of a participant looking back from old age as the narrative devise, is the famous mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line troops in 1781. The causes of the mutiny by soldiers who had faced and overcome five long years of hardship during the independence struggle and had become fed up over, to put it mildly, the horrible working conditions. As always Mr. Fast takes a close look at the class divide-here between the rank and file mutinous soldiers forced out into the hard-bitten winter camps and the colonial gentry who drove them much in the manner of the British overlords. The mutiny was defeated after a short period under threat of annihilation from other, superior Continental Army forces. That defeat, aside from the narrator's personal dilemma, brings us to the central question of what those mutinous forces could reasonable do in these circumstances of the revolutionary struggle for independence that they still supported. The mutinous regiments, belying the arguments of the necessity of stern and unreasonable authority from upper classes, were more than capable of keeping order and discipline under the authority of their own elected leadership (The Committee of Sergeants). The real problem was the limited number of options they had to stay together as a disciplined force. These were forces committed to the revolution, its success and ultimate victorious conclusion. As the story makes clear they had nowhere to go but home or back to the front. No body said every just political action has the right ending. Here there could be no right ending short of turning into rank and file Benedict Arnolds. No thanks.